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Updated: June 19, 2025
I hardly know what might have happened between us if she had not mentioned Leider's name when she did. The insults with which she had begun had hardly been atoned for by her half understanding of my refusal to join Forbes, and I was still in a rage. Yet, as it was, at the mention of Leider I snapped to attention. "Ludwig Leider! Here?" "Yes," she replied significantly.
And our ship was here in Leider's caverns our ship laden with two tons of the most terrific explosive science had ever created. And the Orconites, though they might be suspicious, knew nothing of our weapon. Now that hope had sprung to life again, I knew that the opportunities open to us were huge.
It seemed a harmless place now, with only one squat building of stone and no Orconites about, but we were glad enough to turn away from it and look toward the dark and ragged range of mountains which loomed up some five miles inland the mountains of Leider's headquarters. Not that the sight inspired us with greater confidence. It didn't.
We, in Leider's private laboratory on Orcon, saw the crowds of a mass meeting of some sort in Union Square, saw a boy and a girl kissing each other in the shadow of bushes in Central Park, saw a little fox terrier watching with only one eye open. We could not speak, any of the four of us, as we stared at that very simple box which wrought miracles.
All at once, though, a string of both chemical and physical formulae the last thing a man would expect to think of in such a position flashed into my mind. "Here, wait a minute," I thought. "If Leider's done this thing, it means it must mean that he's juggled his atomic structures through production in terrific quantities of the quondarium light which I theorized about last year!
"What came to me a moment ago," I said breathlessly to the others, "was the idea that when atomic structures are so juggled that they are no longer affected by the gun, all the forces of magnetism, which usually are immune to the atomic stream, are rendered liable to disruption by it. We could not destroy Leider's cable, but we could play the deuce with its magnetic grip on us."
And Leider's forgotten to take that fact into account!" I felt really sure that the guards were not armed with some mysterious weapon we could not see, and Koto felt the same. "Doctor, you're right!" he exclaimed. "Leider's made a mistake! He's forgotten what damage can be done by physical strength, and left us alone with a mere flesh-and-blood guard.
What should I do with Earth except to sit here in my own room, and, with the anarcostic ray, reduce its solid structure into stardust which will drift away into space like the smoke from one tiny match? Pouf! like that." I looked at the table, at Leider's wary hands. I knew that the man was ready, even as he had said, to do away with Earth.
So great was Leider's power that, after disabling us, he had even been able to direct our course so that we had crashed on the beach close to the headquarters he had set up for himself deep in the wilderness, away from the cities of Orcon. The Orconite's free mention of Leider's name and his open admission that the man was king and god in Orcon, made direct inquiry about him easy.
Not even our supreme strength was great enough to stand it. Out across the bleeding, crumpled bodies and the teeming swarms beyond, I saw as through a red mist the glittering, whirling maze of Leider's wondrous generators, and began to curse to myself.
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