A Brand New World by Ray Cummings

Days of grim activity in Graff's camp followed. I think Graff had no intimation of the reason for the earth's defiance; he seemed to feel that our governments were fool-hardy, stupid -- stubborn beyond the point of human reason. He had been in a towering rage, but that passed. He moved about his tasks now with a cool, careful efficiency. But I could see a certain almost awed grimness about him for the diabolical nature of this thing he was doing.

His mood was reflected in all his men. And they changed toward me. Never more than contemptuously tolerant, they were now openly hostile. Gibing at me, the earthman.

I was passing one morning down the line of flimsy houses which was the main street of the camp. A woman leaped from a doorway and struck me in the face. My guard was at hand. Graff never let me move anywhere without an armed man to watch me. He said to protect me, especially from the giant insects which lurked about the camp, and which, in truth, I always feared; but I knew Graff's motive was to watch that I did not try to escape. The woman struck and reviled me until my guard pulled her away.

Graff had sent a globe at once to Africa, to order back his force operating there. It came in, crowding our camp. Near the north line of our barrage Graff built a small stone house. Within it the control globes were being erected. He would never let me or Zetta near it.

The barrage throughout its entire circumference was strengthened. All our projectors were in use, triple-banked in some places. Graff had built a chemical laboratory in the camp. His scientists had for weeks been working in it, endeavoring to produce the Reet current on earth for a renewal of the storage tanks which had been brought from Xenephrene. I was now barred from this building; they were working in it on the Control-globe mechanisms.

Above our camp a flying platform now constantly hovered at a ten-thousand foot altitude. It spread a thin, red barrage like a ceiling above us. Graff anticipated that he would be attacked more vigorously than ever before; he said so to me once, with his sardonic smile -- and he had not forgotten that one aviator who had dropped a bomb upon us.

By August 14 our force had returned from Africa, our lines about our base were strengthened, the Control-globes were erected in the little house, and everything was ready. About the camp, and at intervals five miles out to the barrage line, small projectors the size of a man's hand had been erected; wires in conduits ran from them back to the laboratory. There must have been fifty or more.

On the afternoon of August 14 a current was turned into them. They hummed gently; when the twilight and night came, I saw them emitting a faint purple radiance. Within an hour it hung over the camp -- over all the inside area of the barrage -- like a purple haze. The haze I had seen in the air of Xenephrene. It was to protect us here, in our enclosed area, from the effects of this thing we were about to broadcast over the earth!

A week from that night over Miami when we were defied -- and now Graff was ready. An anxious week for me. A thousand times I had thought of a thousand vague plans of something desperate I might do. But what? I was more closely guarded than ever before. A very pseudo-liberty was all that was permitted me.

Zetta, in a few snatches of talk I had alone with her, still seemed to think she might persuade Graff to stop. Futile hope! Her brave endeavors had from the first been futile. At last, she seemed convinced.

A wariness of manner, an alert, calculating look whenever she was with Graff, came upon her. I can only guess now, what thoughts and plans were behind that grim, masklike little face. She said nothing of her thoughts to me; there seemed suddenly an added estrangement between us.

During the evening of August 14, while I was watching the purple haze, Graff sought me. Zetta was near him.

"We are ready, Peter. I thought that you and Zetta would like to see these little globes that are so powerful to triumph for us."

"Walk out to the Control house?"

"Yes. I am going now to turn the current into the Red Globe."

I strove not to show my emotion; I thought he might dismiss my guard -- and he, Zetta and I might take the walk alone. If I could watch my chance and spring upon him.

But he bade the guard follow close behind us. It was a dark, overcast night. Our little town by the dried river bank was almost in the center of the circular barrage lines. From here it was some five miles to the north of the barrage.

We walked over the slightly undulating dead-gray waste of what had been the Brazilian farm country. The ground was covered with a gray dust, like burned powder. Graff and Zetta and my guard could have leaped over the distance in a few minutes. Graff was impatient, contemptuous of my slow progress. He forced me forward at a trot.

We passed the occasional towers he had built; a few sailing platforms on the summits of the slopes. The purple projectors standing on the ground at intervals were all humming, casting up their purple haze into the still night air.

Ahead of us loomed the red curtain of the barrage. The night now was filled with its howl. A Braun appeared from the darkness -- one of the interior ground guards. His white, half-naked body, with bullet head of clipped white hair, was edged, lurid with the reflected crimson glow. Goggles were on his eyes -- thick glass cones projecting out grotesquely; his ears were muffled with small wire grids. He spoke to Graff, and stood deferentially aside to let us pass.