Classic Audiobook Collection - A Thousand Degrees Below Zero by Murray Leinster ~ Full Audiobook [scifi]

Episode Date: March 1, 2023

A Thousand Degrees Below Zero by Murray Leinster audiobook. Genre: scifi The War to End All Wars has ended and the world has taken a deep breath and is trying to recover normal life in 1919. But a super Villan intent on ruling the entire world has other ideas. In his super fast helicopter (the Black Flyer) he sorties out to block the major ports and rives of the world until all nations with icebergs made by his fiendishly clever devices until they admit his supremacy and kneel before his might. The might of nations are helpless before him but he does not count on our hero, a scientist specializing in low temperatures who was also a gunner in WWI. Teamed with a daring pilot flying the latest fastest bi plane in the army, they tangle with this brilliant but deranged person and might be able to bring him down. Do they? Listen and find out in this thrilling adventure where planes zoom at up to 200 mph!!!! For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 01 (00:12:43) Chapter 02 (00:29:29) Chapter 03 (00:40:27) Chapter 04 (00:55:16) Chapter 05 (01:11:18) Chapter 06 (01:25:36) Chapter 07 (01:41:14) Chapter 08 (01:56:37) Chapter 09 (02:13:30) Chapter 10 (02:29:06) Chapter 11 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A thousand degrees below zero by Murray-Linster, Chapter 1 From some point far overhead, a musical humming became audible. It was not the rasping roar of an aeroplane motor, but a deep, truly melodious note that seemed to grow rapidly in volume. The soft-voiced conversations on the upper deck were hushed. Everyone listened to the strange sound from above. It grew and became clear and distinct. The source seemed to come nearer.

At last the sound came from a spot directly overhead, then passed over and towards the narrows. A cold breeze beat down suddenly. It was not a cool sea breeze, but a current of air coming down from directly above the Coney Island steamer. It was actively, actually, cold. A chorus of exclamations arose, full of the wit of the American holidaying. "'I feel a draft. Say, men, are you giving me the cold shoulder?'

"'Sadie, do you want to borrow all of my coat or only the sleeve?' And one young man caused a ripple of laughter by remarking, "' Feels like my mother-in-law was around somewhere. People hastened to put on such wraps as they had with him. On the lower decks there arose a sound of tired voices, saying with variations only in the names called, Johnny, button up your coat, it's getting cold. The cold wave lasted only for a few moments, however. As the steamer forged ahead, the strata of cold air seemed to be left behind, and the humming

sound grew fainter. If the passengers on the boat had listened, they might have heard a faint splash in the water behind them, but as it was the sound went unnoticed. The humming died away. The boat went on and docked, and the passengers dispersed to their homes. Every one of them woke the next morning to find himself or herself locally celebrated. Half an hour after the Coney Island boat had docked, a tramp steamer. was nosing her way out of the narrows. She was traveling at half-speed. The air was clear,

the channel was well-boiled, and there seemed no possibility of any harm or danger befalling her. The lookout leaned over the bow negligently, watching and listening to the indignant interchange of whistle signals between the two small tugs in a dispute over the right-of-way. He dropped his eyes and stiffened, then turned toward the pilot-house and shouted frantically, but too late. The shout had hardly left his lips before there was a shock and grinding sound, mingled with a raucous shriek of rent and tormented iron plates. The tramp steamer shuddered and stopped, and began to sink a trifle by the head. At the first intimation of danger the man on the bridge had ordered the water-tide doors closed, and now he rang for full speed a-street.

stern. The tramp swung free of the unknown obstruction, but the two bow compartments were flooded, and the steamer stern was lifted until the propeller thrashed helplessly in a useless mixture of air and water. His whistle bellowed an appeal for help, want immediate assistance. Half a dozen tugs, including the two that had been quarreling by whistle, responded to the stricken steamer's call. Their small sirens sent cheery messages, promising instant aid, and they began to tear across the water to water. One tug reached the helpless vessel's side. A second rushed up and began to pull the unwieldy tramp away from the unknown obstacle.

The lights of a third could be seen very near, when there was a crash and a frantic bellow from the tug. It also had struck the obstruction against which. the tramp had run. The tramp bellowed anew. A destroyer shot down the river with a searchlight unshipped, her crew standing by to rescue any persons who could be reached by lifeboats. She swung up and saw the tramp being hauled and pulled at by busy puffing tugs. The long pencil of light danced over the surface of the water to find the derelict or wreck that had caused the trouble. and forth it swept, and then stopped with a jerk as if the operator could not believe his eyes. Floating, sogily in the water of New York Harbor in late August the hottest time of the year,

a wide cake of ice lay glistening under the searchlight rays. The harbor waves ran up to the edge of the ice cake and stopped. Beyond their stopping point the surface was still and glassy. the cake floated heavily in the water and showed no sign of cracks or fissures it was evidently of considerable thickness a second searchlight reinforced the first the two white beams moved back and forth incredulously examining the expanse of ice it was hundreds of yards across at last one of the beams passed something in the center of the cake and hastily returned to the face thing it had seen. Rising calmly and quietly, from what seemed to be a small crater at the center of the ice-cake, a plume of steam floated placidly into the air. It was a huge plume, precisely like the flowing of a white ostrich feather, rising from a small orifice in the

center of the mass of frozen seawater. A wail from the siren of the tug that had run against the ice-cake caused the searchlights to turn in its direction. The engine had ceased to run, and a cloud of escaping steam was pouring from the tug's funnel. Men on the deck gesticulated frantically. The destroyer ran as close as the commander dared, and he shouted through a megaphone. It was impossible to distinguish words in the confused shouts that came back from half a dozen throats at once, but the searchlights soon showed the cause of the excitement. The men on the tug pointed over the side.

The small harbor waves rolled unconcernedly up to a point some twenty feet from the stern of the tug, but there they stopped abruptly. The tug had become enclosed in the ice flow. As those on the destroyer watched, the twenty feet became thirty, and the thirty, forty. The ice-cake was increasing in size with amazing rapidity. A boat put off from the destroyer, and the commander shouted to the crew of the tug to take to the ice. There was a moment's hesitation, and then they jumped over the side and ran to the edge of the flow. The lifeboat touched the edge and was instantly frozen fast, but the sailors managed to break it free again by Herculian efforts.

It went back to the destroyer, whose wireless almost instantly began to crackle. Two other destroyers dashed down from the Brooklyn Navy Yard and turned their searchlights on the strange visitor in the harbor. The semaphore of the first destroyer on the scene began to flash, and the three lean naval craft began to circle around the huge ice cake, warning away all of the craft and constantly measuring and remeuring the size of the mass of ice. One of the destroyers at last slipped outside the narrows and stayed there, patrolling back and forth, to keep other vessels from running foul of the strange and as yet inexplicable phenomenon.

By daybreak the battery was a black mass of people. They looked eagerly toward the narrows, but could see nothing but a wall of mist, from which the gray shape of a destroyer now and then emerged. High in the air, however, the plume of steam was visible. It was now more than a thousand feet high, and was dense and white. The first rays of the sun had gilded the top, while the ground below was still dim and dark, but now it rose in calm and quietness to an unprecedented height, mystifying the people who looked at it and causing a sudden silence to fall upon them all.

A warm, moist sea-breeze had blown in from the ocean during the night, and had been changed to fog as it passed over the expanse of ice, so that the ice itself was hidden from view. But the tall plume of steam told of some mysterious menace to humanity that the crowd assembled at the battery feared without understanding. As the mass of people watched the supremely calm column of steam, rising high in the air of that August morning, newsboys began to circulate among them, their strident cries sounding strangely among the silent multitude.

The narrows were frozen solidly from shore to shore, and all entrance to an egress from New York Harbor was blocked. Small craft could go out beyond Staten Island through the Kilvan Kull, and some vessels could use the other channel, which goes from the East River into the sound, but the great Ambrose Channel, one-third the size of the Panama Canal, and the broad opening that made New York the greatest port on the Atlantic coast, was closed. The growth of the ice-cake had greatly lessened,

so that it could be predicted that it would not expand far beyond its present size, but its origin, and the means by which it resisted the disintegrating effects of the August warmth, were utterly unknown. The cause of the plume of steam from the center of the ice-cake was an unfathomable mystery. Suddenly, from the empty sky, there came a deep musical humming. Instinctively people looked up. The humming grew louder and more distinct, while curious eyes swept the sky.

Then a black speck appeared below one of the fleecy white. clouds and dropped toward the earth. A thousand feet, two thousand feet it fell, then checked, and hung steadily in the air. Those who looked with the naked eye could only discern that it seemed like a wingless black splinter suspended above the earth, but those who had glasses saw the whir of dark disks above a black streamlined body. A small cabin was placed amid ships, and a misshaping glass. lobe hung from chains below.

It was still for several minutes. The passenger, or passengers, seemed to be inspecting the earth below, and particularly the ice-cake, with deliberation and care. Then it began to rise with the same deliberation and certainty swung around and sped off with incredible speed toward the northeast. The humming sound grew fainter and died away. But the crowd standing on the battery began to murmur with a nameless sense of fear. End of Chapter 1

Chapter 2 of a thousand degrees below zero by Murray Lister. This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 2 New York was frightened, and the newspapers, as they appeared, did not allay that fear. The Conservative Tribunal ran a scarehead. Has the glacial age come again, and printed underneath, a resume of the phenomena up to the time of going to press, which did not include the appearance of the black flyer, with an interview from a prominent scientist. An enterprising reporter had routed the worthy gentleman out of bed and rushed him to the scene of the expanding ice-cake in a fast motorboat,

taking down and shorthand his comments on the matter. The scientist had been much puzzled, but spoke at length nevertheless. He said, in part, Has the glacial age come again? I do not know. I can only say that we have no certain knowledge of the original cause of the glacial period, and we cannot say definitely that it did not begin in precisely this fashion. We have volcanoes which radiate incredible quantities of heat to the country surrounding, them. No phenomenon like this has occurred before. But it may be that some unknown cause may bring to

the surface a condition the antithesis of a volcano which, instead of radiating heat, will bring on local glacier-like conditions. One might go farther and suggest that the earth may alternate between periods of volcanic activity during which it is warm and conditions are favorable for habitation and growth, and periods of this new anti-volcanic activity, during which frigidity is normal, and mankind may be forced to take refuge in the tropic zones. Still, I cannot say definitely. The eminent scientist went on for two full columns, during which he refused to say anything definite,

but suggested so many alarming possibilities that everyone who read the tribunal was thrown into a state of mind not far from panic. He offered no explanation of the plume of steam. When the appearance of the black flyer became known to the newspaper officers, city editors threw up their hands. The less conservative printed the wildest explanations. They put forth a virulent organism theory, which it must be admitted, was no farther from the truth than most of the others.

The story began with an interview with the boat swaying in charge of the boat crew from the destroyer. We were ordered to take the men off the ice and to take a special care not to be nipped ourselves. We rode carefully toward the edge of the ice-cake, with the light of the searchlights to guide us. We would see where the flow began when the wave dropped back from it. I've been in northern seas, but I never saw anything like that.

The edge of the ice wasn't smooth and worn away by the waves. It was rough with frost crystals that reached out like fingers, grabbing at the things nearby. When we came close to the edge, some of the men in my boat were scared, and I don't blame them. I dipped my hand overboard, and the water was warm. And twenty feet away, there was that mass of ice. We backed up to the ice-cake and took off the men. I was looking over the side of the lifeboat and saw those long crystals forming and growing while I watched. They were huge, from two feet long for the largest to three or four inches for the smallest.

They reached out and reached out terribly. The stern of the boat was touching the ice, and I saw them reaching for the hole like the tentacles of an octopus. They fastened on and began to grow thicker. We took oars and smashed them, feeling frightened as one is frightened in a nightmare. As fast as we broke them they formed again, and the men on the ice seemed to be wet. rotten slow getting into the boat, though, though I don't doubt they were hurrying all they knew how. When they were all aboard, we had to work like mad to get clear. The paper went on to expound its own idea of what had happened.

The sinister growth of the ice crystals is significant. There has always been notice of and comment upon the striking similarity between the growth of crystals and the growth of plants. Until now, all scientific textbooks have said that crystals could only grow in a supersaturate solution of their own substance, and claim that they were not organic growths, in the sense of growth caused by an intelligence within the crystal. Is it not possible that the scientists have been wrong? Is it not possible that crystals are growths in the same way that plants are growths? Granting that, what is true? to keep a scientist from isolating and cultivating the crystal embryo.

We have done that with germs, and with the life germs and eggs and plants. We can even use a process of parthenogenesis and create monsters from the unfertilized eggs of frogs and sea urchins. Why could not this scientist experiment until the life germ of the ice crystal could be developed and enlarged? Why could not this development continue until the germ could not only create, its crystals under the most favorable conditions of temperature, but at the normal temperature of water. At the Harvard Laboratories, water has been kept liquid far below its normal freezing point, and under tremendous pressure, has been found to remain ice at temperatures of 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Can we doubt that this appearance of ice at this extraordinary season is due to the malicious activities of a foreign government,

Envious of our magnificent merchant marine in commerce? The explanation was ingenious, but though the scientific facts quoted were quite correct, the inference was hardly justifiable. Water can and does reach a temperature several degrees below 32 degrees Fahrenheit without solidifying, as may be proved by putting a glass of water in a cold room in winter. But the slightest jar causes the instantaneous formation of ice-cream. crystals, and in a little while the whole mass is solid. The fact of hot ice must also be admitted, but it requires a pressure of rather more

than 50 tons to the square inch, and is rarely attempted. The paper also was forced to admit as inexplicable the plume of steam, which rose from a thousand to fifteen hundred feet into the air. In any event, the claim that a certain unfriendly foreign government was trying to ruin the commerce of the United States was effectively squashed by cablegrams from Gibraltar, Folkestone, and Yokohama. Three great icebergs had formed in the Straits of Gibraltar and extended until they joined when a solid mass of ice made a bridge that once more rejoined the continents of Africa and Europe from Soota to the rock. The plumes of steam were visible

there, too. Three mighty columns of white mist rose at equal distances across the gap. Folkestone Harbor was a mass of ice. A great transatlantic liner had been caught in the expanding berg, and the huge hull had been crushed, like so much cardboard. The passengers and crew had escaped across the ice. The great steam plume made a wonderful sight from miles around. Yokohama was similarly visited. Three battleships of the Japanese fleet were frozen in, and their hulls cracked and broken. The plume of steam, nearly 2,000 feet high, had aroused the latent superstition of the Japanese and was being exercised in every Shinto temple in the kingdom.

The panic which was engendered by the mysteries of the icebergs and the unknown motives of the men so obvious, obviously responsible for their appearance grew in intensity. New York was in a blue funk. The police felt a tremor that means that at any moment the crowds thronging the streets might break and from sheer panic become uncontrollable. Every patrolman wore a worried frown and worked like mad to keep the crowds moving, moving always. The strain was becoming greater, however, and troops were being hastily.

moved into the city when an announcement was made by the British Foreign Office. It has been decided to make public a communication received at the Foreign Office, bearing on the blocking of Folkestone Harbor, the Straits of Gibraltar, Yokohama, and New York. The communication is dated from The Dictatorial Residence, and reads as follows. To the Premier of Great Britain, you are informed that the blocking of Folkestone Harbor, as well as that of the Straits of Gibraltar, New York, and Yokohama, is evidence of my intention and power to assume control of the governments of the world as dictator. Present administrations and systems of government will continue in power under my direction

and subject to my commands. The machinery of the League of Nations is to be used to enforce my decrees. You will readily understand that the same means I used to block the harbors and straits now frozen over can be extended indefinitely. Rivers can be made to cease to flow, lakes to irrigate, and all commerce and agriculture forced to suspend its activity. This will be done, if it is made necessary, by the refusal of the governments of the world to exceed to my demands, given under my hand at the dictatorial residence.

Signed, Vladislavaros. The Foreign Office offers this communication to allay the fears of the public that a new glacial period may be imminent, but at the same time it wishes to assure the British people. people that the demands of the writer are not taken seriously. It is evident that the maker of such absurd demands is insane, and though he may be able to cause perhaps serious inconvenience to commerce, a means of nullifying his invention will be forthcoming in a short while. British scientists are studying the folk stone phenomena

and are confident of a prompt solution to the problem. Though it might have been expected that such an announcement as that of the intention of an unknown and probably insane man to make himself ruler of the world, would have caused even greater panic. The reverse was actually the case. The motive behind the creation of the icebergs was made so clear that the world settled back with a sort of sporting interest to see what would happen. It had not long to wait. A hint came by some underground channel that Professor Hawkins had offered a suggestion to the American government that had been accepted as a basis for experiment. A reporter went post-taste to the professor's home. He was admitted, but the professor would not see him at the moment.

The reporter sat down patiently to wait. A motor-car drove up to the house and a man in soldiers' uniform stepped out. The reporter gave a whistle. A second car discharged a quietly dressed man in civilian clothes attended by two other army officers. The reporter stared. He recognized the men. Most men on two continents would have recognized them. They passed through the house to the professor's laboratory at the rear.

A long time passed. The reporter fidgeted nervously. Some conference of colossal importance was taking place back there in the laboratory. It was an hour later that the visitors left. With them went a young man the reporter had not seen before. The professor came slowly into the room and smiled apologetically. I am very sorry to have kept you waiting, but it was necessary. I think that in about two hours I will have some news for you.

In the meantime there is nothing more to say. Can you tell us what really happened? How did this Vaurus make the burg? It's the simplest thing in the world, said the professor with a smile. I've managed to duplicate it on a small scale back in my laboratory. Suppose you come back there and I'll show you. A girl appeared in the doorway with a worried frown on her face. Father, has Teddy gone?

Yes, we'll hear in about two hours. The professor turned to the reporter with instinctive courtesy. This is my daughter, Evelyn. The girl shook hands. You want to know about the iceberg, too? Teddy has gone to break it up now. To try to break it up, corrected the professor with a smile. Teddy is my assistant.

But how? insisted the reporter. You seem to be so confident, and everyone else does nothing but guess. "'I'll show you quite clearly,' the professor said gently. "'If you'll come back to the laboratory.' They moved toward the rear of the house. A hullabaloo of whistles broke out in the harbor. The girl turned toward the professor.

"'Teddy already?' The professor frowned. "'He hasn't had time.' He went to a window and looked out inspecting the sky keenly. A slender black splinter hung suspended. in the air. The professor flung open the window, and a musical humming filled the room. As they watched, a smoking object detached itself from the black flyer and fell downward. "'That must be Varus,' said the professor.

A winged flyer, with the insignia of the American Aviation Corps, painted on the under surface of its wings, darted into their field of vision. Black smoke trailed behind it as it shot toward the sinister black craft. There was an instant's pause, and then little puffs of white mist appeared before the propeller of the airplane. He's firing his machine gun, said the reporter excitedly. As he spoke, the black flyer dropped like a stone, and the American plane shot above it. Almost instantly the black flyer checked in mid-air and rose vertically with amazing speed. The American plane dove on for a second and then wavered.

It began to climb, stalled, and dropped towards the earth in a series of side slips and maple leaf turns. It came down erratically, crazily. Killed, said the professor with compressed lips. His daughter uttered a cry. "'Envarez is getting away!' The black flyer had become but the merest speck. It had attained an almost unbelievable height. Now it deliberately swung around and headed off toward the northeast with its same incredible speed.

End of Chapter 2. Chapter 3 of a thousand degrees below zero by Murray Lister. This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 3 Teddy Jared was stuffing his feet into heavy, fur-lined Arctic boots. Ten or twelve soldiers were loading clumsy, awkward-looking engines on improvised sledges, resting on the ice at the foot of the fort embankments. Others were putting equally ungainly iron globes with winged metal rods attached to them on other sledges.

A dozen, deferred and swathed figures, came down the slope of the embankment and examined the preparations. A naval launch ran smartly alongside the edge of the ice, and a messenger came over at the double to the commandant of the fort who stood by Teddy Jared. The messenger saluted. Sir, the object dropped from the black flyer was a tin float having a message attached. The smoke was from a smoke fuse, lighted to attract attention. he handed over the letter saluted again and retired the commandant tore open the letter and read it through then swore frankly a threat to freeze the croton reservoir and cut off new york city's water supply if an answer to his previous demands are not given within forty-eight hours and he can do it mr jared you simply got to settle this business new york would go crazy if the people knew this There'd be no way to supply the water of the city has to have, and seven million people without water.

Teddy smiled grimly. I'm going to try. Professor Hawkins is usually right, and we ought to be able to do something about this burg. A second messenger came up and saluted. Sir, Lieutenant Davis reports that the plane has been recovered, and Lieutenant Curtis's body examined. There are no bullet marks, and the body seems to be. be frozen solidly. He cannot say as yet what caused Lieutenant Curtis's death. Frozen, said Teddy, laconically.

In mid-air? asked the commandant sharply. And in a fraction of a second wearing heavy aviator's clothing? Teddy nodded and buttoned up the huge fur coat in which he was enveloped. I'm ready to start off now, if the sledges are. The little party moved away. from the shore. The heavy mist still hung over the expanse of ice, but near the shore the ice was thinner. The sledges were roped together, and Teddy walked at the head. The party tugged at the ropes on the sledges, puffing out clouds of frosty breath at every exhalation. Teddy had taken the compass bearings on the steam plume, and after he had gone a hundred yards from the shore, the wisdom of his horse became apparent. They were completely surrounded. They were completely

by a thick fog in which objects five yards off were lost to view. Teddy, leading the small column, could not be seen except as a dim and shadowy figure by the men, hardly more than two paces in his rear. He referred constantly to his compass, and, once or twice, glanced at the thermometer he had strapped on the sleeve of his greatcoat. Forty degrees, he murmured to himself. And in New York it's eighty-four in the shade. The ice must be colder still because it's dry and hard.

The party toiled on. Presently small snow crystals crunched underfoot. Frozen mist, said Teddy and glanced at his thermometer. Hmm, 22 degrees, ten below freezing. The party stopped for a breathing spell. I hope you men smoke, said Teddy, because it's going to be cold a few hundred yards, farther on. We'll come clear of this mist presently. If you smoke and inhale, it'll probably

warm up your lungs a little. You don't need it yet, though. Any of you who haven't pulled down the flaps of your helmets had better do so now. A moment or so later they took up their march again. The sledges, with their heavy loads, were cumbersome things to drag over the uneven surface of the ice. The men panted and gasped, as they threw their weight. on the ropes. Teddy felt the air growing cold or still, and presently noticed that the mist no longer seemed to be as thick as before. He glanced down at the front of his heavy fur coat. It was covered with tiny white crystals. He held up his hand with the thick mitten on it to form a dark background, and saw numberless infinitesimal snowflakes drifting slowly toward the ice under his feet.

His thermometer showed two degrees above zero, and New York, six miles away, was sweltering in August heat. "'Not much further,' he called cheerfully. "'We're almost there.' They panted and tugged on, a hundred and fifty yards more, then they stopped and stared. Three hundred yards away, the great column of steam was issuing from the ice. A hollow hillock of snow and ice rose to a height of twenty feet, like the miniature crater of a volcano. From it, in an unbroken stream,

the mass of steam emerged with a roaring, gushing sound. It rose 500 feet before it broke into the plume-like formation that was so characteristic. There was a space, perhaps 600 paces across, in which there was no mist. The coal was too intense to allow for the formation of fog. Water vapor condensed instantly in that frigid atmosphere. But around the clearing the mist rose from the surface of the ice. It became noticeable when it was merely waist-high, then rose to the height of a man and climbed to a height of fifty feet

and a circular wall all about the strange white-open space. Teddy, looking at the top of the wall of vapor, saw that it undulated gently as if waves were flowing back and forth around the tall column of steam. The men began to unload their sledges. The awkward little trench mortars were set in place and careful measurements were made of the distance to the steam plume. While the men labored, Teddy moved forward toward the central cone. Five degrees below zero.

fifteen degrees below zero, thirty degrees below zero. His breath cut sharply when it went into his lungs. Teddy put his mittened hand over his nose and face to partially warm the air before he breathed it in. Now, even through the heavy Arctic clothing he wore, he felt the bitter cold. He detached the thermometer from his sleeve and comely tied it to a cord. He had hoped to be able to lower it down the rim of the crater, but that was impossible. He flung it toward the hillock of snow and ice, let it remain there an instant, then hastily drew it back to read it. The ether in the thermometer had frozen into a solid mass in the bulb of the instrument.

Teddy went back to where the men had made ready. Four of the wicked little guns would fling their three hundred-pound bombs into the sense. of the column of steam. If all went well, at least one charge of T&T would explode far down the orifice. The propelling charges had been inserted and now the slender rods were put into the muzzles of the short-squat weapons. The winged bombs were balanced on the muzzles like top-heavy oranges on so many sticks. At half-second intervals, the four guns went off one after the other. Before the last had exploded, or just as the flame leaped from its muzzle, the hillock of ice rose in an eruption. Four cracking detonations blended into one colossal roar

that half-stunned the little fur-clad party. The rush of air threw them back from their feet. When they rose again a huge hole showed in the center of the clearing. A gaping chasm that went down deep into the heart of the ice. A cloud of yellowish smoke floated above them, and the column of steam had ceased. Only a few stray wisps of white vapor floated up from the opening. It's done! Teddy gave orders for a quick return to the fort. The mortars could be returned for.

At the moment the important thing was to send the news to England and Japan. The return trip was made quickly, and Teddy made hurried explanations to the commander of the forts of what should be done. Men should bore deep holes twenty feet apart, the holes to be along the edges of clearly defined sections of the ice. Simultaneous blasts should be set off, and the sections would float free. The iceberg would not grow again.

It was done for. Cablegrams were prepared and rushed through to Folkestone, Yokohama, and Gibalt. If men took trench mortars and fired shells that would fall down the holes from which the steam issued, the cause of the ice cakes would be destroyed and the ice itself would be blasted off and tossed out to sea to melt. Teddy rushed back to the professor's home to report to him the full verification of his theories, and it was there and then that the first authentic explanation of the ice flow was given to the world. Word of his effort and of the disappearance of the steam plume had preceded him,

and as he sped uptown in the taxi cab, newsboys were already on the streets with their extras. Only the front pages, showing the signs of having hastily been hacked to pieces to make room for the story, had anything about the latest development, and those extras are singularly perfect reflections of the public attitude at that time. End of Chapter 3. Chapter 4 of a thousand degrees below zero by Murray Lister. This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 4 Teddy threw himself out of the machine and rushed up the steps.

Evelyn opened the door before he could ring, and his beaming face told her the news he had to give even without his enthusiastic. It worked! The steam plume has stopped. asked the professor anxiously. "'Absolutely,' said Teddy, cheerfully. "'Not a sign of steam except for two or three puddles of hot water "'that were cooling off when we left to get back to the fort.'

"'The commandant was setting his men to work with the Navy Yard men when I started here. "'Tell me about this, won't you?' said the reporter briskly. "'I'll catch the devil from the city editor for missing out on that part of it. "'But if you'll give me the full story, what's your paper?' The reporter told him, "'That's all right,' said Teddy easily. They were calling extras of that paper as I came uptown. The professor has told you the theory of the thing?'

"'No,' said Evelyn. He was starting to, but the black flyer appeared and shot down the other airplane, and father was so much upset that he couldn't go into details. Was the pilot of the airplane killed?' Teddy nodded. "'Frozen, poor chap. He never knew it struck him.' "'What did happen?' asked the reporter again. "'You people seem to take this so much as a matter of course,

and no one else can do anything but guess.' "'The professor knows more about low temperatures than any other man in the world,' explained Teddy. "'It's only natural that he should be fairly certain of his facts.' He smiled at the professor as the old man made a depreciating gesture. "'Father is much upset,' said Evelyn. "'I think it would be best if you, Teddy explained, will that be all right?

Only, in your account of the matter, said Teddy decidedly, the professor must be given credit for the whole thing. It's his work, and he's entitled to it. No, no, protested the professor. Teddy did a great deal. Evelyn pressed his arm, and he obediently was quiet. The two young people smiled at him. You see how I am ruled, said the professor in mock tragedy,

"'My daughter is going to see that you rest a while,' said Evelyn with a twinkle in her eyes. "'Teddy, you go and explain the whole thing while I take father out and discipline him.' With a laugh she led the old man away. Teddy smiled. "'We aren't accustomed to reporters,' he said. "'Or I suspect we'd act differently. Miss Hawkins is a most capable physicist and helps her father immensely. the three of us worked together so much that, well, come along to the laboratory.

The two went to the rear of the house. On the way they passed through a long room full of glass cabinets, in which odd bits of metalwork glittered brightly. The professor's hobby, said Tettie with a nod toward the cases, antique jewelry and ancient metalwork. He's probably better informed on low temperatures than anyone else I know of, But I really believe he is as much of an authority on that, too. This is Phoenician, and that's early Greek.

These are Egyptian in this case. This way. He opened a small door, and they were in the laboratory. I'm afraid I'll have to lecture a bit, said Teddy. Here's how the professor used to work out what was taking place out in the harbor. He showed an intricate combination of silver globes, tubes, and half a dozen thermometers. You see, Teddy began, the water in the harbor was at a certain temperature. At this time of year it would be around 52 degrees Fahrenheit.

The professor knew that fact, and then the fact that a huge mass of it was turned into ice. When you turn water into ice, you have to take a lot of heat out of it, and that heat has to go somewhere. When water freezes normally in winter, that heat goes into the air. which is cold. In this case, the air was considerably warmer than the ice, and as a matter of fact, undoubtedly radiating heat into the ice instead of taking it away. The heat that would have to be taken from, say, 10 pounds of water at 52 degrees to make it freeze, if put into another smaller quantity of water, would turn the smaller quantity of water into steam. You see? The steam plume! exclaimed the reporter.

Of course, said Teddy, we measure heat by calories, usually. That's the amount of heat required to raise a pound of water one degree Fahrenheit. Suppose you have a mass of water. To make it freeze, you have to take 20,000 calories of heat out of it. Suppose you take that heat out. You've got to do something with it. Suppose you put it into another smaller mass of water. It will make that second mass of water.

water hot, so hot that it will turn into steam at a high temperature. Then Vadas, said the reporter thoughtfully, was taking the heat from a big bunch of water and putting it into a small bunch, and the small bunch went up in steam. Is that right? Precisely. Teddy turned to a file on which hung a number of sheets of paper covered with figures. Here are the professor's calculations. We can only figure approximately. but we knew the size and depth of the ice cake, very nearly the temperature of the water that had been frozen, and naturally it was not hard to estimate the number of calories that had had to be taken out of the harbor water to make the ice cake. To check up, we figured out how much water that number of calories would turn into steam.

The professor appealed to the government scientists who had watched the cake from the first. He found that, from the size of the plume and the other means of checking its volume, he had come within ten per cent of calculating the amount of water that had actually poured out in the shape of steam but-but that's amazing said the reporter it was good work teddy said in some satisfaction then we knew what varus had done and it remained to find out how he'd done it nothing like that had ever happened before he couldn't very well have an engine working there in the water The professor took to his mathematics again. Assume that I have a stove here that will make it just so warm at a distance of five feet. I'm leaving warm air out of consideration now and only thinking of radiated heat. If I put my thermometer ten feet away, how much heat will I get?

Half as much, asked the reporter. One quarter as much, said Teddy. Or three times away I'll get one-ninth as much. or four times away I'll get one-sixteenth as much. You see, if you want to make the ends of an iron bar hot, and I can only heat the middle, the middle has to be red-hot or white-hot to make the ends even warm. If I have to make the middle of a bar red-hot to have the ends warm,

you see, in order to make the ends cold, the middle would have to be very cold indeed. Yes, I understand. Well, the professor worked on that principle. He knew the temperature of the edges and knew the size of the ice cake. It was easy to figure what the temperature must be in the middle. It worked out to within two degrees of absolute zero. What's that?

There isn't any limit to high temperatures. You can go up two thousand degrees, three thousand, four or five. Some things almost certainly produce a temperature. temperature of as much as 8,000 degrees, but high temperatures are produced by putting more heat in by stuffing the thing with calories. I make an iron bar red hot by putting calories in. I make it cold by taking calories out. Well, if you keep that up, you reach the point where there isn't any more calories left to take out. When you get to that point, you have a temperature of 425 degrees centigrade or 1,078 degrees Fahrenheit below zero.

That's absolute zero. Teddy spoke quite calmly, but the reporter blinked. Rather chilly, then. Or rather, Teddy agreed. But our calculations told us that Varus had reached and was using a temperature within two degrees of that in the center of his ice cake. and right next to that temperature he had a very high one as evidenced by the plume of steam. "'I can't see how you got anywhere,' said the reporter, hopelessly.

"'I'm all mixed up.' "'It's very simple,' said Teddy cheerfully. "'On one side of a wall the man had what amounted to a thousand and some odd degrees below zero. On the other side he had probably as much above zero. Evelyn, Miss Hawkins, you know, made the suggestion that solved the problem. She showed us this. Teddy picked up what seemed to be a square bit of opaque glass. Smoked glass?

Yes, no, Teddy smiled. You can't see through it, can you? No. Come around to this side and look. The reporter made an exclamation of astonishment. It's clear glass. It's a piece of glass on which a thin film of platinum has been deposited. It lets light through in one direction, but not in the other.

Evelyn suggested that Varus had something which did the same thing with heat. It would let heat through in one direction, but not in the other. Of course, if it would take all the heat from the air on one side and wouldn't let any come back from the other, it would be cold on one side. The glass looks black because it lets the light go through and lets none come back. The surface, we have assumed, would be almost infinitely cold because it would let heat go through and would let none come back.

We decided that Vadas had made a hollow bomb of some shape or other composed of this hypothetical material. Heat from the outside would be radiated into the interior because the surface absorbed heat like this glass absorbs light. It would act as a surface at more than a thousand below zero. Because something had to be done with the heat that would come in. Varus made the bomb hollow and left two openings in it. The inside of the bomb is intensely hot from the heat

that had been taken out of the surrounding water. The hole at the bottom radiates a beam of heat straight downward which melts a very small quantity of ice, and lets the water flow into the bomb where it is turned into steam. Naturally it flows out of the other hole at the top. There you have the whole thing. And you stopped it? By dropping a TNT bomb down the steam shaft.

It went off and blew the coal bomb to bits. The iceberg will break up and melt now. The reporter stood up. I'd like to thank you for this, but it's too big. big, he said feverishly. Man, just wait till I wave this before the city editor's eyes. He rushed out of the house. The newspapers that afternoon had frantic headlines,

announcing the destruction of the steam plume, and the fact that noticeable signs of melting had begun to show themselves on the ice-cake. Smaller captions told of the dynamiting that had begun and of the destruction of the Yokohama and Folkestone. by soldiers acting on cabled instructions. The Straits of Gibraltar were cleared by salvos fired from the heavy guns on the rock at the three great plumes of steam. The world congratulated itself on the speedy nullification of the menace to its democratic

governments. It did not neglect, however, to rush detachments of men with trench mortars and hand-bombs to its reservoirs prepared to destroy any possible coal-beckonel. bombs on their first appearance. The aviation forces, too, made themselves ready to fight the black flyer on its next appearance, despite the mysterious means by which it had killed the American pilot. This state of affairs lasted for possibly a week, when, within three hours of each other, the papers found two occasions to issue extras.

The first extra announced the death by heart failure of Professor Hawking's. who had been found by his daughter, dead in his laboratory, holding in his hands an antique silver bracelet he had just opened at the clasp. The second, three hours later, announced the formation of an ice-cake in the narrows which grew in size even more rapidly than the original one, and was entirely unattended by the steam plume which gave Teddy Gerard an opportunity to destroy the first. Within three hours the narrows were closed. and the ice flow was creeping up toward New York. In rapid succession, came the news that Norfolk Harbor was frozen over

and Hampton Roads closed, that Charleston was blocked, then Jacksonville. The next morning, delayed cablegrams declared that the Panama Canal was a mass of ice, and almost simultaneously, the Straits of Gibraltar were again admitted to be firmly locked. End of Chapter 4. Chapter 5 of a thousand degrees below zero by Murray Lister.

This Libre Vx recording is in the public domain. Chapter 5 Teddy put his hand comfortingly on Evelyn's shoulder. There isn't anything I can say, Evelyn, he said awkwardly, except that I couldn't have loved him more if he'd been my own father, and it hurts me terribly to have him go like this. Evelyn looked up. Teddy, she said bravely, trying to hold back her sobs.

I've been fearing this for a long time, but I can't believe it wasn't caused by that fearful Vodos. The professor did work very hard over that problem, admitted to Teddy. I don't mean that the work he did caused his heart to fail. I mean that Votas killed father. Evelyn's eyes were dark and troubled as she looked at Teddy Jared. But Evelyn, why do you think such a thing? You know his heart was weak.

Tears came again into Evelyn's eyes, but she forced them back determinedly. Will you go upstairs and look at his fingers? Inside? I was crossing his hands on his breast. Please look. Teddy went soberly up the stairs to where the professor lay quietly on the bed he was occupying for the last time. Teddy turned back the sheet that covered the figure and looked at the gentle old face.

A lump came to his throat, and he hastily turned his eyes away. He lifted the sheet until the professor's thin hands came into view. He looked at the fingers, then lifted one of the white hands, and examined the inside. Small but deep burns disfigured the fingertips. When Teddy went downstairs, his face was white and set, and a great anger burned in him. "'You are right, Evelyn,' he said grimly. "'Where is the bracelet he was holding when he was found?' "'On the assets table.

He was lying beside it when—when I saw him—' Evelyn was grief-stricken, but she forced herself to be calm. Do you think you know what happened?' I'm not sure. Teddy went quietly into the laboratory and found the massive silver bracelet lying where Evelyn has said. He looked at it carefully before he touched it, and when he lifted it, it was in a pair of wooden tongs. That thermocouple, Evelyn, please, and start the small generator, won't you? The two worked on the bracelet for half an hour, then stopped and stared at each others.

their suspicions confirmed. Vadas, said Teddy slowly. Vodas caused your father's death. This earth has gotten too small for both me and Vodas to live on. He knew father would wreck his plans, Evelyn said in a hard voice, and he wished to rule the world, so he killed my father. Teddy's lips were compressed.

Before God, he burst out, before God I'm going to kill Vadas." The bell rang, and in a moment the commandant of the force was ushered in. Mr. Jared, Miss Hawkins, he nodded to them, and then said, They tell me Professor Hawkins is dead. The narrows are frozen over again. Hampton Roads is frozen over. Charleston is frozen over.

The Panama Canal is frozen over. There's no steam plume to blow up. Washington is worried. They're calling me to clear out the channel. The Navy Department is going crazy. If it were a case of fighting men, I'd know something, but I can't fight a chemical combination. What's to be done since the professor is dead? Who on earth can fill his place?

He looked from one to the other, already beginning to show the strain under which he was laboring. Professor Hawkins, said Teddy quietly. was murdered by Votus some four hours ago. Murdered? Votus has been here? No, Votis has not been here, but we may be able to trace him. I'll get the police. Then we'll talk about ice flows.

We know Votis's method now. We'll soon be able to anticipate him. But in the meantime, the commandant snapped angrily. He'll play the devil with the world. We'll play the devil with him when he is caught, said Teddy evenly. I have no intention of letting Vadas get away. Just now there's a possibility of catching him in the ordinary way. He mailed a present to the professor an antique bracelet.

Ancient jewelry was the professor's hobby. He examined the bracelet and died. I heard he was dead, said the commandant restlessly. the paper said heart failure. So did the doctor. Teddy took down the receiver of the telephone. Give me the police emergency, please. In a few moments, he hung up.

The statement that Professor Hawkins had been murdered and that there was a chance of catching Varus was all he needed to say. Hardly five minutes had passed before the commissioner of police himself was in the room with two of his keenest men. You'll have to explain what happened." He said at once to Teddy.

When news of the professor's death came, I phoned it once to the doctor, mentioned in the paper, and asked if there were any possibility of foul play. To tell the truth, I'd been rather afraid something like this might happen. What was it? Votis electrocuted the professor by an antique bracelet. He ended over the ornament. The commissioner examined it gingerly. Nothing funny about this except the workmanship.

And the surface, said Teddy. His set calm was surprising himself. It looks as if it had been lacquered. That's Vodas's secret. What is it? A powerful battery? Teddy turned to the materials with which he and Evelyn had been working. I'll show you.

Here's an instrument that measures the resistance of a given coil. This is one of the professors evaporation machines for producing low temperatures quickly. He evaporates ether in this sheath that surrounds this oven and objects in the oven are cooled far below freezing point. Look at this coil of silver wire. We measure the resistance at room temperature. 120 oms. It is very fine wire.

We put it in the cooling oven and get the engines going. some minutes there was silence while the small electric pump thumped and rattled. Now we'll take the coral out. The thermometer inside the oven says 12 below zero. Teddy handled the small coil of silver wire with thick gloves. We'll measure the resistance again. Fourteen and a half oms resistance approximately. Low temperatures decrease resistance and increased the conductivity of metals.

You see? Yes, but why? The inside of that bracelet is 900 degrees below zero. The whole thing is coated with Varus's lacquer, which in this case radiates all the heat from the inside out, leaving it incredibly cold within. That cold makes the silver conduct electricity better. Well, that 800 degrees below zero Fahrenheit,

Silver has no measurable resistance to the passage of an electric current. Now watch. Teddy laid the bracelet on top of a frame wound with many turns of glistening copper wire. He threw on a switch, and a small generator at one side of the laboratory began to run with a humming purr. Eddie currents are whirling all around that bracelet. A strong current is running in an endless circle in that closed circle. of silver, 900 degrees below zero. Silver at that temperature offers no resistance to an electric current. Closed circuits have been left at that degree of coal for over four hours, and at the

end of that time the electric current was still flowing round and round like a squirrel in a cage. Teddy picked up the bracelet with a pair of wooden tongs. He took a second pair in his other hand. handles insulated the tongs from their handles. There's a current flowing around the inside of this bracelet. There was one flowing around it when the professor received it in the mail. He opened it with his bare hands, suspecting nothing. I opened it with these insulated tongs. Watch.

He jerked on the two tongs. The bracelet parted at the catch, and a dazzling, blinding flash of light appeared with a sharp crackle at the parting. I made the current jump the gap. The professor took it through his body and it killed him. Are you satisfied? God, said the commissioner of police aghast. The box and the wrapper, said one of the men who had come with the commissioner.

Let us have the box and wrapper the bracelet came in, and we'll get the men that mailed it, but we'll handle him with tongs, too, when we close in on him. They took what they wanted and left. Teddy turned to the commandant. Now, sir, we'll see what can be done about the Newburgh. You say there's no plume of steam. Have you had an airplane fly above it to make sure? Yes.

The pilot says the whole ice-cake is covered with mist, except for a round spot in the middle, but there's no sign of a steam plume. Teddy nodded at Evelyn. No holes. in this cold bomb. I wonder what happens to all the heat that comes in. Father mentioned that he expected something of the sort, but didn't say what he thought

could be done about it. The same as we did with the other, I suppose, said Teddy reflectively. Only this time we'll have to blast down to the bomb and then break it up. I'll set men to work if you'll find the bomb, said the commandant. Almost anyone could find it, Teddy remarked. But there are going to be some queer difficulties when you get near the cold bomb. If you'll allow me I'd like to be at hand when it is broken up. I may really be of use there.

He began to pick out instruments he thought he might need. Among other things, he took what seemed to be two silvered globes with small necks. They were dewy bulbs, several low-temperature thermometers, and a thermocouple connected with a delicate galvanobes. completed his preparations. The two men left the house and started for the launch that would take them to the forts. On the way, Teddy was asking crisp questions about the explosives he could have placed at his disposal, quite ignorant of what was happening at the moment in Jacksonville.

The river there was a mass of ice from one shore to the other. All the little reedy islands and the swampy shores were frozen solid. To see the slender palm trees rising from icy shores, their reflections visible on the narrow strip of mist-free ice that ran along the shores of the river was an anomaly. To see fur-clad tourists stepping out of the tropical foliage to step gingerly out on the ice, just to say they'd done it, was even more strange. At the moment, however, interest centered on a little group of soldiers out in the central clearing. in the cloud of mist. They were bundled in furs and swathed in numberless garments until they looked like fat penguins or some strange Arctic animals.

A major of engineers was waving them to the right and left, forward and back, until they stood at equal distance around the clearing. Each man moved backward until the mist that rose gradually from the ice reached his waist. Then, at a whistle signal from the major, they began to move. forward toward a common center. The major had reasoned that the coal bomb must be precisely underneath the exact center of the clearing, and this was a rough and ready means of finding that center. They advanced toward each other, and as they went nearer the center of the clearing,

the cold grew more intense. Infantasmal ice crystals glittered in little clouds where the moisture of their breath froze instantly in the terrific cold. At a second whistle from the Major, they halted. They formed a fairly even circle about forty yards across. Each man began to stamp and fling his arms about to keep him freezing in that more than frigid atmosphere. No man could have stood that cold, no matter how hardy he might be for more than a very few

moments. The Major trotted around the circle, marking the place where each man stood. four small sled loads of explosives stood out in the clearing. The Major intended to blast down toward the cold bomb with them. The Major was marking the position of the last man, completing his circle under which the coal bomb must lie, when a peculiar tremor was felt by every man there. It was not like the shiver of an earthquake or the reverberation of an explosion.

It was an infinitely shrill vibran. that a moment later was followed by a creaking sound that seemed to come from the center of the ice-cake. The men on the ice stopped their stamping and swinging of arms to listen in instinctive apprehension. The center of the circle around which they stood seemed to rise in the air. The ice on which they stood was shivered into tiny fragments. A colossal and implacable roar filled the air, and a great chance of the air. sheet of flame of the unearthly tint of a vaporized metal rose to the heavens. The swathed and bundled soldiers were annihilated by the blast.

A great hole, 500 feet across, gaped in the center of the ice cake. Jacksonville shook from the concussion, and the plate-glass windows of its stores and office buildings splintered into a myriad tiny bits that sprinkled all its streets with sharp-edged, jagged pieces. Teddy Jared, all unconscious of the fate of those who had attempted to meddle with the Jacksonville Ice Cake, went on out to bear and blast open the coal bomb that blocked New York Harbor. End of Chapter 5. Chapter 6 of a thousand degrees below zero by Murray Lister. This Libre Vox recording is in the public domain.

Chapter 6 Teddy Jared straightened up and beat his hands together. Forty-seven below, he said to the soldier behind him. Put a marker here. He moved off to the right. Already a dozen little flags showed where the temperature reached that degree. Teddy was drawing what he would have termed an isothermic line, a line where the temperature was about the same.

He was making a circle about a large part of the open clearing on the ice flow. other flags led back into the mist marking a path and from time to time a party of four or five fur-clad soldiers arrived from the fort dragging a loaded sledge behind them they emptied the load from the sledge turned and vanished into the mist again a small pile of drills explosives and two of the squat trench mortars had already been made when the circle of little red flags had been completed two signal corpsmen set up their instruments and accurately located the center. Directly under that spot, if Teddy's reckoning was correct, the new cold bomb was resting, the sledge from the four derived again, bearing a curious trench catapult for flinging bombs. Four long strips of black cloth were unrolled, under direction of the signal corpsmen, pointing accurately to the center of the circle.

No one had been able to approach nearer thus far than 30 yards from the center. At that distance, Teddy's thermocouple had indicated a temperature of more than 72 degrees below zero, and flesh exposed to the air was frost-bitten on the instant. What the temperature of the air might be directly above the coal-bomb could only be conjectured. One of the infantrymen from the fort, the best grenade man in the garrison, now picked up a mill's grenade, and after carefully picking out the target with his eye, aided by the strips of black cloth, flung the small missile. A hole, perhaps four feet deep and twice as much across, was blasted in the brittle ice. A second, third, and fourth grenade followed.

At the end of that time, the size and depth of the hole had been doubled. The trench catapult was set up. Half a dozen grenades were bundled together and flung into the now much enlarged opening in the surface of the ice. There was no explosion. One automatically braced oneself for the report, and the utter silence that succeeded the disappearance of the grenades came as a peculiar shock. Too cold, remarked Teddy to the young lieutenant in charge. The lieutenant nodded stiffly. We'll try again.

A second batch of grenades was flung into the hole, and the same quiet resulted. I would suggest, Teddy began. We'll fire a trench-mortar-bomb, said the young lieutenant. The heavy-winged projectile flew up into the air, then descended squarely into the opening in the ice. Though standing fifty yards away could hear the crash as it struck, and then a sound as of musical splintering. The young lieutenant swore. The fuses are no good.

Try once more. You can shoot all day and they won't go off, said Teddy mildly. It's too cold down there. The officer said nothing, but supervised the firing of a second mortar bomb with precisely the same result. He swore again. It's probably quite as cold as liquid. air down there, said Teddy. In fact, there is quite possibly a pool of liquefied air at the bottom of the hole.

Your bombs fall into that air and are frozen so solidly before they strike, that the metal gets brittle and simply falls to powder from the shock. You can't do anything going on this way. The young lieutenant hesitated, then turned to Teddy somewhat sulkily. What do you suggest, then? We'd better enlarge the whole. pole first, blast down the walls of the present cavity, then use wrapped dynamite until we have a shallow crater. Then we'll place our explosives by long poles, keeping them warm by running

resistance wires around them and heating them electrically. The young lieutenant, considered and agreed. Teddy went back to the fort to arrange for the heated bombs and the long poles. When he returned, there was only a saucer-like depression in the ice clearing. It was quite fifty yards across, but no more than twenty deep. Standing near the edge, one could see the ice near the bottom glistening liquidly. Air, liquefied by the intense cold at the bottom of the crater, wet the surface of the ice there. And that means the temperature down there is 325 degrees or more below zero Fahrenheit, explained Teddy casually. Here's where we use our heated explosives.

For an hour the party worked busily. Storage batteries brought out on the sledges furnished the current that kept the explosives from becoming inert through cold. Charge after charge was fired, and the bottom of the crater grew steadily deeper. At the lowest point a little puddle of liquefied air collected. We must be pretty nearly at the cold bomb now, said Teddy thoughtfully. There's a mass of liquid air. at the bottom of our crater, and something tells me there's solidified air at the bottom of that puddle.

That means 700 odd degrees below zero. He was clad in the warmest garments that could be found, and every one of the others, working in the clearing, was quite as warmly clothed, but the cold was intense. One of the soldiers, by the small pile of explosives, was chewing a cut of tobacco. He spat. The brownish liquid froze in mid-air and bounced merrily away across the ice. The soldier looked at it with his mouth open, then shut it quickly. A thin film of ice had formed from the moisture on his teeth. The breast of every member of the party was covered with sparkling snow crystals from the congealed moisture of their breath.

I began to doubt if we can keep our stuff from freezing much deeper. Teddy commented. We want to go as deep as we can before we use our dewy bulbs, though. I have only two of them.' The young lieutenant bustled away and presently returned. "'The men say that the last bomb won't go off,' he said grievantly. "'Your heating plan doesn't work.' "'I didn't expect it to work indefinitely,' said Teddy mildly.

"'We want to clear out that liquid air and shoot our two dewy bulbs before it's had time to reform. "'Will you please have a charge made ready to be fired just about, above the surface of that puddle. That should clear it away. Immediately after that charge has gone off, we'll drop our two T&T charges in the Dewey bulbs. They ought to show us the coal-bomb. The dynamite charge was suspended about a foot above the surface of the watery bubbling pool. Air was in that pool. Air turned to transparent liquid by the intense cold. At negative 325 degrees Fahrenheit, air becomes a liquid. Here, exposed to the sunlight in the blue sky, a pool of liquefied gas had collected from the

incredible cold of the coal bomb below. The charge of explosive burst with a shattering roar. The echoes of the explosion had not died away when the two dewy bulbs, filled with TNT, fell into the bared ice cavity. A dewy bulb is a combination. of six vacuum bottles placed one outside the other. They are used for the keeping of liquid gases at a low temperature, but are obviously just as effective in protecting their contents from exterior cold.

They fell some five yards apart and rolled, then were still. Their fuses sputtered. They went off together. A huge mass of shattered ice was thrown aside, and a dark globular mass was. was exposed to view. Almost as soon as it was exposed to the air, a crust of frozen air coated it,

and liquefied air began to trickle down its misshapen sides. There could be no doubt, but that it was the coal bomb, invented by an insane genius to make him master of the world. Those about the rim of the crater looked at it and turned away. Just as the intense heat of a blast furnace sears unprotected flesh even yards from his flame, so the incredible cold of the dark object pinched and wrung with its freezing rays.

Not one man who looked upon the coal bomb but suffered from a deep frostbite. "'We can't approach that thing,' said Teddy, with his hand over his eyes. "'I just as soon or sooner tried to tinker with burning thermite. We'll have to shoot armor-piercing shells at it. They'll freeze when they get near it, but the impact ought to crack the thing. He motioned to the fur-clad soldiers to move back from the crater, and after a hasty consultation with the lieutenant, went off toward the fort to ask for a small-calibur field gun. The lieutenant paced back and forth restlessly. He was an ambitious young man.

He did not relish taking orders from a civilian like Teddy. His eyes fell on the heap of equipment that had been brought. brought out from the fort. Two trench mortars, a trench catapult, a liquid flame apparatus, one of the American inventions that had far outdone the original German flamenvossers. There had been some thought of trying to reach a point just above the coal bomb and melting the ice down to it with liquid flame. That had been quickly proved impracticable.

But the liquid fire apparatus had not been sent back. The young lieutenant was not stupid. On the contrary, he was a singularly intelligent man. In a flash he saw how the liquid flame could have been used much more efficiently than Teddy's resistant coils about his explosive charges. The idea simply had not occurred to Teddy or the young lieutenant either. Now, however, he became all eagerness. If he succeeded in breaking up the coal bomb during Teddy's absence, it would be a feather in his cap. if in addition he pointed out a method of dealing with a coal-bomb superior to teddy's plotting system it would certainly mean his promotion and a very desirable reputation for himself in his profession

he gave his orders briskly the liquid flame tank was set up and began to spray out its stream of fire the young lieutenant had it trained so that it passed just above the top of the ungainly coal-bomb and grazed the upper edge then the two trench marks trench mortars were made ready for firing. The young lieutenant set them up at their proper elevation himself. He was tremendously excited. He pointed the two mortars with the most meticulous precision. To aim them properly, he had to expose his face again and again to the direct rays from the coal bomb, but he paid no attention to the searing, freezing rays. The stream of liquid fire shot upward in a perfect parabola,

and fell evenly exactly where it was aimed. The young lieutenant knew that a mortar bomb would be frozen by the intense cold if it were fired at the coal bomb direct, but his plan got around that difficulty. With the liquid fire playing just above and grazing the coal bomb, when the shell from the mortar struck the incredibly cold surface, both the shell and the coal bomb would be bathed in flame. All was ready. The lieutenant fixed it.

eyes on the coal bomb and gave the signal. The two trench-martre's spouted flame. Two ungainly bombs rose high in the air and fell hurtling down toward the strange frosted object at the bottom of the crater. One of the bombs would fall a little to the left, the other squarely on top. The cracking explosion of the bomb from the trench-martre was lost in the greater war that followed it. Before the young or any of his men could lift a finger. They were enveloped by a colossal sheet of vaporized metal that seemed to fill the earth, the air, and all the sky. Of a weird and unearthly tint, the white-hot flame leaped into the air.

It sprang up three thousand feet in hardly more than two seconds. The blast had the velocity of many rifle balls and the withering heat of molten metal. The young lieutenant and his men were swept into nothingness in the fraction of a second. The crater they had worked on for hours to blast out was a puny ant-hole beside the vast chasm that opened in the ice down to the red clay far beneath the bed of the narrows. And New York shook and trembled from the shock of the terrific explosion. End of Chapter 6. Chapter 7 of a thousand degrees below zero. by Murray Lister.

This Libri-Vox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 7 Teddy was thrown down by the concussion and fell in a heap against the commandant. He leaped to his feet and rushed to the window, from which the glass had disappeared. He saw the remnants of the sheet of flame dying away, and saw that the low-lying cloud of mist had been blown from the surface of the ice. A gaping orifice five hundred feet across showed itself where Teddy and the lieutenant had been working. Of the lieutenant and his men no trace could be seen.

Two or three of the little red flags that had marked the path through the mist still remained, however, and a small sledge was lying overturned beside the sledge route. Four tiny black figures lay in twisted attitudes beside the sledge. As Teddy looked, one of them began to struggle feebly. Teddy stared, speechless. For a moment he was dazed by the suddenness and the overwhelming nature of the calamity that had befallen the young lieutenant and his detachment. Only accident had saved him from a similar fate.

Then his professional instinct reasserted itself, and he began to piece together what he knew of the bomb. In a moment the solution came to him. Votus planned this, he said unsteadily. He filled up his hollow cold bombs with solid iron. The heat that would come in would first melt and then vaporize the interior, until the pressure inside was more than the still solid crust could stand, and all that vaporized iron would burst out.

What a fiend that man must be! An hour later, baffled and discouraged, he was sitting in the laboratory with his head in his hands, trying desperately to grapple with this new problem. The new cold bombs apparently could not be assailed without destruction of those who attacked them. It was impossible to imagine that volunteers could be found to sacrifice their lives to destroy each new bomb as it was placed. The horror of being annihilated by a blast of metallic vapor would deter men. who would not hesitate to face death in a less terrible form. And Vadas was evidently able to place them again nearly as fast as they were blown up.

Telegrams announcing the explosion of the Jacksonville and Charleston Ice Flows lay before Teddy, supplemented by a cablegram from Panama, saying that the Mira Flores locks had been destroyed by the blast when the Panama coal bomb had burst. Teddy was nearly certain that the next number of the next time. morning would find the exploded bombs replaced. Votis's black flyer was evidently capable of carrying a great weight at an immense speed. It also seemed able to reach an almost incredible height, from the fact that the second coal bomb had been dropped in the narrows in broad daylight without the flyer having been sighted. Evelyn turned from the instruments with which she had been working.

She had scraped off a small bit of the lacquer-like surface of the silver bracelet, and had been analyzing it in the hope of finding what element or combination had been used to produce the mystifying heat-inductive effect. "'Teddy,' she said depressantly, "'I can't find a thing.' The lacquer effect seems to be simply the appearance of some way he has treated the metal. The surface gives just the same analysis as the filings from inside. of the metal.

I took a spectro photo, and it gives silver lines with a trace of lead. Analysis by arsenic reduction gives the same result. Perhaps those detectives will be able to trace Varus by the milling-box they took," said Teddy, without much hope. It's not very likely, though. We've got to think of something." Silence fell in the laboratory again, broken only by the faint whistling sound of the flame Evelyn had used in her analytical work.

"'The trouble is,' said Teddy grimly, "'that we've been trailing Varus instead of anticipating him. If we could know where he was going to be—' "'He'll have to show up sooner or later,' Evelyn commented. "'We know, for instance, that he'll have to replace that bomb in the narrows "'or let the harbor stay open. "'The use of these new explosive bombs means that he has to expose himself more than he'd have to with the old ones.

There ought to be an aerial patrol above the city. Teddy stood up sluggishly, discouragement in every line of his figure. A servant tapped on the door of the laboratory. Lieutenant Davis of the military flying corps, sir. Show him in, said Teddy listlessly. A slim young officer came in. His friendly, boyish face was full of whimsical humor. This is rather an intrusion.

I'm afraid," he said, half apologetically, but I thought you might be able to help me out." "'I've done nothing so far,' said Teddy in a rather discouraged tone. Miss Hawkins and I were just canvassing the situation. You're talking about the iceberg and Vadas, aren't you?' Of course. No one talks about anything else nowadays. My taxi had a rough time getting through the crowds on the streets. They don't understand about the explosion in the narrowly.

yet. Teddy introduced him to Evelyn. "'Pleasure, I'm sure,' said Davis with a smile. Then his face sobered. "'That was rotten hard luck about your father, Miss Hawkins. I'm not good at making speeches, but I hope you realize that everyone is sympathizing with you and in a measure sharing your sorrow.' Evelyn shook hands. "'I will allow myself to grieve when Varus has been disposed of,' she said quietly.

Until then I dare not let myself think. Davis released her hand and turned to Teddy. Votas, or the chap in the black flyer anyway, killed my best friend Curtis. He was driving the little Newport that attacked Votus the day you blew up the first bomb. I was the first man to reach the spot where Curtis had crashed, and I swore I'd get Votas for that.

I remember, said Teddy. Frozen. Davis nodded. His face, grave. I have what is probably the fastest little machine in the United States at the fort. A two-seater with Twin Liberty Motors that shoot her up to 150 miles an hour without any trouble at all. I think I can get Vadas with it. I came to you to learn what you think about Votas's weapons. It's only the part of wisdom to learn all you can about your opponent, you know. Teddy found the young man impressing him very favorably.

"'I haven't given the matter much thought,' he confessed. "'But you remember Vadas's tactics?' "'He dropped like a tumbler pigeon,' said Davis, and Curtis overshot him. There wasn't a sign of firing except from Curtis. He simply overran the place where Vadas had been three or four seconds before and then dropped. He was frozen stiff when I found him. I think, said Teddy carefully, that Votus had shot up a jet of some liquefied gas, probably hydrogen.

It hung suspended in the air for a moment, and in that moment the biplane ran into it. A drop of liquid hydrogen placed in the palm of your hand would freeze your arms solidly up well past the elbow. It's something over five hundred degrees below zero. friend ran into what amounted to a shower of it." Davis considered, "'Cheerful thing to fight against, isn't it?' he asked with a smile. Tactics mustn't run above the Black Flyer and mustn't run below it.

He can probably shoot it straight down, too. And almost certainly from the sides,' said Teddy. The man must have been working on this thing for years. And even if he's insane, he'd be a fool not to break his weapon as efficient as possible." Davis's expression became rueful. And so I'm supposed to keep my distance, he remarked, and take pot shots at him while dancing merrily around in mid-air. Can't we do anything about that stuff to nullify it?"

Burn it, suggested Evelyn. Liquid hydrogen burns just as readily as the same gas at normal temperatures. The three of them were silent for a moment. Would rockets set it a fire? asked Davis presently. I could keep a stream of fireballs shooting out before my machine. They ought to. Teddy was losing his discouragement in this new prospect of coming to grips with Vodos. I say, will your machine burn readily?

Only the gas tank. The wings and struts are fireproof. New process. Davis stood up suddenly. Would it bother you to come over and look at my machine? We could probably figure out the thing better then. Teddy rose almost enthusiastically. We'll go over now if you say so.

The taxi cab, bearing Teddy and the young aviator down to the fort, was forced to travel slowly amid the throngs of apprehensive people that overflowed the sidewalks and made the streets almost impassable. The launch took them swiftly to the fort, and in a few moments they had arrived at the small aviation field behind the fortifications on staten island davis led teddy directly to the shed that contained the swift machine of which he was so proud it was a splendid product of the aircraft maker's art twin liberty motors developed nearly eight hundred horse power between them and two great shining propellers pulled the machine through the air with irresistible force You see, said Davis with some enthusiasm, the motors aren't in the fuselage, so the gunner sits up here at the bow and can fire freely in any direction.

The one-man planes with synchronized machine guns firing through the propeller aren't in it with these for real fighting. They're splendid little machines. I drove one in France. But I honestly believe this is better than they are. One responds to the controls every bit as readily and with a good gunner. Machine gunner in France myself," said Teddy, touching his breast. Would you take a chance of letting me sit up front tonight?"

"'Tonight?' asked Davis. I believe Vadas will appear to drop another coal bomb tonight. It will probably be dropped inside the harbor so the ice cake will touch the battery. That will set the people frantic and make them beg them. the government to enter into a parley with Vadas. It's paid no official attention to him so far, you know. Davis's expression became keen and rather stern. We four hours before dark, we'll have to set to work.

Teddy went over and stepped up the ladder that leaned against the cockpit. I want to see your gasoline supply, he remarked. In a moment he came down, looking a trifle dubious. If I'm right about Vadas using liquid hydrogen for a weapon, and we can set it a fire, we'll drive through a half-dozen sheets of flame tonight. Something will have to be done to protect that gas tank from catching fire, and some protection for the carburetors, too. We'll fix that in a hurry, said Davis briskly.

Oh, Simpson, come here. In twenty minutes there were half a dozen mechanics at work. and Teddy was carefully inspecting the machine gun at the bow of the fuselage. Teddy telephoned back to Evelyn what he anticipated would occur that night and his own share in it. Of course there's some risk in it, he finished, but I guess we'll come out. Evelyn's voice was more anxious than Teddy had expected. Do be careful, Teddy, she said in a worried tone. Please be very careful.

Votis has so many fiendish weapons. I'm terribly afraid." Teddy's voice was grim. With the kind assistance of the German government, he remarked, we have a few fiendish inventions, too. I'm using explosive bullets only tonight. Vadas is outlawed." Evelyn spoke almost faintly.

But take good care of yourself, please, Teddy, she urged. It were better that Votas got away this once than that you should be killed for nothing. Teddy smiled. I'm no intention of being killed, Evelyn, but I have some intention that Vodas shall be. There was a curious sound from the other end of the wire. But—but— Evelyn's voice died away.

I'm—I'm going to be praying, Teddy. Goodbye. The last was very faint. Teddy turned from the instrument and went out to where the airplane had been rolled from its shed. The sun was sinking and dusk was falling. Time passed and darkness settled down upon the earth. Stars twinkled into being.

A long searchlight poked a tentative finger of light into the sky. We'd better be going, said Davis thoughtfully. We want to be well up before he appears. Teddy clambered up to his seat and adjusted the straps that would hold him in place. He pulled down the helmet. and fitted the telephone receiver securely over his ears. A telephone was necessary for communication with Davis, four feet behind him, because of the tremendous roar of the engines.

He took the machine-gun button, found the trigger, then made sure the first of a belt of cartridges was in place. He settled back in his seat as the mechanics began to twirl the propellers. He was going out to fight the black flyer. but most incongruously he was not thinking of vodas at all his thoughts dwelt with strange intensity upon evelyn end of chapter seven chapter eight of a thousand degrees below zero by murray lindster this librivox recording is in the public domain chapter eight new york lay below them the long straight lines of lights shining up through the semi-darkness of the moonlit night made a strange appearance to the two in the swift machine davis had mounted to a great height some ten thousand feet and the pinpoints of light outlined more than a dozen cities and towns the hudson was a faintly silvery ribbon flowing down placidly from a far-distant source

Because of the ice-cake in the narrows, its level had risen two or three feet, but now it flowed smoothly over that great obstacle, melting and carrying it away toward the sea. The fighting plain roared around in huge circles, seeming strangely alone in the vast expanse of air. One searchlight from below moved restlessly about the sky. A second joined it, then a third. One by one a dozen are more of long pencil-like beams of light shot up into the sky and moved here and there in seeming confusion, but actually according to a carefully prearranged plan. A hooded red light showed below the biplane in which Teddy and Davis were awaiting some sign of the black flyer.

That had been agreed upon, and none of the searchlight beams flashed upon the circling machine. From time to time Davis shut off the motors, and the two of them lifted the earflaps of their helmets to listen eagerly for the musical humming that would herald Varus' approach. Far to the east they could see where the faintly luminous waters of the ocean came up to and stopped at the darker masses of the land. The harbor below them glittered in the moonlight. The only peculiarity in the scene was the absence of the little harbor-crow. that ply about busily by day and night upon their multifarious errands.

They were all securely docked. The wharves, too, were dark and silent. All the maritime industry of New York was at a standstill. A wide spiral to twelve thousand feet. The motors were hushed during a two thousand feet glide, while the two men in the machine listened intently. For two hours, This maneuver had been repeated and re-repeated.

No sound save the rush of the wind through the guy wires and past the struts had broken the chilly stillness of the heights. The sky was a blue dome of a myriad winking lights. A pale silver moon shone down. The nose of the machine pointed down and the motors ceased to roar. Faintly but unmistakably, above the whistling and rushing of the wind about the surfaces of the biplane, a deep musical humming could be heard. Abruptly the motors burst into life again.

The exhausts began to bellow out their reassuring thunder. The machine began to climb again, circling to every point of the compass, while Teddy and Davis scanned the sky keenly for a sign of the black flyer with its cargo of menace to New York. "'I'm going to fifteen thousand!' Davis's voice sounded with metallic. clearness in Teddy's ear. The telephones between the two helmets were working perfectly. That was Vodas, all right, said Teddy quietly. Did you signal the people beneath?

Davis pushed a button, and a green light glowed beside the red one in the hood below the machine. In a moment, the receipt of this signal by those below was evidenced. The searchlights took up their task with renewed vigor, searching the sky frantically for a sign of the black flying machine. The hood below the biplane allowed the signal to be seen by those on the ground, but made the light invisible to anyone in the air. The biplane swung in wide circles, Teddy and Davis with every nerve-taught and every sense alert, aflame with eagerness to sight their quarry. They saw it, outlined for an instant by the white beam of one of the circling lights.

It was dropping like a stone from the clouds. The searchlight rays glistened from polished black sides and were reflected from shimmering propeller blades above it. "'Hellicor!' said Davis crisply. "'Now!' The black flyer was a thousand feet below them and still falling. The nose of the biplane dips sharply, and it dived straight for the still falling machine. Teddy gripped the machine gun and sighted along the barrel.

Down, the biplane darted, all the power of its 800 horsepower aiding in the speed of its fall. The glistening black machine checked in its drop and hung motionless in mid-air. The pilot was evidently unconscious of the machine swooping down upon him. Five hundred feet down, six hundred. Teddy pulled hard on the trigger and his machine gun spurted fire. A stream of explosive projectiles sped toward the menacing black shape. Teddy saw them strike the shining sides of the machine and explode with little bursts of flame.

The biplane was rushing with incredible speed toward the other flyer. Teddy played his machine gun upon it as he might have played a hose and apparently with as little effect. The tiny explosive shells struck and flashed futile. The black flyer seemed to be unharmed. After a second's hesitation, it dropped again abruptly. The biplane shot toward the spot the other machine had occupied. The distance was too short to turn or swerve quickly as it responded to the controls. Flares! gasped, Davis.

But before he spoke, Teddy was pressing the small button that would send them off. A burst of tiny lights shot out before the biplane, many colored balls of fire. driven forward from a tube below the fuselage. They illuminated the air for a short distance, entering the space from which the Black Flyer had just dropped. Teddy and Davis saw a small cloud of what seemed to be mist or fog hanging in the air. The tiny fireballs darted into it the fraction of a second before the biplane itself had to traverse the same space.

As the first of the light struck the fringe of the whitish cloud, it flared up. Fireball had touched a droplet of liquefied gas and set it flaming. It burned fiercely and with incredible rapidity, setting fire to the remainder of the cloud. Teddy ducked his head as the aeroplane shot madly through a huge globe of blazing gas in mid-air. Great God, gasped Davis. Now, where's Varus? The heavy masks the two aviators had worn had protected them from the flaming hydrogen and their goggles had saved their eyes.

Now Davis was only eager to make a second attempt upon the black machine. He swerved and circled. The searchlights below were waving frantically through the air. The flare aloft had been seen, and they concentrated upon the space below the spot. In a second the black flyer was once more outlined by half a dozen beams. Davis spanked sharply and darted toward it again. The pilot of the strange machine seemed to be quite confident that he had disposed of his antagonist and was apparently busy with something inside the cabin. He was probably preparing to release his coal bomb, but was again interrupted.

The biplane approached. Teddy saw his explosive bullets strike and flash. He knew they struck, but they seemed incapable of doing harm. The black flyer was clearly defined by the searchlights. and Teddy could see it distinctly. It was a long, needle-like body with a glass-enclosed cabin near the center. Above it, four whirring disks of comparatively huge size showed the position of the vertical propellers that enabled it to rise and fall

and to hang suspended motionless in the air. A fifth propeller spun slowly at the bow. That was evidently not running at full speed. Below the needle-like body hung a misshapen globe like the bulging ovipositor of some strange insect. Flash! Flash! The impact of the explosive bullets was marked by spiteful cracks as they burst. Teddy was aiming for the cabin of the machine. Got him! he exclaimed.

The glass of the cabin windows had splintered into fragments. The aeroplane shot toward the motionless blackflyer. Shall I ram him? asked Davis in a perfectly even voice. He was quite prepared to sacrifice both his and Teddy's lives to make absolutely certain of the destruction of the menacing helicopter with its more than dangerous occupant. Teddy, with lips compressed, nodded. He had forgotten that in the darkness Davis could not see his movement. As the biplane sped forward, the black machine dropped again.

Again, the whitish cloud was left behind it, clearly defined in the searchlight rays. Teddy had barely time to press the flare button before they reached the cloud. The mist of atomized liquid hydrogen seemed to burst into flame all about them. The aeroplane roared through hellfire for a moment. Flame was before Teddy's aviator goggles. He was in a veritable inferno. Then the aeroplane shot free again. Ram him, panted Teddy.

Smash him. Do anything. Only we've got to get him. They circle swiftly, searching for the black flyer. The searchlights were following him now, and they saw that he was rising straight up. He had not yet dropped his cold bomb. Davis put his machine at the ascent at as steep an angle as he dared. They climbed almost as rapidly as the helicopter.

The black machine made its first time. aggressive move now. Davis was climbing in a jerky spiral, rising at an amazing speed. Teddy was busy fitting a new belt of cartridges into his machine gun. The pilot of the other machine darted to one side, and a huge cloud of mist sprang into being just below him darting downward like some pale gray snake unfolding itself in the sky. Davis zoomed sharply.

Another second, and he would have run into the whitish cloud. The biplane recovered and swerved to one side. Twelve thousand feet. Thirteen thousand feet. Fourteen thousand feet. Three miles in the air. Then the black flyer began to drop. The biplane dived after him, Teddy's machine-guns spitting fire and explosive bullets

in a furious well-directed blast. Once, twice, bursts of the little flashes that showed his bullets were striking served to reassure Teddy, but the biplane could not gain on the falling helicopter. Down, down. There were half a dozen quick bursts of flame in the air. Anti-aircraft guns were firing. The black machine dropped unharmed. Barely a thousand feet above the waters of the bay.

The propeller at the bow seemed to be put into motion for the strength. straight descent changed into a graceful curve. The curve flattened out, and the black machine ceased to fall. It sped madly for the narrows, with a bedlam of bursting shells all about it, and the vengeful spitting two-seater darting after it like an avenging nemesis. Again and again, spurts of flame against the body of the glistening helicopter showed that Teddy's fire was well directed. But the machine shot onward in a furious rush for the narrow.

Above the narrows, without pausing, a black object that turned to white in the searchlight rays fell from the misshaping globe below the center of the black flyer's body. The thing that fell seemed to leave a mist of fog behind it as it dropped. Then its mission accomplished, the dark machine fled toward the west. Teddy and Davis in the biplane sped after it at the topmost speed of which their aeroplane was capable. Teddy was nearly insane with baffled rage and disappointment. He knew that he had failed. Another cold bomb had been dropped in the narrows, and any attempt to destroy it would only result in the death of those who made the attempt.

Faster, faster, he pleaded to Davis. If it gets far ahead of us, we'll lose it in the darkness. Davis pressed his lips together and used every artifice he knew of. to increase the speed of his machine. But the glistening black body ahead of them drew steadily farther away. At last it could barely be seen. Then as if in derision a light appeared in the cabin of the black flyer. It winked oddly.

Dot dash, dot dash. He's signalling, said Davis. Dot dash, dot dash. W-A-T-C-H, spell Davis. T-H-E-M-I-S-S-I-P-P-P-I-V-A-R-R-H-U-S. Watch the Mississippi. V-R-R-U-S, repeated Teddy. He's getting away.

The light ahead of them winked and disappeared. The sky was empty, except for the biplane roaring after a vanished enemy. He's gotten away! Half sobbed Davis. Damn him! He killed Curtis and he's gotten away! Teddy stared into the empty night with something of Davis's disappointment and despair. End of Chapter 8.

Chapter 9 of a thousand degrees. below zero by Murray Lister. This Labor Vox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 9 Next morning, the world read at its breakfast table that the Mississippi River had frozen over just below St. Louis and that the water was rising rapidly. The river had frozen solidly up to the surface. The level rose and the water started to flow over the top of the ice cake, only to be

turned into ice as it did so. Hour by hour the level rose, and hour by hour the solid ice barrier rose with the water level. Men had tried to blast away through for the rushing waters, but without effect. As fast as the water tried to flow through the opening made by a charge of dynamite, it froze again and plugged the hole through which it was attempting to escape. Hastily improvised levees were thrown up, but the water outstripped the efforts of the builders. The lower part of St. Louis was flooded, and a great part of the population made homeless. Then low-lying lands beside the river were gradually submerged.

In 24 hours there were calls for help all along the upper part of the Mississippi Valley. The rising waters had flooded immense areas of cultivated land, and even larger areas were threatened. In another day, a thousand square miles of crops were underwater, and the loss in livestock was assuming formidable proportions. The new cold bomb in New York Harbor had crept up to the battery as Teddy had foreseen. The Norfolk coal bomb had exploded, fortunately, without loss of life. Gibraltar had witnessed three almost simultaneous blasts and was again free of ice, but the whole world knew that it was at the mercy of Varus.

Davis, Evelyn, and Teddy were discussing the matter dolefully. Davis had come to the laboratory daily in the hopes of hearing that Teddy had devised some plan for the frustration of Votos's ambitious schemes. Teddy found himself liking Davis immensely, but with a peculiarly illogical annoyance that Evelyn seemed to like him quite as well. When he had phoned her of his safety after the flight with Votas, he could hear a flood of thankfulness in her voice. But when he saw her the next day, she was almost distant.

He saw traces of real anxiety on her face, but she had not been really natural until they had worked nearly all day on the silver bracelet, trying to find what had been done to the surface to give it its peculiar property of allowing heat to pass in one direction but not in the other. They were as far as ever from the solution. Davis was quite ignorant of abstract chemistry or physics and could not join in their discussions. But Teddy fancied that he was much more interested in Evelyn than was necessary. He was annoyed to find that he resented it.

He had always looked on Evelyn as a comrade, and he could not understand this feeling that took possession of him. It did not occur to him to speculate upon the fact that he found ideas coming to him much more readily when working by Evelyn's sense. side, or that he rarely attempted anything without asking her opinion. Teddy had never thought much of romance, and he did not suspect how much Evelyn's companionship meant to him. Davis was reiterating for the fortieth time his disappointment at Vodos's getting away. We almost had him, he said disgustedly. Our explosive bullets were playing all over his infernal flying machine.

We'd have landed one in that little glass cap. of his and smashed him nicely in another minute when he skipped off like that. And I'll swear to it we were doing 180 miles an hour. He ran away from us pretty easily, said Teddy dismally. Isn't there a faster machine than yours we could get hold of? Nothing but a single-seater, not so much faster at that, said Davis. 195 is the best, even the latest single-seater combat planes will do at low altitude. "'Even for short bursts of speed?' asked Evelyn.

"'Diving, you'll run up faster than that,' Davis explained. "'When we went straight down after Votus, we must have gone over two hundred. But for straightaway work we've nothing that will catch Votus.' "'What's the official speed record?' asked Evelyn, toying with a test tube. She looked singularly pretty in the long white apron she wore in the laboratory. "'Two hundred and fifteen, I think,' said Davis. Some Spanish aviator made it. He doped his gas with pickrick acid, though.

What does that do? asked Teddy quickly. It's explosive and about doubles the force of your explosions. It eats your engines right up, though. They used to use it in motorboat races until a rule was made against it. You see, an engine is ruined after 20 minutes or so, and it made the racing unfair for people who couldn't buy a new engine for every race. Teddy's face grew thoughtful. Pickrick acid, he said meditatively.

Suppose we used it in the gas of your plane. Would we have a chance of catching Votus? I don't know, Davis said thoughtfully. I hardly think so. It would make our speed better, but if it were anything of a chase, our motors would be ruined before we'd gone far. The acid attacks the steel of the cylinders

and makes the boars too large. Teddy seemed to be thinking rapidly. Yes, you lose all your compression. Teddy looked at Evelyn. Suppose the pistons and the interiors of your cylinders were plated with platinum. Platinum is one of the hardest metals and should stand up under a great deal of wear. Would platinum resist the attack of the acid? Davis grew excited.

Surely. Davis jumped to his feet. Then we've got him. New piston range. will let you plate the cylinders without re-boring them unless you're going to plate them heavily. Can you do the plating? Try, said Teddy. We make 180 with straight gasoline, said Davis excitedly, with doped gas.

How long will it take to fix my motors? Four or five hours. We'll borrow the acid vats of some electroplating concern. Evelyn will mix the solution of platinum salts. I'll go arrange to borrow the vats while you get your motors disassembled and brought here on a motor truck. Teddy hastily began to put on his coat. You're going to try to fight Vodos again? asked Evelyn anxiously. Are we? asked Davis cheerfully. Just ask me. We are. You hit him several times in the last

fight, said Evelyn faintly, and it didn't do any good. We'll use armor-piercing bullets this time, said Davis exuberantly. Or we may be able to mount a one-pounder automatic. I think the plane will stand it. And at worse, we can ram him. Evelyn turned a trifle pale. That means you'll both be killed. Davis smiled. Maybe not.

We'll take a chance anyway, won't we, Jared? Teddy nodded shortly. I'm going to get Votis or he's going to get me, he says succinctly. They started for the front door. The commissioner of police was just getting out of his car. "'News, most likely,' said Teddy, and they waited. The Commissioner of Police looked worried when he shook hands with Teddy. "'My men have been trying to trace that package that contained the bracelet,' he told him,

and found that it was put in a country-rural delivery mailbox after dark. The mail carrier took it when he made his morning route. There is absolutely no way of tracing it any farther. Anyone might have passed by in an automobile and have put it in. The former in whose box it was is above suspicion. Now, another set of letters has been sent in the same way from another rural delivery box, a hundred miles from the first. One is addressed to Miss Hawkins.

I have it here. The postal authorities called me in when they saw the envelope. He showed a huge yellow envelope addressed to Evelyn. In one corner was a large return card, the dictatorial residence. It might be almost anything. said Davis. Better not let Miss Hawkins open it. I'll do it, Jared.

Teddy shook his head. We'll tell her about it, and I'll open it in the laboratory. Evelyn and Davis waited apprehensively until Teddy emerged from that room. No coal bombs, no electric shocks, and no poison gas, he said, smiling. Just a billet-due to Evelyn.

It fits in beautifully with our plans, Davis. Evelyn took the sheet, he extended to her, and read, the dictatorial residence August 29th. His excellency, Vladislavaros, dictator of the earth, has been much annoyed by the efforts of one Theodore Gerard to obstruct his plans and desires. He has been informed through the press

of the fact that Miss Evelyn Hawkins has collaborated with and encouraged Theodore Gerard in his rash attempts. His Excellency, the dictator, is pleased to require that Miss Evelyn Hawkins repair to a spot some five miles due east from Norman's Reef off the coast of Maine. Miss Hawkins may bring with her a maid and such baggage as she may require. She is to be held as security for the cessation of Theodore Gerard's efforts to impede the secure establishment of the dictatorship. The Mississippi River has been closed to traffic and will remain closed until this order has been obeyed.

by Miss Hawkins. The time set for Miss Hawkins's appearance, at that spot, is daybreak of Tuesday, September the 3rd, given at the dictatorial residence, Vodoslaw Votos. Evelyn looked at the three men with a white face. The commissioner of police looked grave. Davis was smiling, and Teddy was smiling, too, but with a blaze of anger in his eyes. "'Jarred,' said Davis whimsically, "'I am much depressed that Votis didn't include me with you

"'as making efforts to obstruct his plans and desires.' "'The government will have to be notified,' said the Commissioner of Police solemnly. "'Do you think I had better go?' asked Evelyn, hesitatingly. "'No,' exploded Teddy and Davis together.' "'Teddy went on. "'Why, Evelyn, the man is in season. sane. And besides, we've just thought of something that's sure to get him. We'll lay and wait for him, and then he'll walk into our parlor nicely, when he does. Fini, said Davis cheerfully, if I may

borrow a phrase from the French. And if it's a long chase, said Teddy even more cheerfully, the dear person set the time for dawn, and we'll have the light to fight by. Let's go and set to work on that plane of yours. They left together in high spirits. Evelyn stood quite still after they had gone, absently crushing the letter from Vodas in her hand. Presently with a sob, she went to her room and allowed herself to cry. They would not let her face danger, but Teddy was going out to fight, perhaps to die, and for her. Over at the hangar, mechanics swarmed upon the fighting plane.

dismounting the motors and disassembling them. The cylinders and pistons were being carefully packed. A big motor truck had already backed up at the wide door of the aeroplane shed, and as fast as the parts were packed they were loaded on it. Davis was there, here and everywhere. He had asked permission for the experiment, and it had been granted. The government was prepared to risk almost anything rather than allow Vodos to succeed in his huge blackmailing of the

the entire human race. There was no hesitation in allowing anything that might afford a fighting chance of drowning the black flyer. The Mississippi floods were growing in size and destructiveness. The New York coal bomb dropped the night Teddy and Davis had fought the black machine over the harbor, was expected to explode at any moment. Every window, still intact in the city, had been pasted with strips of paper to keep the fragments from becoming a menace to those on the streets when the bomb should burst them.

Davis had conferred with the commandant of the forts, and volunteers had been asked for among the garrison. A boat was being heavily armed with concealed guns. It would go to the point where Vodos would expect Evelyn to be taken. He would see the small boat, dropped down to take Evelyn on board his evil craft, and the masked batteries of anti-aircraft guns would open on him and a blast of fire. Teddy's discovery that flares fired into the cloud of liquefied gas would cause it to burn harmlessly in mid-air had been adapted to protect the crew. As the guns opened on the hovering black flyer, a stream of fireballs would be made

to float overhead to set flaming the stream of liquid hydrogen Vodas might be expected to shoot downward. At that, though, the mission of the boat crew was hazardous in the extreme. The telephone rang in the hangar. Teddy was on the wire. He had commandeered the big wooden acid vats of an electroplating plant, and the platinum-plating solution was being mixed even then. If Davis brought the motors over in parts, the plating might begin immediately. The big truck rumbled off, Davis smiling confidently on the seat beside the chauffeur. Half a dozen mechanics perched on various parts of the load. When the truck stopped before the electroplating plant, they leaped off and rushed the glistening cylinders inside. In twenty minutes they were in the plating solution and an almost infinitely thin film of platinum was slowly forming within them. The workmen of the electroplating plant labored far into the night on their task.

Teddy had insisted that a film of platinum ten times the thickness of the usual precious metal plating be used. and the process was slow. When the cylinders had been prepared, the pistons remained, and the exhaust ports and valves. These two were coated with the hard, acid-resisting metal, and Davis's mechanics began their task of fitting piston rings to the altered motor parts. The rings themselves had to be plated, and all the plating burnished and polished. Teddy and Davis snatched a few hours sleep, while the motor in its disassembled state was being carried back to the hangar,

and reinstalled in the airplane. They woke, and during all the following day, Davis sat in the pilot seat, listening with a practiced ear, and aiding in the final tuning-up of the changed motors, adjusting the carburetors to their new fuel. Thirty percent of pickric acid added to the finest-highest-grade gasoline was to be used. No one had dared use such a percentage before,

even for motors that were expected to be ruined. Teddy, in the meantime, had familiarized himself with a small one-pounder automatic gun, similar to the German anti-tank weapons, that was to be installed in the bow of the airplane. By nightfall all was finished. Teddy ran over to New York and saw Evelyn for the last time before making his attempt, and the next morning he and Davis flew to Norman's Reef, where a camouflaged hanger had been erected on telegraphed instructions from New York. Tuesday dawn found them alert and anxiously scanning the sky for a sign of the black flyer.

End of Chapter 9. Chapter 10 of a thousand degrees below zero by Murray Lister. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 10 The stars winked palely from the graying sky. In the east a pallid whiteness showed which slowly yellowed. and then turned to pink. The dawn was breaking. On the little reef men watched keenly. Far out to sea, its single funnel tipped with red paint from the crimson sunlight, a little

boat tossed and rolled. The boat contained the men who had offered their lives for a chance to kill this Vodas who threatened the liberty of the world. Beside the camouflaged hangar, Two great horns, seeming to be enlarged megaphones, pointed toward the sky. Little wires ran from their posts to telephone receivers strapped to the ears of intently listening men. They were microphones to detect the first sound of the musical humming of the black flyer. Teddy and Davis were preferred and goggled and had pushed up their goggles to take powerful glasses and scanned the sky eagerly for a sight of their enemy.

Mechanics stood ready at their propellers of the hidden fighting plane, prepared to spin the motors into roaring life the instant the two aviators had settled in their seats. From before the wide doors of the concealed hangar, a broad expanse of beach ran smoothly down to the ocean. The little boat tossed and rolled. The men at the microphones listened intently. The others searched the sky. down from a wisp of golden cloud, a slim black speck fell toward the earth.

At first so high was it that even those with field-glasses could make out only the thin shape of the glistening black body. It fell a thousand, two thousand feet. The whirring disks above the slender body became visible, then the enclosed cabin near the center. The musical humming filled the air. and lower the strange machine dropped. Davis and Teddy were in their seats.

Now, said Davis sharply, and the propellers whirled. The motors caught, sputtered, and began to run with a steady droning roar. Davis watched keenly as the black shape slowed in its fall and came to a standstill above the little tossing boat. Half a dozen men were holding the airplane back, and the small shed was full of clouds of choking dust and still more choking fumes from the motor. The black flyer hung motionless, barely three hundred yards above the small boat. There was a long moment of waiting.

Then the decks of the boat seemed to fall in. A dozen threatening muzzles were exposed. A dozen flashes of flame shot up from the tiny vessel. Simultaneously, Davis cried out, and the men released his machine and it darted forward. He took off from the beach, skimmed the little. the waves and shot out toward the strange combat that was taking place. The Black Flyer had been hit, that much was certain. It lurched and staggered in the air, losing altitude all the while.

Then the pilot seemed to regain control. He swung swiftly to one side and began to rise. All the time the anti-aircraft guns were firing viciously. The tossing boat made a poor platform for the gunners, however, and their aim was was inevitably poor. The guns kept up a ceaseless roaring. Puff after puff of white smoke showed where their shells burst near Votas. He began to swerve to zigzag, using tactics strangely like those of a dragonfly.

Suddenly he darted to a point exactly above the small boat, and a smoky cloud began to dart down from below his machine. Votas passed on, but the cloud fell swiftly precisely like the cloud of liquefied gags. he had poured down on Teddy and Davis above New York Harbor. Flares! cried Davis in an agony of apprehension, though his voice was only audible to Teddy's by means of the telephone connection between the two helmets. As he spoke, the men on the boat shot up the little fireballs

that had protected the airplane in its former flight. A dozen balls of light sped up to meet the menacing cloud of liquefied gas. They reached it, sped into it glowing feeble. The white cloud did not ignite, but fell on toward the boat. It reached and enveloped the little vessel, and suddenly the guns were still. Damn him, said Teddy in a voice that shook with rage. He's not using hydrogen. We can't close in on him now.

Our flares are no good." Davis tilted the nose of his machine upward, and Teddy stared down his sights. He pulled the trigger. The gun kicked backward, but the recarral cylinders did their work. The tracer's shell left a little line of smoke behind it. It passed below the black body. Too low, said Teddy grimly, and fired again. Vadas began to climb.

Straight up his machine went. But with the pickric acid giving added impetus to the explosions in the cylinders, the two-seater climbed as rapidly. Votis's assent swerved. He was directly over the aeroplane. A whitish cloud appeared below his machine and blotted it out for an instant. We zoom, said Davis almost gaily, and the fighting plane seemed to be dancing on its tail for an instant. The cloud of gas unfolded itself down to the surface of the water, barely twenty yards before

the space in which Davis had checked his course. Around and around a huge circle. The biplane had caught up with the black flyer, and Davis turned toward it for an instant to give Teddy an opportunity to fire. There was a flash at the stern of the slender black body, and the symmetry of the glistening farm was marred by a ragged edge where the tip of the tail had been blown off. "'Almost,' said Teddy, grimly. "'He'll dive now.'

Davis was prepared for the maneuver, and almost as soon as the helicopter began to drop, the The biplane darted down after it, Teddy firing viciously. The streaks of smoke that his shells left behind them told him where he missed. Votus shifted the course of his fall, and again a cloud drifted in the air just before the pursuing plane. Davis flung the joystick forward, and the fighter fell into an absolutely vertical dive. A second more, and it had turned upon its back and was flying upside down, away from the threatening mist. Davis twisted in mid-air and righted his machine.

Vodas was darting away, barely two hundred feet above the surface of the water. Again, the two-seater dived upon him. Teddy shells were zipping dangerously near the black machine. It began to zigzag, to twist and turn like a snake. It doubled back and shot directly under the biplane, but too far below for the deadly mist to be used. Davis banked at a suicidal angle and went after it again. They passed directly above the silent small boat, drifting aimlessly on the waves. Little icicles were forming on the bulwarks, showing that the cold of the liquefied gas was still intense. For one instant, Teddy had a perfect sight and pulled the trigger with the peculiar confidence of a marksman who knows he is making a perfect shot.

There was a flash from the upper portion of the black hull. A dark object shot off in a tangent from one of the whirring disks. The helicopter sank rapidly. Teddy gave a shout. Landed! The black machine recovered again. One of the discs was badly injured and now slowed and stopped, showing that the blade of one of the four sustaining propellers had been broken.

But the remaining three increased their speed. Votas seemed to abandon the idea of fighting. He began to shoot away toward the northeast. He was more than a mile away and Teddy had stopped firing. Votis had no difficulty in distancing the same machine a week before and anticipated no trouble in losing it even with his own flyer partially crippled. He had not reckoned on the Pickrick compound now being used for fuel. The biplane sped madly after the fleet.

black aircraft. The motors roared hugely, and the wind was like a solid mass, pushing fiercely against Teddy's exposed head. A small, half-moon of glass protected Davis from the wind, but for the gunner no such protection was practicable. The rushing of the wind through the wires and along the side of the streamlined body amounted to a shriek. Never has such speed been known before. Davis' voice came quietly to Teddy above the sounds outside, muted by the heavy, padded helmet. The telephone receivers were fast against Teddy's ears. We're making two hundred and twenty-six. We're not gaining, said Teddy grimly.

Wait until he rises. The motors adjusted to be most efficient at about seven thousand feet. The black speck ahead of them was drawing no nearer, it is true, but it was not dwindling. The silver wings of the biplane cut through the air with fierce impatience. It flew in the straightest of straight lines after the other craft. Dark brownish smoke blew backward from the bellowing exhausts, tinged almost to saffron by the presence of the explosive acid.

The sunlight kissed the upper surfaces of the wings of the pursuing plane. Before them the ocean rolled and tossed. Whistling winds and roaring engines. Speed, speed, speed, speed! The biplane rushed with incredible swiftness through the air. The black flyer skimmed lightly on, barely in advance of his white-winged enemy. Twice, Teddy essayed a shot, but the biplane trembled so that the accuracy was impossible, and he could see by the smoke of his tracer's shell that he had gone far wide of the black

machine. The space between the black speck and the waves below it seemed to increase. Rising, said Davis, now we'll get him. Teddy kept his eyes fixed on Votis's slender, needle-like craft. He was barely conscious of the upward tilt of the machine in which he was riding, but he saw that they were keeping pace with Votis as he rose in the air. Four thousand feet, said Davis crisply, and two hundred and twenty-nine miles an hour. There's land ahead." Teddy saw a mountainous coastline becoming visible far away. The Black Flyer continued to rise.

Six thousand feet, said Davis, and two hundred and thirty-two miles. The pilot of the other machines saw that they were gaining. He dropped abruptly. Now! exclaimed Davis fiercely. He dived downward. The descent, coupled with the immense power of the engines. now delivering vastly more than the 800 horsepower for which they were designed, made them shoot toward the black flyer with increasing speed.

The other machine was barely more than half a mile away, and every detail of its construction was visible. Teddy noticed for the first time a slender tube rising between the two center sustaining propellers. He instantly leaped to the conclusion that it was the means by which the jets of liquefied gas had been shot out. He fired. A hit, cried Davis. There had been a flash from the top of the cabin. A jagged rent appeared in the polished roofing, and the slender tube vanished. The Black Flyer seemed to abandon all hopes of escape. It sped madly for a gap between two of the

tall mountains that rose along the coastline. At the unprecedented speed with which both machines had been traveling, the coast seemed fairly to rush at them. No villages were visible, but it seemed to be a habitable, if not an inhabited land. The black flyer swept on across country, Vodas evidently making every effort to gain even a few yards on his adversaries, and Davis just as fiercely determined that he should not. Once, twice, three times Teddy fired. A smoothed and enclosed field, almost surrounded with small buildings, appeared. Vodas dashed toward it desperately. The white-winged biplane vengefully after him.

The black flyer dropped like a stone, and the biplane dived straight for it. In that last dive, Teddy worked his one-pounder as coolly as if at target practice. Flash! The black flyer crumpled and fell the last fifteen. defeat as an inert mass. Teddy jumped from the biplane as it flattened out and settled to the ground. With his automatic pistol drawn and ready, he darted toward the partly wrecked black machine. As he drew near, a sallow face came weakly to a window of the cabin.

An automatic flash from beside the face, and Teddy heard a queer sound and a fall behind him. He did not stop but rushed on, shooting viciously at the face. the opening. He reached the wreck, wrenched open the door, and swung into the cabin with utter disregard for danger. A tall, lean, sallow man was sitting exhausted in the pilot seat of the black flyer. His right arm was crimsoned from a wound in his shoulder, and blood spurred in little frothy jets from a second wound in his neck. Teddy's fire had been better directed than he knew. As he entered with pistol ready, the sallow man raised. his head erect by a tremendous effort. A hooked nose, a merciless mouth, and blazing eyes filled

Teddy with repulsion. The Salomon stared at him superciliously. I am Vladislavonus, dictator of all the earth. He said in a metallic voice. I command. I command. Speech failed him. His head dropped, and he fell limply from the cushioned seat. End of Chapter 10. Chapter 11 of a thousand degrees below zero by Murray Lister. This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 11.

Teddy felt the fallen man's breast, but he was not breathing. In any event, there was nothing that could have been done for him. An artery had been cut by a splinter of the one-pounder shell that had smashed the roof, and he had bled quietly to death, only trying desperately to land and get assistance before he died. The sight of Teddy and Davis, sprinting toward him with drawn pistols, had been too much for his hatred, however, and he had fired his automatic at them even as he was dying. Teddy found Davis lying on the ground with a bullet in his hip. "'I'm all right, Jared,' said Davis cheerfully when Teddy went to him.

"'Just see if there are any more chaps in these houses, before you bother with me. Teddy explored the place thoroughly. There were many signs of human occupancy, but no one save Vadas himself had been there when they landed. He returned to Davis to find him weakly trying to improvise a pad to stop the bleeding. Teddy lifted him and carried him to the house that seemed to be the most used. In a little while, Davis was quite comfortable and contented.

He lit a cigarette and calmly began to read one of the newspapers that littered the place while Teddy continued his explorations. The landing field was a small one, no more than 150 yards long by 75 wide. At one end was an unpretentious but comfortable dwelling, in one of whose rooms Davis was at that moment resting. At the other end a shed evidently formed the hangar for the black flyer. Along the sides of the enclosure were long sheds, some of them empty, some containing supplies of various sorts.

Half a dozen coal bombs, complete except for the mysterious treatment of their surface that gave them their strange property, lay on the floor of one of the sheds along the sides. Another shed, long disused, had provided quarters for workmen. Teddy found the single exit that led from the enclosure. It opened on the wide hillside and afforded a view of miles without a sign of human habitation. The remnants of a wheel track that had obviously not been traveled for months, lay away from the door. Along that primitive road, the materials for building the enclosure and the black flyer had evidently been brought." Teddy went back to Davis. "'Jered,' said Davis amiably, "'I'm a fake. I've lost quite some blood, you know, and I was

pretty weak. But while you were gone I saw a small black bottle on the shelf over there, and I managed to crawl over to it. Wherever we are, prohibition hasn't struck in, and I took just enough to feel all right again. I believe I can drive back. It wasn't more than a two-hour drive anyway, was it? Between two and three, said Teddy, smiling. We were making terrific speed, though. We're probably in Newfoundland somewhere. Or, Iceland. To tell the truth, I'm quite indifferent. Suppose you help me out to the machine again. I want to see what I can find in the laboratory first, said Teddy. The laboratory was of the story. smallest. Whatever experiments had been necessary to perfect the coal bombs and the black flyer

had been made elsewhere. Teddy found a number of notebooks which he took. He found many chemicals, some inconsiderable quantities, and receptacles about the laboratory, but no clue to the mysterious process that had enabled Votus to threaten the world's security. He left Vodas where he lay. Both he and Davis confidently expecting to return and investigate thoroughly both the coal bombs and the Black Flyer. Davis especially was anxious to examine that strange machine in detail, but his wound was painful, and he wished to have it properly dressed. Besides this, the whole world was waiting anxiously to learn its fate, whether Vodis's ambitious plans were to be frustrated, or whether it would have to put its neck beneath the heel of the mad dictator.

"'Ted Teddy lifted Davis to the machine, and after some difficulty they started off. Davis circled above the small clearing until it was tiny beneath them. "'Courses southwest,' he remarked to Teddy. "'We'll notice where we land, and then a northeast course will bring us back here again or nearly.' "'Right,' said Teddy, abstractedly. His mind leaped ahead to the moment when he would see Evelyn again. He had seen her just before starting for Norman's Reef, and she had seemed pale and anxious. He was not sure, but he hoped he was right in believing that she was more anxious than she would

have been had she looked on him merely as a friend or comrade. The biplane sped over the sea across which it had flown in such desperate haste that morning. Davis was weak, but for straightaway flying, modern machines need but little attention. The new inherently stable aeroplanes are so safe that an amateur could pilot one in mid-flight, and Davis had taken a small quantity of stimulant to supplement his strength. At that, however, his endurance was severely taxed before he flattened out and taxied across the landing field on Staten Island. Mechanics rushed out to greet him and help him from the machine. Votis is dead and the black flyer is smashed, said Davis cheerfully,

and incontinently fainted. Teddy made a hasty report to the commandant of the forts and rushed to New York. The second coal bomb had exploded that morning, and the city was panic-stricken. But as his taxi-cab sped uptown, the extras began to appear, announcing the removal of the menace to the world. The frightened crowds changed to happy cheering ones. If Teddy's identity had been suspected as he passed, swiftly through the streets, he would never have gotten through.

He would have been dragged from the motor-car to be cheered and re-chered. As it was, he made his way quickly to Evelyn's home. He sprang up the steps and burst open the door, not waiting for the servant to open it. As he rushed into the hall, Evelyn came into it through an open door. She saw him, and her face was suffused with joy. You're safe, she cried joyfully, and burst into happy tears. Teddy took her quite naturally into his arms and held her there a moment.

She sobbed quietly on his shoulder for a second, clinging to him, then pushed him away and stared at him while a hot flush overspread her face. Oh, she exclaimed in a rush of shame. I—I—she turned and ran away. Teddy caught her. "'What's the matter?' he demanded. Her cheeks were still crimson. "'I—I kissed you,' she said desperately.

"'And you, you hadn't said—' Teddy laughed happily. "'I hadn't said I loved you. "'Well, if that's all that's bothering you, just listen.' And Teddy said it several times. Davis was up and about in less than a week. His wound had been of little importance, and with a crutch which he took with pride in using with dexterity,

he was able to move about almost as well as ever. He came over to tea with Evelyn one afternoon. Teddy was there, too, of course. Davis was boyously showing off how well he could move about. Teddy watched him critically. "'That's all right, Davis,' he said in a paternal tone. "'But you want to get rid of that instrument as soon as you can.' "'What for?' demanded Davis, deafly swinging himself into a chair.

"'We're waiting for you to get well,' explained Teddy with a smile at Evelyn. "'It isn't considered good form to have a little. a groomsman who was a cripple? Groomsman? Who? What? You two? Davis stared from one to the other.

Teddy nodded, and Evelyn turned slightly pink. Davis turned to Teddy. They tell me you and I are to be impressively decorated for smashing Votas, he complained. And there'll be moving pictures taken of it and shown everywhere. I want to be a touching picture, all wounded up, you know, when that happens. A girl threw me over six months ago, and she likes the movies. When she sees me beautifully mangled and being kissed by bearded people who pin medals on me, she'll be sorry. Mayn't I wear a crutch until then?

Teddy laughed, and Evelyn smiled affectionately at Davis. If it's like that, of course, said Evelyn. We'll wait. But Teddy's in an awful hurry. I would be, too, in his place, said Davis promptly. He assumed an expression of extreme reluctance. Well, I suppose I'll have to get well. Teddy shamelessly squeezed Evelyn's hand, and she shamelessly squeezed back. There are compensations for having to wait, said Teddy generously,

provided, of course, it isn't too long. Davis looked at them, and his eyes twinkled. Well, then in that case, he started for the rear of the house. Where are you going? davis looked over his shoulder with a grin you people compensate each other for waiting he smiled amiably i'm going to go out in the laboratory and kiss the galvanometer end of chapter eleven end of one thousand degrees below zero by murray lindster