Invaders from the Infinite | Page 5

nature of a molecular wave, but of just too great a
frequency to do anything. A second part generates a condition in space,
which opposes that wave. After traveling a certain distance, the wave
has lengthened to molecular wave type, but is now beyond the machine
which generated it, and no longer affects it, or damages it. However, as
it proceeds, it continues to lengthen, till eventually it reaches the length
of infra-light, when the air quickly absorbs it, as it reaches one of the
absorption bands for air molecular waves, and any molecular wave
must find its half-wave complement somewhere in that wedge of waves.
It does, and is at once choked off, its energy fighting the energy of the
ray screen, of course. In the air, however, the screen is greatly helped
by the fact that before the half-wave frequency is met in the ray-wedge,
the molecular ray is buried in ions, leaving the ray screen little work to
do.
"Now your job is to design the apparatus in a form that machines can
make automatically. We tried doing it ourselves for the fun of it, but we
couldn't see how we could make a machine that didn't need at least two
humans to supervise."
"Well," grinned Fuller, "you have it all over me as scientists, but as
economic workers--two human supervisors to make one product!"
"All right--we agree. But no, let's see you--Lord! What was that?"
Morey started for the door on the run. The building was still trembling
from the shock of a heavy blow, a blow that seemed much as though a
machine had been wrecked on the armored roof, and a big machine at
that. Arcot, a flying suit already on, was up in the air, and darting past
Morey in an instant, streaking for the vertical shaft that would let him
out to the roof. The molecular ray pistol was already in his hand, ready
to pull any beams off unfortunate victims pinned under them.
In a moment he had flashed up through the seven stories, and out to the
roof. A gigantic silvery machine rested there, streamlined to perfection,
its hull dazzingly beautiful in the sunlight. A door opened, and three
tall, lean men stepped from it. Already people were collecting about the
ship, flying up from below. Air patrolmen floated up in a minute, and

seeing Arcot, held the crowd back.
The strange men were tall, eight feet or more in height. Great, round,
soft brown eyes looked in curiosity at the towering multicolored
buildings, at the people floating in the air, at the green trees and the
blue sky, the yellowish sun.
Arcot looked at their strangely blotched and mottled heads, faces, arms
and hands. Their feet were very long and narrow, their legs long and
thin. Their faces were kindly; the mottled skin, brown and white and
black, seemed not to make them ugly. It was not a disfigurement; it
seemed oddly familiar and natural in some reminiscent way.
"Lord, Arcot--queer specimens, yet they seem familiar!" said Morey in
an undertone.
"They are. Their race is that of man's first and best friend, the dog! See
the brown eyes? The typical teeth? The feet still show the traces of the
dog's toe-step. Their nails, not flat like human ones but rounded? The
mottled skin, the ears--look, one is advancing."
One of the strangers walked laboriously forward. A lighter world than
Earth was evidently his home. His great brown eyes fixed themselves
on Arcot's. Arcot watched them. They seemed to expand, grow larger;
they seemed to fill all the sky. Hypnotism! He concentrated his mind,
and the eyes suddenly contracted to the normal eyes of the stranger.
The man reeled back, as Arcot's telepathic command to sleep came,
stronger than his own will. The stranger's friends caught him, shook
him, but he slept. One of the others looked at Arcot; his eyes seemed
hurt, desperately pleading.
Arcot strode forward, and quickly brought the man out of the trance.
He shook his head, smiled at Arcot, then, with desperate difficulty, he
enunciated some words in English, terribly distorted.
"Ahy wizz tahk. Vokle kohds ron. Tahk by breen."
Distorted as it was, Arcot recognized the meaning without difficulty. "I

wish (to) talk. Vocal cords wrong. Talk by brain." He switched to
communication by the Venerian method, telepathically, but without
hypnotism.
"Good enough. When you attempted to hypnotize me, I didn't known
what you wanted. It is not necessary to hypnotize to carry on
communication by the method of the second world of this system.
What brings you to our system? From what system do you come? What
do you wish to say?"
The other, not having learned the Venerian system, had great difficulty
in communicating his thoughts, but Arcot learned that they had
machines