Part 2

It was only then that he realized how weak and sick he was himself. Strange rays were tearing at his nerves and brain. His very flesh was slowly--very slowly--giving up its atomic power, in a gradual radioactive decay!

He stumbled at his first step and fell crashing to the floor. Paralysis rushed over him, and that droning sound was like a death-dirge in his ears. He tried to drag Ellen's unconscious form toward the door, but the effort was useless. He couldn't even crawl. He just lay there, panting torturedly, his hot brain working in a chaos of fever. He understood now.

The death of Mars all over again. The fused walls. The melted machines. The ozone in the air. A slow, creeping smouldering destruction had burnt itself out at last; perhaps when a new balance had been reached in the atoms of the Martian crust. A crust. A cancerous disease moving in an irregular path, depleting air and water. But there still must be a tiny part of the old process of atomic breakdown continuing on Mars today, maintaining, by electrical disturbances, the ozone in the air.

And he, Sam Conway, had started that same creeping horror here on Earth. It would go along now, spreading and spreading. The walls around him would soon be melting. And there was nothing a man could do to stop it. Not even the science of Mars had been able to save the world that had given it birth. Only in scattered places where the erratic horror had not reached, perhaps in deep crevices in the rocks, had a few plants and low animals been able to survive for a new beginning after most of the fires had died.

Sam Conway cursed himself for his eagerness and lust for power. He'd been like an old gold miner, he thought savagely, ready almost to kill his own brother to preserve his secret until he could use it for himself. There were too many men like that. And now Ellen and all the rest of the world had to suffer.

Mu. Atlantis. The asteroids that had perhaps once been a plant, destroyed, maybe, by a much more violent form of atomic breakdown. But who knew just what accidents might have caused these respective catastrophes? Science must sometimes get ahead of itself, without even outside influence. There was always a risk.

* * * * *

Sam's mind began to fade out, toward the nothingness of oblivion.

Then the real miracle began to happen. The violence of it jarred his brain swiftly back toward a semblance of awareness. Suddenly everything around him was spouting blue electric flame. The table, the chairs, the walls, even the grass and trees beyond the open doorway rippled with a sort of aura. The phenomenon lasted for only two seconds. It snapped and growled like the first dash of some gigantic code signal. Then it broke off. Then it began again.

Once more it stopped. And started.

Sam, even had his mind been clear, could not have guessed how widespread the phenomenon was. He could not have known that, within a twenty mile radius fuses were blowing out, transformers were smoking in their oil-baths and generators were groaning under a terrific overload, as though their armatures had been gripped by an invisible colossus.

But Sam could guess some of the might of the new phenomenon. His body convulsed like the body of a condemned culprit in an electric chair as shocks ripped through him. He could not imagine the origin of what was happening now, unless the forces he had unleashed had entered a new phase of destruction.

Yet this did not seem to be true, for after the first spurt of unknown power had passed, that sonorous hum of doom had been completely strangled. Before the second spurt stopped there was a violent ripping explosion and the tinkling of broken window panes in the adjoining laboratory room. And that constricting paralysis and heat were gone from Sam's body. There were five bursts of strange energy, in all. Then it was over.

Prodded by sheer startlement Sam got to his feet and found that, in spite of weakness, he could stand. His brain was clearer, too. Ellen Varney, unconscious before, was trying to rise. He helped her up and supported her against him.

They stared out of the doorway at the sky. The auroral glow was gone. But they saw, for just an instant, a huge phosphorescent shape, hanging high against the stars. It was a little like a colossal image of a man, but it couldn't have been solid. It was like the aurora itself--as tenuous, as luminous--a kind of gigantic photograph projected in the air. The arm of the vapory figure extended; then the whole image vanished, as if at a speed far exceeding that of light, to some colossal distance.

Sam didn't even speak of the being right away. He helped the girl out of the building into the open.

"Wait here for a few seconds, Ellen," he said in a tone that trembled with awe.

Then he stumbled back into the old garage. All electrical devices were dead, even his flashlight. He had to find his way to the laboratory by burning matches. Every bit of apparatus was in fused ruins now, faintly reddened with heat. But there was no ominous hum in the hot, black stillness. Something deadly had been burned out of diseased substances by counter fire. Even Sam's own flesh had submitted to a curative force.

He found his way to one corner of the room, where, beneath a heavy block of concrete, he had prepared a new hiding place for his aluminum box, and the Martian demonstration apparatus it contained. Tugging the block of concrete free, he looked below it, lighting another match. Somehow the lid of the box had been blown off. Within, the Martian machine was the same as before, except that the crystal cube was no longer clear. Instead it was blackened all the way through, like a black diamond. And there were cracks in it that destroyed its usefulness forever. It, too, had been touched by those counter waves of energy. Touching the cube with his fingers, Sam found that it was hot.

He left the thing in its hole and returned to Ellen, his mind full of colossal realizations.

The girl's voice quavered with awe as she spoke there under the quiet stars.

"We had help, didn't we, Sam?" she stammered, remembering the cloud in the sky, and what Sam had told her about his work. "Somebody from another world. But who? Where...?"

"I don't know, Honey," Sam answered raggedly. "It wasn't Martian help. As far as I know, all Martians are dead. Besides, I've seen their bones. Manlike, but very slender. The being--pictured in the sky was heavily built."

Sam nodded significantly toward the sky.

"Lots of planets up there," he continued. "In other solar systems. Lots of different kinds of beings. I suppose some of those races, on planets of the older stars, have really grown up mentally and scientifically, till they know all about time and space and dimensions and energy, and how to handle and conquer them. And I suppose that somehow they keep careful watch across the awful distance because they've learned by experience that it may be safer. It's not just to save the necks of lesser beings but to guard themselves, too. I was messing around with something pretty big, Ellen. You can't tell how far a danger may sometimes go. A whole universe may be thrown into chaos--"

Sam's fists were clenching and unclenching absently. It was better for science to develop gradually, with a race. And even then there would sometimes be mistakes. Atlantis. Mu. The asteroids. Maybe some of the novae--

"We'd better get back into town, Sam," Ellen offered practically. "There may be damage done there--with all that's been happening. We'd better see."

A chuckle found its way through Sam Conway's awe. "Yeah," he said. "Like your car. I see the headlights have gone out. Good thing it's a diesel, with no electrical ignition to blow, and with a cartridge starter on the motor."

But Sam was too grateful over the miraculous escape from final tragedy he'd just witnessed, to worry much about damage suits over ruined electrical equipment.

And he was very grateful for Ellen, too. He might fly out to Mars some time again, or even farther. But when he touched the girl's warm shoulder he knew that he was truly home at last.