CHAPTER I
Philip Dunbar ran a lean exploratory hand through his tousled long black hair. There was a sardonic, faintly quizzical look in his dark, trimly moustached face, which acquaintances were inclined to describe as "handsome, but saturnine." His little jet-points of eyes, as he stared across at the next laboratory table, glittered enigmatically.
"Well, Ronny," he inquired, in a drawl that rasped, "found it at last?"
Ronald Gates peered up from amid a mass of lenses, batteries and wires. His frank, open face widened into a broad smile. His clear blue eyes sparkled.
"Yes, by heaven," he confessed, enthusiastically, "I think I've got that devil licked!"
Instantly Dunbar was at his side.
"Like hell you have!" he doubted.
At the same time, from the opposite end of the great laboratory, a feminine voice broke out,
"Oh, good, Ronald, I knew you'd do it!" And the tall form of Eleanor Firth, its youthful attractiveness scarcely dimmed by the stained rubber gloves and apron she was wearing, came gliding toward the men. Her big golden-brown eyes blazed with admiration as she turned them full upon Gates. "I knew it, Ronald—I knew you simply had to!"
To an onlooker, the relationship of the men and the girl would have been crystal-clear. Dunbar's manner, as he glared at Gates, was dagger-sharp; Gates had no eyes for Dunbar at all; while both men regarded the young lady with softening glances that were eloquent.
Why was it, Dunbar reflected, that they had all taken to staying in overtime here at their place of employment, the laboratory of the Merlin Research Institute? True, Gates was all worked up about that damnable invention of his! And Eleanor—wasn't it just like a woman to find an excuse to stay when she knew Gates would be there? As for himself—if he didn't want to be shoved out of the picture, he had no choice but to work on after hours!
"Yes, by glory! I think I've done the trick!" Gates was exclaiming. "If you folk'll just come with me to the roof, I'll demonstrate!"
He took up a black instrument resembling a pair of opera glasses, except that it was equipped with large red lenses, and was attached by wires to a cluster of minute batteries and radio-like tubes.
"What did you say you call the contraption?" asked Dunbar, as Gates started upstairs with his invention.
"The Infra-Red Eye."
"Why in blazes do you call it that?"
"Just wait a minute, and you'll see. You know as well as I do, Dunbar, photographs taken in infra-red light will reveal clear details through a mist. Why must the human eye be blind where the camera can see? It is all a question of securing the proper adaptation to etheric vibrations—which I have done by means of invisible rays produced by electrical action on certain iridium and osmium salts in these tubes."
Dunbar grunted a half coherent reply, and threw open the roof-door. As they came out into the heavy mist-laden air of the late July afternoon, the humidity rolled from them visibly. There was a peculiar stagnation in the atmosphere, as though the very breath of heaven had been congealed. Featureless gray clouds hung wearily over the landscape; a dull, blank haze obscured everything beyond a few hundred yards. One might have said that the very elements had gone to sleep.
"Goodness, I do wish we could get some relief from this atrocious heat!" sighed Eleanor.
"The twenty-ninth continuous day of it, unless I've missed my count!" grumbled Dunbar, as he mopped his perspiring brow. "Doesn't it beat the devil? What's more, it's getting worse!"
"Yes, and the strangest thing of all is, it seems to affect the whole world!" returned the girl. "I just can't believe it's not something more than common weather!"
"Hate to tell you what I suspect it is!" returned Dunbar, ominously.
"Come, come, folks, what are you so cheerful about, all of a sudden?" Gates demanded, as he examined the adjustments of the wires. "Good heavens! I'm sick and tired of hearing there's something supernatural about a heat spell, just because it happens to be unusually prolonged."
"Yes, but the other phenomena!" broke in Dunbar, his sharp eyes glinting with hostility. "The dust clouds—the checking of normal wind movements—the indefinable thickening in the atmosphere—the thunder storms of unprecedented violence—"
"Nothing has been definitely established," denied Gates. "Personally, I doubt if it's anything at all, aside from a cycle of exceptional sun-spot activity. But we're wasting our time. Ready now for the infra-red eye?"
"I'm all keyed up!" announced Eleanor, casting the young man one of her strangely kindled, animated glances.
"Here, you make the first test," he decided, thrusting the black instrument into her hands. "Just fit it to your eyes like binoculars. Turn that screw for the adjustment. Wait! I'll see to the current!"
He switched a lever, drew back a panel, and pressed a button. But, aside from a faint whirring sound, there was no apparent effect.
"Now focus the instrument!" he went on. "Point it anywhere. If you don't see through that haze as easily as a knife cuts butter, then set me down as a fraud and a liar!"
The girl screwed up her eyes. Faint wrinkles were visible on her broad, creamy white brow. A second passed in silence. Then an astonishing change overcame her countenance.
All at once, her lips drew apart in an incredulous expression. A gasp came from between her lips. A pallor spread across her cheeks. For several seconds she remained as if glued to the instrument.
Grimacing wrily, she snapped herself away from the eye-piece with a horrified,
"Ugh!" Her eyes bulged. Her whole form was trembling.
"I—I—I guess I'm seeing things!" she explained, lamely.
Then, observing how strangely Dunbar was staring at her, she thrust the instrument at him.
"Here, you—you just look for yourself!"
Dunbar took up the apparatus, and peered through it steadily for perhaps half a minute. But he too, when he put it down, was visibly paler.
"God! Am I crazy?" he grunted. "Here, Ronny, better have a peep yourself—"
But Gates had already snatched up the instrument. And he too gasped as he adjusted the lenses. For he saw nothing that he had anticipated.
The only purpose of the Infra-Red Eye, as he himself had declared, had been to penetrate a haze. But how startlingly the results had exceeded expectations!
Spread far above the earth's surface, in the form of colossal cobwebs, were long tenuous strands, woven in a web many layers deep. The threads, colorless and almost transparent, were thin as though composed of some silken fabric; but were enormously long, and stretched in great curves from horizon to zenith. Over the entire firmament they seemed to be bent and twisted by the tens of thousands, forming intricate geometric patterns, and uncannily giving the impression of enclosing the earth in a great cage. Wavering slightly in the faint breezes of the upper spaces, they covered every section of the visible heavens, even spreading their dim crisscrossing bars across the moon.
As if this discovery in itself was not ghastly enough, a still more terrible sight presented itself. Scores of beings, vaguely human-shaped and each with many limbs dangling octopus-like, swung agilely along the gigantic webs. Of prodigious size—seemingly not less than fifteen or twenty feet tall—the creatures were of a watery pallor that made only the bare outlines of their forms visible. Each, in the middle of an egg-shaped head, displayed two oddly three-cornered eyes that glowed with dull red flames; each possessed six or eight many-fingered hands with which it was adding new segments to the monstrous web.
With a groan, Gates put down the instrument; and, wiping his streaming brow, sagged against a wall for support. But the horror in his eyes matched that in the faces of his companions as the three stared at one another in open-mouthed amazement.