COMPENSATION C. V. TENCH 92 _Professor Wroxton Had Disappeared--But in the Bottom of the Mysterious Crystal Cage Lay the Diamond from His Ring!_ TANKS MURRAY LEINSTER 100 _Two Miles of American Front Had Gone Dead. And on Two Lone Infantrymen, Lost in the Menace of the Fog-gas and the Tanks, Depended the Outcome of the War of 1932._ INVISIBLE DEATH ANTHONY PELCHER 118 _On Lees' Quick and Clever Action Depended the Life of "Old Perk" Ferguson, the Millionaire Manufacturer Threatened by the Uncanny, Invisible Killer._ _Introducing_-- ASTOUNDING STORIES What _are_ "astounding" stories? Well, if you lived in Europe in 1490, and someone told you the earth was round and moved around the sun--that would have been an "astounding" story. Or if you lived in 1840, and were told that some day men a thousand miles apart would be able to talk to each other through a little wire--or without any wire at all--that would have been another. Or if, in 1900, they predicted ocean-crossing airplanes and submarines, world-girdling Zeppelins, sixty-story buildings, radio, metal that can be made to resist gravity and float in the air--these would have been other "astounding" stories. To-day, time has gone by, and all these things are commonplace. That is the only real difference between the astounding and the commonplace--Time. To-morrow, more astounding things are going to happen. Your children--or their children--are going to take a trip to the moon. They will be able to render themselves invisible--a problem that has already been partly solved. They will be able to disintegrate their bodies in New York and reintegrate them in China--and in a matter of seconds. Astounding? Indeed, yes. Impossible? Well--television would have been impossible, almost unthinkable, ten years ago. Now you will see the kind of magazine that it is our pleasure to offer you beginning with this, the first number of ASTOUNDING STORIES. It is a magazine whose stories will anticipate the super-scientific achievements of To-morrow--whose stories will not only be strictly accurate in their science but will be vividly, dramatically and thrillingly told. Already we have secured stories by some of the finest writers of fantasy in the world--men such as Ray Cummings, Murray Leinster, Captain S. P. Meek, Harl Vincent, R. F. Starzl and Victor Rousseau. So--order your next month's copy of ASTOUNDING STORIES in advance! --_The Editor._ The Beetle Horde A TWO-PART NOVEL _By Victor Rousseau_ [Illustration: _Dodd and Tommy realised that they were powerless against the monstrous beetles._] [Sidenote: Only two young explorers stand in the way of the mad Bram's horrible revenge--the releasing of his trillions of man-sized beetles upon an utterly defenseless world.] CHAPTER I _Dodd's Discovery_