Read Ebook: Two worlds for one by Smith George O George Oliver Luros Milton Illustrator

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Ebook has 67 lines and 4304 words, and 2 pages

iece and Ingalls' ear at the same time. "You Americans!... He is yours! I will help, but you must stop him!"

"Okay," replied Ingalls. "Just keep an eye on the district I mentioned. According to the big globe here, that is the best place to divide the world so that each of us can have an equitable half--"

"And a precious lot it will do us," snorted Moreiko. "What a completely outrageous idea!"

"Well, I'm told he is the guy to do it."

Moreiko spluttered for a moment. Then his voice became sober. "Had any other man on earth made that statement I would have scoffed," he said. "But Professor Milton--American, I am alarmed!"

The connection was broken as the Russian hung up in an excited mood.

Days passed. Days in which men poured over shipping statements, pondering their relative importance and seeking some clue of strange shipments to a strange location. A huge airliner was stolen; the seismographs of the world were still save for their usual reportings; for three days all radio was killed by energetic cracklings of static which appeared to be completely non-directional in source. The Department of Terrestrial Magnetism in Washington reported shiftings of the lines of equal deviation from true north and a change in the vertical component as well but their measurements were insufficiently precise to pin the source of trouble down to more than several thousand square miles.

Twenty days after the Professor had resigned from the Institution, all the world's seismographs reported a serious temblor. Directionally, it was tracked down, and the calculations indicated a fairly straight line of fault.

The fault was a vertical Great Circle of the earth dividing the earth into two hemispheres.

Somewhere along this Great Circle must be Professor Milton, reasoned the many agencies seeking him. They beat the Circle from pole to pole and though finding one man in the wilderness of earth might be impossible, every available man was seeking him actively. Locating Milton was inevitable--providing Milton did not accomplish his division of the earth first.

Ten days later the earth shook again, and people looked at one another in fear.

"We must find him!" stormed Ingalls.

Edwards and Harris nodded unhappily. Edwards added: "He's down there, somewhere."

Ingalls looked out of the plane window at a million square miles of glaring ice. "A mote in the Grand Canyon of the Colorado," he grunted.

Professor Moreiko shook his head. "All Americans are crazy," he stated.

"No," grunted Edwards. "Only some of them." Moreiko laughed bitterly. Days upon end of flying over the ice was tiring to them all.

It was, however, only a matter of time before the elusive Professor Milton was located. And hours later, Moreiko gave a shout as he pointed towards a small building squat upon the ice with a tall steel tower beside it. They landed beside the building, and climbed out of the plane worriedly. Whether the professor was armed bothered them quite a bit.

Professor Milton was not armed, nor was he resentful at being found. "Greetings," he boomed genially. "You are the first."

"Why did you hide?" demanded Edwards.

"Hide? I was not hiding. I merely came to the proper place for the division of the earth. I'd have mentioned it, but apparently no one was interested; I was forced to go on my own, so to speak."

"You realize the importance of this?"

"Of course," smiled Professor Milton whimsically. "Once this division takes place, there will be no cause for argument."

"Nor anybody to argue," pointed Edwards.

"Small matter. Russia wants--"

"Might I speak for Russia?" asked Professor Moreiko.

"Ah, Moreiko! So glad to see you. Of course you may speak."

"Professor Milton, I tell you that neither Russia nor the United States is pleased with this proposition of yours."

"Why not?" asked Milton childishly. "It seems equitable."

"It is equitable, but truly not practical."

"No?" boomed Milton, reaching for a large lever protruding from a panel. "I shall show you. I--"

"Please consider first," objected Moreiko.

"But why? Your ideology is at cross purposes with ours; you go your way and we'll go ours."

"Dead!" snapped Moreiko.

"Better dead," replied Milton, "than constant strife."

"You realize that you will kill every man on earth?"

"Not at all.... Just a few. The others will find life difficult for a bit but most will survive."

"But--"

Milton stood to his full height which was imposing. "I care little for that," he boomed. "I am laughed at; I am made a fool of; I am ridiculed. I am told that my theories are impossible. I shall show them all, though they die in the attempt!"

"And you yourself."

"And if I do--if we do--it will prove my theories sound. Russia and the United States may each have their half, separated by millions of miles of space where neither can harm the other."

"It will not work," said Moreiko. Edwards and Harris groaned. Telling Professor Milton that something will not work was the best way to urge him on.

Professor Milton sat down with a superiorly tolerant smile. "I shall give you five minutes," he told the Russian. "If you prove this impossible, I will desist with but a formal apology from those Doubting Thomases."

"Clip him," snapped Ingalls, pointing a revolver at the professor.

Professor Milton smiled. "Field theory," he told Ingalls. "Pull the trigger, and see what happens!"

Ingalls grunted, pointed the pistol at the wall and fired. The explosion was but a piffling one, more of a slow burn than a sharp bang. The bullet oozed from the end of the barrel and fell to the floor with a thud.

Ingalls pulled a blackjack from his pocket and started forward, lifting it. Then he stopped. Moving the sap was difficult, like trying to swing a sledge under water.

"All metals encounter resistive fields here," said Professor Milton.

"At him bare handed, then," snapped Ingalls.

"Wait," said Moreiko. "The world need not lose a brilliant brain. Once I have convinced him of the fallacy, he will forget this entirely."

"Fallacy?" snapped Milton angrily. "You think I cannot divide the world?"

Moreiko smiled. "No, my esteemed colleague, I know you can divide the world; that all the earth grants. The earth does not want itself divided."

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