Avon Fantasy Reader No. 9 — page 65: what you’re looking at

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

tians have made a start by wiping out our colonies and attacking our fleet. Now they are determined to eliminate us entirely from the solar system. At this very hour they are preparing to use their most terrific weapon of all against us.” “What weapon is that, O my father?” I asked. “Come with me, my son, and I will show you.” He led me up to the great observatory on top of his palace. We passed through the general observation room, where a hundred enormous telescopes were in constant use—a thousand trained men observing, recording, and manipulating the instruments. Going into his private observation room, m father himself trained his huge telescope on a ‘distant object. Then he called me to look. I saw what appeared to be a huge spiral of nebulous matter forming near Mars. : “They are clearing interplanetary lanes for the passage of a huge fleet,” I Said. “See, they are collecting all che meteoric hodies for millions-of unles a all directions.” “They are doing more than that, my son,” my father replied. “That mat- ter-condensing and projecting apparatus which they formerly used to clear the way for peaceful. ships is going to be used for a horribly deadly purpose Have you noticed where they are condensing the meteoric a “Tt seems to be on a line between Magong and Mars,” I replied. “It is. Have they ever condensed material in that position betore? You know full well they have not. They have always concentrated it in a position where it could be projected out into space without harm to anyone.” “Why, Father, what do you mean?” “I mean that as soon as that synthetic nebula reaches a sufficient degree of cohesion and solidity it will be projected at us!” “What will it do? Will it burst our planet asunder? Will everyone be killed?” “No. It is not large eacuoh for that, but it can do incalculable damage; and if their aim is good and they are not stopped in some way, they can collect enough of such matter from the meteoric belts of the solar system to depopu- late this planet.” “Can’t we dodge them? What about the new gravity control plant?” “The thing is still in the experimental stage. Besides, it is a terrible and a dangerous thing to disturb or attempt to change the orbit of Magong. Every body in the solar system is in perfect balance with every other body, and too great a change, even in the orbit of our own relatively small planet, may cause untold damage—some upset of the scheme of things, which we cannot possibly foresee. True, we have slightly perturbed the motion of Magong, just as an experiment, but it has been done cautiously, and always with a counter-perturbance sufficient to bring it back to the proper place in its orbit.” Once more my father looked through the giant telescope. “The projectile is formed and on the way,” he said gravely. “Where it will strike, no one can tell—not even those who are. sending it. It may crush this 63 99 COMMEECMOOKS.COMA |