Page:Weird Tales v15n01 1930-01.djvu/78

coldly smiling scientist, a heavy automatic in his grasp turned upon them. From between the other buildings, to right and to left of the clearing, had stepped the other three—Labreau, Kingsford, Krauner—their own pistols trained upon the two. Still hundreds of feet from the condenser, Ralton knew, with finality, in that moment, that never could they make it, never could they reach it with the steel-nosed bullets of four guns tearing through their bodies. That noise the bar had made had roused the four, had brought them pistols in hand to watch mockingly the two before them. The gray-haired, mocking-eyed Munson, the dark face of Labreau, contorted with insane rage; the gloating Kingsford, his strong, intellectual face twisted now as though by some devil's hand; the coldly indifferent countenance of the blond-haired Krauner, whose eyes yet burned madly behind his gleaming glasses—all these faces appeared to be slowly turning about Ralton in that seemingly eternal moment.

Munson's voice came to his ears again. "It has been something of a comedy to watch your clumsy progress," he mocked them, "though unfortunately we can not allow you, of course, to proceed any farther." His voice rose suddenly, the cords of his neck swelling with fury as all amusement left him. "You fools! You try to wreck the greatest scientific experiment ever conducted on this earth; try to save a humanity, a race, as trivial as yourselves from the doom which we, the masters of life, have decreed for them; try to make impossible the new races which we life-masters shall give earth when the protoplasm floods have swept all other life away!"

Then, as abruptly as that burst of insane fury had blazed up it calmed, and the mocking gleam returned to his eyes. "Humanity is passing, even now," he told them, "and as for you two—I think it best that you pass with it———"

Ralton saw his pistol raised a little to bear full upon them, saw in that infinitesimal instant the guns of the others upon them as their hands tensed about their grips, their fingers about the triggers. In that flashing instant it seemed to him that those black muzzles had become, somehow, mighty round dark doorways down which he and all the world were thundering to their doom. It was the end, for him as for the world. The whole scene seemed withdrawn suddenly to a great distance, made suddenly remote, in that instant before death leapt upon them. It was the———

There was a sudden wild scream from Munson, wild shrieks from the others, and Ralton came back to complete reality to see that the madmen were rushing wildly toward great gray glistening masses of jelly-like stuff that had flowed suddenly up over those edges, and were gliding swiftly over it!

The protoplasm masses below were pouring up onto the summit!

Ralton and Mallett swayed there, stunned, transfixed; saw Munson and the others fling themselves insanely upon the forward-gliding masses; saw those masses tower up suddenly beneath that mad, fierce attack and then crash down upon the struggling men, burying them in their glistening folds; saw the insane struggle of the four ceasing abruptly in swift suffocation, saw those masses leaping glidingly forward toward themselves, great glistening arms forming and looping out toward them!

It was that which broke the spell for the two, and they flung themselves toward the great condenser, still yards away, hurled themselves toward the control, the great arms looping toward the staggering two. Ralton heard a cry from Mallett, felt him jerked back from his side by one of those arms, but did not look back even in that instant, flinging himself madly on toward the control. He was within a