shimmeredstrangely as a ripple ran over its colossal bulk.
A change of feeling came gradually over the watching multitude. Theface of the giant was indeed that of a god in the noble, irony-tingedserenity of his calm features. It was if a further world had opened, andone of divinity had stepped down; a further world of kindness andfellow-love, where were none of the discords that bring conflicts andslaughterings to the weary people of Earth. Spiritual peace radiatedfrom the enormous face under the silvery hair, peace with an undertoneof sadness, as if the giant knew of the sorrows of the swarm of dwarfsbeneath him, and pitied them.
From all the roofs and the towers of the city, for miles and milesaround, men saw the mammoth shape and the kindly smile grow more andmore tenuous against the clear blue sky. The figure remained quietly inthe same position, his feet filling two empty streets, and under thespell of his smile all fear seemed to leave the nearer watchers, andthey became more quiet and controlled.
* * * * *
The group of policemen and the janitor made a dash for the house fromwhich the giant had come. They ascended the steps, went in, and foundthe door of the laboratory locked. They broke the door down. Thesergeant looked in.
"Anyone in here?" he cried. Nothing disturbed the silence, and heentered, the others following.
A long, wide, dimly-lit room met their eyes, and in its middle theremains of a great mass of apparatus that had dominated it.
The apparatus was now completely destroyed. Its dozen rows of tubes wereshattered, its intricate coils of wire and machinery hopelessly smashed.Fragments lay scattered all over the floor. No longer was there theleast shape of meaning to anything in the room; there remained merely alitter of glass and stone and scrap metal.
Conspicuous on the floor was a large hammer. The sergeant walked over topick it up, but, instead, paused and stared at what lay beyond it.
"A body!" he said.
A sprawled out dead man lay on the floor, his dark face twisted up, hissightless eyes staring at the ceiling, his temple crushed as with ahammer. Clutched tight in one stiff hand was an automatic. On his chestwas a sheet of paper.
The captain reached down and grasped the paper. He read what was writtenon it, and then he read it to the others:
* * * * *
There was a fool who dreamed the high dream of the pure scientist, and who lived only to ferret out the secrets of nature, and harness them for his fellow men. He studied and worked and thought, and in time came to concentrate on the manipulation of the atom, especially the possibility of contracting and expanding it--a thing of greatest potential value. For nine years he worked along this line, hoping to succeed and give new power, new happiness, a new horizon to mankind. Hermetically sealed in his laboratory, self-exiled from human contacts, he labored hard.
There came a day when the device into which the fool had poured his life stood completed and a success. And on that very day an agent for a certain government entered his laboratory to steal the device. And in that moment the fool realized what he had done: that, from the apparatus he had invented, not happiness and new freedom would come to his fellow men, but instead slaughter and carnage and drunken power increased a hundredfold. He realized, suddenly, that men had not yet learned to use fruitfully the precious, powerful things given to them, but as yet could only play with them like greedy children--and kill as they played. Already his invention had brought death. And he realized--even on this day of his triumph--that it and its secret must be destroyed, and with them he who had fashioned so blindly.
For the scientist was old, his whole life was the invention, and with its going there would be nothing more.
And so he used the device's great powers on his own body; and then, with those powers working on him, he destroyed the device and all the papers that held its secrets.
Was the fool also mad? Perhaps. But I do not think so. Into his lonely laboratory, with this marauder, had come the wisdom that men must wait, that the time is not yet for such power as he was about to offer. A gesture, his strange death, which you who read this have seen? Yes, but a useful one, for with it he and his invention and its hurtful secrets go from you; and a fitting one, for he dies through his achievement, through his very life.
But, in a better sense, he will not die, for the power of his achievement will dissolve his very body among you infinitely; you will breathe him in your air; and in you he will live incarnate until that later time when another will give you the knowledge he now destroys, and he will see it used as he wished it used.--E. W.
* * * * *
The sergeant's voice ceased, and wordlessly the men in the laboratorylooked at each other. No comment was needed. They went out.
They watched from the steps of Edgar Wesley's house. At first sight ofthe figure in the sky, a new awe struck them, for now the shape of thegiant towered a full five hundred feet into the sun, and it seemedalmost a mirage, for definite outline was gone from it. It shimmered andwavered against the bright blue like a mist, and the blue shone throughit, for it was quite transparent. And yet still they imagined they coulddiscern the slight ironic smile on the face, and the peaceful,understanding light in the serene eyes; and their hearts swelled at theknowledge of the spirit, of the courage, of the fine, far-seeing mindof that outflung titanic martyr to the happiness of men.
The end came quickly. The great misty body rose; it floated over thecity like a wraith, and then it swiftly dispersed, even as steamdissolves in the air. They felt a silence over the thousands of watchingpeople in the Square, a hush broken at last by a deep, low murmur of aweand wonderment as the final misty fragments of the vast sky-held figurewavered and melted imperceptibly--melted and were gone from sight in theair that was breathed by the men whom Edgar Wesley loved.
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from _Astounding Stories_ November 1932. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.
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