“I don’t understand, I don’t understand,” said Mark.

“But it is very easy,” said Filostrato. “We have found how to make a dead man live. He was a wise man even in his natural life. He live now forever: he get wiser. Later, we make them live better-for at present, one must concede, this second life is probably not very agreeable to him who has it. You see? Later we make it pleasant for some-perhaps not so pleasant for others. For we can make the dead live whether they wish it or not. He who shall be finally king of the universe can give this life to whom he pleases. They cannot refuse the little present.”

“And so,” said Straik, “the lessons you learned at your mother’s knee return. God will have power to give eternal reward and eternal punishment.”

“God?” said Mark. “How does He come into it? I don’t believe in God.”

“But, my friend,” said Filostrato, “does it follow that because there was no God in the past that there will be no God also in the future?”

“Don’t you see,” said Straik, “that we are offering you the unspeakable glory of being present at the creation of God Almighty? Here, in this house, you shall meet the first draught of the real God. It is a man-or a being made by man-who will finally ascend the throne of the universe. And rule forever.”

“You will come with us?” said Filostrato. “He has sent for you.”

“Of course he will come,” said Straik. “Does he think he could hold back and live?”

“And that little affair of the wife,” added Filostrato.

“You will not mention a triviality like that. You will do as you are told. One does not argue with the Head.”

Mark had nothing now to help him but the rapidly ebbing exhilaration of the alcohol taken at dinner-time and some faint gleams of memory from hours with Jane and with friends made before he went to Bracton, during which the world had had a different taste from this exciting horror which now pressed upon him. These, and a merely instinctive dislike for both the moonlit faces which so held his attention. On the other side was fear. What would they do to him if he refused now? And aiding fear was this young man’s belief that if one gave in for the present things would somehow right themselves “in the morning.” And, aiding the fear and the hope, there was still, even then, a not wholly disagreeable thrill at the thought of sharing so stupendous a secret.

“Yes,” he said, halting in his speech as if he were out of breath, “Yes-of course-I’ll come.”

They led him out. The passages were already still and the sound of talk and laughter from the public rooms on the ground floor had ceased. He stumbled, and they linked arms with him. The journey seemed long: passage after passage, passages he had never seen before, doors to unlock, and then into a place where all the lights were on, and there were strange smells. Then Filostrato spoke through a speaking-tube and a door was opened to them.

Mark found himself in a surgical-looking room with glaring lights, and sinks, and bottles, and glittering instruments. A young man whom he hardly knew, dressed in a white coat, received them.

“Strip to your underclothes,” said Filostrato. While Mark was obeying he noticed that the opposite wall of the room was covered with dials. Numbers of flexible tubes came out of the floor and went into the wall just beneath the dials. The staring dial faces and the bunches of tubes beneath them, which seemed to be faintly pulsating, gave one the impression of looking at some creature with many eyes and many tentacles. The young man kept his eyes fixed on the vibrating needles of the dials. When the three newcomers had removed their outer clothes, they washed their hands and faces, and after that Filostrato plucked white clothes for them out of a glass container with a pair of forceps. When they had put these on he gave them also gloves and masks such as surgeons wear. There followed a moment’s silence while Filostrato studied the dials. “Yes, yes,” he said. “A little more air. Not much: point nought three. Turn on the chamber air . . . slowly . . . to Full. Now the lights. Now air in the lock. A little less of the solution. And now” (here he turned to Straik and Studdock) “are you ready to go in?”

He led them to a door in the same wall as the dials.

Nine

I

“It was the worst dream I’ve had yet,” said Jane next morning. She was seated in the Blue Room with the Director and Grace Ironwood.

“Yes,” said the Director. “Yours is perhaps the hardest post: until the real struggle begins.”

“I dreamed I was in a dark room,” said Jane, “with queer smells in it and a sort of low humming noise. Then the light came on-but not very much light, and for a long time I didn’t realise what I was looking at. And when I made it out . . . I should have waked up if I hadn’t made a great effort not to. I thought I saw a face floating just in front of me. A face, not a head, if you understand what I mean. That is, there was a beard and nose and eyes-at least, you couldn’t see the eyes because it had coloured glasses on, but there didn’t seem to be anything above the eyes. Not at first. But as I got used to the light, I got a horrible shock. I thought the face was a mask tied on to a kind of balloon thing. But it wasn’t, exactly. Perhaps it looked a bit like a man wearing a sort of turban . . . I’m telling this dreadfully badly. What it really was, was a head (the rest of a head) which had had the top part of the skull taken off and then . . . then . . . as if something inside had boiled over. A great big mass which bulged out from inside what was left of the skull. Wrapped in some kind of composition stuff, but very thin stuff. You could see it twitch. Even in my fright I remember thinking, ‘Oh, kill it, kill it. Put it out of its pain. But only for a second, because I thought the thing was dead, really. It was green looking and the mouth was wide open and quite dry-. You realise I was a long time, looking at it, before anything else happened. And soon I saw that it wasn’t exactly floating. It was fixed up on some kind of bracket, or shelf, or pedestal-I don’t know quite what, and there were things hanging from it. From the neck, I mean. Yes, it had a neck and a sort of collar thing round it, but nothing below the collar: no shoulders or body. Only these hanging things. In the dream I thought it was some kind of new man that had only head and entrails: I thought all those tubes were its insides. But presently-I don’t quite know how, I saw that they were artificial. Little rubber tubes and bulbs and little metal things too. I couldn’t understand them. All the tubes went into the wall. Then at last something happened.”

“You’re all right, Jane, are you? “said Miss Ironwood.

“Oh yes,” said Jane, “as far as that goes. Only one somehow doesn’t want to tell it. Well, quite suddenly, like when an engine is started, there came a puff of air out of its mouth, with a hard dry rasping sound. And then there came another, and it settled down into a sort of rhythm-huff, huff, huff-like an imitation of breathing. Then came a most horrible thing: the mouth began to dribble. I know it sounds silly but in a way I felt sorry for it, because it had no hands and couldn’t wipe its mouth. It seems a small thing compared with all the rest but that is how I felt. Then it began working its mouth about and even licking its lips. It was like someone getting a machine into working order. To see it doing that just as if it was alive, and at the same time dribbling over the beard which was all stiff and dead looking . . . Then three people came into the room, all dressed up in white, with masks on, walking as carefully as cats on the top of a wall. One was a great fat man, and another was lanky and boney. The third . . .’ here Jane paused involuntarily. “The third . . . I think it was Mark . . . I mean my husband.” .