Argosy All-Story Weekly, February 18, 1928 — page 60: what you’re looking at

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

858 “Look through the telescope, Leonard!” I gazed upward through the electro-tele- scope. Its condensing lens narrowed the whole gigantic scene into a small circular field of vision. I gasped. Wonderment, awe swept over me. The blue sky was the open space of a tremendously large room; I saw plainly its ceiling, floor and distant walls, The giant shape was a man. He was _ bending forward over a table—the table was under me; the man’s hunched shoulders and peering face were above me. For an instant my mind failed to grasp it all. I swung the telescope field down- ward, sidewise, and up again. And then at last I understood. This was a room, with men grouped at this nearer end of it around the table—men of human form, intent faces framed with long, white hair. The undulating surface over which our vehicle was floating, was a side of what seemed glass, a clear glass slide with a speck of gray rock lying in its center, And the white disk over us in the sky was the lower, small lens of the microscope through which these men were examining us! CHAPTER VI. THE NEW REALM. = OU won’t let them imprison me? Y You won’t, will you, Len?” “T don’t know, Lupe. Really, I have no idea what they will do. It’s en- tirely Jim’s affair. You know that as well as I do.” “Ves, But—you do not think he’s told any one here about me yet, do you?” “No,” I said. ‘“ He hadn’t—yesterday, Why don’t you ask him what he’s going to do? Who could he have told but the Man of Language?”’ “Ts that what they call him?” a4 Yes.” “Tf he—I mean Jim—would say noth- ing, I would work very hard for you—all of you. Miss Dolores says she would like that. And she believes when I say I did not mean to kill that man—back there in New vor: T was drunk with the intoxicat- _ ing ray—” ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. That accursed Frankston current! It was supposed to bring joy—hilarity—but it made most men demons! More than any- thing in the world, it had done harm to mankind. ‘““T did not mean to kill him, Len. I did not know what I was doing.” “The penalty, Lupe, is punishment by pain—very long pain each day for years. You know that?” “Yes, I know.” He relapsed into the moody, frightened silence which now was almost continually upon him. We had been in the new realm some twenty days. I measure them thus— twenty times of sleep, and twice that many meals. But the daylight and darkness had each come but once. Twenty days! So full of strange impres- sions I scarcely know how to recount them. Yet, after such a trip, they were days of almost normality. Our vehicle beneath that microscope had grown rapidly in size. And with our ex- panding visual viewpoint—and the near- ness of solid, motionless objects—its ve- locity seemed infinitely small. It barely floated past the microscope, settling to the floor of that huge room; and with a normal proportionate size, the Beta ray shut off, it came to rest. They crowded around us—old men, loose-robed, and with flowing white hair; seamed, smooth, hairless faces; stern, but kindly; and eyes very bright and intelligent. They were men smaller than I, frail and slight, with heads a trifle overlarge, and a skin very clear—a pallor, not of ill-health, but as though sunlight never had struck them. They crowded around us, at first timid, then friendly; talking together excitedly in a strange, liquid tongue. Dr. Weatherby tried to greet them and to shake hands. They understood neither his words, nor the gesture. But in a mo- ment they comprehended. And _ shook hands—all of them with each of us—very solemnly. | The room had oval openings for win- dows; light was outside, but it seemed rather dim: Presently one of the men tried to herd us along the wall of the room. Comicboo (EO)