men; but to-day the world is at peace, as men regard the
term--and every man's hand is against his neighbor! There will be no
more wars, when there should be! There is but one alternative!"

"And that?" Sarka the First had queried suspiciously.

"The segregation of the fittest! The destruction, swiftly, painlessly,
of all the others! And when the survivors have again re-populated the
earth to overflowing--a repetition of the same corrective! Men will die,
yes, by millions; but those who are left will be a stronger, sturdier
race, and by this process of elimination, century by century, men will
evolve and become super-men!"

"And this plan of yours?"

* * * * *

For a moment Dalis had paused, breathing heavily, as though almost
afraid to continue. Then, while Sarka the First had listened in frozen
terror, Dalis had explained his ghastly scheme.

"If it were not for the mountains and the valleys," said Dalis, "and the
world were perfectly round and smooth of surface, that surface would be
covered by water to the depth of one mile! Is that not correct! The
Earth, rotating on its axis, travels about the sun at the rate of
something like nineteen miles per second, so perfectly balanced that
the oceans remain almost quiescent in their beds! But, Sarka, mark me
well! If we could, together, devise a way to halt this rotation for as
much as a few seconds, what would happen?"

"What would happen?" repeated Sarka the First, dropping his own voice to
a husky, frightened whisper. "Why, the oceans would be hurled out of
their beds, and a wall of water a mile high or more--it is all
guesswork!--would rush eastward around the world, bearing everything
before it! It would uproot and destroy buildings, sweep the rocky
covering of the earth free of soil; and humanity, caught on the earth
below the highest level of the world's greatest tidal wave, would be
engulfed!"

"Exactly!" Dalis had said with a grin. "Exactly! Only--the people we
wish to survive could be warned, and these could either be aloft when
the tidal wave swept the face of the earth, or could be safely out of
reach of the waters on the sides of the highest mountains!"

* * * * *

Sarka the First, wanly smiling, catching his breath at last, now that he
realized the utter impossibility of this mad scheme, had been minded to
humor the fancies of a man whom he had believed not quite sane.

"Why not," he b