Project Gutenberg's The Finding of Haldgren, by Charles Willard Diffin

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Title: The Finding of Haldgren

Author: Charles Willard Diffin

Release Date: August 17, 2009 [EBook #29717]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FINDING OF HALDGREN ***

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Transcribers note: This etext was produced from Astounding Stories
April 1932. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

[Illustration]

[Chet Ballard answers the pinpoint of light that from the
craggy desolation of the moon stabs out man's old call for help.]

The Finding of Haldgren

_A Complete Novelette_

By Charles Willard Diffin

CHAPTER I

SOS

The venerable President of the Federation Aeronautique Internationale
had been speaking. He paused now to look out over the sea of faces that
filled the great hall in serried waves. He half turned that he might let
his eyes pass over the massed company on the platform with him. The
Stratosphere Control Board--and they had called in their representatives
from the far corners of Earth to hear the memorable words of this aged
man.

[Illustration: _The beasts fell into the pit beyond; their screams rang
horribly as they fell._]

From the waiting audience came no slightest sound; the men and women
were as silent as that other audience listening and watching in every
hamlet of the world, wherever radio and television reached. Again the
figure of the President was drawn erect; the scanty, white hair was
thrown back from his forehead; he was speaking:

" ... And this vast development has come within the memory of one man.
I, speaking to you here in this year of 1974, have seen it all come to
pass. And now I am overwhelmed with the wonder of it, even as I was when
those two Americans first flew at Kittyhawk.

"I, myself, saw that. I saw with these eyes the first crude
engine-bearing kites; I saw them from 1914 to 1918 tempered and
perfected in the furnace of war; I saw the coming of detonite and the
beginning of o