Eyes That Watch

by Raymond Z. Gallun

Thus Sam Conway's reveries became unpleasant once more. He wanted to hurry again. He started the car, and drove swiftly out of the village. The tires crunched in dead leaves as he swung into the driveway that led down by the lake. Premonition must have been working in him, accentuating his caution and his haste.

There was a fair-sized brick building there, an old garage. He unlocked the heavy door and went inside. The large main room of the structure was to be his laboratory; the office, his living quarters.

He surveyed the dingy interior critically. Everything, so far as he could see, was exactly as he had left it except for a small smear of ash on the floor in the office room. Driveway ash. Part of a man's footprint. His own? With the panic of a disturbed miser, Sam Conway thought back carefully. It could be his own footprint; but he couldn't remember—couldn't be sure!

His heart began to throb in mounting anxiety at the thought that the lair of his secret might have been entered during his absence. He pulled the shades carefully. Then he clawed his way through the clutter of paraphernalia in the little room—mostly boxes of new laboratory equipment, as yet unpacked. And a few glass jars containing plant samples, and specimens of odd Martian fauna—souvenirs he hadn't been required to turn over to the scientists.

He was sweating profusely from panic when he reached the carefully fitted mopboard in the corner after pulling aside a small desk. He pressed part of the wooden ornamentation, and a section of the mopboard turned on hinges. Feverishly he drew his precious aluminum box from the hiding place he had contrived, and unfastened its lid. From within came a reassuring, cryptic gleam; and Sam Conway almost wilted with relief.

But he wasn't satisfied yet. His fear of possible burglary wasn't the result of miserliness alone. He was afraid to have so gigantic a secret as he possessed get beyond himself—yet. And he was well aware that man would kill to own what he owned—and distrusted, withholding it from Nichols and his scientists.

Carefully he put the aluminum container back, and searched the premises. The windows. The doors. Everything. But he found no telltale marks of intrusion. The footprints, then, in the office room must have been his own. But he'd bar the windows tomorrow. He'd put alarms on the entrances, and he'd find a safer place for his aluminum box.

Now he prepared to work, getting his notebooks ready, putting a little collapsible table in the center of the office room, securing the heavy wood shutters of the windows, turning on the lights, and taking the aluminum box, which was his storehouse of miracles, once more from hiding.

As he sat down at the table, he placed a loaded pistol within easy reach at his elbow. Thus prepared, he lifted his treasure from its homely metal container, and set it lovingly before him. A cube, perhaps four inches square. Like glass. Almost crystal in its transparency, except for a dim misting of pearl. Crowning the cube was a metal pyramid, much tarnished with age, and a dial. That was all. But Sam's gaze was almost gloating, as his mind filled with mighty visions of his own future. He was no different from any other man in this respect, for the touch of power was on him.

He turned the dial of the Martian apparatus. Within the cube spots of fire began to move, around and around a glowing center that was composed of myriad parts. It was all like a three-dimensional cinema—illustrating, in this instance, some mystery of the atom—its revolving planetary electrons, its nucleus of neutrons, positrons....