After World's End
By JACK WILLIAMSON
Author of "The Dead Spot," etc.
GREAT BOOK-LENGTH SUPER-SCIENCE NOVEL
Could the Earthmen ever win againstMalgarth, the Robot monster? Wastheir only hope Barry Horn, who hadwaked from the age-long amnesicsleep of the cosmic rays, and DonaKeradin, the wonder-girl in the carboncrystal?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Marvel Science Stories February 1939.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
We found the stranger, when we unlocked the bungalow after a weekon the lakes, seated at my big desk in the study. His face was anenigma of youth and age. Lean beneath his long white hair, it was grayand drawn and hollowed as if with an infinite heartbreak—and yet itsmiled. His emaciated hand, thrust out across the pile of loose yellowsheets he had written, gripped an incredible thing.
Queerly lifelike, he was yet more queerly still.
"Why, hello!" I said.
And then, when he remained stiffly staring at that scintillating gloryin his rigid hand, we knew that he was dead.
His injuries, when we came to discover them, were dreadful as theywere inexplicable. All his gaunt, shrunken body—torso, neck, andlimbs—showed dark purple ridges. It looked as the body of Laocoön musthave looked, when the serpents were done. But we found no snakes in thebungalow.
"The man was tortured," asserted the examining doctor. "By ropes, fromthe looks of it, drawn mercilessly tighter. Flesh pulped beneath theskin. Grave internal injuries. A miracle he lived as long as he did!"
For four or five days had passed, the doctors agreed, since thestranger received his injuries. He had been dead, by the coroner'sestimate, about twenty hours when we found his body.
It is fortunate indeed for us all, by the way, that we had beentogether at the lakes and that friends there were able to substantiateour mutual alibi. Otherwise, in view of the incredible circumstances,ugly suspicion must have fallen upon us.
"Death," ran the oddly phrased verdict of the coroner's jury, afterwe all had been questioned, and the premises, the manuscript, and thestone examined, "resulting from injuries sustained through the act ofpersons or things unknown."
The stranger's life, as much as his death, remains a mystery. Thesheriff and the aiding state police have failed to identify him. Themanuscript is signed, "Barry Horn," but no record has been found thatsuch a man is missing. The medical examiners agreed that he was ofcontemporary American stock; but they were mystified by the freaks ofcell structure indicating extreme age in a man apparently young.
His clothing, even, is enigma. Textile experts have failed to name thefine rayon-like fibers of his odd gray tunic and the soiled, torn cloakwe found on the couch. The hard shiny buttons and buckle, like thebright pliant stuff of his belt and sandals, have baffled the syntheticchemists.
The weapon we found in the yellow belt seems worth the study ofscience, but no scientist yet has made anything of it. It looks like abig, queer pistol, with a barrel of glass. Its mechanism is obviouslybroken, and my attempts to fire it have proved unsuccessful.
How he came into the bungalow—unless in the strange way his manuscriptsuggests—we have been unable to conjecture. For the house was securelylocked before we started to the