Iditarod pioneer., 1915-01-30

grim silence, they gave chase and swept down, hundred yards above him, perhaps, and a couple of hundred behind. They were beginning to understand what he was. He ceased to watch them and concentrated himself on the city ahead, and for time the two aeroplanes raced
 bullet came tearing through the air by him, as though someone was tearing paper. second followed. Something tapped the machine.
 It was time to act. The broad avenues, the park, the palaces below rushed, widen ing but nearer and nearer to them.
 Ready" said the steersman.
 The gaunt face hardened to grimness, aad with both hands the bomb thrower lifted the big atomic bomb from the box and steadied it against the side It was black sphere two feet in diameter. Between its handles was a little celluloid stud, and to this he bent his head until his lips touched it. Then he had to bite in order to let the air in upon the indUcive. Sure of its ac- possibility, he craned his neck over the side of the aeropIane and judged his pace and distance Then very quickly he bent for ward, bit the stud and hosted the bomb over the side.
 Round" he whispered inaudibly.
 The bomb flashed binding scarlet in mid air and fell a descending column of blaze eddying spirally in the midst of whirlWlnd Both the aeroplanes were tossed like shut tecocks, hurled high and sideways, and the steersman with gleaming eyes and set teeth fought in great banking curves for bal ance The gaunt man Clung tight with hands and knees; his nostrils dilated, his teeth biting his lips. He was firmly strapped
 When he could look down again it was like looking down upon the crater of a small volcano In the open garden before the imperial castle shuddering star of evil splendor spurted and poured up smoke and flame toward them like an accusation. They were too high to distinguish the people clearly or mark the bombs effect upon the building until suddenly the facade totterci and crumbled before the flare as sugar dissolves in water The man stared for 8 moment showed all his long teeth and then staggered into the cramped standing posi- tion his straps permitted, holsted out and bit another bomb and sent 1t down after its fellow.
 Always before in the development of war fare the shells and rockets fired had been but momentarily explosive; they had gone of in an instant once and for all and if there was nothing living or valuable within reach of the concussion and the flying frag- ments then they were spent and over. But carolinum, which belonged to the group of Hyslop's so-called Suspended degenera- tor" elements, once its degeneratlve process had been induced, continued a furious radi- ation of energy, and nothing could arrest 1t. Of all Hyslops artificial elements, carohnum was the most heavily stored with energy and the most dangerous to make and han dle To this day it remains the most potent degenerator known. What the earlier twen- tieth century chemists called the half period was seventeen days; that IS to say, 1t poured out half of the huge store of energy | in its great molecules in the space of seven teen days; the next seventeen days emis- sion was a half of that first periods out l pouring, and so on. AS with all radio active substances this carolinum, though every seventeen days its power is halved, though constantly it diminishes toward the | imperceptible, is never entirely exhausted, and to this day the battlehelds and bomb 1 fields of that frantic time in human history ! are sp,inkled with rsdianb matter ard 50