LITMIR.BIZ

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a better AFPA man to save his own skin, or else court almost certain exposure and the death by torture that would follow on its heels.

      He could not sleep. He got up after a time and turned on the lights. Restlessly he paced his sleeping compartment, then enlarged his beat to include the tiny laboratory. He tried to quit thinking of that hidden room in the heart of Central, and the cold-eyed man who sat there and calmly ordered numberless deaths and floggings.

      He turned his thoughts rather to the weird vegetation in the craters about him, and the potent juices that ran through these plants. He had come to this place as an actor. Now that he was about to leave it for all time, he realized it would be as a genuine scientist and not as a faker.

      The American thought suddenly of the experiments he had begun and never quite finished. Perhaps it would soothe his mind and give him a better perspective if he occupied himself with them once more. So, as he paced the floor, he retraced his findings, step by step, until he had freshened his memory. He stopped in his tracks, hit by an uninvited and unexpected thought. He frowned for an instant, then strode to the chemical cabinet.

      Winchester took down a small vial of silvery oil, and a half-dozen standard solvents. He tried each until he found the combinations that would mix with the oil and not emulsify. He then jabbed his arm for blood, and experimented with it in combination with the Crater specimens. Last but not least, he brought forth from their hiding place a handful of little ampules — each containing a few C. C.'s of the insidious Lotusol. He put on a gas mask and strapped it tight.

      At the end of an hour, five beakers stood on the table before him. The first was filled with a milky-white mess of curds; the second a thin, watery substance of bluish tinge, in which liverish hunks of matter floated.

      The third and fourth showed chalky precipitates. It was only the fifth which came out clear. This had a deep rose color and a slightly oily texture. Winchester looked at them all, then carefully dumped them down the drain.

      He turned on the air blower and let it run. Meantime he mixed up a fresh solution. That he poured into a container and hung it high on the wall. A small flexible tube with a valve led down from it. At the end of the tube was a sharp, hollow needle.

      Winchester unstrapped his gas mask and stopped the blower. Once more the air was pure. He lay down on the table and bared his left arm. He reached with his right hand and grasped the dangling needle. It took but one swift jab, accurately placed, to insert it in a vein. Then he turned the small valve and let the solution flow.

      He lay back on the table and reached for one more item. It was a small ampule filled with a pale, canary-colored liquid. He snapped its neck with a firm twist of the fingers. His nostrils were assailed with a sickly-sweet odor. He gasped violently, and thought he was going to die. For a long moment it seemed that a clamp was snapped upon his throat, choking, choking, choking.

      Then came blissful relief. Golden vapors, gloriously illuminated, seemed to fill the room. As from far off mountain heights, the blended voices of untold multitudes of singing angels filled the ears with soothing melodies.

      Pleasant odors crowded in, mingling into strange, fleeting combinations that succeeded one another in delightful variety.

      A gratifying tingling suffused the skin. Winchester's mouth seemed to fill with the fragrant juices of exotic fruits.

      He seemed to be aware of tender lips caressing his. All was well with the American. His lungs drew in breath after breath of the delicious Lotus vapor. He relaxed and let the kaleidoscope of dreams unfold itself in endless and always wonderful panorama.

      The scene shifted. Cynthia appeared to him, laughing gaily. He gathered her into his arms, soothed her for the hardships she had had to endure in trying to save him from the gendarmes of Munich.

      That vision faded, too, to be replaced by a fantasy of victorious conquest. Winchester experienced the lust of battle to its fullest, the tremendous satisfaction of seeing a wicked enemy humbled, beaten, in the dust.

      And after that came more.

      CHAPTER XV

       A Vision

       Table of Contents

      Allan Winchester saw things with uncanny clarity. Never, in life, had every doubt and misgiving been swept away to be replaced by the clear, unchallengeable, lucid truth. But now it was so. All was revealed.

      He saw himself the ruler of a mighty race, a race that governed not one planet but a hundred. He did not sit on a gilded throne, surrounded by sycophants and cringing servitors, but in a cool, quiet study, lined with books. Its windows gave out onto a sun-specked terrace and a park, beyond whose trees he could glimpse the spires of the perfect city.

      He ruled, yet he did not rule; for the laws were so just that they were never questioned or infringed. His people were contented; well-housed, well-fed and healthy. Each did, for the good of all, what he could; each received, according to his nature, his proper needs.

      Industry, art and science were welded into one harmonious whole, vigorous and flourishing, not for its own purposes, but for the better service of mankind. There was no waste, there was no shortage. The workers were happy. They were following the bent shown early in their childhood.

      Work that delighted the hand and eye was done by hand. Work that was distasteful was relegated to the machines.

      Poverty, disease and crime were words which had dropped out of the vocabulary. Lies and mutual recriminations no longer were bandied. There was no need for them. They had gone the way of slander, envy, jealousy, gluttony, greed and the other major vices.

      Winchester rolled over, blearily half conscious. His unthinking fingers groped for and found the half-drained ampule and crushed it. Again he inhaled the delicate aroma, and sank back into heavenly dreams.

      For what seemed to be an eternity, history unrolled before him as on a mighty scroll. He saw a great conquerors, and would-be conquerors, from the Hittites onward; the petty tyrants of business and the household; gangsters, feeding on blackmail, who once held cities in their clutches.

      Last of all he saw those who aspired to rule by violence, but lacked the intelligence — the common criminals of the jails. He talked with the great philosophers, long dead — Plato, Aristotle, Maimonides, Spinoza. He talked with Friedrich Nietzsche, the German thinker, whose vision of a "superman" had so infected German thought.

      He stirred uneasily. His dream was turning sour. Sleepily he reached for another ampule, but could not find it. He dropped back into unrestful slumber.

      Other shades came to trouble him. He witnessed the execution of the martyrs — benevolent men, but lacking in the will to fight. He saw Galileo offer a boon to humanity, only to withdraw it after torture. In a later century he saw artists and scientists fleeing from Europe like rabbits from a forest fire, not knowing how to resist a tyrant who understood only brute force —

      Winchester shuddered and opened his eyes. The jar above him was half empty. A warm, rosy liquid dribbled from his punctured arm and made a small pool on the floor. He felt a sudden impulse to rise and smash things.

      He bounded to his feet. With one sweep of the arm he demolished the container above him, saw it crash into a thousand fragments. Then he plunged into his bedroom, eager for action — but for what end, he did not know. He knew only that he had the urge to come alive again and do things, great things.

      The sight of himself in the mirror halted him in his tracks. He stared at the wild-eyed, desperate-looking apparition before him for a long, unbelieving minute. His nostrils quivered, and he trembled with a blind fury he did not understand.

      But in a moment reaction set in, and he staggered shakily to his bunk and fell across it. He suffered intensely for an hour or more, and then grew calm. He knew that what he craved was more Lotusol, but wisely he had stolen only a limited quantity. There was no more.

      At length he slept.

      For

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