derous metal sufficiently strong to prevent the inner
warmth of the laboratory getting out, or the biting cold of the heights
to enter, and studied her still as she buckled about her hips her own
personal Sarka-Belt, which automatically encased her, through contact
with her tight clothing, with the warmth and balanced pressure of the
laboratory, which would remain constant as long as she wore it.

With a nod and a brief smile, she stepped to the metal door and vanished
through it. Sarka turned gloomily back to his laboratory. Looking into
the depths of the Revolving Beryl and adjusting the enlarging device
which brought back, life size, the infinitesmal individuals mirrored in
the Beryl, he watched her go--a trim white figure which flashed across
the void, from mountain-top to her valley home, like a very white
projectile from another world. Very white, and very precious, but....

When she was home, and had waved to him that she had arrived safely, he
forgot her for a time, and allowed his eyes to study the inner workings
of this vast, crowded world whose on-rushing fate was so filling his
brain with doubt, with fear--and something of horror!

CHAPTER II

_The People of the Hives_

Moodily Sarka stared into the depths of the Beryl, which represented the
Earth, and in which he could see everything that earthlings did, after
visually enlarging them, through use of a microscope that could be
adjusted, with relation to the Beryl, to bring out in detail any section
of the world he wished to study. His face was utterly sad. The people at
last truly possessed the Earth--all of it that was, even with the aid of
every miracle known to science, habitable.

The surface of the Earth was one vast building, like a hive, and to each
human being was allotted by law a certain abiding place. But men no
longer died, unless they desired to do so, and then only when the
Spokesmen of the Gens saw fit to grant permission; and there soon would
be no place for the newborn to live. Even now that point had practically
been reached throughout the world, and in the greater portion it _had_
been reached, and passed, and men knew that while men did not die, they
could be killed!

The vast building, towering above what had once been the surface of the
earth, to heights undreamed of before the discovery, was irregular on
its top, to fit the contour of the earth, and its roof, constructed of
materials raped from the earth's core, was so d