sigh--"just as soon as I put
through a personal message."

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The Lord of Space

_By Victor Rousseau_

[Illustration]

[Sidenote: A Black Caesar had arisen on Eros--and all Earth trembled
at his distant menace.]

"On the day of the next full moon every living thing on earth will be
wiped out of existence--unless you succeed in your mission, Lee."

Nathaniel Lee looked into the face of Silas Stark, President of the
United States of the World, and nodded grimly. "I'll do my best, Sir,"
he answered.

"You have the facts. We know who this self-styled Black Caesar is, who
has declared war upon humanity. He is a Dane named Axelson, whose
father, condemned to life imprisonment for resisting the new
world-order, succeeded in obtaining possession of an interplanetary
liner.

"He filled it with the gang of desperate men who had been associated
with him in his successful escape from the penitentiary. Together they
sailed into Space. They disappeared. It was supposed that they had
somehow met their death in the ether, beyond the range of human ken.

"Thirty years passed, and then this son of Axelson, born, according to
his own story, of a woman whom the father had persuaded to accompany
him into Space, began to radio us. We thought at first it was some
practical joker who was cutting in.

[Illustration: _It was like struggling with some vampire creatures in
a hideous dream._]

"When our electricians demonstrated beyond doubt that the voice came
from outer space, it was supposed that some one in our Moon Colony had
acquired a transmitting machine. Then the ships we sent to the Moon
Colony for gold failed to return. As you know, for seven weeks there
has been no communication with the Moon. And at the last full moon
the--blow--fell.

"The world depends upon you, Lee. The invisible rays that destroyed
every living thing from China to Australia--one-fifth of the human
race--will fall upon the eastern seaboard of America when the moon is
full again. That has been the gist of Axelson's repeated
communications.

"We shall look to you to return, either with the arch-enemy of the
human race as your prisoner, or with the good news that mankind has
been set free from the menace that overhangs it.

"God bless you, my boy!" The President of the United States of the
World gripped Nat's hand and stepped down the ladder that led from the