The Man Who Saved the Earth

                            by Austin Hall




[Illustration: Not a sound; the whole works a complicated mass covering
a hundred acres, driving with a silence that was magic. Not a whir nor
friction. Like a living composite body pulsing and breathing the strange
and mysterious force that had been evolved from Huyck’s theory of
kinetics. The four great steel conduits running from the globes down the
side of the mountain. In the center at a point midway between the globes,
a massive steel needle hung on a pivot and pointed directly at the sun.]




    We read of the days when the powers of radium were yet
    unknown. It is told us that burns were produced by
    incautiously carrying a tube of radium salts in the
    pocket. And here in this story we are told of a different
    power, opalescence, due to another element. It can destroy
    mountains, excavate cavities of immeasurable depths and
    kill human beings and animals in multitude. The story
    opens with a poor little boy experimenting with a burning
    glass. Then he becomes the hero of the story—he studies
    and eventually finds himself able to destroy the earth. He
    exceeds Archimedes in his power. And he suddenly finds
    that he has unlocked a power that threatens this very
    destruction. And the story depicts his horror at the
    Frankenstein which he had unloosed, and tells of his wild
    efforts to save humanity, and of the loss of the cosmic
    discoveries of the little newsboy grown up to be a great
    scientist.




                              CHAPTER I

                            THE BEGINNING


Even the beginning. From the start the whole thing has the precision
of machine work. Fate and its working—and the wonderful Providence
which watches over Man and his future. The whole thing unerring: the
incident, the work, the calamity, and the martyr. In the retrospect of
disaster we may all of us grow strong in wisdom. Let us go into
history.

A hot July day. A sun of scant pity, and a staggering street; panting
thousands dragging along, hatless; fans and parasols; the sultry
vengeance of a real day of summer. A day of bursting tires; hot
pavements, and wrecked endeavor, heartaches for the seashore, for
leafy bowers beside rippling water, a day of broken hopes and listless
ambition.

Perhaps Fate chose the day because of its heat and because of its
natural benefit on fecundity. We have no way of knowing. But we do
know this: the date, the time, the meeting; the boy with the burning
glass and the old doctor. So commonplace, so trivial and hidden in
obscurity! Who would have guessed it? Yet it is—after the creation—one
of the most important dates in the world’s history.

This is saying a whole lot. Let us go into it and see what it amounts
to. Let us trace the thing out in history, weigh it up and balance it
with sequence.

Of Charley Huyck we know nothing up to this day. It is a thing which,
for some reason, he has always kept hidden. Recent investigation as to
his previous life and antecedents have availed us nothing. Perhaps he
could have told us; but as he has gone down as the world’s great
martyr, there is no hope of gaining from his lips what we would so
like to know.

After all, it does not matter. We have the day—the incident, and its
purport, and its climax of sequence to the day of the great disaster.
Also we have the blasted mountains and the lake of blue water which
will ever live with his memory. His greatness is not of warfare, nor
personal ambition; but of all mankind. The wreaths that we bestow upon
him have no doubtful color. The man who saved the earth!

From such a beginning, Charley Huyck, lean and frail of body, with,
even then, the wistfulness of the idealist, and the eyes of a poet.
Charley Huyck, the boy, crossing the hot pavement with his pack of
papers; the much treasured piece of glass in his pocket, and the sun
which only he should master burning down upon him. A moment out of the
ages; the turning of a straw destined to out-balance all the previous
accumulation of man’s history.

The sun was hot and burning, and the child—he could not have been more
than ten—cast a glance over his shoulder. It was in the way of
calculation. In the heyday of childhood he was not dragged down by the
heat and weather: he had the enthusiasm of his half-score of years and
the joy of the plaything. We will not presume to call it the spirit of
the scientist, though it was, perhaps, the spark of latent
investigation that was destined to lead so far.

A moment picked out of destiny! A boy and a plaything. Uncounted
millions of boys have played with glass and the sun rays. Who cannot
remember the little, round-burning dot in the palm of the hand and the
subsequent exclamation? Charley Huyck had found a new toy, it was a
simple thing and as old as glass. Fate will ever be so in her working.

And the doctor? Why should he have been waiting? If it was not
destiny, it was at least an accumulation of moment. In the heavy
eye-glasses, the square, close-cut beard; and his uncompromising
fact-seeking expression. Those who knew Dr. Robold are strong in the
affirmation that he was the antithesis of all emotion. He was the
sternest product of science: unbending, hardened by experiment, and
caustic in his condemnation of the frailness of human nature.

It had been his one function to topple over the castles of the
foolish; with his hard-seeing wisdom he had spotted sophistry where we
thought it not. Even into the castles of science he had gone like a
juggernaut. It is hard to have one’s theories derided—yea, even for a
scientist—and to be called a fool! Dr. Robold knew no middle
language;he was not relished by science.

His memory, as we have it, is that of an eccentric. A man of slight
compassion, abrupt of manner and with no tact in speaking. Genius is
often so; it is a strange fact that many of the greatest of men have
been denied by their fellows. A great man and laughter. He was not
accepted.

None of us know to-day what it cost Dr. Robold. He was not the man to
tell us. Perhaps Charley Huyck might; but his lips are sealed forever.
We only know that he retired to the mountain, and of the subsequent
flood of benefits that rained upon mankind. And we still denied him.
The great cynic on the mountain. Of the secrets of the place we know
little. He was not the man to accept the investigator; he despised the
curious. He had been laughed at—let be—he would work alone on the
great moment of the future.

In the light of the past we may well bend knee to the doctor and his
protégé, Charley Huyck. Two men and destiny! What would we be without
them? One shudders to think.

A little thing, and yet one of the greatest moments in the world’s
history. It must have been Fate. Why was it that this stern man, who
hated all emotion, should so have unbended at this moment? That we
cannot answer. But we can conjecture. Mayhap it is this: We were all
wrong; we accepted the man’s exterior and profession as the fact of
his marrow.

No man can lose all emotion. The doctor, was, after all, even as
ourselves—he was human. Whatever may be said, we have the certainty of
that moment—and of Charley Huyck.

The sun’s rays were hot; they were burning; the pavements were
intolerable; the baked air in the canyoned street was dancing like
that of an oven; a day of dog-days. The boy crossing the street; his
arms full of papers, and the glass bulging in his little hip-pocket.

At the curb he stopped. With such a sun it was impossible to long
forget his plaything. He drew it carefully out of his pocket, lay down
a paper and began distancing his glass for the focus. He did not
notice the man beside him. Why should he? The round dot, the brownish
smoke, the red spark and the flash of flame! He stamped upon it. A
moment out of boyhood; an experimental miracle as old as the age of
glass, and just as delightful. The boy had spoiled the name of a great
Governor of a great State; but the paper was still salable. He had had
his moment. Mark that moment.

A hand touched his shoulder. The lad leaped up. “Yessir. _Star_ or
_Bulletin_?”

“I’ll take one of each,” said the man. “There now. I was just watching
you. Do you know what you were doing?”

“Yessir. Burning paper. Startin’ fire. That’s the way the Indians did
it.”

The man smiled at the perversion of fact. There is not such a distance
between sticks and glass in the age of childhood.

“I know,” he said—“the Indians. But do you know how it was done; the
why—why the paper began to blaze?”

“Yessir.”

“All right, explain.”

The boy looked up at him. He was a city boy and used to the streets.
Here was some old high-brow challenging his wisdom. Of course he knew.
“It’s the sun.”

“There,” laughed the man. “Of course. You said you knew, but you
don’t. Why doesn’t the sun, without the glass, burn the paper? Tell me
that.”

The boy was still looking up at him; he saw that the man was not like
the others on the street. It may be that the strange intimacy kindled
into being at that moment. Certainly it was a strange unbending for
the doctor.

“It would if it was hot enough or you could get enough of it
together.”

“Ah! Then that is what the glass is for, is it?”

“Yessir.”

“Concentration?”

“Con— I don’t know, sir. But it’s the sun. She’s sure some hot. I know
a lot about the sun, sir. I’ve studied it with the glass. The glass
picks up all the rays and puts them in one hole and that’s what burns
the paper.

“It’s lots of fun. I’d like to have a bigger one; but it’s all I’ve
got. Why, do you know, if I had a glass big enough and a place to
stand, I’d burn up the earth?”

The old man laughed. “Why, Archimedes! I thought you were dead.”

“My name ain’t Archimedes. It’s Charley Huyck.”

Again the old man laughed.

“Oh, is it? Well, that’s a good name, too. And if you keep on you’ll
make it famous as the name of the other.” Wherein he was foretelling
history. “Where do you live?”

The boy was still looking. Ordinarily he would not have told, but he
motioned back with his thumb.

“I don’t live; I room over on Brennan Street.”

“Oh, I see. You room. Where’s your mother?”

“Search me; I never saw her.”

“I see; and your father?”

“How do I know. He went floating when I was four years old.”

“Floating?”

“Yessir—to sea.”

“So your mother’s gone and your father’s floating. Archimedes is
adrift. You go to school?”

“Yessir”

“What reader?”

“No reader. Sixth grade.”

“I see. What school?”

“School Twenty-six. Say, it’s hot. I can’t stand here all day. I’ve
got to sell my papers.”

The man pulled out a purse.

“I’ll take the lot,” he said. Then kindly: “My boy, I would like to
have you go with me.”

It was a strange moment. A little thing with the fates looking on.
When destiny plays she picks strange moments. This was one. Charley
Huyck went with Dr. Robold.




                              CHAPTER II

                           THE POISON PALL


We all of us remember that fatal day when the news startled all of
Oakland. No one can forget it. At first it read like a newspaper hoax,
in spite of the oft-proclaimed veracity of the press, and we were
inclined to laughter. ’Twixt wonder at the story and its
impossibilities we were not a little enthused at the nerve of the man
who put it over.

It was in the days of dry reading. The world had grown populous and of
well-fed content. Our soap-box artists had come to the point at last
where they preached, not disaster, but a full-bellied thanks for the
millennium that was here. A period of Utopian quietness—no villain
around the corner; no man to covet the ox of his neighbor.

Quiet reading, you’ll admit. Those were the days of the millennium.
Nothing ever happened. Here’s hoping they never come again. And then:

Honestly, we were not to blame for bestowing blessing out of our
hearts upon that newspaperman. Even if it were a hoax, it was at least
something.

At high noon. The clock in the city hall had just struck the hour that
held the post ’twixt a.m. and p.m., a hot day with a sky that was
clear and azure; a quiet day of serene peace and contentment. A
strange and a portent moment. Looking back and over the miracle we may
conjecture that it was the clearness of the atmosphere and the
brightness of the sun that helped to the impact of the disaster.
Knowing what we know now we can appreciate the impulse of natural
phenomena. It was _not_ a miracle.

The spot: Fourteenth and Broadway, Oakland, California.

Fortunately the thousands of employees in the stores about had not yet
come out for their luncheons. The lapse that it takes to put a hat on,
or to pat a ribbon, saved a thousand lives. One shudders to think of
what would have happened had the spot been crowded. Even so, it was
too impossible and too terrible to be true. Such things could not
happen.

At high noon: Two street-cars crossing Fourteenth on Broadway—two cars
with the same joggle and bump and the same aspect of any of a hundred
thousand at a traffic corner. The wonder is—there were so few people.
A Telegraph car outgoing, and a Broadway car coming in. The traffic
policeman at his post had just given his signal. Two automobiles were
passing and a single pedestrian, so it is said, was working his way
diagonally across the corner. Of this we are not certain.

It was a moment that impinged on miracle. Even as we recount it,
knowing, as we do, the explanation, we sense the impossibility of the
event. A phenomenon that holds out and, in spite of our findings,
lingers into the miraculous. To be and not to be. One moment life and
action, an ordinary scene of existent monotony; and the next moment
nothing. The spot, the intersection of the street, the passing
street-cars, the two automobiles, pedestrian, the
policeman—non-existent! When events are instantaneous reports are apt
to be misleading. This is what we find.

Some of those who beheld it, report a flash of bluish white light;
others that it was of a greenish or even a violet hue; and others, no
doubt of stronger vision, that it was not only of a predominant color
but that it was shot and sparkled with a myriad specks of flame and
burning.

It gave no warning and it made no sound; not even a whir. Like a hot
breath out of the void. Whatever the forces that had focused, they
were destruction. There was no Fourteenth and Broadway. The two
automobiles, the two street-cars, the pedestrian, the policeman had
been whiffed away as if they had never existed. In place of the
intersection of the thoroughfares was a yawning gulf that looked down
into the center of the earth to a depth of nausea.

It was instantaneous; it was without sound; no warning. A tremendous
force of unlimited potentiality had been loosed to kinetic violence.
It was the suddenness and the silence that belied credence. We were
accustomed to associate all disaster with confusion; calamity has an
affinity with pandemonium, all things of terror climax into sound. In
this case there was no sound. Hence the wonder.

A hole or bore forty feet in diameter. Without a particle of warning
and without a bit of confusion. The spectators one and all aver that
at first they took it for nothing more than the effect of startled
eyesight. Almost subtle. It was not until after a full minute’s
reflection that they became aware that a miracle had been wrought
before their faces. Then the crowd rushed up and with awe and now
awakened terror gazed down into that terrible pit.

We say “Terrible” because in this case it is an exact adjective. The
strangest hole that man ever looked into. It was so deep that at first
it appeared to have no bottom; not even the strongest eyesight could
penetrate the smoldering blackness that shrouded the depths
descending. It took a stout heart and courage to stand and hold one’s
head on the brink for even a minute.

It was straight and precipitous; a perfect circle in shape; with sides
as smooth as the effect of machine work, the pavement and stone curb
had been cut as if by a razor. Of the two street-cars, two automobiles
and their occupants there was nothing. The whole thing so silent and
complete. Not even the spectators could really believe it.

It was a hard thing to believe. The newspapers themselves, when the
news came clamoring, accepted it with reluctance. It was too much like
a hoax. Not until the most trusted reporters had gone and had wired in
their reports would they even consider it. Then the whole world sat up
and took notice.

A miracle! Like Oakland’s Press we all of us doubted that hole. We had
attained almost everything that was worth the knowing; we were the
masters of the earth and its secrets and we were proud of our wisdom;
naturally we refused such reports all out of reason. It must be a
hoax.

But the wires were persistent. Came corroboration. A reliable
news-gathering organization soon was coming through with elaborate and
detailed accounts of just what was happening. We had the news from the
highest and most reputable authority.

And still we doubted. It was the story itself that brought the
doubting; its touch on miracle. It was too easy to pick on the
reporter. There might be a hole, and all that; but this thing of no
explanation! A bomb perhaps? No noise? Some new explosive? No such
thing? Well, how did we know? It was better than a miracle.

Then came the scientists. As soon as could be men of great minds had
been hustled to the scene. The world had long been accustomed to
accept without quibble the dictum of these great specialists of fact.
With their train of accomplishments behind them we would hardly be
consistent were we to doubt them.

We know the scientist and his habits. He is the one man who will
believe nothing until it is proved. It is his profession, and for that
we pay him. He can catch the smallest bug that ever crawled out of an
atom and give it a name so long that a Polish wrestler, if he had to
bear it, would break under the burden. It is his very knack of getting
in under that has given us our civilization. You don’t baffle a
scientist in our Utopia. It can’t be done. Which is one of the very
reasons why we began to believe in the miracle.

In a few moments a crowd of many thousands had gathered about the
spot; the throng grew so dense that there was peril of some of them
being crowded into the pit at the center. It took all the spare
policemen of the city to beat them back far enough to string ropes
from the corners. For blocks the streets were packed with wondering
thousands. Street traffic was impossible. It was necessary to divert
the cars to a roundabout route to keep the arteries open to the
suburbs.

Wild rumors spread over the city. No one knew how many passengers had
been upon the street-cars. The officials of the company, from the
schedule, could pick the numbers of the cars and their crews; but who
could tell of the occupants?

Telephones rang with tearful pleadings. When the first rumors of the
horror leaked out every wife and mother felt the clutch of panic at
her heartstrings. It was a moment of historical psychology. Out of our
books we had read of this strange phase of human nature that was wont
to rise like a mad screeching thing out of disaster. We had never had
it in Utopia.

It was rumbling at first and out of exaggeration; as the tale passed
farther back to the waiting thousands it gained with the repetition.
Grim and terrible enough in fact, it ratioed up with reiteration.
Perhaps after all it was not psychology. The average impulse of the
human mind does not even up so exactly. In the light of what we now
know it may have been the poison that had leaked into the air; the new
element that was permeating the atmosphere of the city.

At first it was spasmodic. The nearest witnesses of the disaster were
the first victims. A strange malady began to spot out among those of
the crowd who had been at the spot of contact. This is to be noticed.
A strange affliction which from the virulence and rapidity of action
was quite puzzling to the doctors.

Those among the physicians who would consent to statement gave it out
that it was breaking down of tissue. Which of course it was; the new
element that was radiating through the atmosphere of the city. They
did not know it then.

The pity of it! The subtle, odorless pall was silently shrouding out
over the city. In a short time the hospitals were full and it was
necessary to call in medical aid from San Francisco. They had not even
time for diagnosis. The new plague was fatal almost at conception.
Happily the scientists made the discovery.

It was the pall. At the end of three hours it was known that the death
sheet was spreading out over Oakland. We may thank our stars that it
was learned so early. Had the real warning come a few hours later the
death list would have been appalling.

A new element had been discovered; or if not a new element, at least
something which was tipping over all the laws of the atmospheric
envelope. A new combination that was fatal. When the news and the
warning went out, panic fell upon the bay shore.

But some men stuck. In the face of such terror there were those who
stayed and with grimness and sacrifice hung to their posts for
mankind. There are some who had said that the stuff of heroes had
passed away. Let them then consider the case of John Robinson.

Robinson was a telegraph operator. Until that day he was a poor
unknown; not a whit better than his fellows. Now he has a name that
will run in history. In the face of what he knew he remained under the
blanket. The last words out of Oakland—his last message:

“Whole city of Oakland in grip of strange madness. Keep out of
Oakland,”—following which came a haphazard personal commentary:

“I can feel it coming on myself. It is like what our ancestors must
have felt when they were getting drunk—alternating desires of fight
and singing—a strange sensation, light, and ecstatic with a spasmodic
twitching over the forehead. Terribly thirsty. Will stick it out if I
can get enough water. Never so dry in my life.”

Followed a lapse of silence. Then the last words: “I guess we’re done
for. There is some poison in the atmosphere—something. It has leaked,
of course, out of this thing at Fourteenth and Broadway. Dr. Manson of
the American Institute says it is something new that is forming a
fatal combination; but he cannot understand a new element; the
quantity is too enormous.

“Populace has been warned out of the city. All roads are packed with
refugees. The Berkeley Hills are covered as with flies—north, east,
and south and on the boats to Frisco. The poison, whatever it is, is
advancing in a ring from Fourteenth and Broadway. You have got to pass
it to these old boys of science. They are staying with that ring.
Already they have calculated the rate of its advance and have given
warning. They don’t know what it is, but they have figured just how
fast it is moving. They have saved the city.

“I am one of the few men now inside the wave. Out of curiosity I have
stuck. I have a jug and as long as it lasts I shall stay. Strange
feeling. Dry, dry, dry, as if the juice of one’s life cells was
turning into dust. Water evaporating almost instantly. It cannot pass
through glass. Whatever the poison it has an affinity for moisture. Do
not understand it. I have had enough—”

That was all. After that there was no more news out of Oakland. It is
the only word that we have out of the pall itself. It was short and
disconnected and a bit slangy; but for all that a basis from which to
conjecture.

It is a strange and glorious thing how some men will stick to the post
of danger. This operator knew that it meant death; but he held with
duty. Had he been a man of scientific training his information might
have been of incalculable value. However, may God bless his heroic
soul!

What we know is thirst! The word that came from the experts confirmed
it. Some new element of force was stealing or sapping the humidity out
of the atmosphere. Whether this was combining and entering into a
poison could not be determined.

Chemists worked frantically at the outposts of the advancing ring. In
four hours it had covered the city; in six it had reached San Leandro,
and was advancing on toward Haywards.

It was a strange story and incredible from the beginning. No wonder
the world doubted. Such a thing had never happened. We had accepted
the law of judging the future by the past; by deduction; we were used
to sequence and to law; to the laws of Nature. This thing did look
like a miracle; which was merely because—as usually it is with
“miracles”—we could not understand it. Happily, we can look back now
and still place our faith in Nature.

The world doubted and was afraid. Was this peril to spread slowly over
the whole state of California and then on to the—world. Doubt always
precedes terror. A tense world waited. Then came the word of
reassurance—from the scientists:

“Danger past; vigor of the ring is abating. Calculation has deduced
that the wave is slowly decreasing in potentiality. It is too early
yet to say that there will be recessions, as the wave is just reaching
its zenith. What it is we cannot say; but it cannot be inexplicable.
After a little time it will all be explained. Say to the world there
is no cause for alarm.”

But the world was now aroused; as it doubted the truth before, it
doubted now the reassurance. Did the scientists know? Could they have
only seen the future! We know now that they did not. There was but one
man in all the world great enough to foresee disaster. That man was
Charley Huyck.




                             CHAPTER III

                        THE MOUNTAIN THAT WAS


On the same day on which all this happened, a young man, Pizzozi by
name and of Italian parentage, left the little town of Ione in Amador
County, California, with a small truck-load of salt. He was one of the
cattlemen whose headquarters or home-farms are clustered about the
foothills of the Sierras. In the wet season they stay with their
home-land in the valley; in the summer they penetrate into the
mountains. Pizzozi had driven in from the mountains the night before,
after salt. He had been on the road since midnight.

Two thousand salt-hungry cattle do not allow time for gossip. With the
thrift of his race, Joe had loaded up his truck and after a running
snatch at breakfast was headed back into the mountains. When the news
out of Oakland was thrilling around the world he was far into the
Sierras.

The summer quarters of Pizzozi were close to Mt. Heckla, whose looming
shoulders rose square in the center of the pasture of the three
brothers. It was not a noted mountain—that is, until this day—and had
no reason for a name other than that it was a peak outstanding from
the range; like a thousand others, rugged, pine clad, coated with
deer-brush, red soil, and mountain miserie.

It was the deer-brush that gave it value to the Pizzozis—a succulent
feed richer than alfalfa. In the early summer they would come up with
bony cattle. When they returned in the fall they went out driving
beef-steaks. But inland cattle must have more than forage. Salt is the
tincture that makes them healthy.

It was far past the time of the regular salting. Pizzozi was in a
hurry. It was nine o’clock when he passed through the mining town of
Jackson; and by twelve o’clock—the minute of the disaster—he was well
beyond the last little hamlet that linked up with civilization. It was
four o’clock when he drew up at the little pine-sheltered cabin that
was his headquarters for the summer.

He had been on the road since midnight. He was tired. The long weary
hours of driving, the grades, the unvaried stress though the deep red
dust, the heat, the stretch of a night and day had worn both mind and
muscle. It had been his turn to go after salt; now that he was here,
he could lie in for a bit of rest while his brothers did the salting.

It was a peaceful spot! this cabin of the Pizzozis; nestled among the
virgin shade trees, great tall feathery sugar-pines with a mountain
live oak spreading over the door yard. To the east the rising heights
of the Sierras, misty, gray-green, undulating into the distance to the
pink-white snow crests of Little Alpine. Below in the canyon, the
waters of the Mokolumne; to the west the heavy dark masses of Mt.
Heckla, deep verdant in the cool of coming evening.

Joe drew up under the shade of the live oak. The air was full of cool,
sweet scent of the afternoon. No moment could have been more peaceful;
the blue clear sky overhead, the breath of summer, and the soothing
spice of the pine trees. A shepherd dog came bounding from the doorway
to meet him.

It was his favorite cow dog. Usually when Joe came back the dog would
be far down the road to forestall him. He had wondered, absently,
coming up, at the dog’s delay. A dog is most of all a creature of
habit; only something unusual would detain him. However the dog was
here; as the man drew up he rushed out to greet him. A rush, a circle,
a bark, and a whine of welcome. Perhaps the dog had been asleep.

But Joe noticed that whine; he was wise in the ways of dogs; when
Ponto whined like that there was something unusual. It was not
effusive or spontaneous; but rather of the delight of succor. After
scarce a minute of petting, the dog squatted and faced to the
westward. His whine was startling; almost fearful.

Pizzozi knew that something was wrong. The dog drew up, his stub tail
erect, and his hair all bristled; one look was for his master and the
other whining and alert to Mt. Heckla. Puzzled, Joe gazed at the
mountain. But he saw nothing.

Was it the canine instinct, or was it coincidence? We have the account
from Pizzozi. From the words of the Italian, the dog was afraid. It
was not the way of Ponto; usually in the face of danger he was alert
and eager; now he drew away to the cabin. Joe wondered.

Inside the shack he found nothing but evidence of departure. There was
no sign of his brothers. It was his turn to go to sleep; he was
wearied almost to numbness, for forty-eight hours he had not closed an
eyelid. On the table were a few unwashed dishes and crumbs of eating.
One of the three rifles that hung usually on the wall was missing; the
coffee pot was on the floor with the lid open. On the bed the
coverlets were mussed up. It was a temptation to go to sleep. Back of
him the open door and Ponto. The whine of the dog drew his will and
his consciousness into correlation. A faint rustle in the sugar-pines
soughed from the canyon.

Joe watched the dog. The sun was just glowing over the crest of the
mountain; on the western line the deep lacy silhouettes of the pine
trees and the bare bald head of Heckla. What was it? His brothers
should be on hand for the salting; it was not their custom to put
things off for the morrow. Shading his eyes he stepped out of the
doorway.

The dog rose stealthily and walked behind him, uneasily, with the same
insistent whine and ruffled hair. Joe listened. Only the mountain
murmurs, the sweet breath of the forest, and in the lapse of bated
breath the rippling melody of the river far below him.

“What you see, Ponto? What you see?”

At the words the dog sniffed and advanced slightly—a growl and then a
sudden scurry to the heels of his master. Ponto was afraid. It puzzled
Pizzozi. But whatever it was that roused his fear, it was on Mt.
Heckla.

This is one of the strange parts of the story—the part the dog played,
and what came after. Although it is a trivial thing it is one of the
most inexplicable. Did the dog sense it? We have no measure for the
range of instinct, but we do have it that before the destruction of
Pompeii the beasts roared in their cages. Still, knowing what we now
know, it is hard to accept the analogy. It may, after all have been
coincidence.

Nevertheless it decided Pizzozi. The cattle needed salt. He would
catch up his pinto and ride over to the salt logs.

There is no moment in the cattle industry quite like the salting on
the range. It is not the most spectacular perhaps, but surely it is
not lacking in intenseness. The way of Pizzozi was musical even if not
operatic. He had a long-range call, a rising rhythm that for depth and
tone had a peculiar effect on the shattered stillness. It echoed and
reverberated, and pealed from the top to the bottom of the mountain.
The salt call is the talisman of the mountains.

“_Alleewahoo!_”

Two thousand cattle augmented by a thousand strays held up their heads
in answer. The sniff of the welcome salt call! Through the whole range
of the man’s voice the stock stopped in their leafy pasture and
listened.

“_Alleewahoo!_”

An old cow bellowed. It was the beginning of bedlam. From the bottom
of the mountain to the top and for miles beyond went forth the salt
call. Three thousand head bellowed to the delight of salting.

Pizzozi rode along. Each lope of his pinto through the tall tangled
miserie was accented. “_Alleewahoo! Alleewahoo!_” The rending of
brush, the confusion, and pandemonium spread to the very bottom of the
leafy gulches. It is no place for a pedestrian. Heads and tails erect,
the cattle were stampeding toward the logs.

A few head had beat him to it. These he quickly drove away and cut the
sack open. With haste he poured it upon the logs; then he rode out of
the dust that for yards about the place was tramped to the finest
powder. The center of a herd of salting range stock is no place for
comfort. The man rode away; to the left he ascended a low knob where
he would be safe from the stampede; but close enough to distinguish
the brands.

In no time the place was alive with milling stock. Old cows, heifers,
bulls, calves, steers rushed out of the crashing brush into the
clearing. There is no moment exactly like it. What before had been a
broad clearing of brownish reddish dust was trampled into a vast cloud
of bellowing blur, a thousand cattle, and still coming. From the
farthest height came the echoing call. Pizzozi glanced up at the top
of the mountain.

And then a strange thing happened.

From what we gathered from the excited accounts of Pizzozi it was
instantaneous; and yet by the same words it was of such a peculiar and
beautiful effect as never to be forgotten. A bluish azure shot though
with a myriad flecks of crimson, a peculiar vividness of opalescence;
the whole world scintillating; the sky, the air, the mountain, a vast
flame of color so wide and so intense that there seemed not a thing
beside it. And instantaneous—it was over almost before it was started.
No noise or warning, and no subsequent detonation: as silent as
winking and much, indeed, like the queer blur of color induced by
defective vision. All in the fraction of a second. Pizzozi had been
gazing at the mountain. There was no mountain!

Neither were there cattle. Where before had been the shade of the
towering peak was now the rays of the western sun. Where had been the
blur of the milling herd and its deafening pandemonium was now a
strange silence. The transparency of the air was unbroken into the
distance. Far off lay a peaceful range in the sunset. There was no
mountain! Neither were there cattle!

For a moment the man had enough to do with his plunging mustang. In
the blur of the subsequent second Pizzozi remembers nothing but a
convulsion of fighting horseflesh bucking, twisting, plunging, the
gentle pinto suddenly maddened into a demon. It required all the skill
of the cowman to retain his saddle.

He did not know that he was riding on the rim of Eternity. In his mind
was the dim subconscious realization of a thing that had happened. In
spite of all his efforts the horse fought backward. It was some
moments before he conquered. Then he looked.

It was a slow, hesitant moment. One cannot account for what he will do
in the open face of a miracle. What the Italian beheld was enough for
terror. The sheer immensity of the thing was too much for thinking.

At the first sight his simplex mind went numb from sheer impotence;
his terror to a degree frozen. The whole of Mt. Heckla had been shorn
away; in the place of its darkened shadow the sinking sun was blinking
in his face; the whole western sky all golden. There was no vestige of
the flat salt-clearing at the base of the mountain. Of the two
thousand cattle milling in the dust not a one remained. The man
crossed himself in stupor. Mechanically he put the spurs to the pinto.

But the mustang would not. Another struggle with bucking, fighting,
maddened horseflesh. The cowman must needs bring in all the skill of
his training; but by the time he had conquered his mind had settled
within some scope of comprehension.

The pony had good reasons for his terror. This time though the man’s
mind reeled it did not go dumb at the clash of immensity. Not only had
the whole mountain been torn away, but its roots as well. The whole
thing was up-side down; the world torn to its entrails. In place of
what had been the height was a gulf so deep that its depths were
blackness.

He was standing on the brink. He was a cool man, was Pizzozi; but it
was hard in the confusion of such a miracle to think clearly; much
less to reason. The prancing mustang was snorting with terror. The man
glanced down.

The very dizziness of the gulf, sheer, losing itself into shadows and
chaos overpowered him, his mind now clear enough for perception reeled
at the distance. The depth was nauseating. His whole body succumbed to
a sudden qualm of weakness: the sickness that comes just before
falling. He went limp in the saddle.

But the horse fought backward; warned by instinct it drew back from
the sheer banks of the gulf. It had no reason but its nature. At the
instant it sensed the snapping of the iron will of its master. In a
moment it had turned and was racing on its wild way out of the
mountains. At supreme moments a cattle horse will always hit for home.
The pinto and its limp rider were fleeing on the road to Jackson.

Pizzozi had no knowledge of what had occurred in Oakland. To him the
whole thing had been but a flash of miracle; he could not reason. He
did not curb his horse. That he was still in the saddle was due more
to the near-instinct of his training than to his volition.

He did not even draw up at the cabin. That he could make better time
with his motor than with his pinto did not occur to him; his mind was
far too busy; and, now that the thing was passed, too full of terror.
It was forty-four miles to town; it was night and the stars were
shining when he rode into Jackson.




                              CHAPTER IV

                       “MAN—A GREAT LITTLE BUG”


And what of Charley Huyck? It was his anticipation, and his training
which leaves us here to tell the story. Were it not for the strange
manner of his rearing, and the keen faith and appreciation of Dr.
Robold there would be to-day no tale to tell. The little incident of
the burning glass had grown. If there is no such thing as Fate there
is at least something that comes very close to being Destiny.

On this night we find Charley at the observatory in Arizona. He is a
grown man and a great one, and though mature not so very far drawn
from the lad we met on the street selling papers. Tall, slender, very
slightly stooped and with the same idealistic, dreaming eyes of the
poet. Surely no one at first glance would have taken him for a
scientist. Which he was and was not.

Indeed, there is something vastly different about the science of
Charley Huyck. Science to be sure, but not prosaic. He was the first
and perhaps the last of the school of Dr. Robold, a peculiar
combination of poetry and fact, a man of vision, of vast, far-seeing
faith and idealism linked and based on the coldest and sternest truths
of materialism. A peculiar tenet of the theory of Robold: “True
science to be itself should be half poetry.” Which any of us who have
read or been at school know it is not. It is a peculiar theory and
though rather wild still with some points in favor.

We all of us know our schoolmasters; especially those of science and
what they stand for. Facts, facts, nothing but facts; no dreams or
romance. Looking back we can grant them just about the emotions of
cucumbers. We remember their cold, hard features, the prodding after
fact, the accumulation of data. Surely there is no poetry in them.

Yet we must not deny that they have been by far the most potent of all
men in the progress of civilization. Not even Robold would deny it.

The point is this:

The doctor maintained that from the beginning the progress of material
civilization had been along three distinct channels; science,
invention, and administration. It was simply his theory that the first
two should be one; that the scientist deal not alone with dry fact but
with invention, and that the inventor, unless he is a scientist, has
mastered but half his trade. “The really great scientist should be a
visionary,” said Robold, “and an inventor is merely a poet, with
tools.”

Which is where we get Charley Huyck. He was a visionary, a scientist,
a poet with tools, the protege of Dr. Robold. He dreamed things that
no scientist had thought of. And we are thankful for his dreaming.

The one great friend of Huyck was Professor Williams, a man from
Charley’s home city, who had known him even back in the days of
selling papers. They had been cronies in boyhood, in their teens, and
again at College. In after years, when Huyck had become the visionary,
the mysterious Man of the Mountain, and Williams a great professor of
astronomy, the friendship was as strong as ever.

But there was a difference between them. Williams was exact to
acuteness, with not a whit of vision beyond pure science. He had been
reared in the old stone-cold theory of exactness; he lived in figures.
He could not understand Huyck or his reasoning. Perfectly willing to
follow as far as facts permitted he refused to step off into
speculation.

Which was the point between them. Charley Huyck had vision; although
exact as any man, he had ever one part of his mind soaring out into
speculation. What is, and what might be, and the gulf between. To
bridge the gulf was the life work of Charley Huyck.

In the snug little office in Arizona we find them; Charley with his
feet poised on the desk and Williams precise and punctilious, true to
his training, defending the exactness of his philosophy. It was the
cool of the evening; the sun was just mellowing the heat of the
desert. Through the open door and windows a cool wind was blowing.
Charley was smoking; the same old pipe had been the bane of Williams’s
life at college.

“Then we know?” he was asking.

“Yes,” spoke the professor, “what we know, Charley, we know; though of
course it is not much. It is very hard, nay impossible, to deny
figures. We have not only the proofs of geology but of astronomical
calculation, we have facts and figures plus our sidereal relations all
about us.

“The world must come to an end. It is a hard thing to say it, but it
is a fact of science. Slowly, inevitably, ruthlessly, the end will
come. A mere question of arithmetic.”

Huyck nodded. It was his special function in life to differ with his
former roommate. He had come down from his own mountain in Colorado
just for the delight of difference.

“I see. Your old calculations of tidal retardation. Or if that doesn’t
work the loss of oxygen and the water.”

“Either one or the other; a matter of figures; the earth is being
drawn every day by the sun: its rotation is slowing up; when the time
comes it will act to the sun in exactly the same manner as the moon
acts to the earth to-day.”

“I understand. It will be a case of eternal night for one side of the
earth, and eternal day for the other. A case of burn up or freeze up.”

“Exactly. Of if it doesn’t reach to that, the water gas will gradually
lose out into sidereal space and we will go to desert. Merely a
question of the old dynamical theory of gases; of the molecules to be
in motion, to be forever colliding and shooting out into variance.

“Each minute, each hour, each day we are losing part of our
atmospheric envelope. In course of time it will all be gone; when it
is we shall be all desert. For instance, take a look outside. This is
Arizona. Once it was the bottom of a deep blue sea. Why deny when we
can already behold the beginning.”

The other laughed.

“Pretty good mathematics at that, professor. Only—”

“Only?”

“That it is merely mathematics.”

“Merely mathematics?” The professor frowned slightly. “Mathematics do
not lie, Charlie, you cannot get away from them. What sort of fanciful
argument are you bringing up now?”

“Simply this,” returned the other, “that you depend too much on
figures. They are material and in the nature of things can only be
employed in a calculation of what may happen in the future. You must
have premises to stand on, facts. Your figures are rigid: they have no
elasticity; unless your foundations are permanent and faultless your
deductions will lead you only into error.”

“Granted; just the point: we know where we stand. Wherein are we in
error?”

It was the old point of difference. Huyck was ever crashing down the
idols of pure materialism. Williams was of the world-wide school.

“You are in error, my dear professor, in a very little thing and a
very large one.”

“What is that?”

“Man.”

“Man?”

“Yes. He’s a great little bug. You have left him out of your
calculation—which he will upset.”

The professor smiled indulgently. “I’ll allow; he is at least a
conceited bug; but you surely cannot grant him much when pitted
against the Universe.”

“No? Did it ever occur to you. Professor, what the Universe is? The
stars for instance? Space, the immeasurable distance of Infinity. Have
you never dreamed?”

Williams could not quite grasp him. Huyck had a habit that had grown
out of childhood. Always he would allow his opponent to commit
himself. The professor did not answer. But the other spoke.

“Ether. You know it. Whether mind or granite. For instance, your
desert.” He placed his finger to his forehead. “Your mind, my
mind—localized ether.”

“What are you driving at?”

“Merely this. Your universe has intelligence. It has mind as well as
matter. The little knot called the earth is becoming conscious. Your
deductions are incompetent unless they embrace mind as well as matter,
and they cannot do it. Your mathematics are worthless.”

The professor bit his lip.

“Always fanciful.” he commented, “and visionary. Your argument is
beautiful, Charley, and hopeful. I would that it were true. But all
things must mature. Even an earth must die.”

“Not our earth. You look into the past, professor, for your proof, and
I look into the future. Give a planet long enough time in maturing and
it will develop life; give it still longer and it will produce
intelligence. Our own earth is just coming into consciousness; it has
thirty million years, at least, to run.”

“You mean?”

“This. That man is a great little bug. Mind: the intelligence of the
earth.”

This of course is a bit dry. The conversation of such men very often
is to those who do not care to follow them. But it is very pertinent
to what came after. We know now, everyone knows, that Charley Huyck
was right. Even Professor Williams admits it. Our earth is conscious.
In less than twenty-four hours it had to employ its consciousness to
save itself from destruction.

A bell rang. It was the private wire that connected the office with
the residence. The professor picked up the receiver. “Just a minute.
Yes? All right.” Then to his companion: “I must go over to the house,
Charley. We have plenty of time. Then we can go up to the
observatory.”

Which shows how little we know about ourselves. Poor Professor
Williams! Little did he think that those casual words were the last he
would ever speak to Charley Huyck.

The whole world seething! The beginning of the end! Charley Huyck in
the vortex. The next few hours were to be the most strenuous of the
planet’s history.




                              CHAPTER V

                         APPROACHING DISASTER


It was night. The stars which had just been coming out were spotted by
millions over the sleeping desert. One of the nights that are peculiar
to the country, which we all of us know so well, if not from
experience, at least from hearsay; mellow, soft, sprinkled like salted
fire, twinkling.

Each little light a message out of infinity. Cosmic grandeur; mind:
chaos, eternity—a night for dreaming. Whoever had chosen the spot in
the desert had picked full well. Charley had spoken of consciousness.
On that night when he gazed up at the stars he was its
personification. Surely a good spirit was watching over the earth.

A cool wind was blowing; on its breath floated the murmurs from the
village; laughter, the song of children, the purring of motors and the
startled barking of a dog; the confused drone of man and his
civilization. From the eminence the observatory looked down upon the
town and the sheen of light, spotting like jewels in the dim glow of
the desert. To the east the mellow moon just tipping over the
mountain. Charley stepped to the window.

He could see it all. The subtle beauty that was so akin to poetry: the
stretch of desert, the mountains, the light in the eastern sky; the
dull level shadow that marked the plain to the northward. To the west
the mountains looming black to the star line. A beautiful night;
sweetened with the breath of desert and tuned to its slumber.

Across the lawn he watched the professor descending the pathway under
the acacias. An automobile was coming up the driveway; as it drove up
under the arcs he noticed its powerful lines and its driver; one of
those splendid pleasure cars that have returned to favor during the
last decade; the soft purr of its motor, the great heavy tires and its
coating of dust. There is a lure about a great car coming in from the
desert. The car stopped, Charley noted. Doubtless some one for
Williams. If it were, he would go into the observatory alone.

In the strict sense of the word Huyck was not an astronomer. He had
not made it his profession. But for all that he knew things about the
stars that the more exact professors had not dreamed of. Charley was a
dreamer. He had a code all his own and a manner of reasoning. Between
him and the stars lay a secret.

He had not divulged it, or if he had, it was in such an open way that
it was laughed at. It was not cold enough in calculation or, even if
so, was too far from their deduction. Huyck had imagination; his
universe was alive and potent; it had intelligence. Matter could not
live without it. Man was its manifestation; just come to
consciousness. The universe teemed with intelligence. Charley looked
at the stars.

He crossed the office, passed through the reception-room and thence to
the stairs that led to the observatory. In the time that would lapse
before the coming of his friend he would have ample time for
observation. Somehow he felt that there was time for discovery. He had
come down to Arizona to employ the lens of his friend the astronomer.
The instrument that he had erected on his own mountain in Colorado had
not given him the full satisfaction that he expected. Here in Arizona,
in the dry clear air, which had hitherto given such splendid results,
he hoped to find what he was after. But little did he expect to
discover the terrible thing he did.

It is one of the strangest parts of the story that he should be here
at the very moment when Fate and the world’s safety would have had
him. For years he and Dr. Robold had been at work on their visionary
projects. They were both dreamers. While others had scoffed they had
silently been at their great work on kinetics.

The boy and the burning glass had grown under the tutelage of Dr.
Robold: the time was about at hand when he could out-rival the saying
of Archimedes. Though the world knew it not, Charley Huyck had arrived
at the point where he could literally burn up the earth.

But he was not sinister; though he had the power he had of course not
the slightest intention. He was a dreamer and it was part of his dream
that man break his thraldom to the earth and reach out into the
universe. It was a great conception and were it not for the terrible
event which took his life we have no doubt but that he would have
succeeded.

It was ten-thirty when he mounted the steps and seated himself. He
glanced at his watch: he had a good ten minutes. He had computed
before just the time for the observation. For months he had waited for
just this moment; he had not hoped to be alone and now that he was in
solitary possession he counted himself fortunate. Only the stars and
Charley Huyck knew the secret; and not even he dreamed what it would
amount to.

From his pocket he drew a number of papers; most of them covered with
notations; some with drawings; and a good sized map in colors. This he
spread before him, and with his pencil began to draw right across its
face a net of lines and cross lines. A number of figures and a rapid
computation. He nodded and then he made the observation.

It would have been interesting to study the face of Charley Huyck
during the next few moments. At first he was merely receptive, his
face placid but with the studious intentness of one who has come to
the moment: and as he began to find what he was after—an eagerness of
satisfaction. Then a queer blankness; the slight movement of his body
stopped, and the tapping of his feet ceased entirely.

For a full five minutes an absolute intentness. During that time he
was out among the stars beholding what not even he had dreamed of. It
was more than a secret: and what it was only Charley Huyck of all the
millions of men could have recognized. Yet it was more than even he
had expected. When he at last drew away his face was chalk-like; great
drops of sweat stood on his forehead: and the terrible truth in his
eyes made him look ten years older.

“My God!”

For a moment indecision and strange impotence. The truth he had beheld
numbed action; from his lips the mumbled words:

“This world; my world; our great and splendid mankind!”

A sentence that was despair and a benediction.

Then mechanically he turned back to confirm his observation. This
time, knowing what he would see, he was not so horrified: his mind was
cleared by the plain fact of what he was beholding. When at last he
drew away his face was settled.

He was a man who thought quickly—thank the stars for that—and, once he
thought, quick to spring to action. There was a peril poising over the
earth. If it were to be voided there was not a second to lose in
weighing up the possibilities.

He had been dreaming all his life. He had never thought that the
climax was to be the very opposite of what he hoped for. In his under
mind he prayed for Dr. Robold—dead and gone forever. Were he only here
to help him!

He seized a piece of paper. Over its white face he ran a mass of
computations. He worked like lightning; his fingers plying and his
mind keyed to the pin-point of genius. Not one thing did he overlook
in his calculation. If the earth had a chance he would find it.

There are always possibilities. He was working out the odds of the
greatest race since creation. While the whole world slept, while the
uncounted millions lay down in fond security, Charley Huyck there in
the lonely room on the desert drew out their figured odds to the point
of infinity.

“Just one chance in a million.”

He was going to take it. The words were not out of his mouth before
his long legs were leaping down the stairway. In the flash of seconds
his mind was rushing into clear action. He had had years of dreaming;
all his years of study and tutelage under Robold gave him just the
training for such a disaster.

But he needed time. Time! Time! Why was it so precious? He must get to
his own mountain. In six jumps he was in the office.

It was empty. The professor had not returned. He thought rather grimly
and fleetingly of their conversation a few minutes before; what would
Williams think now of science and consciousness? He picked up the
telephone receiver. While he waited he saw out of the corner of his
eye the car in the driveway. It was—

“Hello. The professor? What? Gone down to town? No! Well, say, this is
Charley”—he was watching the car in front of the building. “Say,
hello—tell him I have gone home, home! H-o-m-e to Colorado—to
Colorado, yes—to the mountain—the m-o-u-n-t-a-i-n. Oh, never mind—I’ll
leave a note.

He clamped down the receiver. On the desk he scrawled on a piece of
paper:

    Ed:

    “Look these up. I’m bound for the mountain. No time to
    explain. There’s a car outside. Stay with the lens. Don’t
    leave it. If the earth goes up you will know that I have
    not reached the mountain.”

Beside the note he placed one of the maps that he had in his
pocket—with his pencil drew a black cross just above the center. Under
the map were a number of computations.

It is interesting to note that in the stress of the great critical
moment he forgot the professor’s title. It was a good thing. When
Williams read it he recognized the significance. All through their
life in crucial moments he had been “Ed.” to Charley.

But the note was all he was destined to find. A brisk wind was
blowing. By a strange balance of fate the same movement that let Huyck
out of the building ushered in the wind and upset calculation.

It was a little thing, but it was enough to keep all the world in
ignorance and despair. The eddy whisking in through the door picked up
the precious map, poised it like a tiny plane, and dropped it neatly
behind a bookcase.




                              CHAPTER VI

                       A RACE TO SAVE THE WORLD


Huyck was working in a straight line. Almost before his last words on
the phone were spoken he had requisitioned that automobile outside;
whether money or talk, faith or force, he was going to have it. The
hum of the motor sounded in his ears as he ran down the steps. He was
hatless and in his shirt-sleeves. The driver was just putting some
tools in the car. With one jump Charley had him by the collar.

“Five thousand dollars if you can get me to Robold Mountain in twenty
hours.”

The very suddenness of the rush caught the man by surprise and lurched
him against the car, turning him half around. Charley found himself
gazing into dull brown eyes and sardonic laughter: a long, thin nose
and lips drooped at the corners, then as suddenly tipping up—a queer
creature, half devil, half laughter, and all fun.

“Easy, Charley, easy! How much did you say? Whisper it.”

It was Bob Winters. Bob Winters and his car. And waiting. Surely no
twist of fortune could have been greater. He was a college chum of
Huyck’s and of the professor’s. If there was one man that could make
the run in the time allotted, Bob was he. But Huyck was impersonal.
With the burden on his mind he thought of naught but his destination.

“Ten thousand!” he shouted.

The man held back his head. Huyck was far too serious to appreciate
mischief. But not the man.

“Charley Huyck, of all men. Did young Lochinvar come out of the West?
How much did you say? This desert air and the dust, ’tis hard on the
hearing. She must be a young, fair maiden. Ten thousand.”

“Twenty thousand. Thirty thousand. Damnation, man, you can have the
mountain. Into the car.”

By sheer subjective strength he forced the other into the machine. It
was not until they were shooting out of the grounds on two wheels that
he realized that the man was Bob Winters. Still the workings of fate.

The madcap and wild Bob of the races! Surely Destiny was on the job.
The challenge of speed and the premium. At the opportune moment before
disaster the two men were brought together. Minutes weighed up with
centuries and hours outbalanced millenniums. The whole world slept;
little did it dream that its very life was riding north with these two
men into the midnight.

Into the midnight! The great car, the pride of Winter’s heart, leaped
between the pillars. At the very outset, madcap that he was, he sent
her into seventy miles an hour; they fairly jumped off the hill into
the village. At a full seventy-five he took the curve; she skidded,
sheered half around and swept on.

For an instant Charley held his breath. But the master hand held her;
she steadied, straightened, and shot out into the desert. Above the
whir of the motor, flying dust and blurring what-not, Charley got the
tones of his companion’s voice. He had heard the words somewhere in
history.

“Keep your seat, Mr. Greely. Keep your seat!”

The moon was now far up over the mountain, the whole desert was bathed
in a mellow twilight; in the distance the mountains brooded like an
uncertain slumbering cloud bank. They were headed straight to the
northward; though there was a better road round about. Winters had
chosen the hard, rocky bee-line to the mountain.

He knew Huyck and his reputation; when Charley offered thirty thousand
for a twenty-hour drive it was not mere byplay. He had happened in at
the observatory to drop in on Williams on his way to the coast. They
had been classmates; likewise he and Charley.

When the excited man out of the observatory had seized him by the
collar, Winters merely had laughed. He was the speed king. The three
boys who had gone to school were now playing with the destiny of the
earth. But only Huyck knew it.

Winters wondered. Through miles and miles of fleeting sagebrush, cacti
and sand and desolation, he rolled over the problem. Steady as a rock,
slightly stooped, grim and as certain as steel he held to the north.
Charley Huyck by his side, hatless, coatless, his hair dancing to the
wind, all impatience. Why was it? Surely a man even for death would
have time to get his hat.

The whole thing spelled speed to Bob Winters; perhaps it was the
infusion of spirit or the intensity of his companion; but the thrill
ran into his vitals. Thirty thousand dollars—for a stake like
that—what was the balance? He had been called Wild Bob for his daring;
some had called him insane; on this night his insanity was
enchantment.

It was wild; the lee of the giant roadster a whirring shower of
gravel: into the darkness, into the night the car fought over the
distance. The terrific momentum and the friction of the air fought in
their faces; Huyck’s face was unprotected: in no time his lips were
cracked, and long before they had crossed the level his whole face was
bleeding.

But he heeded it not. He only knew that they were moving; that slowly,
minute by minute, they were cutting down the odds that bore disaster.
In his mind a maze of figures; the terrible sight he had seen in the
telescope and the thing impending. Why had he kept his secret?

Over and again he impeached himself and Dr. Robold. It had come to
this. The whole world sleeping and only himself to save it. Oh, for a
few minutes, for one short moment! Would he get it?

At last they reached the mountains. A rough, rocky road, and but
little traveled. Happily Winters had made it once before, and knew it.
He took it with every bit of speed they could stand, but even at that
it was diminished to a minimum.

For hours they fought over grades and gulches, dry washouts and
boulders. It was dawn, and the sky was growing pink when they rode
down again upon the level. It was here that they ran across their
first trouble; and it was here that Winters began to realize vaguely
what a race they might be running.

The particular level which they had entered was an elbow of the desert
projecting into the mountains just below a massive, newly constructed
dam. The reservoir had but lately been filled, and all was being put
in readiness for the dedication.

An immense sheet of water extending far back into the mountains—it was
intended before long to transform the desert into a garden. Below, in
the valley, was a town, already the center of a prosperous irrigation
settlement; but soon, with the added area, to become a flourishing
city. The elbow, where they struck it, was perhaps twenty miles
across. Their northward path would take them just outside the tip
where the foothills of the opposite mountain chain melted into the
desert. Without ado Winters put on all speed and plunged across the
sands. And then:

It was much like winking; but for all that something far more
impressive. To Winters, on the left hand of the car and with the east
on the right hand, it was much as if the sun had suddenly leaped up
and as suddenly plumped down behind the horizon—a vast vividness of
scintillating opalescence: an azure, flaming diamond shot by a million
fire points.

Instantaneous and beautiful. In the pale dawn of the desert air its
wonder and color were beyond all beauty. Winters caught it out of the
corner of his eye; it was so instantaneous and so illusive that he was
not certain. Instinctively he looked to his companion.

But Charley, too, had seen it. His attitude of waiting and hoping was
vigorized into vivid action. He knew just what it was. With one hand
he clutched Winters and fairly shouted.

“On, on, Bob! On, as you value your life. Put into her every bit of
speed you have got.”

At the same instant, at the same breath came a roar that was not to be
forgotten; crunching, rolling, terrible—like the mountain moving.

Bob knew it. It was the dam. Something had broken it. To the east the
great wall of water fall-out of the mountains! A beautiful sight and
terrible; a relentless glassy roller fringed along its base by a lace
of racing foam. The upper part was as smooth as crystal; the stored-up
waters of the mountain moving out compactly. The man thought of the
little town below and its peril. But Huyck thought also. He shouted in
Winter’s ear:

“Never mind the town. Keep straight north. Over yonder to the point of
the water. The town will have to drown.”

It was inexorable; there was no pity; the very strength and purpose of
the command drove into the other’s understanding. Dimly now he
realized that they were really running a race against time. Winters
was a daredevil; the very catastrophe sent a thrill of exultation
through him. It was the climax, the great moment of his life, to be
driving at a hundred miles an hour under that wall of water.

The roar was terrible. Before they were half across it seemed to the
two men that the very sound would drown them. There was nothing in the
world but pandemonium. The strange flash was forgotten in the terror
of the living wall that was reaching out to engulf them. Like insects
they whizzed in the open face of the deluge. When they had reached the
tip they were so close that the outrunning fringe of the surf was at
their wheels.

Around the point with the wide open plain before them. With the flood
behind them it was nothing to outrun it. The waters with a wider
stretch spread out. In a few moments they had left all behind them.

But Winters wondered; what was the strange flash of evanescent beauty?
He knew this dam and its construction; to outlast the centuries. It
had been whiffed in a second. It was not lightning. He had heard no
sound other than the rush of the waters. He looked to his companion.

Hucyk nodded.

“That’s the thing we are racing. We have only a few hours. Can we make
it?”

Bob had thought that he was getting all the speed possible out of his
motor. What it yielded from that moment on was a revelation.

It is not safe and hardly possible to be driving at such speed on the
desert. Only the best car and a firm roadway can stand it. A sudden
rut, squirrel hole, or pocket of sand is as good as destruction. They
rushed on till noon.

Not even Winters, with all his alertness, could avoid it. Perhaps he
was weary. The tedious hours, the racking speed had worn him to
exhaustion. They had ceased to individualize, their way a blur, a
nightmare of speed and distance.

It came suddenly, a blind barranca—one of those sunken, useless
channels that are death to the unwary. No warning.

It was over just that quickly. A mere flash of consciousness plus a
sensation of flying. Two men broken on the sands and the great,
beautiful roadster a twisted ruin.




                             CHAPTER VII

                          A RIVEN CONTINENT


But back to the world. No one knew about Charley Huyck nor what was
occurring on the desert. Even if we had it would have been impossible
to construe connection.

After the news out of Oakland, and the destruction of Mt. Heckla, we
were far too appalled. The whole thing was beyond us. Not even the
scientists with all their data could find one thing to work on. The
wires of the world buzzed with wonder and with panic. We were
civilized. It is really strange how quickly, in spite of our boasted
powers, we revert to the primitive.

Superstition cannot die. Where was no explanation must be miracle. The
thing had been repeated. When would it strike again. And where?

There was not long to wait. But this time the stroke was of far more
consequence and of far more terror. The sheer might of the thing shook
the earth. Not a man or government that would not resign in the face
of such destruction.

It was omnipotent. A whole continent had been riven. It would be
impossible to give description of such catastrophe; no pen can tell it
any more than it could describe the creation. We can only follow in
its path.

On the morning after the first catastrophe, at eight o’clock, just
south of the little city of Santa Cruz, on the north shore of the Bay
of Monterey, the same light and the same, though not quite the same,
instantaneousness. Those who beheld it report a vast ball of azure
blue and opalescent fire and motion; a strange sensation of vitalized
vibration; of personified living force. In shape like a marble, as
round as a full moon in its glory, but of infinitely more beauty.

It came from nowhere; neither from above the earth nor below it.
Seeming to leap out of nothing, it glided or rather vanished to the
eastward. Still the effect of winking, though this time, perhaps from
a distanced focus, more vivid. A dot or marble, like a full moon,
burning, opal, soaring to the eastward.

And instantaneous. Gone as soon as it was come; noiseless and of
phantom beauty; like a finger of the Omnipotent tracing across the
world, and as terrible. The human mind had never conceived a thing so
vast.

Beginning at the sands of the ocean the whole country had vanished; a
chasm twelve miles wide and of unknown depth running straight to the
eastward, where had been farms and homes was nothing; the mountains
had been seared like butter. Straight as an arrow.

Then the roar of the deluge. The waters of the Pacific breaking
through its sands and rolling into the Gulf of Mexico. That there was
no heat was evidenced by the fact that there was no steam. The thing
could not be internal. Yet what was it?

One can only conceive in figures. From the shores of Santa Cruz to the
Atlantic—a few seconds; then out into the eastern ocean straight out
into the Sea of the Sargasso. A great gulf riven straight across the
face of North America.

The path seemed to follow the sun; it bore to the eastward with a
slight southern deviation. The mountains it cut like cheese. Passing
just north of Fresno it seared through the gigantic Sierras halfway
between the Yosemite and Mt. Whitney, through the great desert to
southern Nevada, thence across northern Arizona, New Mexico, Texas,
Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, entering the Atlantic at
a point halfway between Brunswick and Jacksonville. A great canal
twelve miles in width linking the oceans. A cataclysmic blessing.
Today, with thousands of ships bearing freight over its water, we can
bless that part of the disaster.

But there was more to come. So far the miracle had been sporadic.
Whatever had been its force it had been fatal only on point and
occasion. In a way it had been local. The deadly atmospheric
combination of its aftermath was invariable in its recession. There
was no suffering. The death that it dealt was the death of
obliteration. But now it entered on another stage.

The world is one vast ball, and, though large, still a very small
place to live in. There are few of us, perhaps, who look upon it, or
even stop to think of it, as a living being. Yet it is just that. It
has its currents, life, pulse, and its fevers; it is coordinate; a
million things such as the great streams of the ocean, the swirls of
the atmosphere, make it a place to live in. And we are conscious only,
or mostly, through disaster.

A strange thing happened.

The great opal like a mountain of fire had riven across the continent.
From the beginning and with each succession the thing was magnified.
But it was not until it had struck the waters of the Atlantic that we
became aware of its full potency and its fatality.

The earth quivered at the shock, and man stood on his toes in terror.
In twenty-four hours our civilization was literally falling to pieces.
We were powerful with the forces that we understood; but against this
that had been literally ripped from the unknown we were insignificant.
The whole world was frozen. Let us see.

Into the Atlantic! The transition. Hitherto silence. But now the roar
of ten thousand million Niagaras, the waters of the ocean rolling,
catapulting, roaring into the gulf that had been seared in its bosom.
The Gulf Stream cut in two, the currents that tempered our
civilization sheared in a second. Straight into the Sargasso Sea. The
great opal, liquid fire, luminescent, a ball like the setting sun, lay
poised upon the ocean. It was the end of the earth!

What was this thing? The whole world knew of it in a second. And not a
one could tell. In less than forty hours after its first appearance in
Oakland it had consumed a mountain, riven a continent, and was
drinking up an ocean. The tangled sea of the Sargasso, dead calm for
ages, was a cataract; a swirling torrent of maddened waters rushed to
the opal—and disappeared.

It was hellish and out of madness; as beautiful as it was uncanny. The
opal high as the Himalayas brooding upon the water; its myriad colors
blending, winking in a phantasm of iridescence. The beauty of its
light could be seen a thousand miles. A thing out of mystery and out
of forces. We had discovered many things and knew much; but had
guessed no such thing as this. It was vampirish, and it was literally
drinking up the earth.

Consequences were immediate. The point of contact was fifty miles
across, the waters of the Atlantic with one accord turned to the
magnet. The Gulf Stream veered straight from its course and out across
the Atlantic. The icy currents from the poles freed from the warmer
barrier descended along the coasts and thence out into the Sargasso
Sea. The temperature of the temperate zone dipped below the point of a
blizzard.

The first word come out of London. Freezing! And in July! The fruit
and entire harvest of northern Europe destroyed. Olympic games at
Copenhagen postponed by a foot of snow. The river Seine frozen. Snow
falling in New York. Crops nipped with frost as far south as Cape
Hatteras.

A fleet of airplanes was despatched from the United States and another
from the west coast of Africa. Not half of them returned. Those that
did reported even more disaster. The reports that were handed in were
appalling. They had sailed straight on. It was like flying into the
sun; the vividness of the opalescence was blinding, rising for miles
above them alluring, drawing and unholy, and of a beauty that was
terror.

Only the tardy had escaped. It even drew their motors, it was like
gravity suddenly become vitalized and conscious. Thousands of machines
vaulted into the opalescence. From those ahead hopelessly drawn and
powerless came back the warning. But hundreds could not escape.

“Back,” came the wireless. “Do not come too close. The thing is a
magnet. Turn back before too late. Against this man is insignificant.”

Then like gnats flitting into fire they vanished into the opalescence.

The others turned back. The whole world freezing shuddered in horror.
A great vampire was brooding over the earth. The greatness that man
had attained to was nothing. Civilization was tottering in a day. We
were hopeless.

Then came the last revelation; the truth and verity of the disaster
and the threatened climax. The water level of all the coast had gone
down. Vast ebb tides had gone out not to return. Stretches of sand
where had been surf extended far out into the sea. Then the truth! The
thing, whatever it was, was drinking up the ocean.




                             CHAPTER VIII

                     THE MAN WHO SAVED THE EARTH


It was tragic; grim, terrible, cosmic. Out of nowhere had come this
thing that was eating up the earth. Not a thing out of all our science
had there been to warn us; not a word from all our wise men. We who
had built up our civilization, piece by piece, were after all but
insects.

We were going out in a maze of beauty into the infinity whence we
came. Hour by hour the great orb of opalescence grew in splendor; the
effect and the beauty of its lure spread about the earth; thrilling,
vibrant like suppressed music. The old earth helpless. Was it possible
that out of her bosom she could not pluck one intelligence to save
her? Was there not one law—no answer?

Out on the desert with his face to the sun lay the answer. Though
almost hopeless there was still some time and enough of near-miracle
to save us. A limping fate in the shape of two Indians and a battered
runabout at the last moment.

Little did the two red men know the value of the two men found that
day on the desert. To them the debris of the mighty car and the prone
bodies told enough of the story. They were Samaritans; but there are
many ages to bless them.

As it was there were many hours lost. Without this loss there would
have been thousands spared and an almost immeasurable amount of
disaster. But we have still to be thankful. Charley Huyck was still
living.

He had been stunned; battered, bruised, and unconscious; but he had
not been injured vitally. There was still enough left of him to drag
himself to the old runabout and call for Winters. His companion, as it
happened, was in even better shape than himself, and waiting. We do
not know how they talked the red men out of their relic—whether by
coaxing, by threat, or by force.

Straight north. Two men battered, worn, bruised, but steadfast,
bearing in that limping old motorcar the destiny of the earth. Fate
was still on the job, but badly crippled.

They had lost many precious hours. Winters had forfeited his right to
the thirty thousand. He did not care. He understood vaguely that there
was a stake over and above all money. Huyck said nothing; he was too
maimed and too much below will-power to think of speaking. What had
occurred during the many hours of their unconsciousness was unknown to
them. It was not until they came sheer upon the gulf that had been
riven straight across the continent that the awful truth dawned on
them.

To Winters it was terrible. The mere glimpse of that blackened chasm
was terror. It was bottomless; so deep that its depths were cloudy;
the misty haze of its uncertain shadows was akin to chaos. He
understood vaguely that it was related to that terrible thing they had
beheld in the morning. It was not the power of man. Some force had
been loosened which was ripping the earth to its vitals. Across the
terror of the chasm he made out the dim outlines of the opposite wall.
A full twelve miles across.

For a moment the sight overcame even Huyck himself. Full well he knew;
but knowing, as he did, the full fact of the miracle was even more
than he expected. His long years under Robold, his scientific
imagination had given him comprehension. Not puny steam, nor weird
electricity, but force, kinetics—out of the universe.

He knew. But knowing as he did, he was overcome by the horror. Such a
thing turned loose upon the earth! He had lost many hours; he had but
a few hours remaining. The thought gave him sudden energy. He seized
Winters by the arm.

“To the first town, Bob. To the first town—an aerodome.”

There was speed in that motor for all its decades. Winters turned
about and shot out in a lateral course parallel to the great chasm.
But for all his speed he could not keep back his question.

“In the name of Heaven, Charley, what did it? What is it?”

Came the answer; and it drove the lust of all speed through Winters:

“Bob,” said Charley, “it is the end of the world—if we don’t make it.
But a few hours left. We must have an airplane. I must make the
mountain.”

It was enough for Wild Bob. He settled down. It was only an old
runabout; but he could get speed out of a wheelbarrow. He had never
driven a race like this. Just once did he speak. The words were
characteristic.

“A world’s record, Charley. And we’re going to win. Just watch us.”

And they did.

There was no time lost in the change. The mere fact of Huyck’s name,
his appearance and the manner of his arrival was enough. For the last
hours messages had been pouring in at every post in the Rocky
Mountains for Charley Huyck. After the failure of all others many
thousands had thought of him.

Even the government, unappreciative before, had awakened to a belated
and almost frantic eagerness. Orders were out that everything, no
matter what, was to be at his disposal. He had been regarded as
visionary; but in the face of what had occurred, visions were now the
most practical things for mankind. Besides, Professor Williams had
sent out to the world the strange portent of Huyck’s note. For years
there had been mystery on that mountain. Could it be?

Unfortunately we cannot give it the description we would like to give.
Few men outside of the regular employees have ever been to the
Mountain of Robold. From the very first, owing perhaps to the great
forces stored, and the danger of carelessness, strangers and visitors
had been barred. Then, too, the secrecy of Dr. Robold—and the respect
of his successor. But we do know that the burning glass had grown into
the mountain.

Bob Winters and the aviator are the only ones to tell us; the
employees, one and all, chose to remain. The cataclysm that followed
destroyed the work of Huyck and Robold—but not until it had served the
greatest deed that ever came out of the minds of men. And had it not
been for Huyck’s insistence we would not have even the account that we
are giving.

It was he who insisted, nay, begged, that his companions return while
there was yet a chance. Full well he knew. Out of the universe, out of
space he had coaxed the forces that would burn up the earth. The great
ball of luminous opalescence, and the diminishing ocean!

There was but one answer. Through the imaginative genius of Robold and
Huyck, fate had worked up to the moment. The lad and the burning glass
had grown to Archimedes.

What happened?

The plane neared the Mountain of Robold. The great bald summit and the
four enormous globes of crystal. At least we so assume. We have
Winter’s word and that of the aviator that they were of the appearance
of glass. Perhaps they were not; but we can assume it for description.
So enormous that were they set upon a plain they would have overtopped
the highest building ever constructed; though on the height of the
mountain, and in its contrast, they were not much more than golf
balls.

It was not their size but their effect that was startling. They were
alive. At least that is what we have from Winters. Living, luminous,
burning, twisting within with a thousand blending, iridescent
beautiful colors. Not like electricity but something infinitely more
powerful. Great mysterious magnets that Huyck had charged out of
chaos. Glowing with the softest light; the whole mountain brightened
as in a dream, and the town of Robold at its base lit up with a beauty
that was past beholding.

It was new to Winters. The great buildings and the enormous machinery.
Engines of strangest pattern, driven by forces that the rest of the
world had not thought of. Not a sound; the whole works a complicated
mass covering a hundred acres, driving with a silence that was magic.
Not a whir nor friction. Like a living composite body pulsing and
breathing the strange and mysterious force that had been evolved from
Huyck’s theory of kinetics. The four great steel conduits running from
the globes down the side of the mountain. In the center, at a point
midway between the globes, a massive steel needle hung on a pivot and
pointed directly at the sun.

Winters and the aviator noted it and wondered. From the lower end of
the needle was pouring a luminous stream of pale-blue opalescence, a
stream much like a liquid, and of an unholy radiance. But it was not a
liquid, nor fire, nor anything seen by man before.

It was force. We have no better description than the apt phrase of
Winters. Charley Huyck was milking the sun, as it dropped from the end
of the four living streams to the four globes that took it into
storage. The four great, wonderful living globes; the four batteries;
the very sight of their imprisoned beauty and power was magnetic.

The genius of Huyck and Robold! Nobody but the wildest dreamers would
have conceived it. The life of the sun. And captive to man; at his
will and volition. And in the next few minutes we were to lose it all!
But in losing it we were to save ourselves. It was fate and nothing
else.

There was but one thing more upon the mountain—the observatory and
another needle apparently idle; but with a point much like a gigantic
phonograph needle. It rose square out of the observatory, and to
Winters it gave an impression of a strange gun, or some implement for
sighting.

That was all. Coming with the speed that they were making, the airmen
had no time for further investigation. But even this is comprehensive.
Minus the force. If we only knew more about that or even its theory we
might perhaps reconstruct the work of Charley Huyck and Dr. Robold.

They made the landing. Winters, with his nature, would be in at the
finish; but Charley would not have it.

“It is death, Bob,” he said. “You have a wife and babies. Go back to
the world. Go back with all the speed you can get out of your motors.
Get as far away as you can before the end comes.”

With that he bade them a sad farewell. It was the last spoken word
that the outside world had from Charley Huyck.

The last seen of him he was running up the steps of his office. As
they soared away and looked back they could see men, the employees,
scurrying about in frantic haste to their respective posts and
stations. What was it all about? Little did the two aviators know.
Little did they dream that it was the deciding stroke.




                              CHAPTER IX

                 THE MOST TERRIFIC MOMENT IN HISTORY


Still the great ball of Opalescence brooding over the Sargasso. Europe
now was frozen, and though it was midsummer had gone into winter
quarters. The Straits of Dover were no more. The waters had receded
and one could walk, if careful, dryshod from the shores of France to
the chalk cliffs of England. The Straits of Gibraltar had dried up.
The Mediterranean completely land-locked, was cut off forever from the
tides of the mother ocean.

The whole world going dry; not in ethics, but in reality. The great
Vampire, luminous, beautiful beyond all ken and thinking, drinking up
our lifeblood. The Atlantic a vast whirlpool.

A strange frenzy had fallen over mankind: men fought in the streets
and died in madness. It was fear of the Great Unknown, and hysteria.
At such a moment the veil of civilization was torn to tatters. Man was
reverting to the primeval.

Then came the word from Charley Huyck; flashing and repeating to every
clime and nation. In its assurance it was almost as miraculous as the
Vampire itself. For man had surrendered.

    To the People of the World:

    The strange and terrible Opalescence which, for the past
    seventy hours, has been playing havoc with the world, is
    not miracle, nor of the supernatural, but a mere
    manifestation and result of the application of celestial
    kinetics. Such a thing always was and always will be
    possible where there is intelligence to control and
    harness the forces that lie about us. Space is not space
    exactly, but an infinite cistern of unknown laws and
    forces. We may control certain laws on earth, but until we
    reach out farther we are but playthings.

    Man is the intelligence of the earth. The time will come
    when he must be the intelligence of a great deal of space
    as well. At the present time you are merely fortunate and
    a victim of a kind fate. That I am the instrument of the
    earth’s salvation is merely chance. The real man is Dr.
    Robold. When he picked me up on the streets I had no idea
    that the sequence of time would drift to this moment. He
    took me into his work and taught me.

    Because he was sensitive and was laughed at, we worked in
    secret. And since his death, and out of respect to his
    memory, I have continued in the same manner. But I have
    written down everything, all the laws, computations,
    formulas—everything; and I am now willing it to mankind.

    Robold had a theory on kinetics. It was strange at first
    and a thing to laugh at; but he reduced it to laws as
    potent and as inexorable as the laws of gravitation.

    The luminous Opalescence that has almost destroyed us is
    but one of its minor manifestations. It is a message of
    sinister intelligence; for back of it all is an
    Intelligence. Yet it is not all sinister. It is
    self-preservation. The time is coming when eons of ages
    from now our own man will be forced to employ just such a
    weapon for his own preservation. Either that or we shall
    die of thirst and agony.

    Let me ask you to remember now, that whatever you have
    suffered, you have saved a world. I shall now save you and
    the earth.

    In the vaults you will find everything. All the knowledge
    and discoveries of the great Dr. Robold, plus a few minor
    findings by myself.

    And now I bid you farewell. You shall soon be
    free.    Charley Huyck.

A strange message. Spoken over the wireless and flashed to every
clime, it roused and revived the hope of mankind. Who was this Charley
Huyck? Uncounted millions of men had never heard his name; there were
but few, very few who had.

A message out of nowhere and of very dubious and doubtful explanation.
Celestial kinetics! Undoubtedly. But the words explained nothing.
However, man was ready to accept anything, so long as it saved him.

For a more lucid explanation we must go back to the Arizona
observatory and Professor Ed. Williams. And a strange one it was
truly; a certain proof that consciousness is more potent, far more so
than mere material; also that many laws of our astronomers are very
apt to be overturned in spite of their mathematics.

Charley Huyck was right. You cannot measure intelligence with a
yard-stick. Mathematics do not lie; but when applied to consciousness
they are very likely to kick backward. That is precisely what had
happened.

The suddenness of Huyck’s departure had puzzled Professor Williams;
that, and the note which he found upon the table. It was not like
Charley to go off so in the stress of a moment. He had not even taken
the time to get his hat and coat. Surely something was amiss.

He read the note carefully, and with a deal of wonder.

“Look these up. Keep by the lens. If the world goes up you will know I
have not reached the mountain.”

What did he mean? Besides, there was no data for him to work on. He
did not know that an errant breeze had plumped the information behind
the bookcase. Nevertheless he went into the observatory, and for the
balance of the night stuck by the lens.

Now there are uncounted millions of stars in the sky. Williams had
nothing to go by. A needle in the hay-stack were an easy task compared
with the one that he was allotted. The flaming mystery, whatever it
was that Huyck had seen, was not caught by the professor. Still, he
wondered. “If the world goes up you will know I have not reached the
mountain.” What was the meaning?

But he was not worried. The professor loved Huyck as a visionary and
smiled not a little at his delightful fancies. Doubtless this was one
of them. It was not until the news came flashing out of Oakland that
he began to take it seriously. Then followed the disappearance of
Mount Heckla. “If the world goes up”—it began to look as if the words
had meaning.

There was a frantic professor during the next few days. When he was
not with the lens he was flashing out messages to the world for
Charley Huyck. He did not know that Huyck was lying unconscious and
almost dead upon the desert. That the world was coming to catastrophe
he knew full well; but where was the man to save it? And most of all,
what had his friend meant by the words, “look these up”?

Surely there must be some further information. Through the long, long
hours he stayed with the lens and waited. And he found nothing.

It was three days. Who will ever forget them? Surely not Professor
Williams. He was sweating blood. The whole world was going to pieces
without the trace of an explanation. All the mathematics, all the
accumulations of the ages had availed for nothing. Charley Huyck held
the secret. It was in the stars, and not an astronomer could find it.

But with the seventeenth hour came the turn of fortune. The professor
was passing through the office. The door was open, and the same fitful
wind which had played the original prank was now just as fitfully
performing restitution. Williams noticed a piece of paper protruding
from the back of the bookcase and fluttering in the breeze. He picked
it up. The first words that he saw were in the handwriting of Charley
Huyck. He read:

“In the last extremity—in the last phase when there is no longer any
water on the earth; when even the oxygen of the atmospheric envelope
has been reduced to a minimum—man, or whatever form of intelligence is
then upon the earth, must go back to the laws which governed his
forebears. Necessity must ever be the law of evolution. There will be
no water upon the earth, but there will be an unlimited quantity
elsewhere.

“By that time, for instance, the great planet, Jupiter, will be in
just a convenient state for exploitation. Gaseous now, it will be, by
that time, in just about the stage when the steam and water are
condensing into ocean. Eons of millions of years away in the days of
dire necessity. By that time the intelligence and consciousness of the
earth will have grown equal to the task.

“It is a thing to laugh at (perhaps) just at present. But when we
consider the ratio of man’s advance in the last hundred years, what
will it be in a billion? Not all the laws of the universe have been
discovered, by any means. At present we know nothing. Who can tell?

“Aye, who can tell? Perhaps we ourselves have in store the fate we
would mete out to another. We have a very dangerous neighbor close
beside us. Mars is in dire straits for water. And we know there is
life on Mars and intelligence! The very fact on its face proclaims it.
The oceans have dried up; the only way they have of holding life is by
bringing their water from the polar snow-caps. Their canals pronounce
an advanced state of cooperative intelligence; there is life upon Mars
and in an advanced stage of evolution.

“But how far advanced? It is a small planet, and consequently eons of
ages in advance of the earth’s evolution. In the nature of things Mars
cooled off quickly, and life was possible there while the earth was
yet a gaseous mass. She has gone to her maturity and into her
retrogression; she is approaching her end. She has had less time to
produce intelligence than intelligence will have—in the end—upon the
earth.

“How far has this intelligence progressed? That is the question.
Nature is a slow worker. It took eons of ages to put life upon the
earth; it took eons of more ages to make this life conscious. How far
will it go? How far has it gone on Mars?”

That was as far the the comments went. The professor dropped his eyes
to the rest of the paper. It was a map of the face of Mars, and across
its center was a black cross scratched by the dull point of a soft
pencil.

He knew the face of Mars. It was the Ascræus Lucus. The oasis at the
juncture of a series of canals running much like the spokes of a
wheel. The great Uranian and Alander Canals coming in at about right
angles.

In two jumps the professor was in the observatory with the great lens
swung to focus. It was the great moment out of his lifetime, and the
strangest and most eager moment, perhaps, ever lived by any
astronomer. His fingers fairly twitched with tension. There before his
view was the full face of our Martian neighbor!

But was it? He gasped out a breath of startled exclamation. Was it
Mars that he gazed at; the whole face, the whole thing had been
changed before him.

Mars has ever been red. Viewed through the telescope it has had the
most beautiful tinge imaginable, red ochre, the weird tinge of the
desert in sunset. The color of enchantment and of hell!

For it is so. We know that for ages and ages the planet has been
burning up; that life was possible only in the dry sea-bottoms and
under irrigation. The rest, where the continents once were, was
blazing desert. The redness, the beauty, the enchantment that we so
admired was burning hell.

All this had changed.

Instead of this was a beautiful shade of iridescent green. The red was
gone forever. The great planet standing in the heavens had grown into
infinite glory. Like the great Dog Star transplanted.

The professor sought out the Ascræus Lucus. It was hard to find. The
whole face had been transfigured; where had been canals was now the
beautiful sheen of green and verdure. He realized what he was
beholding and what he had never dreamed of seeing; the seas of Mars
filled up.

With the stolen oceans our grim neighbor had come back to youth. But
how had it been done. It was horror for our world. The great
luminescent ball of Opalescence! Europe frozen and New York a mass of
ice. It was the earth’s destruction. How long could the thing keep up;
and whence did it come? What was it?

He sought for the Ascræus Lucus. And he beheld a strange sight. At the
very spot where should have been the juncture of the canals he caught
what at first looked like a pin-point flame, a strange twinkling light
with flitting glow of Opalescence. He watched it, and he wondered. It
seemed to the professor to grow; and he noticed that the green about
it was of different color. It was winking, like a great force, and
much as if alive; baneful.

It was what Charley Huyck had seen. The professor thought of Charley.
He had hurried to the mountain. What could Huyck, a mere man, do
against a thing like this? There was naught to do but sit and watch it
drink of our lifeblood. And then—

It was the message, the strange assurance that Huyck was flashing over
the world. There was no lack of confidence in the words he was
speaking. “Celestial Kinetics,” so that was the answer! Certainly it
must be so with the truth before him. Williams was a doubter no
longer. And Charley Huyck could save them. The man he had humored.
Eagerly he waited and stuck by the lens. The whole world waited.

It was perhaps the most terrific moment since creation. To describe it
would be like describing doomsday. We all of us went through it, and
we all of us thought the end had come; that the earth was torn to
atoms and to chaos.

The State of Colorado was lurid with a red light of terror; for a
thousand miles the flame shot above the earth and into space. If ever
spirit went out in glory that spirit was Charley Huyck! He had come to
the moment and to Archimedes. The whole world rocked to the recoil.
Compared to it the mightiest earthquake was but a tender shiver. The
consciousness of the earth had spoken!

The professor was knocked upon the floor. He knew not what had
happened. Out of the windows and to the north the flame of Colorado,
like the whole world going up. It was the last moment. But he was a
scientist to the end. He had sprained his ankle and his face was
bleeding; but for all that he struggled, fought his way to the
telescope. And he saw:

The great planet with its sinister, baleful, wicked light in the
center, and another light vastly larger covering up half of Mars. What
was it? It was moving. The truth set him almost to shouting.

It was the answer of Charley Huyck and of the world. The light grew
smaller, smaller, and almost to a pin-point on its way to Mars.

The real climax was in silence. And of all the world only Professor
Williams beheld it. The two lights coalesced and spread out; what it
was on Mars, of course, we do not know.

But in a few moments all was gone. Only the green of the Martian Sea
winked in the sunlight. The luminous opal was gone from the Sargasso.
The ocean lay in peace.

It was a terrible three days. Had it not been for the work of Robold
and Huyck life would have been destroyed. The pity of it that all of
their discoveries have gone with them. Not even Charley realized how
terrific the force he was about to loosen.

He had carefully locked everything in vaults for a safe delivery to
man. He had expected death, but not the cataclysm. The whole of Mount
Robold was shorn away; in its place we have a lake fifty miles in
diameter.

So much for celestial kinetics.

And we look to a green and beautiful Mars. We hold no enmity. It was
but the law of self-preservation. Let us hope they have enough water;
and that their seas will hold. We don’t blame them, and we don’t blame
ourselves, either for that matter. We need what we have, and we hope
to keep it.

                              (The End.)