Adventure, racial spleen, and biological degeneration.
* Chicago and the Congo.
* As is usual with Taine's work, the plot is very complex, with much activity in the past determining the present sequence of events.
* The characters are Evans, a medical missionary who has served in Africa; Dr. Colton, a young Chicago physician who specializes in tropical diseases; Big Tom and Little Tom Blake, a father and son who specialize in X-ray study of subatomic phenomena; and as romance, Li la Meredith, a beautiful young woman who accompanies the expedition and might as well have been left out of the story.
* Previously, to reveal what Taine guards until the end of the story, Swain had been stationed in the Congo. His past was very unsavory, for despite a certain intelligence, he was a violent antievolutionist and took his post to demolish the belief that humanity evolved from the apes. Among his more disreputable activities in Africa was a crusade in which he captured and burned alive all the apes he could catch. For this purpose, he went native in the worst way (Taine's racist imagination runs wild here about "bestial blacks"), joined several tribes, and became the equivalent of a low-grade witch doctor. He was such a foul person that even the natives finally rejected him. His knowledge of the Congo, however, is unexcelled.
* During his crusade he entered an unknown area that had been struck, perhaps thousands of years earlier, by a meteorite bearing an unknown element. This element (asterium) , which is fantastically heavy in its pure, metallic state, transforms iron into a very heavy isotope and emits a gas that creates a feeling of exhilaration, is habit-forming, and leads to devolution of a sort.
* Its victims grow body hair, become ape-like with fantastic strength, lose their intellectual powers, and (as a rule) become very nasty. Swain, while exploring, becomes habituated to the new gaseous element and is gradually transformed, although in his case the transformation is only partial and intermittent. Around the meteor area live many other beings who have been transformed in varying degrees by the asterium.
* As the story opens, Swain, in Chicago, in a lucid moment consults Dr. Colton, who becomes interested in his case. Also soon implicated are the Blakes, who are going to Africa to study sleeping sickness. (Why atomic physicists should study sleeping sickness is an odd point that Taine does not explain.) Colton, the Blakes, and Swain (as a sort of outcaste guide) thereupon resort to the Congo, where Swain runs amok. Following his trail, the others come to the meteoritic area, which is overrun by hostile, giant ape-like subhumans who are later explained as transformed pygmies.
* Preeminent among them is a ninefoot giant of fantastic strength, who is friendly to the explorers. They call him the Captain.
* The Captain, upon the arrival of the expedition, begins to kill the other mutants, and such is his prowess at throwing pebbles of the fantastically heavy metal, that soon he is the only survivor. He leads the expedition to the source of asterium, which is reached through a fantastic series of periodically water-filled tunnels.
* The explorers are soon aware of the narcotic effects of the new element, but the Blakes undertake experiments with it. The results of X-ray bombardment are unexpected: The asterium disintegrates explosively and contagiously. The major surface deposits are soon gone, and the underground deposits will also destroy themselves. In the resulting holocaust Swain is drowned, the Captain dies saving the others from a collapsing tunnel, and the world is safe.
* It is then explained that the benevolent giant had been Campbell McKay, the great explorer and geologist who disappeared some years ago. His Calvinistic background and Scottish heredity had enabled him to withstand the immoral aspects of the drug-element, despite some loss of intellect.
* The idea is interesting, despite Taine's ignorance of zoology and his shocking racial intolerance. The literary development is fumbling.
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