Page:Amazing Stories Volume 15 Number 12.djvu/61

of their small home up the river from the Ionian city that summer evening. "I'll leave that to Dad and Vanz and your father. There's just one crusade I'm going to make before I quit for good."

Margo's golden head didn't move from its place on his shoulder.

"What's that?"

"Destroy these Biology Stations!" Dane said. "Think of the menace to our racial customs! In a few more years of this incubator system, every family album in the country will be no more than a glorified catalogue of mason jars!"

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(Concluded from page 9)

FOR years the most fondly cherished hope of man has been the dream of some day controlling the elements, so as to eliminate forever such calamities of nature, as droughts, cyclones, floods hail storms, etc.

While still far from the accomplishment of this goal some progress has been made. Two American scientists have devised a method of inducing rain that has worked with moderate success in several tests. Flying through rain clouds they have sprayed electrified sand into them on the principle that droplets of water form about specks of dust.

Even the infinitesimal electron may serve as a nucleus of condensation in laboratory experiments. It was hoped that sand particles charged with positive electricity might serve to bring about the coalescence of vapor particles of clouds to form globules of the order or size of raindrops.

The expectations have been, at least in a measure, verified. Scientific rain-making on a small scale is an accomplished fact. Whether more strides will be taken in the same direction remains to be seen.

ONE of the moot points over which scientists have been arguing recently is the nature of the brilliantly white spot which shows in photographs on the top of the planet Mars. Some contend that it is an ice cap, while others are of the opinion that it is frozen carbon dioxide.

Maybe they are both wrong. Maybe this brilliant patch of white is, along with the canals, a signaling system to Earth.

THE ceaselessly changing physical construction of this world of ours puts to shame the imagining of various fantasy authors. For it has been definitely proven that the "solid crust" of the earth is far from solid; that the earthquakes which have been recorded in every sector of the globe are actually a manifestation of the comparatively fragile surface of the earth.

When we realize that the earth's core is composed of an incredibly vast underlying sea of boiling lava, and that waves from this mighty seething ocean cause the fissures in the earth's surface, we gain a truer appreciation of the limitless power still dormant at the earth's core. These mighty vibrations, while losing ninety-nine per cent of their power in their passage through the earth's crust, still retain sufficient force to demolish a city in one quake.

But closer to the source of these vibrations lie the anchorages of earth's continents; and many scientists hold the belief that the gradual shifting of the continents of the earth is from the tremendous battering blows aimed at their bases by the waves of lava breaking under the floor of the ocean. The terrible power at the earth's core, the shifting of the continents year by year, the fragility of the earth's crust, these sound like the component parts of a rattling good science fiction story. Well—maybe they are.

HAVING reached this point, we see that we must leave you for another month, but confidentially, we are glad we've reached this point! Because, if you don't think that big New Year Issue is going to be a headache to make-up in time for the deadline, you've no imagination—and what are you reading science fiction for, anyway?

So keep your eyes peeled for the big book, and let us know how you like it. Until next month, think of your editor—sleepless but happy! Rap

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"Tropical fish are a hobby with me."