Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930

He led the way to a gleaming circle of glass like an inverted telescope, about a yard in diameter, mounted in the floor. "Look!" said the dwarf. Kendrick did so--and there, spread below him, lay the floor of the desert. His camp, his apparatus, were just as he had left them. Cor now moved toward the dial. "Behold!" he said, pulling a lever. Instantly the scene below was an inferno. Stricken by a blast of stupendous heat, the whole area went molten, lay quivering like a lake of lava in the crater of an active volcano. "Suppose, my dear Professor," smiled the dwarf, strolling back from the dial, "just suppose, for instance, that instead of the lonely camp of an obscure scientist, your proud city of New York had been below there!" Kendrick shuddered. Well he knew now the terrible power, the appalling menace of this strange invader. "I would prefer not to make such a supposition," he said, quietly, with a last thoughtful glance at that witches' caldron below. "Then let us think of pleasanter things. You are my guest of honor, sir--America's foremost scientist, though she may never realize it," with a piping chuckle. "To-night there will be a great banquet in your honor. Meanwhile, suppose I show you to your quarters." Nettled, fuming, though outwardly calm, Kendrick permitted himself to be escorted from the laboratory to an ornate apartment on one of the lower floors. There Cor left him, with the polite hint that he would find plenty of attendants handy should he require anything.