A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, February 1950 — page 74: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Rete Se atts a a ~~ . 74 A. MERRITT’S FANTASY méchatism out of order for an hour of so.” “Heard and seen?” said I ‘Yes, heard, bie by some funny électfical device. ut don’t tell me that they can see in the dark!” He smiled again. “The equivalent of seeing,” said he. “They could count your heart-beat and your respiration.” “How the dévil could they?” said I. “Tt would take me the entire hour to explain that device alone,” said he. “Shall I use the time that way?” I shrugged my shoulders. “Go back to the béginning and tell me what happened to you—at the laboratory, first of all,” said I. E SIGHED and closed his eyés. And then he settled down in his chair, op- posite me, and said, “I'll go back to that. Back to that night when I thought that I was about to make a discovery that would stop the pulse of the world.” He laughed a little. “Were you wrong?” “T was a young fool,” said he “I thought, for one thing, that the whole miracle of life was about to lie in the palm of my hand.” “Were you Pn “Ves,” he said, solemnly, “and I’ve an idea that ten thousand years from now, science will still be just as far as ever from the true solution!” “T saw you chucking thunder and lightning around,” said 1. “That’s what I’d managed to devise,” said he. “Such a war machine as, I sup- pose, the wofld never had seen before. Even these cunning dévils up here néver had even conceived of the like. And that was all that they needed before they stafted out to conquer the world!” I swallowed hard. “At the trial today,” I suggested, “you were sitnply trying to pull the wool over theit eyes—imake them think that you were seeing everything 4s they watited you to see it?” “That’s what I was trying to do,” said he, “and that’s what I managed, I think. Now to go back to the laboratory... . I was working with a tube of radioactive gas and a certain solid compound which in turf was capable of actifig upon the gas to—”’ “Quit it, Cleve,” said I. “Get down to the blood and bones of the thing, will your” “That compound and the gas—they are the blood and bones of the thing, I’m afraid,” said he. “But I'll simply say that when the gas and the solid conibined, they produced an explosion of power—be- cause the power bound up in thé atom was suddenly dispersed. The, thunderbolt, as you call it, was one fofm in which that energy could be directed. But there were other ways, too.” “T wondered,” said I, “how long a great city would last if it were bombarded the y you blasted the side of that cliff of solid rock!” “The greatest city in the world,” said he, “even Manhattan, all steel and con- crete, would be blasted off the face of the earth in five minutes!” I opened my eyes. I was dead silent, be- cause I could see that he was not lying. He méant what he said! He went on, with a sort of savage pleas- ure that I could understand, ‘I could have flown an airplane over the séa and blown the Alps as flat as the sea, and blown up another set of Alps in the central plain of France. I could have split the Rocky Mountains in two—” He paused. “I'll let the boasting go, from now on,” said he. “But I haven't been exaggerating.” Then he went on, “But I ‘ll go back to thé time when I was working there at my tubes, I come to the moment when I felt something in the air that was neither sound nor heat nor light—it was simply a tremor in my own nerves! I turned around, and there I saw—” He paused and put a hand across his eyes. “I saw sections of the steel wall being cut away in gteat sweeps. They fell outward with- otit a Sound, afid thé agericy that cut through them did so without noise. Noth- ifig could be seen. : “I started for the door to get help—to get you—but at the same moment, I was turned into stone.” “Took here, old man,’’ said I, “T’ll bes lievé anything and everything, only don’t tell me—”’ He stmiled—a mere twitch of the lips without mirth. “Simply a little wireless device for passing through me a tension of electricity icb