Argosy All-Story Weekly — "The Purple Limited" — page 126: what you’re looking at

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

692 runs counter to that law and disintegrating turns its will and strength against itself— instead of marching in unison behind them as a shield against the enemy—as a pha- lanx into’ the unknown.’ A little pause; then came these singular sentences: ‘““Weaklings praying for miracles to make easy the path their own wills should clear! Beggars who whine for alms from dreams! Shirkers each struggling to place upon his god the burden whose carrying and whose carrying alone can give him strength to walk free and unafraid, him- self Godlike among the stars!” And now distinctly, unfalteringly the eery voice went on: “Dominion over all the earth? Yes— as long as man is fit to rule; no longer. . Science had warned us. Where was the mammal when the giant reptiles reigned? Slinking hidden and afraid in the dark and Secret places. Yet man sprang from these skulking mammals. “ For how long a time in the history of earth has man been master of it? For a breath—for a cloud’s passing! And will remain master only until something grown stronger than he wrests mastery from him —even as he wrested it from his ravening kind—as they took it from the reptiles— as did the reptiles from the giant saurians —which snatched it from the nightmare rulers of, the Triassic—and so down to whatever held sway in the murk of earth dawn! “Life! Life! Life! Life everywhere struggling for completion! Life crowding other life aside, battling for its moment of supremacy, gaining it, holding it for one rise and fall of the wings of time beating through eternity—and then—hurled down, trampled under the feet of another strain- ing life whose hour has struck! ‘Life crowding outside every barred threshold in a million circling worlds, yes, in a million rushing universes; pressing against the doors, bursting them down, overwhelming, forcing out those dwellers who had thought themselves so secure. ‘“ And tlhese—these—”’ the voice sudden- ly dropped whole octaves, because thickly, vibrantly resonant, “over the Threshold, ‘jnvulnerable! ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. within the House of Man — nor: do.s '> even dream that his doors are down! Ti:.. —Things of metal whose brains are thin - ing crystals — Things that suck th-:- strength from the sun and and whose bio«..! is the lightnings! “The sun! The sun!” he cried. ‘* There lies their weakness!” The voice rose in pitch, grew strident. “Go back to the city! Go back to the city! Goodwin! Drake! They are not No! The sun—strike through the sun! the Cones that—the Keeper of the Cones —ah-h-h-ah—”’ , a We shrank back appalled, for from the parted, scarcely moving lips in the un- changing face a gust of laughter, mad, mocking, terrifying, racked its way. ‘“ Vu!- nerable—under the law—even as we! The Keeper of the Cones! ‘““Guard Ruth!” he gasped. <A faint tremor shook him; slowly the mouth closed. ‘Martin! Brother!” wept Ruth. I thrust my hand into his. breast; felt the heart beating—slowly, but regularly, with a curious suggestion of stubborn, unshake- able strength, as though every vital force had concentrated there as in a beleagured citadel. But Ventnor himself, the con- sciousness that was Ventnor was gone; had withdrawn into that subjective void in which he had said he floated—a lonely sen- tient atom, his one line of communication with us cut; severed from us as completely as though he were, as he had described it, outside space. — And white-faced, pale-lipped Drake and I gazed deep into each other’s haunted eyes, neither daring to be first to break the silence of which the muffled sobbing of the girl seemed to be the sorrowful soul. . CHAPTER XXII. “ FREE! BUT A MONSTER!” HE peculiar ability of the human mind to slip so readily into the ref- uge of the commonplace after or even during some well-nigh intolerable crisis has been to me long one of the most interesting Go into the city—not invulnerable—the Keeper of the Cones—-. ~ (COO)INN (C 6)(0)©) S (C(O) nn