CUBE ROOT OF CONQUEST
By Rog Phillips
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Amazing Stories October1948. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Jan ran tirelessly, his long clean limbs carrying him at express trainspeed across the uneven terrain. The small deer was beginning to showevidences of tiring. Its foam-flecked mouth was open, the swollen tongueprotruding over the teeth. The ten or more miles of the chase had provenJan's superior strength.
The deer rounded a dense patch of blackberry bushes and bounded out ofsight over the crest of the hill. To Jan's keen eye it seemed that thedeer stumbled at the instant of vanishing from view. Eagerly he put on aburst of speed to catch up and make the kill.
The scene that burst into view brought amazement into his clear blueeyes. The deer had stumbled, but caught itself, and was bounding downthe gentle slope. Jan thrust curiosity away and concentrated onregaining the ground lost. His naked feet touched the turf with piledriver force every ten feet. The muscles under the tanned skin of hislegs worked with smooth effort.
The deer was headed directly toward a glistening square spot just ahead.It was in mid stride when it reached it, its front legs doubled, readyto straighten and touch the ground at the right instant, its hind legsstretched out behind.
In that position it sailed over the glistening square that was set flushinto the ground, and—vanished.
It vanished about like it might vanish around a tree. Its head andantlers went first, followed by the rest of it. One hoof seemed tohesitate, hanging in the air by itself. Then it was gone.
Jan turned desperately to avoid the spot and brought himself to a halt afew feet beyond. The hair on the back of his neck felt prickly with fearof the unknown. He returned cautiously to inspect the mysterious,glistening square slab.
It was no more than four feet across each way. There was no way oftelling what its surface was like. About where its surface might be wasa soft carpet of glistening, cool force that seemed neither solid norfluid. It was something like the surface of a glowing ember in a dyingfire, smoothed out flat and spread with uniformity over an area ofsixteen square feet.
Jan's eyes pulled away from this fascinating thing and turned to surveywhat had first caused him to break his pace in surprise. A shortdistance away a skeleton of twisted and sheered off steel girders hintedat what had once been a bridge across a deep gash in the rollingterrain. On the other side was what had once been a huge city ofsky-scrapers, though Jan had never heard of such a thing and did notknow that that was what it had been.
Nothing was visible in the mysterious plate, yet a man had gone into it!
With a frown of uneasiness he dismissed the ruins of the city and thebridge and turned to the mysteriously glowing square once more. The deerhad vanished over it. Therefore it must have something to do with thevanishing of the deer. Since he had chased the deer so far, it would befoolish to turn away without investigating. The deer might still be