teel arch bridge up to and including the former
plant of the Niagara Falls Power Company," said Brevard, "you see the
plant extends. And, on the Canadian side--or what was the Canadian,
before 'we' absorbed Canada--it stretches from the Ontario Power
Company's works to those of the Toronto-Niagara Power Company, including
both. In addition to having absorbed these, it has taken over the
Niagara Falls Hydraulic Power and Manufacturing Company, the Canadian
Power Company and half a dozen others, and has, as you see, established
its central offices and plant on Goat Island.

"Here Flint and Waldron have what may be called a citadel within a
citadel--twelve acres of administration buildings, laboratories (in
charge of your old friend Herzog, by the way!) and experimental works,
including also the big steel chambers, vacuum-lined, where they are
already storing their liquid oxygen to be turned into their pipe-lines
and tank-cars. This Goat Island central plant will be the real kernel in
the nut, Gabriel. Once _that_ is gone, you'll have ripped the heart out
of the beast, smashed the vital ganglia, and given the world the
respite, the breathing-space it must have, to free itself!"

"And if I don't?" asked Gabriel. "If anything happens to upset our
blockading tactics, or if our attacking forces are defeated or our
aeroplanes shot down, what then?"

"Then," said Brevard, slowly, "then the world had better die than
survive under the abominable slavery now impending. Already the
pipe-lines have been laid to Buffalo, Cleveland, Albany and Scranton.
Already they're under way to New York City itself, and to Cincinnati.
Already other plants have been projected for Chicago, Denver, San
Francisco and New Orleans, to say nothing of half a dozen in the Old
World. At this present moment, as we all sit here in this quiet room on
this remote mountain-slope, the world's air is being cornered! All the
atmospheric nitrogen is planned for, by Flint and Waldron, to pass under
their control--and with it, every crop that grows. All the oxygen will
follow. They're already having their domestic-service apparatus
manufactured--their cold-pipe radiators, meters, evaporators and
respirators. I tell you, comrades, this thing is close upon us, not as a
theory, now, but as a terrible, an inconceivably ghastly reality!

"Even as we talk this thing over, those devils in human form are at
work impoverishing the atmosphere, the very basis of all life. My