THE RADIO BEASTS RALPH MILNE FARLEY ACE BOOKS, INC. 1120 Avenue of the Americas New York, N.Y. 10036 THE RADIO BEASTS Originally published in 1925 as a serial in _Argosy All-Story Weekly_. _Cover art and illustration by Ed Emshwiller._ Printed in U.S.A. I FROM ANOTHER WORLD One warm evening in July after the chores were done, I was sitting on the kitchen steps of my farmhouse, on Chappiquiddick Island off the coast of Massachusetts, idly glancing through the _Boston Post_ of that morning, when for some reason the following item happened to attract my attention: MADMAN TERRORIZES G. E. PLANT IN LYNN LYNN.—A maniac, clad only in a nightgown, broke into the General Electric laboratory in Lynn yesterday evening, and frightened the night operator, who thought he was a ghost. Patrick Mulcahy, the night operator, was seated in the radio room with the highpowered receiving set in action, when suddenly the intruder appeared before him. As Mulcahy jumped to his feet in surprise, the madman approached him, muttering some unintelligible gibberish, whereupon Mulcahy emptied his automatic at the other, and fled. The employment manager of the G. E. Company, when interviewed late last evening, stated that Mulcahy was a total abstainer; and bloodstains on the floor confirm Mulcahy’s story. It is believed that the disturber is an escaped inmate of Danvers, but the asylum authorities deny the loss of any of their patients. Whoever he is, the man is still at large. “Such a clumsy fabrication,” thought I. “It is too bad that the _Boston Post_ has fallen so low as to print such an old, old gag.” Then I laid down the paper, and let my mind wander as it willed. The episode which I had just read had occurred in the _radio_ room of the General Electric Company. Radio! That word suggested to me the greatest radio genius whom I have ever known: Myles Standish Cabot, of Boston. He had been a classmate, and friend of mine. He had mysteriously disappeared from his laboratory on Beacon Street, and nothing further had been heard of him until one night four years later, when a hollow projectile had dropped from the sky onto my farm, bearing in its interior a holographic account of my friend’s adventure during the preceding four years. This story I had edited, and it appeared under the title “The Radio Man.” It related how Myles, while experimenting with the wireless transmission of matter, had accidentally projected himself through space to the planet Venus. This accounted for his mysterious disappearance.