Page:Weird Tales Volume 7 Number 2 (1926-02).djvu/13

before this monstrous thing had come out of the air. It would flow on when the thing was passed. The stars overhead, a pipe, a mocking bird calling from a near-by thicket—these were real. Voices that spoke warnings and shook buildings to atomic dust—dream stuff.

The next morning the world might well have rubbed its eyes to make sure it was not dreaming. Every paper in the world carried the amazing story of the building that was only a heap of dust beside the Missouri River at Great Falls. Column on column tried to describe the sight of the night before, though no two of the thousands could tell alike what had occurred. Only one thing was sure: the voice that had warned had fulfilled its warning, and now there was yet another.

Scientists tried to calm a troubled public mind. It poohed at mysterious rays. It derided any power that would act over unlimited space at any one designated spot. Explosives of some new type—yes. That was possible, it was probable. Some chemical reagent that would destroy form would be found easily. But as for etheric force—it was absurd. No mere proof like a building crumbled to powder could make them believe it. They offered no explanations as to the placing of explosives that could not be discovered, of the arrangements for releasing a chemical that could destroy metal, mineral and vegetable in the twinkling of an eye, at a specified moment. They denied the existence of something that their laboratories had not yet produced.

The public mind would not be calmed. It focused itself on Texas, the quadrangle at Fort Sam Houston, which was to shimmer in the night, break into waves of decomposition and settle to the earth in cosmic powder. And that part of the public within travel radius of Fort Sam Houston either rushed where it might be present at the cataclysm or rushed that it might be as far away as trains could carry it

There were no crowds to witness the destruction of the quadrangle. General Josiah Hodgkiss saw to that. He pished the whole business. Except for the arguments of his colonels he would have posted a squad in the old structure to see that nothing went wrong. Double sentries patrolled the entrances to the reservation surrounded by thousands of cars and tens of thousands of persons who had come to be at hand, even though they could not see, when this new menace functioned again.

All over the world men sat awaiting the news that would be flashed over every wire leading out of San Antonio. Government was in this thing now, and all traffic was suspended five minutes before the hour. The fort was connected by telephone with the telegraph offices, and observers were ready to announce the destruction of the building. All officers were as near the quadrangle as they dared, carefully failing to observe shadowy forms in the background—enlisted men who had refused to hear taps.

The last guards were called from the quadrangle. Powerful searchlights, placed during the day, were beating upon the structure, bathing it in a refulgence more brilliant than the light of several suns. Watches in hand, the observers waited, ticking off the minutes. The 10 o'clock call from a silvery bugle broke upon the night. A bar, and then a sustained "ah," from hundreds of throats.

Once more startled eyes beheld solid matter shimmer like the still surface of a pond when a soft breeze disturbs the moon's reflection, then that twisting and turning, as though suddenly liquid, solid stone would splash down in a torrent. Instead of the torrent came a blinding cloud on