Polaris and the Goddess Glorian

by Charles B. Stilson

Under the first fademe he halted; and with a grim prayer that the destroying agency might not be out of order, he pressed the lever that controlled the upper shaft of the glass.

With a mighty hissing and seething of the water, the indescribable light-ray leaped upward, so dazzlingly brilliant in its unknown color that it nearly blinded the man who had loosed it.

Full on the bottom of the fademe above him the light ray struck and played, with the water boiling around it. The metal hull crumpled away like solder before the tinsmith's point. So swift and furious was its action that in an instant Minos saw the vessel above come sinking down. He had barely time to pull his rope and get his own fademe from under. As it was, the descending wreck grazed the stern of his vessel with a jar that nearly unseated him. Thereafter he went more swiftly.

From ship to ship he went down the long line, scarcely pausing under each. Ship after ship he left behind him—sunken and useless wrecks.

Minos had finished with the first row of fademes, and was coming back on the second line, when a guardsman on shore saw an upthrust of furious light from the deck of one of the golden ships, and then saw the doomed fademe plunge down.

Throwing up his hands, the soldier ran across the harbor court, shouting that some captain had gone mad and was destroying the fleet.

Then the harbor that had been still became alive. Lights flashed up. Men ran hither and thither. A messenger was dispatched to Adlaz to report to the king. Some sober-minded and brave men launched small boats into the harbor to go out and warn the engineers of the other fademes.

Well near the end of his second line was Minos when he bethought him that his activities must draw attention to him. Then he loosed in succession the other three tubes, and their deadly rays shot forth, one from each side and one below. The king let them roar unchecked, and all around his vessel the water was turned into a boiling inferno. Like the evil genius of Adlaz, he rode on, leaving only wreckage in his wake.

Part way down the last northern line, the end found him.

Engineers on the other fademes had been awakened. Hastily they plunged their vessels beneath the surface and set out against the destroyer. Because of the fierce play of his four rays, they could not come at him from either side or from above or below.