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During the whole of that summer Professor Pye was at work upon what may be described as his Atomic Gun. Externally it consisted of a tube of palmyrium mounted on a tripod stand, and in appearance not unlike a machine-gun. Its mouth could be closed by a diaphragm of palmyrium, and to the centre of the tube electric leads were attached. The apparatus’s interior could have been described only by Professor Pye himself, and the description was set down in cypher in a note book which he kept locked in a safe.

Also, during the whole of August he kept the laboratory locked, and Hands, brooding over his exclusion, was both a little grieved and tempted. Moreover, Professor Pye’s temper had become like the English weather, absolutely unpredictable in its moods and phases. He was extraordinarily taciturn. He emerged from the lab. to munch his biscuits and apples in the dining-room, and the lab. key was in his pocket.

Hands, who after all was human, did make one attempt to play Peeping Tom one day while the Professor was at lunch. Undoubtedly, the old boy was up to something, and Hands had not escaped the world’s passion for sensationalism. Since the laboratory door was locked, and the key in the professor’s pocket, he would have to attempt the windows, but when Hands sneaked round with an empty grocery box for a stool he found that the windows were shut and the blinds drawn. Obviously, Professor Pye had something to hide, and he was not taking any chances.

And Hands wondered. He was not without education in the matter of lurid literature. Like many simple souls and children he had a fantastic fancy. Now—just what would a very ingenious gentleman create in a lonely and a sexless spot like this? Sex and its bitter and baffled urges vexed Hands not a little. Supposing an old man like the professor had dreamed amorous dreams and was proposing to create a sort of mechanical Venus?

“Damn it,” said Hands—“why not?”

The fantastic notion piqued him. He even chortled over it. Certainly, this would be a species of creation that a man like Professor Pye would keep draped and screened. And then Hands had a feeling that somehow his carnal fancy had overstepped the bounds of decency.

Eminent scientists should be allowed to transcend the erotic. Professor Pye might be planning to fly to the moon.

Hands felt bothered by a certain personal turgidity, and when the flesh vexed him he dug hard in his garden or took Jumbo for a walk. On occasions he would ramble along the downs for miles, finding solace and solitude, while Jumbo discovered rabbits, imaginary and otherwise. To Hands his dog was a dumb but eloquent preceptor. The little beast had attached himself to a lone man to the exclusion of all canine calls.

“Marvellous!” Hands would exclaim, “Jumbo, you can teach me something.”

It was a Thursday in September when Hands asked Professor Pye to grant him leave of absence for the afternoon, and though he did not know it, the request toned with the professor’s plans. He was in a state of concealed excitement. He had been wanting to get rid of Hands for the afternoon.

“I’d like to take the dog for a walk, sir.”

Pye was affable.

“Certainly, Hands, certainly. You can have the whole afternoon. By the way, you haven’t had a holiday since you’ve been here.”

“No, sir.”

“You must take a holiday, Hands. Haven’t you any relations?”

“I’ve a brother in Brighton, sir.”

“Well, arrange to take a holiday. I may be going to stay at my London club for a week.”

“Holidays aren’t much in my line, sir. You see——”

The professor was emphatic.

“Everybody needs a holiday sometimes. Change of environment. You must go for a holiday, Hands.”

Hands took Jumbo out on the downs towards Dorking. Now, just what was the old fellow at? Was he really going to London, or did he desire Jack Hands’s absence for a period? Hands had taken a Thermos with him, and a parcel of bread and butter and cake. The professor allowed him grocer’s cake, the yellow stuff with cherries in it, but on that day Jumbo consumed most of the cake. Hands was feeling strangely depressed. Almost, he seemed to be suffering from some unpleasant premonition.

Not so Professor Pye. He carried that four-foot tube of alloy with its tripod to the top of the observation tower, and linked it to a power plug by long flexes that ran from one of the lab. windows and were raised by a cord to the top of the little concrete tower. It was a serene and perfect September day, windless and golden, but Professor Pye had no eyes for the beauty of the landscape. His hands trembled as he attached the wires to the apparatus. He was face to face with his crisis, and he was facing more than a critical experiment. He was confronting death, personal annihilation. He could regulate his current, and release what he might estimate to be a small charge of On-force, but he could not swear that the new force would not shatter the apparatus and kill its creator.

But he needed a target, something protoplasmic and obvious upon which he could train the atomic gun. He stood looking down over the low parapet, and the target offered itself, some cows in a field in the hollow of the valley. These cows belonged to Mr. Honniset of Fox Farm, and they were pastured in two different fields separated by a strip of arable. One of the fields was less than three hundred yards away, the other more than a quarter of a mile. Professor Pye trained the gun on the farther field, and stood back behind it with his foot on the contact-maker.

For one moment he hesitated. There was a faint click as a flexible wire operated the diaphragm, a second click as his foot pressed the make and break. The palmyrium tube remained motionless; there was no sound, no suggestion of vibration. Professor Pye stood with his eyes fixed on the apparatus. He had been prepared for a possible catastrophe, blackness, oblivion.

Apparently, nothing that could be registered by the senses had happened. Professor Pye kept his foot on the contact maker for three seconds, released it, and closed the diaphragm. A curious little grin seemed to trickle into his beard. What had happened? Had anything happened? He was conscious of furious excitement and a feeling of personal reprieve. He had let the thing loose, and he was alive.

He walked to the parapet and looked down into the valley. The cows in the farther field had been grazing in a group, and every beast in that field was down. Dead? The animals were lying on their sides, legs and heads extended. The cows in the near field were still grazing. Professor Pye’s face expressed a kind of demonic exultation. His hair stood up like the crest of a cockatoo. But were those cows dead, or merely shocked and temporarily helpless? He dashed downstairs for a pair of field-glasses, returned, and crouching behind the parapet, focused his glasses on the field.

He realized that he was looking at carcasses. The flaccid, inert posture of the bodies was unmistakable. He watched them intently for five minutes, and not one of the animals gave any sign of life.

Professor Pye stood up. His face was the face of a man who was not quite sane. It might have been the face of a Biblical Satan, or of a mischievous, malignant and amoral boy who had perpetrated some cunning outrage and who gloated over its success. What were a few cows compared with the discovery that he could kill, silently, swiftly, secretly? He possessed power, power such as no other man had ever commanded. He had evolved that power. It was his.