Chapter II: Part 2

He opened his eyes at last. Startled, he sat up. Around him was the warm glitter of glass and metal. His space suit was gone. He was in a crystalline cage, filled with warm, humid air. Odd gadgets, like ray lamps used in therapy, were fitted to the ceiling. Strange, tropical vegetation grew in the cage, and water tinkled somewhere.

There was a kind of soothing quiet over the place, except for that distant clanging. There was a smoothness to everything; a mood of mechanical refinement and perfection. It was almost hypnotic, somehow. It dazed and quieted the senses.

Paul Arnold, clad in the slacks and shirt he'd worn under his space armor, was lying on the floor beside Harwich. He was still unconscious, but he was breathing evenly. His color was much better than before. The rays from the roof above were slowly healing his weakened body.

Evan Harwich shook the boy gently. "Wake up, Paul!" he urged. "This must be it! The center of Power! The place we wanted to find! Some kind of machine brought us!"

Paul Arnold rubbed his eyes and sat up. Together, Harwich and the boy looked around through the crystal walls of the cage in which they were confined.

"There--there's the Tower!" young Arnold stammered at last, pointing.

It glittered in the faint morning sunshine. It was undoubtedly the same huge pinnacle that astronomers had photographed from the other moons of Jupiter. Only it was close, now, its details sharp and clear and real. Around its slender, tapered spire, thousands of feet aloft, the faintest of frosty aureoles clung; a ghostly light, like the sundogs of Earthly winter days.

"The Tower must be the source of the Ionian force envelope, Evan!" Paul Arnold offered after a moment. "That light up there at its top almost proves it."

Both men were talking vaguely, thinking vaguely, looking around vaguely. In part this must have been because of sheer wonder. Places like the Spacemen's Haven on Ganymede seemed as far away as a dream now.

An incomprehensible sense of depression was creeping over Evan Harwich, as he studied his surroundings further. There were many other cages in view, arranged in blocks, with paved alleyways between. Vegetation was thick in the evidently air-conditioned habitations. Little pools of water glistened in them daintily, strange paradox on dying Io.

And there were creatures, too. Scores of them in each cage. Strange, fragile, sluglike animals crept about aimlessly. They looked just faintly human, with their pinkish skins and manlike heads. But there was no slight shadow of intelligence in those great, sad, stupid eyes.

Harwich wasn't squeamish, but he looked at these futile animals with a certain pitying revulsion. "What kind of a nursery place have we got ourselves into, Paul?" he grumbled quizzically.

Arnold shrugged. "They're something like men, these things, aren't they?" he offered in puzzlement. "Maybe that's another unknown quantity to figure out. But this place is plenty wonderful, though. Look!"

The youth was pointing upward. Against the cold Ionian sky a flattened object was circling at low altitude. A flying machine without wings, it seemed to be. From it dangled strange webby metal arms, as it moved in a circular path, above the surrounding desert hills. It seemed to keep watch over those thousands of crystal cages in the valley. It must be a guardian of some sort.

"I'm not at all sure I like it here," Harwich growled. "We were fixed up, revived, made new men again, so to speak; but still I don't like it here."

"Somehow I've got the same idea," Paul Arnold agreed with a quizzical smile.

A little clinking noise behind the two men made them turn about. After that, awe kept them spellbound. They didn't speak. What was there to say? They didn't try to retreat, either. What was the use? If what they saw was danger, they could do nothing to avert it. Hypnotized with wonder, they only stared, feeling as helpless as the larvae in an ant-hill, tended and cared for by the workers.

* * * * *

A section of the cage-bottom had raised, like a trapdoor. A bulk was creeping through the opening. It was a machine, so marvelous, so refined in its functioning, that it seemed far more than alive. It was flat, like a small tractor; but there were no treads for it to move on. It seemed, rather, to glide on a cushioning, grayish mist. The thing purred softly, like a great cat, and tiny lights twinkled in crystalline parts of it--batteries to deliver fearful atomic or cosmic power, perhaps. The mechanism had many flexible tentacular arms of metal that glinted with a lavendar luster.

But even the substance of those arms, the metal itself, looked indefinite and eye-hurting at the edges, as though it was partly fourth-dimensional, or something.

Both men grasped the truth. Here was that million-year advancement of science that they'd talked about with such thrilled fascination, in the stuffy bar of the Spacemen's Haven, back in Ganymede City. But Ganymede City, with all its human crudeness and inefficiency, seemed like a lost, happy legend, now, to Arnold and Harwich. Far, far away, and dim. For here was dread wonder to eclipse it. Futurian fact! Physical principles of such a miraculous order that mankind had scarcely dreamed of their outer fringes yet, were functioning here.

The flat machine advanced. But it was only instinct working, when the two men crouched away from it a little. It was useless to fight; it was useless to run.

"Get away, you!" Paul Arnold grumbled dully to the mechanism. "Beat it! Scram."

And Harwich was reacting in a similar manner. "What the hell!" he stammered. "What are you trying to do with us."

It was almost funny--the ineffectual, confused protest of those two men. They were like children too lost in their new environment to know what was dangerous and what was not.

Misty, lavender tentacles reached out and grasped them carefully. They were lifted from the floor of the cage like babes. Once Harwich's great freckled arms tautened, as though he was going to battle the monstrous miracle that held him. But futility checked the urge. Where was there anything to win by struggling, now? And how could a mere man win anyway, against soft-moving mechanical power, that should belong to the far future? Oddly the tentacles were warm and tingling, not cold like you'd think metal should be.

And so Arnold and Harwich submitted to a paternal, mechanical dominance, regretfully, because there was nothing else to do. It hurt their sense of freedom, but where was there any alternative?

Still floating a little off the tile pavement of the cage, the machine carried the two men easily to the opening in the floor, and glided down into a crystal-roofed tunnel. There it began to accelerate swiftly, flying with bullet-like speed, a foot or so above the glass bottom of the passage.

The tunnel's roof was transparent as air. Through it, Harwich and Arnold could see that they were nearing the Tower rapidly. After only a moment of whizzing, breath-taking flight, they had arrived within that great, enigmatic edifice, for the passage entered its base.

There, in an eerie half-twilight, the flat little machine released the two humans whom it had brought here, to the Tower.

Mute with an even greater wonder than before, Harwich and Arnold stared around them. The room was gigantic, soaring up in a huge, metal-ribbed dome. Scores of crystal-walled passages led into this colossal chamber of secrets. The whole immense Tower building was transparent, except that some darkening pigment had been added to the material that composed it, 'till it was like bluish glass. Through it the desolate surrounding hills of Io could be seen, and the cages, filled with those aimless, pathetic, sluglike creatures.

But the attention of the two men was drawn inevitably to the center of the room. Rearing up there, under the rotunda of the dome, was a massive, lavender-sheened pyramid. It gave a steady, throbbing sound, as of countless tiny wheels and shafts whirling inside it, working cams and rods, and who knew what else?

"Dammit!" Evan Harwich kept muttering under his breath in dim confusion. "Dammit."

He was used to machinery, yes. He was used to the roar of rockets, and to the delicate instruments used in space flight. But this was machinery of a far higher order. That busy, vibrating pyramid, squatting there like some huge idol, somehow seemed to possess a definite personality of its own!

Suddenly Paul Arnold clutched the patrol pilot's arm. "I wonder if I believe what I see!" he whispered tensely. "Look!"

Harwich's gaze followed the lines of the boy's pointing finger to something quite near--so near, and seemingly so insignificant in this vast, somber, throbbing interior, that he had not noticed before.

Just at the base of the pyramid there was an artistic little structure, consisting of four slender pillars and a roof. It looked like a small, ornamental kiosk or arbor, so artfully were the scientific details of it--the coils in its top, and the delicate filaments that pronged from them--concealed in the decorative metal scroll-work.

Within the pillared structure, somehow, there stood a man--an Earthman. His heavy body was clad now in a rocketeer's leather coverall. At his waist dangled a heat pistol, and on his fat face there was a strange, wild sort of smirk.

"Howdy, boys!" he greeted. "Yes, it's me--George Bayley, the guy who used to keep a print shop in Ganymede City! I've been here longer than you have, and I've been able to find out more. Pretty nice, huh? The people of Io had science perfected before they became extinct. Everything was done by machines, even investing. Not a bit of work to do any more. And if they wanted anything special, they just came into this little coop, here, and wished."

* * * * *

Bayley paused, still smirking. His loud voice had seemed distant in that great room, and vibrant with awe. Harwich and Arnold stared at him for a moment, neither knowing quite what to say, or what to believe.

And what was that which had just spilled from his lips, as though he had been a little afraid of the statement himself? About perfected science, and wishing?

"You're crazy!" Evan Harwich stormed fiercely. "You're a liar!"

But his furious tone was tremulous with doubt, even as he spoke. He knew at once that he'd just grabbed onto these words, and uttered them, maybe because, somehow, he hated Bayley, and wanted to contradict his seemingly impossible claims. But in this temple of un-Earthly marvels, one's whole standard of judgment was upset. Possible and impossible became meaningless terms here, at the foot of this great, whirring pyramid, which seemed a symbol of omnipotence.

"Crazy?" Bayley questioned. "No, Harwich, you can't say that, when you're all tangled up and fuddled yourself! What I said about wishing is true. Telepathic control of machines, it must be. This place is so damned wonderful that it would turn Aladdin of the Wonderful Lamp green with envy! And it would drive the Genie of the Lamp down into his shoes in shame!"

Harwich's doubts, if they had been doubts, and not just confusions, began to dim a trifle. After all, one of the big objectives of the science of Earthmen, was to make life easier; to transfer as much of the burden of work as possible to machines. Why couldn't the same objective have been conceived here on the Forbidden Moon? Not only conceived, but accomplished? Io was an old world; life had begun here sooner than on Earth, and science, too! So there had been more time for advancement.

"All right, Bayley," Harwich growled grudgingly. "Tell us what you've discovered."

"Yes, for Pete sake, tell us!" Paul Arnold joined in.

It was odd, the way they were asking the fat printer for information, now, when they should be hating him for the wrongs he had done them. But, perhaps, the human mind can hold only so much at one time. For the moment there was room only for dazed awe and questioning in their thoughts, and hatred was temporarily pushed into the background. The equal of Aladdin's miracles did not seem so far from possibility, here!

"Okay!" George Bayley rumbled. "Glad to spill the beans; what I know of them. I arrived here in my space ship about fourteen hours ago, when it was still dark. The Tower building here looked by far the most important, so I came straight to it. There were machines flying about, but they paid no attention to me at all, so I wasn't worried much about what they might do to me.

"Leaving my ship on the other side of the Tower, I got into this room through a tunnel. I was wearing a space armor, of course. I passed through a kind of airlock. This chamber was just like you see it now, except that lights were burning, because it was night."

"And then?" Paul Arnold questioned eagerly.

"Exploring, I climbed into this little metal coop, here at the foot of the pyramid," Bayley went on. "By then I was pretty flabbergasted with all I'd seen. I began to think I needed a drink of something strong. Yep, it must have been telepathy! Because presto--one of those flat flying machines with the tentacles, whizzed up to me from a tunnel exit. It was carrying a kind of crystal carafe.

"Boy, I didn't know what to think! I didn't know whether I ought to taste the stuff in that carafe, at first. But finally I did. It was damned good. Not alcoholic, but something a whole lot better."

Harwich and Arnold looked at each other, as Bayley paused, as if to get his breath. They looked up at the pyramid, throbbing above them, like some great, cryptic, servant personality. The feeling that Bayley was telling the truth, was growing on them.

"Naturally you tried other things, after the carafe was brought to you, Bayley," Paul Arnold prompted. "You wanted to see how much further this expression of desires by telepathy might be carried. You wanted to see how much more you could use the ancient Ionian science."

Bayley, still standing in that little metal-pillared structure, nodded slowly. "You catch on quick, Arnold," he said. "First I wished for gold, since it was the first thing I thought of. The sounds inside the pyramid changed a little, as though an order was going out somehow, maybe by radio. Five minutes later a whole bunch of those flying machines came into the Tower here, carrying bars of gold in their tentacles. There it is."

The printer was pointing toward a dully gleaming heap of yellow ingots near the farther wall of the chamber.

"But this, I soon found out, was just kid stuff!" Bayley continued. "I suppose if I'd thought of radium here in this wishing coop, I would have got a couple of tons of that, too! But I wished for a space ship--something special, beyond anything an Earthman ever saw before! Well, the pyramid buzzed a little longer and stranger this time, as though it was sort of thinking and planning, and as though the wheels inside it were maybe inventing, too. Then, somewhere far off, there was a lot of pounding for about an hour. I guess you know the answer, boys. There she is--the sweetest little super-futuristic space flier you ever saw!"

Harwich and Arnold stared at the torpedo-like ship that rested in a cradle-like support nearby. It was completely without rocket-tubes, or other visible means of propulsion. But its rakish lines and wicked lavender glitter made it look as though it might well reach the distant stars themselves.

* * * * *

Evan Harwich bit his lip tensely. Suddenly a thought struck him. "Did you see any Ionians since you've been here, Bayley?" he asked. "Any living, intelligent beings who might question your right to be prowling around?"

Bayley laughed. "Not one!" he returned. "They're extinct, I'm sure of it! And that's lucky for me."

The patrol pilot was beginning to put the pieces of the Forbidden Moon's riddle together at last. And Paul Harwich must have been doing the same. The evidence, as far as it went, was clear.

Perfected science! The fat printer had told them that all you had to do was think your wishes in that queer little pillared structure. And the machines translated your wishes into fact. Unless Bayley had lied, and there was small reason to suppose that he had, the rest was maybe not so difficult to understand.

First, the great envelope of force around Io. That was to keep possibly dangerous intruders away, of course. Thus, the ancient Ionians had lived in carefree idleness and luxury, tended by their perfected machines. The thing in the pyramid must be the master servant mechanism, reachable in that pillared kiosk, by telepathy. It must be the coordinator, in contact with the other mechanisms by radio, or something. Adding and calculating machines, way back in the Twentieth Century, had thought and reasoned, after a fashion. More recently, on Earth, apparati of a similar nature had done far more, working out intricate mathematical problems, far more swiftly and accurately than any human being could.

And the apparatus within the pyramid must be much the same thing, but developed to the nth degree! A vast planning, calculating device that could reason and invent with a swiftness and perfection far beyond any living mind. But it was still just mechanical; a servant apparatus that thought by the turning of the wheels and the movement of levers inside it with no more consciousness than an adding machine of the Twentieth Century!

This was the way Harwich figured it all out. And he saw something else, too.

"Uh-uh, Bayley," he remarked suddenly. "Soon after that new space flier was brought here at your command, you decided that you were complete boss around here, didn't you? There were no ancient Ionians in your way. All you had to do was wish, inside that telepathy kiosk, and it was just like Aladdin wishing with his lamp, eh?"

For the first time, cold, comprehending anger had come into the patrol pilot's tone.

"Why sure--sure!" Bayley growled back at him. "And why not? Just about anything I can think of is possible! And, let me tell you something else, you poor dope! You and Arnold wouldn't be alive now, if I hadn't wished it! I thought you might have gotten through the Ionian force shield somehow, when the RQ257 cracked up. I thought you might be somewhere out there on the desert still living. So I just wished that the machines go and get you, and revive you if you needed it. I thought maybe it might be fun."

It was enough. Cold anger reborn in Evan Harwich's breast was suddenly rekindled into blazing fury by the memory of the RQ257, and a wire filed almost through in a Gyon condenser. Evan Harwich's muscles tightened. Wordlessly he was about to leap at George Bayley.

But a warm metal tentacle whipped suddenly about his waist. The flat mechanism that had brought him and Arnold to the Tower, had seized him. Again, he was helpless.

"You see?" Bayley drawled. "I really am boss, here, just as you said. I just wished that you be restrained, and you are! But I've been doing too much talking and explaining. How about a little showing for a change, huh?"

"Damn you, Bayley!" Harwich growled, but the fat printer ignored the curse.

He only grimaced crookedly. "Let's make a couple more wishes," he taunted. "A couple of really good ones! How about a whole fleet of space ships, for instance? The biggest, most powerful fleet in the solar system! All automatic craft, capable of flying and maneuvering unmanned! Then, let's see, the other wish? It's not so difficult either. Both you and Arnold are my deadly enemies, Harwich. I think it would be fun to make my enemies squirm a little. I'd like to see you crack up, Harwich! You've always been so tough! So how about some kind of a discomfort device? Something really special? In short, a torture instrument! Come on, pretty machines! Do your stuff!"

Paul Arnold's face turned pale, but he bit his lip courageously. Evan Harwich studied the strange, wild light in the fat printer's squinted eyes, and waited for whatever would happen.

There was a crescendoing whir within that huge pyramidal coordinator. The man who had usurped the rule of the ancient Ionians over their mechanical servitors, had given his telepathic orders. Already there were signs of obedience. Thinking and planning was going on in that pyramid; thinking and planning more intricate than that of the greatest human wizard that had ever lived, more soulless and swift than that of an adding machine.

Presently, from far away, came a thin, shrill sound. Looking back through the darkened glass walls of the Tower room, Harwich and Arnold, both of them clutched, now, by the tentacles of the flat robot, saw a horde of black specks collecting against the sky in the pale sunlight outside. A flock of those flat, tentacled, flying things.

They seemed to emerge from an opening in the ground; from a vault where perhaps they'd been stored for ages. In a gigantic swarm they hovered over the glass cages and their pathetic animal inhabitants. Then, drifting like gulls away from this weird city of the Forbidden Moon, they moved off toward the surrounding hills.

There, like swarming bees, they settled in their tremendous numbers, on the open, arid valley. Flame tools in their tendrils were brought into play. Dust, reddened with heat, began to rise.

"They're leveling the ground!" Paul Arnold whispered hoarsely. "They must be preparing a shipyard!"

"Sure, kid," George Bayley laughed, trying to conceal the half-scared wonder in his own voice. "Maybe it'll take weeks for them to build the fleet I asked for! But they'll do it! You'll see, if I happen to let you live that long!"

* * * * *

The unholy wizardry of the Forbidden Moon was proven beyond all doubt. And in this weird Tower room, air-conditioned against the cold thinness of the atmosphere beyond its wall, the pyramid still throbbed a shrill portent of more to come.

A second robot mechanism soared into the chamber from a tunnel mouth. It bore a curious tripod-like instrument. The flying automaton spiralled down like a bubble, and came to rest beside Harwich and the youth. Pinioned by the tendrils of the other automaton, they were helpless to do anything but watch and submit. They were pushed flat on their backs, and held firmly. The tripod instrument was set up between them.

"The discomfort device, this must be!" Bayley gloated, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. "In just a few seconds there's going to be some fun, I'll bet! Now, Harwich and Arnold, I'm wishing you bad luck. Just a little foretaste of what I might wish later! Okay, pretty machines! Give my beloved enemies the works, just for a second."

Two rods of metal, projecting down from the tripod, were set in position by one of the automatons. One rod touched Harwich's skull, the other Paul Arnold's. A switch was moved.

There was no sound; but all of the patrol pilot's body seemed suddenly and maddeningly afire. To the very center of his mind, agony stabbed, viciously. No searing pain of any injury he had ever received, could have equaled this. He writhed, longing to scream his lungs out, as that moment of sheer hell seemed to last an age.

"God!" Paul gasped when it was over.

Both men were sweating and limp, and yet no visible harm had been done to their bodies. Artificial sensation, the torture must have been. Nerve impulses transmitted directly to the brain. A devilish, perverted achievement of superscience! Such agony might conceivably go on, in Satanic refinement, for months, without bringing death.

"You see, boys, I'm boss here as long as I stay in this little telepathy coop, where the old Ionians used to give their orders!" George Bayley hissed triumphantly. "All the wonders of the Forbidden Moon are mine to use, just as I see fit! There were just a bunch of machines here, waiting for somebody to control them. A pistol doesn't ask who pulls its trigger! And I got here first!"

"I was afraid of something like this when we were still on Ganymede, before any of us knew," Paul Arnold muttered raggedly.

And Evan Harwich understood very well what the youth meant. George Bayley was feeling that touch of power here. A sense of omnipotence was flattering his shallow ego, raising him in his own estimation to the level of some ruthless god. He, who had been a petty business man, a printer, a repairer of instruments, a loan shark! Just a crumby, fat little human being, ridiculous, small and conceited. Pathetic, too, stubborn, and lacking in judgment. There were many like him on Earth, and among the scattered spheres of Earth's interplanetary empire.

Maybe, after all, the wisdom of the Forbidden Moon was too big for the human race. Maybe they would have to grow themselves first, advance in evolution, before they would know how to handle and how to win real benefits from such wisdom.

"All right, Nero," Harwich growled contemptuously to Bayley. "I'll grant that you're in the driver's seat, ready to stop nowhere. Building a space fleet and all. But where is Clara Arnold?"

The patrol pilot asked the question with fear and doubt in his heart.

"Clara Arnold?" said Bayley almost casually. "Too damned clever for a girl! Said she thought I might have had something to do with the crackup of the RQ257. Said she was worried about Paul and you, too, Harwich, being maybe stranded still alive here on Io. But she said that she'd finally decided my promises weren't good for anything, anyway. That I'd have to rescue you two men first before she'd believe in me. Until then, our engagement was off."

Harwich felt a brief wave of elation, as he heard these words. Clara had seemed so quiet and timid; but she'd evidently proved herself plenty courageous and plenty smart.

"But where is she?" Harwich growled angrily. "Now, I mean!"

"Don't get excited," Bayley sneered. "She came to the Forbidden Moon with me, hoping to see you and the kid again. I left her locked in my rocket. But she can't mean much to me any more now! Not when they begin to hear about me all over the solar system! Just a passing fancy! I suppose I might just as well have the machines bring her here now, to see just how completely helpless you two dopes are!"

* * * * *

Harwich and Paul Arnold were still pinioned to the floor by the automatons; but in the patrol pilot's slitted eyes glowed the subdued light of murder, futilely smoldering. The fat printer was absolutely master now of Clara, the boy, and himself. In his stupid, cruel, shallow vanity, cosmic power the deeper secrets of which he could never have understood, had driven Bayley to madness; to megalomania. That clanging and that red glow from near the distant hills showed the extent of his ambitions beyond question. The slave machines were not building that colossal fleet of space warships for nothing! Armed with weapons beyond human knowledge, such a fleet would sweep in aggressive fury to even the remotest world within the field of the sun's gravity!

But Harwich's feelings changed briefly to relief, when Clara Arnold was brought into the Tower room by another of those metal slaves. The automaton removed from her a flexible, transparent covering, of evidently airtight material, a protection against the rarity of the Ionian atmosphere, probably, for in being taken from the airlock of Bayley's rocket to the air-conditioned Tower here, she would otherwise have been exposed to suffocation.

The machine set the girl down gently. She looked scared, her blonde hair was awry, as though, maybe, she'd struggled with the robot; but otherwise she was still all right.

She looked about in wondering terror; for what she saw was still a complete mystery to her, just as it had been to her brother and Evan Harwich a little while ago. No one had told her anything yet.

"Paul--Evan!" she stammered "What is all this here? This pyramid, and Bayley? What's happened? Tell me, somebody!"

"Take it easy, Clara," Harwich responded, trying to sound reassuring. "Everything will be all right!" he ended a little unconvincingly, trying to shield the girl from grim truth.

"Everything's all right already, Clara," Bayley assured her mockingly. "I've got these two men of yours just where they can do the least harm! How would you like to see 'em squirm a little? I've got a special device for that purpose, something very refined and painful! And I've got just about everything else! In a month's time I could give you the planet Earth, to wear in a ring around your finger, if I happened to want to."

"What's he talking about, Evan?" the girl pleaded again, the shadow of fear in her face deepening. "It sounds sort of awful! Please tell me. Why are those flat monsters holding you and Paul to the floor?"

"I told you to take it easy, Clara," Harwich returned with a trace of sternness. "This maniac, Bayley, has got the upper hand now, but I said everything would be all right, didn't I?"

The patrol pilot was trying again to reassure the girl, with a show of truculent bravado this time. He hoped that truculence would make his words sound true, as though he had a trump card up his sleeve, or something.

"All right in the end, Harwich?" the fat printer chuckled wickedly. "Well, the end's pretty close. In another minute you'll be too tortured to do anything but scream. Right now I'm thinking and wishing. Look, the automatons are getting that agony tripod ready again!"

It was true. Metal tentacles were whipping about, adjusting the torture rods to touch Harwich's and Paul Arnold's skulls again.

Everything will be all right! That statement was a mocking memory to the patrol pilot now. An empty, rash challenge to the man whose petty ego yearned to control even the solar system.

Harwich had never felt so completely helpless in his life before, not even when he had been suffocating out there on the deserts of the Forbidden Moon. If he could only somehow knock Bayley out of that little, pillared structure that served as a receiver for telepathic orders to the machines; if only he could replace him there for a second, then everything might be very, very different! But Harwich was held helpless to the pavement of the tower room. His massive muscles were useless against machine might!

Direct argument--an attempt to make Bayley see the narrowness and lack of originality in his colossal ambitions--he knew was equally futile. Bayley was stubborn and shallow and greedy. Besides, he would never admit that he was wrong, even if he felt the truth of it!

So Harwich felt utterly checkmated on every side. The clanging out there, the building of the space fleet, mocked him. The rustle of wheels in that huge pyramid coordinator mocked him. All the Aladdin-like miracles of the Forbidden Moon mocked him, pointing out his impotence to do anything, now.

He even wondered savagely why that great coordinator mechanism, with all its terrific powers, didn't revolt against the dominance of the puny human being that mastered it. But, of course, it would have no desire to revolt. It had no desires of any kind, no capacity for happiness or misery, no consciousness even. It was no more alive, no more sentient, than an adding machine. Only infinitely more complex. It invented things and it directed lesser mechanisms only by the rolling of the wheels and the surge of energy inside it. And it responded to telepathic control of whomever was there to give it, just as a space ship might respond to whomever was at its throttle.

Still, there had to be some way out of this mess! Harwich knew it wasn't just Clara and Paul and himself that were in danger. It was everything he knew and respected. Freedom. Liberty. Unless he and his companions were able to do something, a Dark Age would come, surely. An age of machines, ruled by a madman.

The rod of the torture instrument was touching his skull. In just another moment the agony would begin. But what was Paul Arnold muttering beside him?

"Evan, those animals in the cages! We thought they looked like men didn't we? Here's something else: Maybe they are men, in a way! Men who went backward in evolution; lost their intelligence."

* * * * *

No one but Harwich could have heard the boy, for he spoke in a very low tone. But at once the patrol pilot understood; grasped a part of the Ionian riddle that he had missed before. Machines. No thinking or work to do. Indolence. And then?

At once Harwich saw a way, a slim possibility to avert cosmic catastrophe. He couldn't appeal to Bayley's reason, but maybe he could appeal to his fears. He had to try it, anyway.

Suddenly the patrol pilot's lips curled in derision and contempt. "Bayley," he said, "you're an utter damned fool! You think you'll extend your power all over the solar system. Well, maybe you will do that; but in the end you'll be destroyed! You give the orders--sure! But do you understand the thing in that pyramid? It was made to serve, as all machines are. The ancient Ionians had it pretty nice for themselves, yes. But did you ever wonder what happened to them? _Where are they now? Do you know, Bayley?_"

Harwich's final question was a dry whisper, like the voice of some ghost of ages past.

"_Where are those ancient Ionians now, Bayley?_" he repeated.

No man could have escaped awe there in that tremendous Tower room, where all the mysteries of the eons seemed to be congregated, many of them hidden and unknown and perhaps dangerous. George Bayley's eyes were suddenly very big. Quite evidently there were many things that he had not thought about. His gaze lingered momentarily on the great throbbing pyramid, inscrutable there in this huge dusky chamber.

"Stop trying to bluff me, you crazy idiot!" the fat printer stormed at last. "The Ionians are extinct, of course!"

Harwich managed to grin wolfishly. "If you believe that, Bayley, do you want to follow them into extinction?" he questioned. "Yes, they mastered science. They conquered even the problem of the thinning atmosphere and the loss of moisture and heat on their dying world. But after they turned their science over to the machines, something happened to them. Their numbers began to grow less, yes. They lost control of their empire, which must have included all the moons of--Jupiter. But they didn't completely die out, Bayley! Something happened to those Ionians that was far worse! Do you know what it was, Bayley? Do you want the same thing to happen to you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about!" the printer stammered furiously, fear of the unknown spreading over his plump face.

"No, those ancient people of the Forbidden Moon didn't become completely extinct," Harwich continued. "I believe you can see quite a few of them from the Tower room here. The walls are semi-transparent, and those cages outside aren't far away. They're full of Ionians. Sluglike, brainless monstrosities without even intelligence enough or will enough to wish any more!"

Harwich paused to let the facts sink into George Bayley's mind.

"That's them!" the patrol pilot continued. "It's an old theory that any race has to keep struggling, thinking, working; otherwise it goes backwards. By using their brains and muscles, Earthmen developed from apish ancestors, you know. But here the Ionians had everything done for them. So evolution was reversed. They lost their intelligence. And now, what are they? Stupid beasts, tended by machines that follow the original orders of long ago to take care of them. Worse than animals in a zoo."

Bayley's eyes were fairly popping, as he stared through the semi-transparent walls of the Tower room. Doubtless he could see those creatures in their air-conditioned habitations. Just helpless, squirming, incubator freaks!

"I wondered what they were--why they were here," Bayley stammered.

Harwich almost believed at first that he had won a point with the obese loan shark--scared him out of most of his wild ambitions. But then, gradually, he saw Bayley's expression grow a trifle less tense. It was just as Harwich had feared. The printer was beginning to realize that it must have taken countless generations to degenerate to their present sorry state. The same condition could not affect him personally. When Bayley saw this truth, he would be the same megalomaniac as before.

There was only that one slim chance left for Harwich. Bayley's attention was strongly diverted now. But in a few seconds more, he would be himself again.

Was the grip of the metal tentacles that held Harwich a little looser than before, now, because Bayley, the master of machines, had his mind so intensely on other things, and away from the thought of giving telepathic commands?

In a sudden, savage lunge, Harwich jerked free from the automaton that held him to the floor. His clothing was torn and his flesh scraped, but what did this matter? Everything depended on instant action. The patrol pilot leaped past Paul Arnold, and his sister, Clara, who had only watched and listened while he had talked with such grim truth to Bayley.

* * * * *

Already the flat, glittering robot was after Harwich, but he continued his surprise rush toward the roofed, pillared kiosk that was the receiver for telepathic orders.

His attack ended in a dying tackle. Bayley was drawing his heat pistol, but before he could fire it, Harwich's weight struck him. There, together, in the kiosk, they wrestled and fought. At last there was a chance for the patrol pilot to bring his massive muscles into play. He swung his heavy fists, and all the fury of weeks of hardship and misfortune were back of his blows. Bayley tottered away from under the kiosk, and for a second Harwich stood there free.

He was in the position of control at last; but Bayley had his pistol out and aimed, now. Clara was screaming as the fat man pressed the trigger.

It was too late for Harwich to marshal his thoughts properly. He was only able to will that the automaton behind him should cease attacking him. He could not call to his aid any of the great science of Io, in time.

With the speed of light, a slender pencil of intense heat waves from Bayley's pistol, struck his side and burned straight through his body. No bullet could have drilled a neater hole. Harwich's legs collapsed under him, and he lay writhing there within the kiosk.

A split second later the heat pistol in Bayley's hand spat again. Turning weakly, Harwich saw Clara crumple and go down. In another instant, Paul became the third victim.

"You're done, Harwich!" the fat printer was yelling triumphantly. "You're finished, all of you!"

But by now the patrol man's seething flood of hate had registered. He was within the telepathy kiosk; and if he had ever willed instant destruction for anyone, he willed it now, for Bayley. Under other circumstances he might not have felt so vengeful, but his ebbing pulses blazed with fury.

There was a click within that vast, slumberous pyramid, that loomed like a grim god in this shadowy place of enigmas. The automaton that had recently held Harwich captive, seemed to move like a maddened animal, created out of pure lightning. Its tentacles whipped around Bayley long before he could fire again. Harder than steel cable, the tendrils tightened, like the coils of a python.

There was a choked cry of terror and anguish, and then a sickening, crunching, squashing sound, as flesh and bone and blood oozed between those constricting metal loops.

It was almost the last thing that Evan Harwich saw. He was mortally wounded, a slender hole bored through his side.

Harwich's last delirium was a dream. A silly dream, maybe. Clara and he together. A little house. Fancifully he pictured its details. Maybe a mining concession somewhere here among the moons of Jupiter, too. An orderly life. Not all this hectic battling with unknown dangers any more. He was a little tired of adventure, a little tired of being space patrol pilot, too. He could resign.

Somewhere, Evan Harwich's fanciful thinking came to an end.

* * * * *

He awoke suddenly. Paul Arnold was shaking him.

"On your feet, you big lug!" the boy was yelling happily. "There's not a thing wrong with you, now! Clara and I have been awake for half an hour."

Harwich staggered erect, grumbling confusedly, his stiff, black hair awry. He'd been lying on a divan. The room around him was almost familiarly furnished, except for slightly fantastic details of decoration. The windows were wide, and beyond them there was a sort of yard, with freshly planted trees. Over the whole setup there was a fine crystal airdrome.

"What the heck! Where in the name of sense are we?" Harwich burst out in startled pleasure.

He looked first at Paul Arnold, and then at Clara, whose amber eyes were twinkling with secretive mischief. It was as though the two had some sort of joke up their sleeves.

Harwich glanced again out of the window. Beyond the airdome, glinting and new, was what looked like improved mining equipment. Cropping out of the ground was the grayish, shiny stuff of a rich ore lode. And there was a space ship, too; bright and slender and strange, but it looked plenty serviceable!

"Where are we, anyway?" Harwich demanded again, still completely in the dark. "Does either of you two know?"

"Still on Io, evidently!" Paul Arnold breezed with a taunting grin. "Same kind of hills and general character of country! When Bayley shot me, I passed out. I didn't know anything more until I woke up here a little while ago!"

"But this layout, Paul!" Harwich growled. "This house and this mining stuff! How come? You've got some kind of an answer in mind, I'm sure, by the way you look! I give up. Spill the gag!"

"Okay, Evan," said the boy. "I really do think I've got that part figured out! After Bayley shot you with the heat-pistol, you were lying in that telepathy kiosk in the Tower room. Consciously or unconsciously, you must have done some wishing there, before your brain blacked out."

Harwich gasped. So that was it! He'd wanted to be alive, though he had been mortally wounded. And so he was! His shirt was open. There was a neat round scar on his chest, left by the heat-ray burn, and evidence of careful supersurgery! The automatons of the Forbidden Moon had saved his life. Probably Clara's and Paul's lives, too. All while they were unconscious! The house, the garden, the mine!

"Our miracle hunt on the Forbidden Moon hasn't turned out so badly," Paul Arnold remarked. "But so far it's been a lot different from what Dad or you or I could have anticipated. This place looks like a nice family setup, Evan. Did you wish include anybody besides yourself?"

Harwich flushed, and looked sheepish. Clara, there, was definitely blushing, but she was smiling, too.

The ex patrol pilot managed a nervous grin. "I guess you got me there, Paul," he said. "Now, if it's all right with you, Clara, I don't know whether I have to say it or not, since it's a dead giveaway. But will you marry me?"

He got it out, feeling that it had been an awful job. But Clara smiled happily.

"Try and stop me, Evan," she laughed. "There has to be someone around to keep you from getting conceited. Just because you won out for us here on Io, doesn't mean that you won't need bossing yourself, once in a while!"

Paul Arnold winked, and left discreetly for other parts of the house.

Arm in arm Clara and Evan looked through a window that faced west. Something was flying there, high up in the sky. It glinted in the late afternoon sunlight. A lonely speck against the cold firmament, it seemed to hurry, bent on a last mission.

A few minutes later, from the east, there came a terrific concussion. The whole dark purple sky, above those sullen hills, was illuminated with a bluish-white glare for a second. Flying fragments soared far into space.

Clara clung tightly to Evan. "What was that?" she questioned fearfully.

Harwich grinned, but still there was a haunting shadow of sadness in his face. "I'm sure I know," he said. "That was the end of the science of the Forbidden Moon. The end of the force shield, apparatus, the end of those poor Ionians, and the end of the pyramid! The end of the whole thing. Suicide, you might call it. You see, back there in the telepathy kiosk, I wished that too, and the machines were made only to obey. I hope that when Earthmen, in the future, learn as much science as existed here on Io, they'll know how to use it, too. We're much too young a race yet, I guess."

Clara Arnold's awe softened after a moment. "Come on, Evan," she said. "Let's forget all about that for now. I want to show you the kitchen, here. It's ducky!..."