Amazing Stories, August 1927 — page 78: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

492 iniscent of days when the whole of the earth was a vast fecund jungle. “Won't there be a risk in such experiments?” I asked. “If such chemicals do exist, and you collect them in any quantity, mayn’t they have a frightful effect on the human body?” “Very likely,’ answered Schirmanhever, but the excitement in his voice proved how little he cared. He added, ‘‘There’s always a risk in the Unknown.” From now on he grew pale with a dreadful pal- lor. He lost his appetite. He had trembling fits that made me fear he had caught some tropical fever. I saw him emerge at intervals from the interior of the floating laboratory waving his arms before him as though to push back an insufferable heat. He paced the white beach, muttering to him- self, and gesticulating. One day he shouted: “T’ve found it at last—the,Secret of Life! I’ve got the thing that first brought Life into exist- ence! I’ve got it there, owt there!’? He pointed to the floating laboratory. “That much of it!” He cupped his hands. ‘And before I’m through Ill have this much of it!” He threw out his arms in a wild gesture that seemed to embrace the entire horizon. A thrill of horror shot through me. Suddenly I realized the truth of why Schirmanhever was wast- ing away—remembered my casual suggestion of that night, forgotten next morning. Something deadlier than poison was devouring him. I seized his arm, tried to prevent him from going out to the boat again. Schirmanhever fought himself loose, and the expression in his eyes as he leaped away told me he was mad, utterly mad. HE next week was a nightmare. Schirman- hever, with the cunning of madness, slept on the boat now, fearing I would detain him if he re- turned to the bungalow. But he came on shore stealthily and in the moonlight I saw him several times pacing the beach, tottering along in a queer way like a drunken man, At last I could stand it no longer. I resolved, even at risk of my own life, to make a trip to the floating laboratory, find out what he was doing there, and bring him forcibly back to shore. I set out one evening in the dusk. As I put foot on the deck of the boat, Schirmanhever emerged from a hatchway. He was gasping, his eyes were AMAZING STORIES maniacal, but at sight of me he seemed to pull him- self together. With a convulsive effort he put his hands to his head, and in that instant I believe he realized he was dying. Turning, he staggered back down the steps into the interior of the vessel, did something to the machinery, then appeared on deck again holding a large platinum dish containing a curious salt that glowed with a pale sea-green phosphorescence. I had one glimpse of this strange substance, then Schirmanhever had flung the dish into the ocean, which swallowed it with a slight hiss. In one final moment of sanity Schirmanheveyr grasped my hand, cried hoarsely, “Go! Don’t wait a minute! Get back to the shore right away, be- cause this’’—his nerveless fingers slipped away from mine, to indicate the boat we were standing on—‘‘won’t be here more than a few seconds.” Then he collapsed on the deck, dead. An uncontrollable panic seized me in the face of that prostrate body, that dreadful, ominous silence by which I was surrounded, and springing back into the skiff, I rowed madly for shore. Scarcely was my foot on land than there was a roar behind me, and the floating laboratory split apart into burning fragments, which an instant later was swallowed by the water. After more than a month of frightful solitude, the yacht returned and car- ried me back to America. Subsequent develop- ment are known to all—how, one by one, Schir- manhever’s plants ceased to function, as though in the chemical magnets there were some vita] ele- ment, corresponding to an electric battery, which needed renewal after a certain number of years, and the secret of restoring this energy had been known only to him. Frantic endeavors are still be- ing made to rediscover Schirmanhever’s secrets, in order once again to infuse vitality into that great ocean industry which now lies idle. And—most in- teresting of all to me are the many speculations in- dulged in by scientists upon the nature of those mysterious elements which caused Schirmanhever’s terrible end, until today it is generally recognized that Schirmanhever actually did manage to extract from the ocean water in an appreciable quantity— it was that greenish phosphorescent substance in the platinum dish, undoubtedly—certain rare but exceedingly complex and powerful chemicals which, millions of years ago, when the earth was all ocean, first brought life into being. THE END. FATT Hc The Master Mind of Mars By EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS A New Story by the Master of Scientifiction also The Face in the Abyss By A. MERRITT (See Inside Front Cover) MMT micbooksicom» LUAU) eS oT we