e ground than they sent up tiny green
shoots that grew larger each moment. Within ten minutes there was a new
plant a foot high. Within half an hour, the plant budded, blossomed, and
cast forth its own seed.

"You understand?" asked the scientist. "Development is going on as
rapidly among the children. Before the first year has passed, the
youngest baby will have grandchildren; that is, if the baby tests out
fit to pass its seed down to the new generation. I know it sounds
absurd. Yet you saw the plant."

"But Doctor," Northwood rubbed his jaw thoughtfully, "Nature's forces of
destruction, of tearing down, are as powerful as her creative powers.
You have discovered the ultimate in creation and upbuilding. But
perhaps--oh, Lord, it is too awful to think!"

"Speak, Northwood!" The scientist's voice was impatient.

"It is nothing!" The pale young man attempted a smile. "I was only
imagining some of the horror that could be thrust on the world if a
supermind like Adam's should discover Nature's secret of death and
destruction and speed it up as you have sped the life force."

"_Ach Gott!_" Dr. Mundson's face was white. "He has his own laboratory,
where he works every day. Don't talk so loud. He might be listening. And
I believe he can do anything he sets out to accomplish."

Close to Northwood's ear fell a faint, triumphant whisper: "Yes, he can
do anything. How did you guess, worm?"

It was Adam's voice.

* * * * *

"Now come and see the Leyden jar mothers," said Dr. Mundson. "We do not
wait for the child to be born to start our work."

He took Northwood to a laboratory crowded with strange apparatus, where
young men and women worked. Northwood knew instantly that these people,
although unusually handsome and strong, were not of Adam's generation.
None of them had the look of newness which marked those who had grown up
under the Life Ray.

"They are the perfect couples whom I combed the world to find," said the
scientist. "From their eugenic marriages sprang the first children that
passed through the laboratory. I had hoped," he hesitated and looked
sideways at Northwood, "I had dreamed of having the children of you and
Athalia to help strengthen the New Race."

A wave of sudden disgust passed over Northwood.

"Thanks," he said tartly. "When I marry Athalia, I intend to have an
old-fashioned home and a Black Age family. I don't relish having my
children turned into--experiment