Contents
THE
LOVE-SLAVE AND THE SCIENTISTS
by Frank BelknapLong 3
Copyright, 1935, by the
Popular Fiction Publishing Company, for Weird
Tales magazine, by permission of. the author.
THE CAVE by Beatrice Grimshaw...............................................................
13
Copyright, 1932, by McCall Corporation.
THE FORGOTTEN PLANET by Sewell Peaslee Wright....................... 25
Reprinted by consent of the author with arrangement through Ackerman
Fantasy Agency.
THE CURIOUS CASE OF NORTON
HOORNE by Ray Cummings.. 43
Copyright, 1920, by the Frank A. Munsey Co., by permission of the author.
THE POWER AND THE GLORY by Charles W. Diffin.........................
57
Reprinted by permission of the author with arrangement through Ackerman
Fantasy Agency.
HE WALKED BY DAY by Julius Long.......................................................
63
Copyright, 1934, by the
Popular Fiction Publishing Company, for Weird
Tales magazine.
ORIGINAL SIN by S. Fowler Wright........................................................... 68
Copyright, 1950, by Arkham House for "Throne of Saturn." By permission
of the author.
THE THING THAT WALKED ON
THE WIND by August Derleth.. 74
Copyright, 1932, by The
Clayton Magazines, Inc.; copyright, 1945, by August Derleth for "Something Near." By permission of Arkham House.
RAIDERS OF THE UNIVERSES by Donald Wandrei............................
83
Copyright, 1932, by The
Clayton Magazines, Inc., for Astounding Stories Sept. 1932. By
permission of the author.
THE
HOUSE OF SHADOWS by Mary Elizabeth Counselman.............
98
Copyright, 1933, by the
Popular Fiction Publishing Company, for Weird Tales magazine.
THE SHIP OF SILENCE by Albert Richard Wetjen...............................
104
Copyright, 1932, by McCall Corporation.
THE STREET THAT WASN'T THERE
by Clifford Sima\ and Carl Jacobi 116
Copyright, 1941, by H-K
Publications, Inc., for Comet, 1941. By permission of Carl Jacobi and Clifford Simak,
avon fantasy reader no. 15 copyright, 1950, by avon novels, inc. printed in u.
s. a.
THE
LOVE-SLAVE AND THE SCIENTISTS
by Frank BelknapLong
Science has solved most of the problems of
daily living: housing, food, health. But what has been done to solve the
problems of the lonely, of the unloved? That seems to be a subject men of the
laboratories shy away from—it is surrounded by too many taboos. Yet surely they
could find an answer? Frank Belknap Long thinks there is an answer and in this
rather piquant story, he presents it. But he also sees another side—science may
have an answer, but will people stand for it? What if a misunderstood husband
finds a scientific solution to his problem, will the wife tolerate the
solution? Will a husband perceive the excellence of science's answer to the
lonely housewife's problem?
AY-BRONZED
and dripping, Gland Surgeon V67 emerged from the sun pool, and flicked die
water from his hair and eyebrows. Then he stooped, and thrust a sturdy,
muscular arm into the pale green water. The arm was seized by slim hands, and a
voice said: "Help me out, darling."
V67
raised from the water an adorable form. His face was aglow with boyish rapture
as he set it down beside him on the edge of the pool.
Mechanical
Companion GH8 looked up at him. Her lips were parted in a smile, and the disk
in her bosom said: "It is lovely up here in the sun. Kiss me,
darling."
V67 bent, and implanted a fervent, lingering
kiss on the soft, pneumatic lips of Mechanical Companion GH8. GH8 sighed, and her arms crept about the
dripping shoulders of her very human and warm-blooded escort.
For
a moment they embraced in silence. Then V67 gently untangled her arms, and
asked: "Cold, my sweet?"
Mechanical
Companion GH8 said nothing. The disk was exhausted. V67 debated for a moment
with himself. Supervisor of Emotion T74 had supplied Companion GH8 with only
one reply disk. He knew that if he rewound the record mechanism and set GH8
back in the pool she would swim and splash about and begin to talk to him
again. But he was by no means certain that the glamor
and enchantment would survive a second trial. Besides, there was a chill wind blowing, and his flesh was breaking out in goose-pimples.
3
With infinite tenderness he bent and lifted
the fragile rubber form of Mechanical Companion GH8 from the gleaming, metallic
margin of the pool. He had been compelled to time his questions so that they
would accord with the answer intervals on the disk, but now he could talk to
her more freely, and still preserve an illusion of reality.
Murmuring
endearments he carried her across the sky garden and set her gently down in one
of the racks which the Supervisor of Emotion had provided for exhausted
companions. For a moment he stood gazing down at her with glowing eyes. Then,
abruptly, he turned, and strode to the vacuum chute.
Three
other men were waiting to enter the chute. One of them, a thin, ascetic-looking individual in striped swimming-shorts, was an
associate of V67's at the Gland Surgery. V67 greeted him with upraised palm.
"Mechanical
Companion GH8 was glorious," he said. "No man would want to divorce his wife these days. I was getting frightfully bored and
despondent, but GH8 has corrected all that. Don't you like the Companions,
J78?"
The
man in shorts shook his head. "If I had my way these recreational gardens
would be abolished," he said. "We are becoming a race of self-indulgent
flat-fish. I like the pools here, and the squash-ball courts, but the Companions
are utterly pernicious."
V67
frowned. "You need a gland injection, 178," he said. "A shot of adrenalin and perhaps a little thyroid. You
talk like a Twentieth Century puritan."
J78
grunted. "And you behave like a perfect sybarite," he said. "It
is a good thing we are not living in the Twentieth Century. Or even in the
Twenty-first. The ancient moralists would have put you in a lethal
chamber."
V67 laughed. "I'm not
as bad as you think, J78," he said.
J78 grunted again.
One
of the waiting men heaved himself up to the aluminum slide at the pinnacle of
the vacuum chute and relaxed with a contented
sigh. His weight caused the slide to tilt slightly. As he vanished from sight
V67 said: "Do you mind if I go next? I'm ten minutes overdue at the
surgery."
J78 and the other man
nodded.
With a brisk, athletic leap V67 surmounted
the slide and settled his long limbs in a reposeful attitude. Immediately the
slide tilted, and released him. For an instant the soft blue sky above the sky
garden was visible to his upturned gaze. Then it dimmed and vanished. A faint
droning arose from the depths beneath, and a thick blanket of darkness settled
about him.
He was soon speeding with a terrific velocity
in a vertical direction. The chute was an almost
perfect vacuum and he was compelled to hold his breath as the miles beneath him
telescoped into a thrumming spatial porridge. The thrumming came from the
pounding blood in his ears.
As
he fell, his mind became a kaleidoscopic canvas. Something in the swift rhythms
of the descent generated a mental attitude akin to slumber. As in a dream of
infinite magnitude and brief duration his mind surged in the blackness.
4
In visual splendor he beheld a vivid panorama of Mechanical Companions dancing, racing and swimming for
the edification of tired and despondent husbands. Their lithe, graceful bodies
glistened in the screen-filtered sunlight on the flower-garlanded roof-tops of Cosmopolis.
Another
vision flashed across his mind. He saw the Divorce Bureaus in the Fifth Level kiosks, saw the crowded booths and the rapidly growing
mountains of writs and petitions. He saw the long, long files of hopeless
women, the wan clerks, and—chief objects of pity—the bored and dispirited
husbands.
It was a vision of the past. As V67 sped downward in the darkness the
gloomy and depressing picture was replaced by a verbal hallucination. V67
distinctly heard the Dictator of Emotional Arts affirm: "The normal male
will at times fervently crave the solace of a new face, and mysterious, unknown
hands upon his brow. 'The wonder and enticement of a strange
woman.' You
are all familiar with the phrase. But if this antisocial urge could be
surmounted
as soon as it arises, in a way that would not provoke jealousy, and that
would----- "
The voice droned on, became confused and indistinct.
V67
had another blinding vision of the sky gardens and their lithe-limbed and
rhythmically moving dispensers of solace. It was a joy to reflect that Mechanical Companions were already in attendance in
thirty-three of Cosmopolis' sky gardens. The vogue,
introduced at the beginning of the year 5678, was spreading like wildfire, and
would undoubtedly tend to preserve and glorify the time-honored institution of
monogamous marriage. No sensible wife could be jealous of a mechanical, pneumatic leisure-hour companion. It was the beginning of a
new dawn in the emotional lives of thousands of husbands, and V67 had no
misgivings as slowly from amidst the congeries of racing, dancing forms a lovely face wreathed in silver talc emerged, and. usurped his vision. He
saw again the enticing pneumatic lips of his own dear Mechanical Companion GH8,
and heard her whisper: "It is glorious here in the sun. Are you happy, my
darling?"
Metallic
arms crept about him in the darkness, and the droning became a roar as of
cyclopean dynamos.
The
white-aproned street sanitationists
of Level TG assisted him from the basal slide at the circular lower exit to
Vacuum Chute H65. As he arose in the incandescent light the jointed basal slide
shot upward. It would contact his associate J78 a thousand feet above the exit,
and carry him downward in its mechanical arms.
V67
did not wait for his associate to arrive. He did not like J78. The man was a prig and a hypocrite. Striding rapidly along the pressed resovin pavement of Level TG he drew the spice-scented air
deep into his lungs and exhaled with zest.
Ordinarily
he shunned drugs. The mild intoxication produced by the health-air which
circulated freely on Level TG, and the other non-recreational levels, was all
the stimulation he needed. On this occasion, however, he extracted a small bluish vial from his upper tunic pocket, and poured upon his palm
six grains of astravasin.
Astravasin deadened and dissipated the softer emotions,
and stimulated
5
cold, scientific zeal. It was more favored by women than men,
but V67 found it occasionally beneficial. He had sufficient
virility to dismiss as irrelevant the conventional sneers
which were directed against the male astravasin
users.
He
snuffed the drug into his nostrils and accelerated his pace. He was facing a trying ordeal. The patient awaiting him in the Gland Surgery was a victim of a hideous maladjustment of secretions. The
wretch had actually reverted to the mores of the jungle, and killed his wife in
a fit of jealous rage.
To
steady his perspective, V67 walked to the edge of the pavement and looked down
into the abyss beneath him. Far below, the outer extremities of the lower level
platforms abutted above the great central artery of Cosmopolis.
Down, down he stared, past the projecting tiers and platforms, past the
laboratory levels and the industrial levels and the agrarian levels till his
gaze rested on the cyclopean turbines five miles below.
A vertigo swept over him. He withdrew his gaze and
walked on. Level TG was a running tier of laboratories. At intervals of fifty
feet, circular doors opened in the resovin facade
that ran the length of the entire cityward wall of
the level. They were surmounted by blue-litten
classification plates bearing labels in radiumite
script. He passed the Skin and Exoskeleton Correctional Laboratory, the
Sympathetic System Clinic, the Muscle and Nerve Surgery, the Epithelial and
Glandular Tissue Laboratory, and the Tumor Removal Center. There was a long
line of patients waiting to enter the Removal Center.
V67
shivered inwardly. He did not like to think about cancer. It was a major blight—the one appalling malady that had successfully defied the
medical innovations of fifty centuries. A quarter of the population was
afflicted with malignant tumors of one sort or another. The Health Supervisors
affirmed that the malady was directly traceable to over-indulgence in electric
baths and cosmic-ray rejuvenators, but V67 was
skeptical of their glib and facile explanations.
He met several co-workers as he progressed
toward the surgery. Bio-chemist H43, grave and severe in his india-rubber frock, greeted him with upraised palm as he
emerged from Bio-chemical Clinic R66, and T52 saluted him from the edge of the
pavement. He passed quickly by K99, L90 and W43.
"How is your
wife?" asked W43.
V67
said: "Very well, thanks," and experienced a momentary qualm. It was absurd, of course. In adoring Mechanical Companion GH8 he had
adhered to a highly moral conduct pattern. His wife could not possibly resent
his attentions to an artificial woman. The Dictator of Emotional Arts had
proclaimed after extensive research and experimentation that no normal wife could be jealous of a Mechanical Companion. Jealousy was a disease anyway— a
pathological reversion to a primitive level of thought and feeling—but even
when it did arise, its malignant shafts were directed against flesh-and-blood
realities. The Dictator of Emotional Arts was a man of vast erudition, and V67
was content to abide by his decision.
V67
was now abreast of the Gland Surgery. Turning in at the bulb-surmounted
entrance he passed quickly down a long, blue-lit corridor, and nodded to the
attendant at the door of the operating-room.
6
"F56 has just been asking for you,"
said the attendant. "Your patient isn't standing it very well."
V67
nodded gravely. He was conscious of an intense cerebral curiosity, but sympathy
and compassion were alien to his mood. The astravasin
was circulating freely in his blood-stream. With ceremonious precisionAe removed his tunic and asked the attendant for
his antiseptic suit and mask.
The
attendant opened a numbered drawer in a metal cabinet at his elbow, and handed
V67 a folded rubber garment and a black
surgical mask.
The
mask was a cumbersome contrivance that went completely over his head. It had
eyeholes of violet glass, and a long, twisted breathing-tube that terminated in
a square metallic box in the region of the wearer's navel. In appearance it was
strikingly like the Western European gas masks of the World Wars of 1914, 1936,
1967 and 1987 in the primitive artifacts wing of the Museum of Historical
Antiquities on Level K97.
Having
adjusted the mask and pulled the thin rubber antiseptic garment up over his
shoulders, V67 nodded to the attendant and passed into the operating-room.
The
operating-room was bathed in a diffused purple light. It was heavily
impregnated with hylofoam, that powerful and
dangerous anesthetic which exerted a numbing influence on the lower nerve
centers, leaving them almost insensible to pain and yet with sufficient
vitality to relay messages to the brain and spinal cord. Its action was
insidious and curious. It entered the bloodstream by absorption through lungs
and skin, and altered the vitalistic content of
individual cells in every organ and tissue of the human body. Invented in the
Twenty-third Century, it had displaced all the cruder anesthetics of an earlier
age.
It
had one disadvantage: it did not completely do away with pain. But as the
victim of its fumes remained in full possession of his faculties and could even
discourse rationally with his dissectors, the surgical workers who refused to
countenance its use were branded as Twentieth Century sentimentalists, or
worse.
V67
walked slowly across the vast, dome-ceilinged operating-room in the direction
of Table 4R6. He breathed deeply of the pure oxygen which circulated beneath
his antiseptic mask, and stopped occasionally to greet associates as he passed
between the long tiers of tables. Three hundred and twenty-four operations were
in progress.
Some
of his associates were selecting and arranging their^ instruments, others were
actually at work on the glands of their human subjects, and a few were busy rectifying blunders, or
guarding against future mistakes by dissecting the dead.
When
he arrived at Table 4R6 the tall form of Gland Surgeon F56 arose from a
stooping posture, laid down a gleaming metallic instrument, and advanced to
greet him: "You're ten minutes late," he said reproachfully, through
the audition tube in the lower left-hand corner of his mask. "You \now I'm too nervous to work past my schedule. My nerves are all shot. Why
didn't you relieve me?"
"I'm sorry, F56," said V67. "I
was sun-bathing in a sky garden, and you
7
know how exacting the new Companions are. You'd better take a shot of
adrenalin before you leave."
He paused an
instant, then asked: "How's the patient?"
F56
lowered his head. "He's lost consciousness," he said. "He's
horribly over-emotional, I'm afraid."
"I should think he would be!"
exclaimed V67. "A man jealous enough to subject his wife to an atomic
bombardment just because she exchanged five-minute kisses with a turbine
mechanic is mighty shabby human material."
"Jealousy
is a revolting disease," affirmed F56. "A
superstitious, utterly illogical hang-over from the ages of savagery.
That man is actually living in the Twentieth Century."
"All
strong emotion is pathological," assented V67
gravely. He was conscious that he was reaffirming a truism, but he had to say
something to ease the tension. F56 was obviously worried about the man on the
table. He had lost four cases in as many weeks, and the Chief of Staff was
beginning to regard him with suspicion. If the suspicion became a certainty the
Chief of Staff might conceivably decide that F56's place was where his patient
was now lying. It was a contingency which F56 didn't like to think about. He
loved the full, abundant life which his slightly unstable glands afforded him.
V67,
despite the astravasin in his blood-stream, could
sympathize with this very human weakness of his associate. He was himself
slightly unstable. Mechanical Companion GH8 could bear witness to that.
Gripping
his associate by the shoulder, he murmured reassuringly: "Don't worry,
F56. I'll bring him out of it."
"Thanks, old man," said F56.
His gait was slightly unsteady as he turned
from the table and made his way slowly across the vast domed room.
With
a sigh V67 moved forward, and stood for a moment staring intently down at the
white, haggard face of the man on the table. The subject was young, and
physically robust. The surgeons of an earlier and less remorseless age would
have shuddered at the way V67's associate had taken advantage of that
robustness. There was only a small area of firm flesh remaining.
V67 did not shudder. The man on the table had
been guilty of an anti-social act, and society insisted, as it had every right
to do, upon a surgical corrective. The man had deliberately reduced his wife to
an inert mass of gray ash by bombarding her with an atomic disintegrator. Men
who succumbed to violent emotions were a menace to the peace and well-being of
the Corporate Commonwealth. The surgeons of Cosmopolis
were the benevolent masters, the therapeutic overlords of anti-social bodies.
V67 dipped his fingers into a bowl of ammonium vapor, and rubbed them across
the young man's brow.
Slowly,
unsteadily, the patient's eyelids flicked open. For a moment he stared up in
dazed bewilderment at his new benefactor.
Conquering his disgust and
enmity, V67 said: "How do you feel now, boy?"
The
young man's eyes showed an awareness of pain. He essayed a twisted smile.
"I feel pretty rotten," he said. "How long is it going to take,
Surgeon?"
"Not
long," said V67. "Not long, boy. We've removed a portion of your
thyroid and right lobe pituitary, and •-'it away practically all of your
adrenal
8
cortex. A few stitches, and we'll be finished. I
rather suspect that psychopaths will find that you will not require any mental
reconditioning. The jealousy spasm was purely glandular."
"You
mean, I wouldn't have—have disintegrated her if my glands had been
normal?" asked the youth. His facial muscles contracted pitifully as he
spoke.
V67
was busy with his surgical dressing. He nodded sadly as he sewed and kneaded
the lacerated tissues into a semblance of normality. "I'm afraid the
glands were at the root of all your troubles, boy," he said. "Your
parental supervisors should have corrected the maladjustment in childhood."
"But
several thousand years ago men often killed their wives," said the youth.
"Several thousand years ago men murdered
one another on a wholesale scale
in hideous blood-letting contests," said V67. "They had no control
whatever.
You can not justify your conduct by exalting the
primitive, my lad. If our
race has raised itself above the level of the jungle it has done so only by a
long
process of selective mating. When the eugenists of
the Twenty-second Century
started selecting stocks on a glandular basis they--- "
"Were blind!" interrupted the
youth, in desperation. "Blind, I tell you.
War was awful, but love------ "
V67 shrugged. "We still love," he
said.
The youth's face twisted in a grimace.
"You think you do," he said.
"We
have overcome certain crude and violent prejudices, that is
all," said V67 calmly. He wished the young man would not talk so much. His
ceaseless, primitive chatter unnerved him, despite the astravasin
in his blood-stream.
He
did not realize that the young man was talking to keep up his courage. It was
not so much the pain that the young man dreaded. He dreaded the thought that he
would become like his benefactor—high-minded, impartial and serene.
But
there was nothing the young man could do. He was bound and helpless. He would
be turned into a cool, impersonal cog in the vast mechanism of the Corporate
State. "Curse them!" he muttered, in jungle fury. "Curse them
all!"
His
resentment was short-lived. The excess glandular secretions were ceasing to
stimulate his brain even as he spoke. With the glands removed, the remaining
hormones became mild aids to normality instead of goads to anti-social action.
For
exactly forty-five minutes V67 labored with painstaking care. Then he
straightened, dipped his instruments in a basin of pale blue antiseptic, and
drew a thin sheet of transparent rubber over the breast and limbs of his
patient.
"You'll
be all right now," he said. "I'll prescribe a cathartic, and your
digestion will be checked by the dietician."
The
youth's eyes were melancholy, and resigned. "Thank you, Surgeon," he
said.
Ten minutes later V67 was standing before a
vacuum chute in the Release Corridor of Level TG. He was very tired. His work
was exacting and arduous, and the unstable portions of bss
personality were in mild revolt. It was
9
really unjust that he should be compelled to devote
five hours a week to social labor, he told himself. It was his conviction that
with a more equitable distribution of leisure and a more rigidly planned
economy the work quotas could be substantially reduced.
"Your
turn, V67," said an impatient, red-haired bio-chemist on the opposite side
of the chute.
V67
nodded, climbed up and relaxed on the broad, unstable slide. The slide tilted
and released him. He thought of many things as he shot downward in the
darkness. The faces of Mechanical Companion GH8 and his wife vied for supremacy
in his mind. Eventually they merged into a single image, and he sighed in rapture.
It
was a mystical ideal he beheld now—the composite of all feminine loveliness.
Mechanical Companion GH8 was simply another aspect of his wife's personality.
It was absurd to imagine that the concept woman did not embrace a variety of lovely forms. Individual women
were merely facets, isolated aspects of one eternal and glorious reality—the
feminine principle, imperishable, mysterious and sublime.
"My
own sweet wife and dear companion," he murmured, in mystical adoration.
Down,
down he swept. The blood throbbed in his temples, his pulses ached. Finally a
droning began and he felt something collide with his nether extremities. Then
the steel-cold arms of the jointed basal slide crept about him, and his
consciousness reverted to a more practical level.
He
emerged in a glare of incandescence. The sun-simulating arc lamps which lined
the cityward wall of Suburban Home Level RH shone
down upon him in radiant splendor, and a tempered
buoyancy came upon him as he climbed from the slide and turned his steps in the
direction of his suburban home.
He
hoped that his wife had heard no disquieting rumors. The sky gardens were far
removed, both spatially and spiritually, from the quiet haven of his home. As
he walked between the cyclopean tiers of potted shrubs, the great domed
aquariums with their myriads of brilliant-hued and exotic fishes and
crustaceans, and felt upon his brow the warm sea breezes still redolent with
the spices of far islands and archipelagoes as they emerged from hundreds of
swinging odorphones, a look of supreme contentment
came into his face.
So
rapidly did he walk that he traversed the distance between the chute exit and
the portals of his suburban home without meeting anyone. Stepping into the
vacuum lift he was whirled up fifty-five stories, and emerged in the community
corridor adjoining his wife's quarters.
The
corridor was deserted. He was glad of this, for he did not wish to talk to dull
and gossipy B54, or exuberant and boisterous C88, or any of the other tenants
of Story 55.
As
he tiptoed across the floor to the door of his wife's television room a great
joy came upon him. He felt confident that she would be sitting relaxed in the
darkness, enjoying an African or Asian telqlog. He
would steal up behind her and implant a fifteen-second kiss on the nape of her
neck, immediately beneath the two blond curls which intertwined so adorably
below her coiffure.
He laid his hand on the door and drew it
outward. The television room was in darkness as he had anticipated, and his
wife was clearly visible from the doorway. Clearly visible, and leaning on the
shoulder of another man!
As
his gaze swept the room he felt his flesh go suddenly cold. It was an optical
illusion, of course—a mad, cruel hallucination caused by the astravasin in his blood-stream.
Yet
his wife was actually whispering
in the darkness as she
stroked the dark, curly hair of the other man. Her head rested on his right
shoulder, and he was crushing her hand in his long, virile fingers.
"My dear, my darling," she
whispered. "You
understand me."
"It is glorious here in the darkness,"
said her companion.
Somehow
the grave, mechanical tones of the speaker's voice seemed vaguely unnatural.
V67 had no clear notion at first as to the cause of this. He simply stood
trembling in the doorway, resisting the evidence of his senses, and telling
himself over and over that it was the astravasin, the
astravasin. The drug soothed at first, but later it
heightened and distorted the perceptions of sense. What he saw was surely
nothing more than a visual illusion, the figments of a drug-fevered brain.
The
attempt at evasion was tragically short-lived. Slowly, insidiously, the truth
crept upon him, and he was shaken to the core of his being by the sickening
realization that his wife had succumbed to the flatteries of that newest of
fads and abominations—the sirupy-voiced male
Mechanical Companion!
The
horror of it was more than he could sanely endure. With an oath he slammed the
door shut, and strode fiercely into the room.
His
wife turned about, and screamed. Without uttering a word V67 lifted the
Companion into the air and brought him down with violence on the tempered steel
floor of the television room.
There
ensued a crash. Something tinkled in the mannikin's
chest, and a small revolving wheel emerged from a twisted sleeve, and rolled
diagonally across the floor. With a curse V67 picked the detestable creature
up, and hurled him across the room. Never in his life had he experienced such
primitive, unregenerate wrath.
The
Companion collided with the opposite wall and sank limply to the floor. As his
head contacted the hard steel the record in his breast said: "Your husband
does not esteem you as I do. I see you enwreathed in roses, bedewed in mists of
glory. Your lips are like a lotus-flower, and the touch of your hand is a
healing benison. When you are beside me the moon's splendor is enhanced
tenfold, and all the stars of heaven sing for me."
V67
turned slowly about. His wife was shrinking white-faced against the base of the
television screen.
"So
you console yourself with a gigolo in my absence!" he cried, his lips
livid with wrath.
"A gig—gig----- "
stammered his wife, in a frightened whisper.
V67
cursed his wife's lack of erudition. "The new male Companions are exactly
like the abominable gigolos of the ancient world," he muttered fiercely.
"A more despicable type of parasite never existed."
11
"But the Dictator of Emotion has
announced that Mechanical Companions are perfectly respectable," pleaded
his wife, in desperation.
V67
looked at her. His eyes were destitute of compassion. "He was speaking of
the female Companions," he said. "That sort of thing is all right for
a man."
"It's
a strange rule that doesn't work both ways," said the wife, in a
despairing tone.
Brutal
and primitive passions were flooding V67 in waves. Something loathsome and
aberrant in his nature surged to the surface, and for a moment he felt an
impulse to strike his wife—actually to strike her—with the flat of his hand.
The impulse generated its own negation. Man
is not built to cross the humanizing gulf of forty centuries and revert to the
savagery of a dead world without experiencing an overwhelming reaction. No
sooner had V67 experienced the detestable emotion than a great shame and horror
came upon him. He sank into a chair, and covered his face with his hand.
Compassionately
his wife rose and crossed to where he was sitting. Slipping to the floor beside
him, she rested her blond, talc-wreathed head against his right knee.
"My poor darling," she whispered.
"Do you imagine for a moment that
he has taken your place in my affections? Why, he is a mere mechanical toy,
an amusing diversion. Even if he does talk divinely of moonlight and roses
he is, in essence, nothing but a gadget. I was lonely, and horribly unhappy,
and I wanted to make you jealous. But if you will give up that creature-- "
V67
was silent for a moment. Then his hand descended, and caressed his wife's
coiffure. As the flimsy adornment slipped between his fingers he said:
"You are right, my sweet. Tomorrow I shall ask Supervisor of Emotion T74
to give me permission to dismantle Mechanical Companion GH8. You will doubtless
be relieved when the bosom records are destroyed, and the tender, individual
nuances of her face, throat and limbs cease to exist as parts of an illusionary
whole."
His
wife looked up at him. She thought: "He will give up. Mechanical Companion
GH8 for my sake, but he still loves her. He is going to dismantle her because
he can not bear the thought of surrendering her to
another. In his sight she will always remain as young and lovely and
inaccessible as the figures on a Grecian urn. How did the ancient poet phrase
it?
"She can not fade, though thou hast not thy bliss. For ever wilt
thou love, and she be fair.
"I shall have a real rival now."
There
was a far-away look in V67's eyes as he continued, tenderly, to caress his
wife's silver coiffure.
a
plainingly, through the grasses, and through the fallen
creepers, wine-colored and gold.
There
were these, and something else. There was a shadow on the island: the loom of a strange and eerie story but half-told.
Rafferty's
Luck had not failed from the usual causes—not altogether, that is. It had gone
through the common history of little, remote mines; supposed at first to be
very rich in copper, it had turned out to be a mere pocket, with a problematical
vein behind it, that might or might not be worth developing when found.
It
had been worked by the partners—there were three—in turns. The island was far
out of the track of ships; it had been visited accidentally, by a shipwrecked
crew. Three of these had found the copper, and kept silence; and later on, two
had gone up to work it.
They
had worked it, won enough ore for a good show, and waited confidently for the
returning boat. But—when it came, it found only one man. The other had killed
himself. Without any reason, he had cut his throat.
The
third man took his place, and arranged, as before, that a passing schooner
should call. It called within a few days, arid found one man. The other,
without any reason, had leaped over a precipice,
and died.
Upon
this, the third went away, and stayed so long that the mine— which was on
British territory, and under mining-laws—had nearly been forfeited. At the last
moment the men now interested in it got me to go and hold the place, while the
third partner went to London for capital.
They
were candid enough—they told me that the island was under a shadow; and when I
asked just what they meant, they said: "Exactly that. Rafferty and
Wilder" (the two who had died) "both said something about
shadows."
"What?" I asked.
"Nothing that anybody could understand. Rafferty had cut almost through his
windpipe, and Wilder's face was smashed in by the fall. As like as not,"
went on the third partner,—France was his name,—"as like as not, drink had
something to do with it; they were neither of them sober men."
"But you are—and you didn't come to any
sort of grief?"
"I am—and I didn't."
"Yet you don't feel like staying. You
only had a few days of it."
"Haven't I told you I must go and scare
up some cash? Are you on, or not?"
"I am on," I said.
"Good. A man with an M.C. and a D.C.M.
like you—"
"Hang
the M.C. and the D.C.M. I'm going because I'm broke, and because I want to know
what it's like to be really alone As for your shadows, they won't make me jump over
cliffs. I take one spot after sundown, never more."
"Good,"
said France again. He looked at me as if it was in his mind to say something
more, but whatever the thing was, he kept it back. . . . "About the
journey," he continued. . . .
Six
weeks later I was left at Cave Island by a whaleboat—the last step in a decline
that began with an ocean liner, continued through inter-island
14
schooners and trading ketches, and ended in the last ketch's boat, sent off to ferry me through a network of reefs too dangerous for any sizable
ship.
"If
there is payable ore here," I thought,
"small wonder it's been overlooked; God-forsaken and Satan-protected the
place is, and out of the way of the world!" And I began to wonder, as the whaleboat stemmed green shallows, making for the
hummocky deserted bay that stretched beyond, whether I had done well. I am from Clare; I have seen the dread sea-walls of Moher, and felt, on their high crowns, the "send"
of that unknown evil that men of Ireland, for the confounding of strangers,
chose to personify as the frightful Phooka.
"This too is an evil place," I thought, and on that account, I said a small prayer. Now mind you, it was well done, as you shall
afterwards know.
Then
we beached, and began unloading my gear; and I was too busy with that, and with
carrying most of it up to the bungalow, before dark should fall, to think of
anything else. By and by the boat was back at the ship's side, a long way out,
and the ship had made sail, and when I looked at her, in the last of the light,
and saw her fading away like a ghost that has given its message, and goes back
to its tomb, I knew that I was indeed alone—pressed down and running over, I
had my wish!
After
a day or two, I began to wonder what all the trouble was about,
if indeed there had ever been any trouble except drink and the consequences of
it. Cave Island was a windy spot, as I have said; not very large or long, only
a mile or two at biggest, it was
swept by all the winds that blow across the immense, lonely spaces of the
central Pacific
world, where almost no land
is. In the mornings and at nights it was cool;
during the day nothing but the wind saved it from most torrid heat. It was a
barren place, and full of stones, some of them black and spongy and as
big as houses. There was coarse grass, that never seemed to be still, almost as
if things unseen ran under it, and kept it moving
even in a calm. There were a few flowers that Rafferty
had planted in his time, and there was the iron bungalow, and a storing shed,
and a shaft with bucket and windlass dangling over, and tools abandoned by the
side. For the rest, there was the sun wheeling over the island, at night the
myriad unpitying stars, and always sea and sea. So lonely it was,
that you could hear yourself breathe; out of the wind, you could listen to your
heart beating. When you got up in the morning you took the burden of yourself
upon your shoulders, and carried it, growing heavier and heavier, all day; even
at night, it was with you in your dreams. Yet I liked this, as one likes all
strong, violent experience. Solitude is violent; it is delicious, it is hateful; and as surely as a snake unwatched can strike,
so it can maim or kill. . . .
What do you know, you who think that solitude
is a locked room in a city, or a garden with the neighbors shut away?
A
week or so went past. Every day I went to the workings, did a job with pick and shovel; wrote in my diary what I had done, and for the rest, was free. I liked to be free. Not since the war—and certainly not in it— had I been my own man; if I was
not filling one of the blind-alley jobs that
15
confront the untrained, hardly educated man of near
forty, I was harder at work than ever, hunting
another.
But
if I was free, I was not at ease. I could see, after the first few days, that there was not much in the
mine—worse, that there was never likely to be. I had worked copper before, and
I judged that the worst of it was better than the best of this, once the
surface show had been removed. In fact, it was nothing but a pocket. And how
was a mere pocket going to give me a brick bungalow with an arched veranda, in Bondi or Coogee, and a garden behind
it and a little touring-car, and a tobacconist's business somewhere near the
surf beaches, to keep all going; and in the garden, behind the window-panes of
the bungalow, in a long chair on the veranda, at the wheel of the car, or
swimming brown and bonny through the surf—always there, in my heart and in my
life, the girl of my hopeless dreams.
No,
I had not told France all the truth. He is a good fellow, but one does not give
him confidences. Being broke was nothing new to me; being alone, the spice of
it, the strangeness, I could have done without. But Rafferty's Luck offered the
one and only chance I had of making my dream come true, and I would have taken
it if it had led halfway to hell.
Instead, it seemed to lead to nothing.
I
was so disappointed, so sore against France—whom I now perceived to be engaged
in the familiar trick of unloading a hopeless venture upon a public too far
away to understand—that I set my teeth, and resolved to hunt the island from
coast to coast—to comb it through for a better show, and if found, to take that
show myself. I don't know that this was moral; I only know I was prepared to do
it.
By
this time, I had forgotten all about the "shadow," and the suicides.
Men who have roughed it, who own little, are not particularly shocked at
suicide, or sudden death of any kind. You must have much to lose before you
shudder at the passing breath of the storm that has swept another from his hold
on life, and that will one day sweep you too.
So I did not think about Rafferty, or about
Wilder—until the day when I found the cave; and after that it all began.
I had been prospecting over the summit of the
island, without much success. On this day, I went down to the beach, and began
patiently to circle the whole place, resolving, literally, to leave no stone
unturned in the search for something better than Rafferty's Luck. It takes
longer to walk all around an island than you'd think, even if the island is no
more than a mile or two across. I spent all day upon the job, eating a biscuit
for dinner, and drinking, once or twice, from the little streams that ran out
of the crevices. If any of them had tasted ill I should have been glad; but
they were all fresh as milk, no tinge of metal in them.
Toward sunset I came upon something that I hadn't noticed before—a cave. It was at the foot of an immense wall of
rock; you could not have seen it from above, and the only way of reaching it
was the way by which I had come, a painful climb along the narrow glacis of
stones on the windward side. The beach and the anchorage were of course on the
lee side.
16
Ships wouldn't, for their lives, come up to
windward; I was therefore almost sure that nobody, save myself,
had seen or visited the cave.
That
pleased me—you know how it is. I was
glad that I had brought my torch with me—a costly big five-cell, like a
searchlight, that She had sent me when I sailed; she hadn't sixpence to rub
against sixpence, but she would have given her head away—and so would I; that
was why we both were poor, and likely to remain so. . . .
I
had a good look at the cave. It was very high; seventy or eighty feet at least.
It was not quite so wide, but it seemed to run a good way back. The cold stream
of wind that came out of it had a curious smell; I could not describe it to
myself, otherwise than by saying that the smell seemed very old. I stood in the
archway, in that stream of slightly tainted wind, examining the rocks about
the mouth of the cave. There was not much daylight left now, but I could see,
plainly enough, that here was small hope of a better find. I kept the torch in my hand as I went on into the interior
of the cave; time enough, I thought, to turn it on when I had to; there were no
spare batteries on the island.
By
and by I began to go backwards; that is, I went on a little way, and then
turned to look at the ground I had passed, lit up by the stream of light from
the entrance. Coral, old and crumbling underfoot; limestone; a vein of
conglomerate. Nowhere any sign of what I sought. It was getting darker; the
cave, arching high above me, seemed to veer a little to one side, and the long
slip of blue daylight was almost gone. Now, with half-a-dozen steps, I lost it altogether; I stood in complete darkness, with the cool wind
streaming about me, and that strange, aged smell, now decidedly stronger.
"Time
for the light," I thought. Something made me swallow in my throat, made me
press my foremost foot tight to the ground, because it seemed1,
oddly enough, to have developed a will
of its own; it wanted to move back, and the backward foot wanted to swing on
its toe and turn round. ... I will swear I was not afraid—but somehow my feet were.
I snapped on the light, and swung it ahead. It
showed a narrow range of rock wall on each side; a block of velvet darkness
ahead, and in the midst of the darkness, low down, two circles of shining
bluish green. Eyes—but what eyes! They were the size of dinner-plates! They did
not move, they only looked; and I was
entirely sure that they saw me. If they had been high up, I do not think I should have minded them—much. But they were, as I have
said1, low down, and that was somehow horrible. Lurking.
Treacherous. . . .
I
had shot crocodiles by night, discovering them exacdy
as I had discovered this unnamed monster, by the shine of their eyes in
torchlight. But I had had a sporting-rifle to do it with, and knew what I was
shooting at. Now I was totally unarmed; the futile shotgun I had brought with
me for stray pot-hunting, was up at the bungalow. I
had not the vaguest idea what this creature might be, but I knew what was the only thing to do under the circumstances, and I
did it: I ran away.
Nothing
stirred. Nothing followed me. When I reached the outer arch of the cave, all
glorious with sea and sunset, there was not a sound anywhere but the lifting
crash and send of the waves upon the broken beach.
I stood for a moment looking at the
magnificent sky that paled and darkened while one could quickly have counted a
hundred. "I shall have to come back," was my thought, "with a
charge of dynamite, and a bit of fuse. Shotgun just as much use as a
pea-shooter." I told myself these things, but now that I was out of the
cave, I could not for the life of me believe in what
I had seen. "It wasn't the sort of smell it ought to have been," I
said aloud weakly, and kicked the stones about aimlessly with my foot.
Something rolled. I looked at it, and it was a skull.
"Peter
Riordan," I said, "this is not your lucky day." And I picked up
the skull. There were bones with it, all loose and lying about. "I can
make a guess what happened to Mr. Bones!" I said, peering through swiftly
falling twilight at the skull. It was like a shock of cold water to see that it
was old beyond computing—almost fossilized, dark and mossy with the passage of
incalculable time. As for the bones, they crackled like pie-crust when I put my
foot on them. I could see where they had fallen out of the rock; they must have
lain there buried, for a long time.
"I
don't understand," I thought. "Things
don't fit together. This is a hell of an island." It seemed good to me to
climb the cliff as fast as I could,
making for the solid walls of the bungalow, and leaving behind me in the inhospitable
twilight those queer bones now unburied, and the cave, and the immense green
eyes that did not move.
The
bungalow was a good way off; in order to reach it, I had to cross the empty
rolling downs on the top of the island, with their long grass that never was
still, and their heaps of hummocks of black stone. By this time it was so late
that I could only see the stones as lumps of indefinite darkness. Some of them
were big even by daylight; by night they looked immense. They were queerly
shaped, too; once, when I paused to get breath (for I can assure you I was
going hard) I noticed that the biggest one in sight looked exactly like the
rounded hind-quarters of an elephant, only no elephant ever was so big.
I
leaned against a boulder, and mopped my face. There was a rather warm wind
blowing; it brought with it the sort of scents that one expects by night —the
dark-green smell of grass wet with dew, the curious singeing odor of baked
stones gradually giving out their heat, little sharp smells of rat and iguana,
out hunting. And something
else. . . .
"Peter
Riordan," I said, "you quit imagining things that aren't there.
Rafferty did, and Wilder did." And I propped
myself against the stone, and took out a cigarette.
It
was never lighted. Just as I was feeling in my matchbox, I looked at the giant
boulder again, and as I hope for heaven, I saw it walk away. That is, it did
not walk—it hobbled, lurching against the sky.
For
obvious reasons I didn't light the cigarette, but I put it into my mouth, and
chewed it; that was better than pothing. "We
aren't going to be stampeded," I said (but noiselessly, you may believe).
"We are going to see this through." And, being as wise as I was
brave—perhaps a little wiser—I got inside a sort of pill-box of loose stones,
and peered out through the openings. By this time it was as dark as the inside
of a cow; you could only see stars
18 and stars, and the ink-black blots made
against them by one thing and another. And the great black thing that wasn't a
boulder, and wasn't an elephant, went lurching and lumbering, smashing through
Orion, wiping Scorpio of! the sky, putting out the
Pointers where the Cross was waiting to come up; it seemed to swing all over
the universe. "It's chasing something," I thought.
It
was. One could see it tack and turn with incredible swiftness, swinging behind
it something that might have been legs and might have been a tail. Clearly, it
was hunting, like the rats and the iguanas, and now I could see—• or thought I
could see—the thing it hunted: Something very small, compared with the
enormous bulk of the beast; something that dodged in and out of the stones,
running for its life. A little, upright thing with a round head, that scuttled
madly, squeaked as it ran.
Or
had I fancied the squeak? The whole amazing drama was so silent that I could
not be sure. It seemed to me that if there had been a cry, a queer thin cry, I
had heard it inside my head, not outside. I can't explain more clearly, but
there are those who will understand. At any rate, I was sure the thing had
cried, and that it had cause. The end was approaching.
There
was another frantic doubling, another swing around of the immense hobbling
beast, and then the little creature simply was not—and the enormous shadow had
swept to the edge of the cliff and over, and was gone.
I
felt my forehead wet. My breath was coming as quickly as if it had been I who had squeaked and doubled there, out among the
night-black grasses and the stones. . . . The shadow! They who died had seen shadows.
"But,"
I found myself saying argumentatively, to the silent stars, "I am real,
and that wasn't. It's like things in a dream, when you know the railway engine
can't run over you, because it isn't really there."
Something
obscuredly answered: "Rafferty is dead, and
Wilder is dead. Death is real."
I
got out of the pill-box. "I shall say the multiplication table all the waf home," I told myself. And I did. But when I had
got home to the bungalow, I said
something else—I said a prayer. "Perhaps they didn't," I thought. Then I went in, and cooked my supper. It was
quite a good supper, and I slept
very well.
Next
morning nothing seemed more impossible than the things that, I was assured, had
not happened last night. All the same, I decided to go and have another look at
the cave, with plenty of dynamite, and the shotgun, for what that might be
worth. I could not forget that Beth, who would give her head away—and who had
given her heart—was waiting for that brick house, and that little car, and
those Sunday mornings on the surf beaches. And I was resolved that she should
not miss them.
It
was now about ten days since I landed, and I began, for the first time, to
count the days that remained. France would have to reach London, find a
simpleton who would finance his venture (I knew he'd do it—he could have
squeezed money out of a concrete pillar), return to Australia, and make his way
to the island. Six weeks; three weeks; six weeks; three or
four weeks. Nineteen in all. And I had put one
week and a half behind me. There
19
remained seventeen and a half. Four months and a half. A
hundred and twenty-two days, if I succeeded in keeping my senses. If I did not,
it was a hundred and twenty-two minus x.
I
could see the x in
front of me; a black, threatening thing, big as a garage door. But I defied it. "You won't get me," I said. "I'm bound for Bondi and the
brick bungalow." And, whistling "Barnacle Bill" to keep my
spirits up, I began to cut lead piping into slugs. "Ought to have brought
a rifle," I thought, "but never mind; I can do something with these,
and a bit of dynamite and a fuse."
It
took me about fifteen minutes to cut up the slugs. When I raised my eyes from
the table on which I was working, I saw, through the window of the cottage, a
steamer—a small trading-boat with a black and white funnel. She was out in the
roadstead, and she was just preparing to let go anchor.
I let off a shout; you should hear a Clare man do it!
"X,
I've got you," I
cried. "Dead as a doornail—stabbed with your own beastly
minus!" And I sent the lead pipe flying across the floor. I just had to
make a noise.
In
the roadstead, the little steamer was making a terrible row with her roaring
anchor-chains, and a whaleboat was rapidly being lowered. Within
ten minutes, France and I were shaking hands.
"Never
went to London at all," he told me at the top of his voice. "Got the whole lump of expenses right in Sydney, from two or
three splendid chaps who were staying at my hotel. Loads
of money. Country fellows."
"They would be," I thought, remembering
France's local reputation.
"Brought the machinery up with me! Brought a geologist.
Get a start, get a nice report, go down again and
float the company."
"Leaving me in charge?"
"That's right."
"It
isn't—not by a mile! France," I said, looking him
straight in the eyes, —he had candid, jolly blue eyes, the little beggar, and
he had a smile under his toothbrush mustache that would have wiled cash out of
a New York customs-officer,—"France, I don't like this affair of yours any
too well, and Fd prefer to be out of it." For I
knew, now, that the little car and the Sundays in the surf would have to come
by some other road.
"Got
the wind up?" he asked, cocking his hat on one side of his head, and
looking at me impertinently.
"I
don't know about that," I said,—and indeed I did not know; it was" a puzzling matter,—"but I do know that there isn't enough payable
copper here to sheet a yacht."
"Oh,
you're no expert," he said easily. "Let me introduce Mr. Rattray Smith, our geologist. Mr. Peter Riordan."
"Why
not a mining engineer?" I asked curtly, glancing with some distaste at
the academic-looking youth who had followed France out of the boat.
"Came
too high," explained France with a charming,
smile. "Smith knows copper when he sees it."
"I
reckon he knows which side his bread is buttered on," I commented, without
troubling to lower my voice over-much. I simply could not stand
20
that geologist; he was such a half-baked looking
creature, fairly smelling of chalk and blackboards.
"Quite,"
was France's answer. "And he's got all sorts of
degrees; look lovely on a prospectus."
"Maybe,"
was all I answered. I heard afterwards that Smith's
degrees were more showy than practical, from our point of view—B.Sc., F.G.S.,
and something else that I forget; palaeontology was
his special game, and he knew next to nothing about metals. France had got him
cheap because he had been ill, and needed a change., France, it appeared, meant
to make full use of Mr. Rattray Smith's shining
degrees in the forthcoming prospectus; meantime, as he somewhat coarsely put it
to me, he intended to "stuff the blighter up for all he was worth."
"You
go and take him for a walk," he said to me now. "Show him the
workings, and help him with his notes. I've got to see the machinery
ashore."
I
didn't want to see that machinery land; I knew only too well what it would
be—old, tired stuff that had been dumped on half-a-dozen wharves, for the
deluding of share-holders, in many places; stuff never meant to be used, only
to be charged at four times its value in expense accounts. ... I took
Smith to the workings; showed him the ore, lowered him down the shaft,
displayed the various tunnels. I said not a word. He could delude himself if he
liked; I meant to have no hand in it.
Perhaps
he was not such a fool as he looked; perhaps, I cynically told myself, he was
more knave than fool. At all events, he said very little, and took only a few
notes. I began to like him better, in spite of his horn-rimmed glasses and his
academic bleat.
"Look
here," I said, as we were returning to the house. "I've been all over
the damned island, and I'll eat any payable stuff you find."
"All over?" he said, cocking one
currant-colored eye at me through his glasses.
I
began to think he might not be such a fool as he looked. Clearly he had sensed
a certain reserve that lay behind my speech.
"Well,"
I said, not caring enough about him to mince words, "there's a warren of
caves down on the wind'ard side of the island and I
tried to investigate the biggest one the other day."
"What
did you find? Any indications?" he squeaked.
"Couldn't tell you. I was stopped by a beast. Nightmare
beast, with eyes as big as plates. Lladn't a
gun with me, but I meant to have a go at it later on."
"But
that's—but that's most—" he began to stammer eagerly.
France,
who had gone to the house for a drink, looked out of the window, and
interrupted me.
"What's
this about beasts, and why are you making slugs for your silly old
shotgun?" he demanded.
I
told him.
"You've
got 'em too," was his only comment. This, for
some reason or other, made me desperate.
"That's
not the whole of it," I said. "Last night I saw a thing as big as six
elephants chasing a little thing in the dark."
21
"You would," he said. "Have a
hair of the dog that bit you, and take some bromide when you're going to
bed."
"Look here—will you come down to the
cave yourself?" I pleaded.
"With
all that machinery to land, and the ship bound to
clear before sundown? Not much."
"Very
well.
Will you come for a walk on the top of the island after dark?"
"Oh,
yes," he said, casually. "Never saw anything when I was here for a
fortnight, and don't expect to now. But I'll come."
"Was
it moonlight when you were here?" I shouted after him as he started for
the beach.
"What's that to— Yes, I reckon it
was."
Rattray Smith began deliberately: "The
influence of light on all these phenomena—"
"What d'ye
mean?" I asked. "Are you a spiritualist? Surely you couldn't
be."
"In the excellent company of Sir William
Crookes and Sir Oliver Lodge, I certainly could," he answered. "I
suppose you think that the modern man of science is necessarily skeptic, like
his—his—"
"1
think he believes either a darn' sight too little, or a devilish sight too
much, if you ask me," I said. "But wait till tonight."
We
waited. And after dark, we all went up to the top of the island and posted
ourselves in the "pill-box." There.was an
enormous sky of stars above us; all round us the faintly smelling, feebly
rustling grasses, and standing up among them, big as cottages and railway cars,
were the silhouetted shapes of gigantic rocks.
I had thought we might have hours to wait,
and after all might see nothing; but I was wrong. We had not been in the pill-box
ten minutes, before a whole mass of stars before us went suddenly black. It was
just over the biggest of the cottage-sized rocks, and I had a nasty idea that
the rock itself —or what we had thought to be rock—was part of the rising mass.
Have
you ever seen an innocent stick turn into a serpent, a log in a river show
sudden crocodile-eyes and swim away?
If you have, then you will
know how I felt.
Up
went the monster, half across the sky; and now it began to lurch and hirple with that strange movement I had noted before,
covering immense areas of ground with every lurch. I heard Rattray
Smith draw in his breath with a sort of whistling noise.
"I
don't think it'll touch
us," I whispered, with my lips on his ear. "Keep quiet."
"Man,"
he said. "Oh, man!" and seemed to choke. France kept quite still.
I smelled the queer smell of it, not the sort
of smell it should have been; strangely old and non-pungent. I saw a small
shadow, round-headed, come out of nowhere and scuttle away. I saw the great
shadow hunting it. Smith saw too; for some extraordinary reason, he was crying,
in broken, half-suppressed sobs.
"I don't reckon it
can—" I began, in a cautious whisper. He interrupted.
22
"Man," he said, "you—you—don't
know. I've seen discarnate spirits; I've seen— I— No matter. This is beyond
everything one ever— Woopl"
They
were out of the pill-box, like rats breaking cover, and I after them, going I
didn't know where. I had seen what they had—and even though I didn't believe
it, I ran. The big shadow had turned toward us, suddenly rearing itself up, up, until it stood a hundred feet high among the
stars. It leaned a little forward, like something listening; it was semi-erect,
and in its enormous forepaws it held a small dark thing that kicked and then
was still.
"I—I—"
stuttered Rattray Smith as we ran. "Discarnate
dinosaur—spirits if they get angry— Where's the
house?"
"Wrong
way," I panted, seizing his elbow. I had caught a pale gray glimmer in
front of us, and realized we were heading for the sea. We stopped and looked
back. Something immense rocked heavily against the stars, coming up with
appalling swiftness. I saw that it was between us and the bungalow. Not that
that mattered; by its size, it could have cracked the bungalow like a nut—and
that it meant, for sport or for spite, to drive us over the cliff. I knew—I
don't know how—that it was powerless to treat us as it had treated the little
black ghost of prehistoric man, in that strange reproduction of an age-old
drama, but that it was an evil thing, and would harm us all it could. And I
knew too, in the same swift enlightening moment, why one man of the two who
died had fallen over the cliff, and why another had slain himself. The last had
not been able to endure this terrible rending of the veil. . . .
"Smith,"
I panted, "stand your
ground; you'll break your neck. It can't harm us. It's only the fear."
"Discarnate
spirts—" he babbled. I did not heed him. I was
busy doing what the soldier did for Joan of Arc, in her evil moment—making a
Cross of two sticks, with a stem of grass twisted round them. I held it in my
hand, and I said—no matter what. Those who know will know.
By
ever so little, the giant shadow missed us, lurched forward and with one
toppling leap, went down the cliff.
"Come
on," I shouted to Smith and France, though I could not see the latter.
"I've got my torch and a plug of dynamite; we'll see the whole thing
through."
"What are you going to
do?" squeaked Rattray Smith.
"Put
out those eyes in the cave," I shouted. I was exhilarated, above myself —as
one used to be in the war. I scrambled down the cliff in the transparent dark,
feeling my way; slightly surprised, but not much, to hear Smith coming after, I
found the cave.
We stood for a minute gaining breath, and
looking about us. There was nothing to be seen anywhere; nothing to be heard
but the steady slapping of waves on the beach.
"I'm with you,"
declared Smith squeakily. "As a palaeontologist—•"
"A which?" I said. "Don't trip over those bones,
and don't stop to pick them up now!"—for he was stooping down and
fumbling. I added, without quite knowing what I meant, "The dinosaur's
ghost didn't have eyes." But
23
he seemed to know; he said: "That makes it all the more—" I did
not hear the rest; we were too busy picking our way.
Round
the corner, we stopped. The eyes were there. Low down, unmoving, unwinking in the ray of the
torch as I threw it on. Big as plates; blue-green, glittering—
"Hold
the torch while I fix this," I whispered. Smith took it; his hand was
unsteady, but I could not blame him for that. I bit off my fuse as short as I
dared; lit it, and tossed the plug. . . .
There
was a boom that almost cracked our ear-drums; immediately after, stones and
dirt came smashing down in such quantity that we found ourselves staggering wildly,
bruised and cut, beneath a hundred blows.
"Are you hurt?" I called to Smith.
"Bring your damned torch here," was
his only reply.
I came forward, and found him on hands and
knees in the midst of an amazing raffle of half-fossilized bones; some of them
were as big as the masts of a ship, though partly smashed by the explosion.
Almost falling loose from the cliff above our heads was the most astounding
skull I had ever dreamed of, a thing far bigger than an
elephant's, with huge eye-sockets set well forward, and the tusky
jaws of a tiger. Behind the eye-sockets, as I waved
the torch, shone a mass of something vivid, greenish blue.
"Oh,
God," cried Smith—who didn't believe in God,—"you've broken up the
finest dinosaur skeleton in the world!"
I was too busy to trouble about him. I had
climbed a little way up, and was scraping at the mass of iridescent, green-blue
crystals in which the skull was set; which, through uncounted ages, had sifted
down through various openings, filling the huge orbits of the eyes, so that
they gleamed in the light as if alive.
"I'd
break up my grandmother's skeleton," I told him joyously, "if it was
bedded in copper pyrites. We've found the paying stuff at last!" It was
not the dark roof of the cave that I saw, as I said that, not the glittering
pyrites, or the amazing great bones, or the scrambling, complaining figure of
Smith on the floor of the cave. It was St. Mary's in Sydney, on a summer
morning, with a white figure coming up the aisle "on her father's
arm"—to me!
Rattray Smith, I understand, has written a great
deal for different scientific magazines about the curious happenings on Cave
Island. In one, he told the story of the great skeleton; how it was found, and where, and how put together again. He doesn't say what he
got for it, but I believe that was something to write home about; good
dinosaurs come high, with or without incredible ghost stories attached. The
spiritualistic magazines simply ate up his account of the prehistoric ghost and
its sinister activities. Especially did they seem to like his conclusions about
the skeleton acting as a sort of medium, or
jumping-off point, for the apparition. He may have been'right
or wrong there; at all events, it is certain that after the removal of the
bones, no one engaged in working the mines ever saw or heard anything
remarkable.
France?
We found him in the bungalow, drunk, and under a bed. He says, and maintains,
that we were all in the same condition. A man must save his face.
3L
by. Seweli JPeailee WJrialit
The name of SetoeU Peaslee Wright is not seen today in the science-fiction pulps, but it was well known to the readers of the early thirties, for Wright was one of the men who put the infant science-fiction on its feet and headed it towards its present stature. Among his original successes were a series of stories taken from the "annals' of the "Interplanetary Patrol" as related by a retired old space captain, John Hanson. Told with the clear narration of a day when authors had to construct their own spaceships and do without formula stereotypes, we think the modern reader will get a kick out of the story of a world that had to be expunged from the records of tlie civilized stars.
g
HAVE been asked to record,
plainly and without prejudice, a brief history of the Forgotten Planet.
That
this record, when completed, will be sealed in the archives of the
Interplanetary Alliance and remain there, a secret and rather dreadful bit of
history, is no concern of mine. I am an old man, well past the century mark,
and what disposal is made of my work is of little importance to me. I grow
weary of life and living, which is good. The fear of death was lost when our
scientists showed us how to live until we grew weary of life. But I am
digressing—an old man's failing.
The
Forgotten Planet was not always so named. The name that it once bore had been,
as every child knows, stricken from the records, actual and mental, of the
Universe. It is well that evil should not be remembered. But in order that this
history may be clear in the centuries to come, my record should go back to
beginnings.
So
far as the Universe is concerned, the history of the Forgotten Planet begins
with the visit of the first craft ever to span the space between the worlds:
the crude, adventuresome Edorn, whose name, as well as the names of the nine Zenians
who manned her, occupy the highest places in the roll of honor of the Universe.
Ame Baove, the
commander and historian of the Edorn, made but brief comment on his stop at the Forgotten Planet. I shall record it in full:
"We
came to rest upon the surface of this, the fourth of the planets visited during
the first trip of the Edorn, eighteen spaces before the height
25
of the sun. We found ourselves surrounded
immediately by vast numbers of creatures very different from ourselves, and
from their expressions and gestures, we gathered that they were both curious and
unfriendly.
"Careful
analysis of the atmosphere proved it to be sufficiently similar to our own to
make it possible for us to again stretch our legs outside the rather cramped
quarters of the Edorn, and
tread the soil of still another world.
"No sooner had we emerged, however, than
we were angrily beset by the people of this unfriendly planet, and rather than
do them injury, we retired immediately, and concluded our brief observations
through our ports.
"The
topography of this planet is similar to our own, save that there are no
mountains, and the flora is highly colored almost without exception, and
apparently quite largely parasitical in nature. The people are rather short in
stature, with hairless heads and high foreheads. Instead of being round or oval,
however, the heads of these people rise to a rounded ridge which runs back from
a point between and just above the eyes, nearly to the nape of the neck behind.
They give evidence of a fair order of intelligence, but are suspicious and
unfriendly. From the number and size of the cities we saw, this planet is evidendy thickly populated.
"We
left about sixteen spaces before the height of the sun, and continued towards
the fifth and last planet before our return to Zenia."
This report, quite naturally, caused other
explorers in space to hesitate. There were so many friendly, eager worlds to
visit, during the years that relations between the planets were being
established, that an unfriendly people were ignored.
However,
from time to time, as spaceships became perfected and more common, parties from
many of the more progressive planets did call. Each of them met with the same
hostile reception, and at last, shortly after the second War of the Planets,
the victorious Alliance sent a fleet of the small but terrible Deuber Spheres, convoyed by four of the largest of the
disintegrator ray-ships, to subjugate the Forgotten Planet.
Five
great cities were destroyed, and the Control City, the seat of the government,
was menaced before the surly inhabitants conceded allegiance to the Alliance.
Parties of scientists, fabricators, and workmen were then landed, and a
dictator was appointed.
From all the. worlds of the
Alliance, instruments and equipment were brought to the Forgotten Planet. A
great educational system was planned and executed, the
benign and kindly influence of the Alliance made every effort to improve the
conditions existing on the Forgotten Planet, and to win the friendship and
allegiance of these people.
For
two centuries the work went on. Two centuries of bloodshed, strife, hate and
disturbance. Nowhere else within the known Universe was there ill feeling. The
second awful War of the Planets had at last succeeded in teaching the lesson of
peace.
Two centuries of effort—wasted effort. It was near the end of the second century
that my own story begins.
Commander at that time of the supercruiser Tamon, a Special Patrol ship of the Alliance, I was not at all surprised to
receive orders from the Central Council to report at emergency speed. Special
Patrol work in those days, before the advent of the present de-centralized
system, was a succession of false starts, hurried recalls, and urgent,
emergency orders.
I
obeyed at once. In the Special Patrol service, there is no
questioning orders. The planet Earth, from which I sprang, is and always
has been proud of the fact that from the very beginning, her men have been
picked to command the ships of the Special Patrol. No matter how dangerous, how
forlorn and hopeless the mission given to a commander of a Special Patrol ship, history
has never recorded that any commander has ever hesitated. That is why our
uniform of blue and silver commands the respect that it does even in this day
and age of softening and decadence, when men—but again an old man digresses.
And perhaps it is not for me to judge,
I
pointed the blunt nose of the Tamon at Zenia, seat of the Central Council, and in
four hours, Earth time, the great craft swept over the gleaming city of the
Central Council and settled swiftly to the court before the mighty, columned
Hall of the Planets.
Four
pages of the Council, in their white and scarlet livery, met me and conducted
me instantly to a little ante-room behind the great council chamber.
There
were three men awaiting me there; three men whose faces, at that time, were
familiar to every person in the known Universe.
Kellen, the oldest of the three, and the spokesman,
rose as I entered the room. The others did likewise, as the pages closed the
heavy doors behind me.
"You are prompt, and that is good," thought Kellen. "I welcome you. Remove now thy menore."
I
glanced up at him swiftly. This must surely be an important matter,
that I was asked to remove my menore band.
It
will, of course, be understood that at that time we had but a bulky and clumsy
instrument to enable us to convey
and receive thought; a device consisting of a heavy band of metal, in which
were imbedded the necessary instruments and a tiny atomic energy generator, the
whole being worn as a
circlet or crown upon the head.
Wonderingly,
I removed my menore, placed it upon the long, dark
table around which the three men were standing, and bowed. Each of the three,
in turn, lifted their gleaming circlets from their heads, and placed them
likewise upon the table before them.
"You
wonder," said Kellen, speaking of course, in the soft and liquid universal language, which is, I
understand, still disseminated in our schools, as it should be. "I shall
explain as quickly and as briefly as possible.
"We
have called you here on a dangerous mission. A mission that will require tact and quickness of mind as well as bravery. We have selected you,
have called you, because we are agreed that you possess the qualities required.
Is it not so?" He glanced at his two companions, and they nodded gravely,
solemnly, without speaking.
"You
are a young man, John Hanson," continued Kellen,
"but your record in your service is one of which you can be proud. We trust you—with
27 knowledge that is so secret, so precious, that we must revert to speech in
order to convey it; we dare not trust it, even in this protected and guarded
place, to the menore's quicker but less discreet
communication."
He
paused for a moment, frowning thoughtfully as though dreading to begin. I waited silently, and at last he spoke again.
"There
is a world"—and he named a name which I shall not repeat, the name of the Forgotten Planet—"that is a
festering sore upon the body of the Universe. As you know, for two centuries we
have tried to pass on to these people an understanding of peace and friendship.
I believe that nothing has been left undone. The Council and the forces behind
it have done everything within their power. And now—"
He
stopped again, and there was an expression of deepest pain written upon his
wise and kindly face. The pause was for but an instant.
"And
now," he went on firmly, "it is at an end. Our work has been undone. Two centuries of effort—undone. They have risen in revolt,
they have killed all those sent by the Alliance of which this Council is the
governing body and the mouthpiece, and they have sent us an ultimatum—a threat
of war!"
"What?"
Kellen nodded his magnificent old head gravely.
"I
do not wonder that you start," he said heavily. "War!
It must not be. It cannot be! And yet, war is what they threaten."
"But, sir!" I put in eagerly. I was young and rash in those days. "Who are
they, to make war against a united Universe?"
"I
have visited your planet, Earth," said Kellen,
smiling very faintly. "You have a tiny winged insect you call bee. Is it not so?"
"Yes."
"The
bee is a tiny thing, of little strength. A man, a little child, might crush one
to death between a thumb and finger. But the bee may sting before he is
crushed, and the sting may linger on for days, a painful and unpleasant thing.
Is that not so?"
"I
see, sir," I replied, somewhat abashed before the tolerant, kindly wisdom
of this great man. "They cannot hope to wage successful war, but they may
bring much suffering to others."
"Much
suffering," nodded Kellen, still gently smiling.
"And we are determined that this thing shall not be. Not"—and his face
grew gray with a terrible and bitter resolve—"not if we have to bring to
bear upon that dark and unwilling world the disintegrating rays of every ship
of the Alliance, so that the very shell of the planet shall disappear, and no
life ever again shall move upon its surface.
"But
this," and he seemed to shudder at the thought, "is a terrible and a
ruthless thing to even contemplate. We must first try once again to point out
of them the folly of their ways. It is with this mission that we would burden
you, John Flanson."
"It is no burden, but
an honor, sir," I said quietly.
"Youth! Youth!" Kellen
chided me gently. "Foolish, yet rather glorious.
Let me tell you the rest, and then we shall ask for your reply again.
"The news came-to us
by a small scout ship attached to that unhappy world. ^
28 .
It
barely made the journey to Jaron, the nearest planet,
and crashed so badly, from lack of power, that all save one man were killed.
"He
luckily tore off his menore, and insisted in speech
that he be brought here. He was obeyed, and, in a dying condition, was brought
to this very chamber." Kellen glanced swiftly,
sadly, around the room, as though he could still visualize that scene.
"Every
agent of the Alliance upon that hateful planet was set upon and killed,
following the working out of some gigantic and perfectly executed plan—all save
the crew of this one tiny scout ship, which was spared to act as a messenger.
" 'Tell your great Council,' was the message these
people sent to us, 'that here is rebellion. We do not want, nor will we
tolerate, your peace. We have learned now that upon other worlds than ours
there are great riches. These we shall take. If there is resistance, we have a
new and a terrible death to deal. A death that your great
scientists will be helpless against; a horrible and irresistible death that
will make desolate and devoid of intelligent life any world where we are forced
to sow the seeds of ultimate disaster.
" 'We are not yet ready. If we were, we would not
move, for we prefer that your Council have time to think about what is surely
to come. If you doubt that we have the power to do what we have threatened to
do, send one ship, commanded by a man whose word you will trust, and we will
prove to him that these are no empty words.'
"That,
as nearly as I can remember it," concluded Kellen,
"is the message. The man who brought it died almost before he had
finished.
"That
is the message. You are the man we have picked to accept their challenge.
Remember, though, that there are but the four of us in this room. There are but
four of us who know these things. If you for any reason do not wish to accept
this mission, there will be none to judge you, least of all, any one of us, who
know best of all the perils."
"You
say, sir," I said quietly, although my heart was pounding in my throat,
and roaring in my ears, "that there would be none to judge me.
"Sir,
there would be myself. There could be no more merciless judge. I am honored
that I have been selected for this task, and I accept the responsibility
willingly, gladly. When is it your wish that we should start?"
The
three presiding members of the Council glanced at each other, faintly smiling,
as though they would say, as Kellen had said a short
time before: "Youth! Youth!" Yet I believe
they were glad and somewhat proud that I had replied as I did.
"You
may start," said Kellen, "as soon as you
can complete the necessary preparations. Detailed instructions will be given
you later."
He
bowed to me, and the others did likewise. Then Kellen
picked up his menore and adjusted it.
The interview was over.
"What do you make it?" I asked the
observer. He glanced up from his instrument.
"Jaron, sir. Three degrees to port;
elevation between five and six degrees. Approximate only, of course,
sir."
"Good
enough. Please ask Mr. Barry to hold to his present course. We shall not stop
at Jaron."
The
observer glanced at me curiously, but he was too well disciplined to hesitate
or ask questions.
"Yes, sir!" he said crisply, and
spoke into the microphone beside him.
None
of us wore menores when on duty, for several reasons.
Our instruments were not nearly as perfect as those in use to-day, and verbal
orders were clearer and carried more authority than mental instructions. The
delicate and powerful electrical and atomic mechanism of our ship interfered
with the functioning of the menores, and at that time
the old habit of speech was far more firmly entrenched, due to hereditary
influence, than it is now.
I
nodded to the man, and made my way to my own quarters. I wished most heartily
that I could talk over my plans with someone, but this had been expressly
forbidden.
"I
realize that you trust your men, and more particularly your officers," Kellen had told me during the course of his parting
conversation with me. "I trust them also—yet we must remember that the
peace of mind of the Universe is concerned. If news, even a rumor, of this
threatened disaster should become known, it is impossible to predict the
disturbance it might create.
"Say
nothing to anyone. It is your problem. You alone should leave the ship when you
land; you alone shall hear or see the evidence they have to present, and you
alone shall bring word of it to us. That is the wish of the Council."
"Then it is my wish," I had said,
and so it had been settled.
Aft,
in the crew's quarters, a gong sounded sharply; the signal for changing
watches, and the beginning of a sleep period. I glanced at the remote control
dials that glowed behind their glass panel on one side of my room. From the
registered attraction of Jaron, at our present speed,
we should be passing her within, according to Earth time, about two hours. That
meant that their outer patrols might be seeking our business, and I touched
Barry's attention button, and spoke into the microphone beside my bunk.
"Mr.
Barry? I am turning in for a little sleep. Before you turn over the watch to Eitel, will you see that the nose rays are set for the
Special Patrol code signal for this enar? We shall be
close to Jaron shortly."
"Yes, sir! Any other orders?"
"No. Keep her on her present course. I
shall take the watch from Mr. Eitel."
Since
there have been changes since those days, and will undoubtedly be others in the
future, it might be well to make clear, in a document such as this, that at
this period, all ships of the Special Patrol Service identified themselves by
means of invisible rays flashed in certain sequences, from the two nose, or
forward, projectors. These code signals were changed every enar,
a period of time arbitrarily set by the Council; about eighteen days, as time
is measured on the Earth, and divided into ten periods, as at present known as enarens. These were further divided into enaros, thus giving us a time-
30
reckoning system for use in space, corresponding
roughly to the months, days and hours of the Earth.
I retired, hut not to sleep. Sleep would not
come. I knew, of course, that if curious outer patrol
ships from Jaron did investigate us, they would be
able to detect our invisible ray code signal, and thus satisfy themselves that
we were on the Council's business. There would be no difficulty on that score.
But what I should do after landing upon the rebellious sphere, I had not the slightest idea.
"Be
stern, indifferent to their threats," Kellen had
counseled me, "but do everything within your power to make them see the
folly of their attitude. Do not threaten them, for they are a surly people, and you might precipitate matters. Swallow your pride if
you must; remember that yours is a gigantic responsibility, and upon the
information you bring us may depend the salvation of millions. I am convinced
that they are not—you have a word in your language that fits exactly. Not
pretending . . . what is the word?"
"Bluffing?" I had
supplied in English, smiling.
"Right! Bluffing. It is a very descriptive word. I am
sure they are not bluff-ing."
I
was sure of it also. They knew the power of the Alliance; they had been made to
feel it more than once. A bluff would have been a foolish thing, and these
people were not fools. In some lines of research they were extraordinarily
brilliant.
But
what could their new, terrible weapon be? Rays we had; at least half a dozen
rays of destruction; the terrible dehydrating ray of the Deuber
Spheres, the disintegrating ray that dated back before Ame
Baove and his first first
voyage into space, the concentrated ultra-violet ray that struck men down in
fiery torment. . . . No, it could hardly be a new ray that was their boasted weapon.
What,
then? Electricity had even then been exhausted of its possibilities. Atomic
energy had been released, harnessed, and directed. Yet it would take fabulous
time and expense to make these machines of destruction do
what they claimed they would do.
Still pondering the
problem, I did fall at last into a fitful travesty of sleep.
I
was glad when the soft clamor of the bell aft announced the next change of watch.
I rose, cleared the cobwebs from my brain with an icy shower, and made my way
directly to the navigating room.
"Everything
tidy, sir," said Eitel, my second officer, and a
Zenian. He was thin
and very dark, like all Zenians, and had the high,
effeminate voice of that people. But he was cool and fearless and
had the uncanny cerebration of his kind; I trusted him as completely as I
trusted Barry, my first officer, who, like
myself, was a native of Earth. "Will you take over?"
"Yes,"
I nodded, glancing at the twin charts beneath the ground glass top of
the control table. "Get what sleep
you can the next few enaros. Presently I shall Want every man on duty and at his station."
He
glanced at me curiously, as the observer had done, but saluted and left with only a brief, "Yes, sir!" I
returned the salute and turned my attention again to the
charts.
The navigating room of an interplanetary ship
is without doubt unfamiliar ground to most, so it might be well for me to say
that such ships have, for the most part, twin charts, showing progress in two
dimensions; to use land terms, lateral and vertical. These charts are really no
more than large sheets of ground glass, ruled in both directions with fine
black lines, representing all relatively close heavenly bodies by green lights
of varying sizes. The ship itself is represented by a red spark, and the whole
is, of course, entirely automatic in action, the instruments comprising the
chart being operated by super-radio reflexes.
Jaron, the charts showed me at a glance, was now
far behind. Almost directly above—it is necessary to resort to these
unscientific terms to make my meaning clear—was the tiny world Elon, home of the friendly but impossibly dull winged
people, the only ones in the known Universe. I was there but once, and found
them almost laughably like our common dragon-flies on Earth; dragon-flies that
grow some seven feet long, and with gauzy wings of amazing strength.
Directly
ahead, on both charts, was a brilliantly glowing sphere of green —our
destination. I made some rapid mental calculations, studying, the few fine
black lines between the red spark that was our ship, and the nearest edge of
the great green sphere. I glanced at our speed indicator and the attraction
meter. The little red slide that moved around the rim of the attraction meter
was squarely at the top, showing that the attraction was from straight ahead;
the great black hand was nearly a third of the way
around the face.
We
were very close; two hours would bring us into the atmospheric envelope. In
less than two hours and a half, we would be in the Control City of what is now
called the Forgotten Planet!
I glanced forward, through the thick glass
partitions, into the operating room. Three men stood there, watching intendy; they too, were wondering why we visited the
unfriendly world.
The
planet itself loomed up straight ahead, a great half-circle, its curved rim
sharp and bright against the empty blackness of space; the chord ragged and
blurred. In two hours. ... I turned
away and began a restless pacing.
An
hour went by; an hour and a half. I pressed the attention button to the
operating room, and gave orders to reduce our speed by half. We were very close
to the outer fringe of the atmospheric envelope. Then, keeping my eye on the
big surface-temperature gauge, with its stubby red hand, I resumed my nervous
pacing.
Slowly
the thick red hand of the surface-temperature gauge began to move; slowly, and
then more rapidly, until the eyes could catch its
creeping.
"Reduce
to atmospheric speed," I ordered curtly, and glanced down through a side
port at one end of the long navigating room.
We
were, at the moment, directly above the twilight belt. To my right, as I looked
down, I could see a portion of the glistening antarctic
ice cap. Here and there were the great flat lakes, almost seas, of the planet.
Our
geographies of the Universe today do not show the topography of the Forgotten
Planet; I might say, therefore, that the entire sphere was land area, with
numerous great lakes embedded in its surface, together with
32
many broad, very crooked rivers. As Ame Baove had reported, there were no mountains, and no high land.
"Altitude
constant," I ordered. "Port
three degrees. Stand by for further orders."
The earth seemed to whirl slowly beneath us. Great cities drifted astern, and I compared the
scene below me with the great maps I took from our chart-case.
The Control City should be just beyond the visible rim; well in the daylight area.
"Port
five degrees," I said, and pressed
the attention button to Barry's quarters.
"Mr. Barry, please call all men to quarters, including the off-duty watch, and then report to the navigating room. Mr. Eitel will be under my
direct orders. We shall descend within the next few minutes."
"Very well, sir."
I pressed the attention
button to Eitel's room.
"Mr.
Eitel, please pick ten of your best men and have them report at the forward exit. Await me, with the men, at that
place. I shall be with you as soon
as I turn the command over
to Mr. Barry. We are
descending immediately."
"Right, sir!"
said Eitel.
I
turned from the microphone to find
that Barry had just
entered the navigating room.
"We
will descend into the Great Court of the Control City, Mr. Barry," I said.
"I have a mission here. I am sorry, but these are the only instructions I
can leave you.
"I
do not know how long I shall be gone from the ship, but if I do not return
within three hours, depart without me, and report directly to Kellen of the Council. To him, and no other. Tell him,
verbally, what took place. Should there be any concerted action against the Tamon, use your own judgment as to the action to be taken, remembering that
the safety of the ship and its crew, and the report to the Council, are
infinitely more important than my personal welfare. Is that clear?"
"Yes,
sir. Too damned clear."
I smiled and shook my head.
"Don't worry," I
said lightly. "I'll be back well within the appointed time."
"I
hope so. But there's
something wrong as hell
here. I'm talking now
as man to man; not to my commanding officer. I've been watching below, and I have seen at least two spots where large numbers of our ships have been destroyed. The remaining ships bear their own damned emblem where the crest of the Alliance should be—and was. What does it mean?"
"It
means," I said slowly, "that I shall have to rely upon every man and officer to forget himself
and myself, and obey
orders without hesitation and without flinching. The orders are not mine, but direct from the Council itself." I held out my hand to
him—an ancient
Earth gesture of greeting,
good-will and farewell—and he shook it vigorously.
"God
go with you," he said softly, and with a little nod of thanks I turned and quickly left the room.
Eitel, with his ten men, were waiting for me at
the forward exit. The men fell back a few paces and came to attention; Eitel saluted smartly. "We are ready, sir. What are
your orders?"
"You
are to guard this opening. Under no circumstances is anyone to enter save myself.
I shall be gone not longer than three hours; if I am not back within that time,
Mr. Barry has his orders. The exit will be sealed and the Tamon will depart immediately, without me."
"Yes, sir. You will pardon me, but I gather that your
mission is a dangerous one. May I not accompany you?"
I shook my head.
"I shall need you
here."
"But,
sir, they are very excited and angry; I have been watching them from the
observation ports. And there is a vast crowd of them around the ship."
"I
had expected that. I thank you for your concern, but I must go alone. Those are
the orders. Will you unseal the exit?"
His
"Yes, sir!" was brisk and efficient, but there was a worried frown on
his features as he unlocked and released the switch that opened the exit.
The
huge plug of metal, some ten feet in diameter, revolved swiftly and
noiselessly, backing; slowly in its fine threads into the interior of the ship,
gripped by the ponderous gimbals which, as the last threads disengaged, swung
the mighty disc to one side, like the door of some great safe.
"Remember
your orders," I smiled, and with a little gesture to convey an assurance
which I certainly did not feel, I strode through the circular opening out into
the crowd. The heavy glass secondary door shot down behind me, and I was in the
hands of the enemy.
The
first thing I observed was that my menore, which I
had picked up on my way to the exit, was not functioning. Not a person in all that vast multitude wore a menore;
the five black-robed dignitaries who marched to meet me wore none.
Nothing
could have showed more clearly that I was in for trouble. To invite a visitor,
as Kellen had done, to remove his menore
first, was, of course, a polite and courteous thing to do if one wished to
communicate by speech; to remove the menore before
greeting a visitor wearing one, was a tacit admission of rank enmity; a
confession that one's thoughts were to be concealed.
My first impulse was to snatch off my own
instrument and fling it in the solemn, ugly faces of the nearest of the five
dignitaries; I remembered Kellen's warning just in
time. Quietly, I removed the metal circlet and tucked it under my arm, bowing
slightly to the committee of five as I did so.
"I
am Ja Ben," said the first of the five, with an
evil grin. "You are the representative of the Council that we commanded to
appear?"
"I
am John Hanson, commander of the ship Tamon of the Special Patrol Service. I am here to represent the Central
Council," I replied with dignity,
"As
we commanded," grinned Ja
Ben. "That is good. Follow us and you shall have the evidence you were
promised."
Ja Ben led the way with two of his black-robed
followers. The other two
34 .
fell in behind me. A virtual prisoner, I marched
between them, through the vast crowd that made way grudgingly to let us pass.
I
have seen the people of most of the planets of the known Universe. Many of them, to Earth notions, are odd. But these people, so much like us in
many respects, were strangely repulsive.
Their
heads, as Ame Baove had
recorded, were not round like ours, but possessed a high bony crest that ran
from between their lashless, browless
eyes, down to the very nape of their necks. Their skin, even that covering
their hairless heads, was a dull and papery white, like parchment, and their
eyes were abnormally small, and nearly round. A hateful, ugly people, perpetually
scowling, snarling; their very voices resembled more the growl of wild beasts
than the speech of intelligent beings.
Ja Ben led the way straight to the low but vast
building of dun-colored stone that I knew
was the administration building of the Control City. We marched up the broad,
crowded steps, through the muttering, jeering multitude, into the building
itself. The guards at the doors stood aside to let us through and the crowd at
last was left behind.
A
swift, cylindrical elevator shot us upward, into a great glass-walled laboratory,
built like a sort of penthouse on the roof. Ja Ben
walked quickly across the room towards a long, glass-topped table; the other
four closed in on me silently but suggestively.
"That
is unnecessary," I said quietly. "See, I am unarmed and completely
in your power. I am here as an ambassador of the Central Council, not as a
warrior."
"Which
is as well for you," grinned Ja
Ben. "What I have to show you, you can see quickly, and then depart."
From
a great cabinet in one corner of the room he took a shining cylinder of dark red metal, and held it up before him, stroking its sleek sides with
an affectionate hand.
"Here
it is," he said, chuckling. "The secret of our
power. In here, safely imprisoned now, but capable of being released at
our command, is death for every living thing upon any planet we choose to
destroy." He replaced the great cylinder in the cabinet, and picked up in
its stead a tiny vial of the same metal, no larger than my little finger, and
not so long. "Here," he said, turning again towards me, "is the
means of proving our power to you. Come closer!"
With my bodyguard of four
watching every move, I approached.
Ja Ben selected a large hollow hemisphere of
crystal glass and placed it upon a smooth sheet of flat glass. Next he picked a
few blossoms from a bowl that stood, incongruously enough, on the table, and
threw them under the glass hemisphere.
"Flora," he
grinned.
Hurrying
to the other end of the room,- he reached into a large flat metal cage and
brought forth three small rodent-like animals, natives of that world. These he
also tossed carelessly under the glass.
"Fauna," he
grunted, and picked up the tiny metal vial.
One end of the vial unscrewed. He turned the
cap gently, carefully, a
35
strained, anxious look upon his face. My four guards
watched him breathlessly, fearfully.
The
cap came loose at last, disclosing the end of the tube, sealed with a grayish
substance that looked like wax. Very quickly Ja Ben rolled the little cylinder under the glass
hemisphere, and picked up a beaker that had been bubbling gently on an electric
plate close by. Swiftly he poured the thick contents of the beaker around the
base of the glass bell. The stuff hardened almost instantly, forming an
air-tight seal between the glass hemisphere and the flat plate of glass upon
which it rested. Then, with an evil, triumphant smile, Ja Ben looked up.
"Flora," he
repeated. "Fauna. And death. Watch! The little metal cylinder is plugged still, but in a moment that
plug will disappear—simply a volatile solid, you understand. It is going
rapidly . . . rapidly ... it is
almost gone now! Watch. ... In an instant now . . . ah!"
I
saw the gray substance that stopped the entrance of the little metal vial
disappear. The rodents ran around and over it, trying to find a crevice by
which they might escape. The flowers, bright and beautiful, lay untidily on the
bottom of the glass prison.
Then,
just as the last vestige of the gray plug vanished, an amazing, a terrible
thing happened. At the mouth of the tiny metal vial a greenish cloud appeared.
I call it a cloud, but it was not that. It was solid, and it spread in every
direction, sending out little needles that lashed about and ran together into
a solid mass while millions of little needles reached out swiftly.
One
of these little needles touched a scurrying animal. Instantly the tiny brute
stiffened, and from his entire body the greenish needles spread swiftly. One of
the flowers turned suddenly thick and pulpy with the soft green mass, then
another, another of the rodents . . . God!
In
the space of two heart beats, the entire hemisphere was filled with the green mass, that still moved and writhed and seemed to press
against the glass sides as though the urge to expand was insistent, imperative.
. . .
"What is it?" I
whispered, still staring at the thing.
"Death!" grunted
Ja Ben, thrusting his
hateful face close to mine, his tiny round eyes, with their lashless
lids glinting. "Death, my friend. Go and tell
your great Council of this death that we have created for every planet that
will not obey us.
"We
have gone back into the history of dealing death and have come back with a
death such as the Universe has never known before!
"Here
is a rapacious, deadly fungus we have been two centuries in developing. The
spores contained in that tiny metal tube would be invisible to the naked
eye—and yet given but a little time to grow with air and vegetation and flesh
to feed upon, and even that small capsule would wipe out a world. And in the
cabinet,"—he pointed grinning triumphantly—"we have, ready for
instant use, enough of the spores of this deadly fungus to wipe out all the
worlds of your great Alliance.
"To
wipe them out utterly!" he repeated, his voice shaking with a sort of
frenzy now. "Every living thing upon their faces, wrapped in that thin,
hungry green stuff you see there under that glass. All life wiped out; made
uninhabitable so long as the Universe shall endure. And
we—we shall be rulers, unquestioned, of that Universe. Tell your doddering
Council that!" He
leaned back against the table, panting with hate.
"I shall tell them all I have seen; all
you have said," I nodded.
"You believe we have the power to do all
this?"
"I do—God help me, and the
Universe," I said solemnly.
There
was no doubt in my mind. I could see all too clearly how well their plans had
been laid; how quickly this hellish growth would strangle all life, once its
spores began to develop.
The
only possible chance was to get back to the Council and make my report, with
all possible speed, so that every available armed ship of the universe might
concentrate here, and wipe out these people before they had time to—
"I
know what you are thinking, my friend," broke in Ja Ben mockingly. "You might as well have worn
the menore! You would have the ships of the Alliance
destroy us before we have time to act. We had foreseen that, and have provided
for the possibility.
"As
soon as you leave here, ships, provided with many tubes like the one just used
for our little demonstration, will be dispersed in every direction. We shall be
in constant communication with those ships, and at the least sign of hostility,
they will be ordered to depart and spread their death upon every world they can
reach. Some of them you may be able to locate and eliminate; a number of them
.are certain to elude capture in infinite space— and if only one, one lone
ship, should escape, the doom of the Alliance and millions upon millions of
people will be pronounced.
"I
warn you, it will be better, much better, to bow to our wishes, and pay us the
tribute we shall demand. Any attempt at resistance will precipitate certain
disaster for your Council and all the worlds the Council governs."
"At least, we would
wipe you out first," I said hoarsely.
"True,"
nodded Ja Ben. "But the
vengeance of our ships would be a terrible thing! You would not dare to take
the chance!"
I
stood there, staring at him in a sort of daze. What he had said was so true;
terribly, damnably true.
If only—
There
was but one chance I could see, and desperate as it was, I took it. Whirling
the heavy metal ring of my menore in my hand, I
sprang towards the table.
If
I could break the sealed glass hemisphere, and loose the fungus upon its
creators; deal to them the doom they had planned for the universe, then perhaps
all might yet be well.
Ja Ben understood instantly what was in my
mind. He and his four aides leaped between me and the table, their tiny round
eyes blazing with anger. I struck one of the four viciously with the menore, and with a gasp he fell back and slumped to the
floor.
Before
I could break through the opening, however, Ja Ben
struck me full in the face with his mighty fist; a blow that sent me, dazed and
reeling, into a corner of the room. I brought up with a crash against the
cabinet
37
there, groped wildly in an effort to steady my *4$F, and fell to the floor. Almost before I struck, all four of them were upon ate.
They
hammered me viciously, shouted at me, cursed me in the universal tongue, but I
paid no heed. I pretended to be unconscious, but my heart was beating high with
sudden, glorious hope, and in my brain a terrible,
merciless plan was forming.
When
I had groped against the cabinet in an effort to regain my balance, my fingers
had closed upon one of the little metal vials. As I fell, I covered that hand
with my body and hastily hid the tiny tube in a deep pocket of my blue and
silver Service uniform.
Slowly,
after a few seconds, I opened my eyes and looked up
at them, helplessly.
"Go,
now!" snarled Ja Ben, dragging me to my feet
"Go, and tell your Council we are more than a match for you—and for
them." He thrust me, reeling, towards his three assistants. "Take him
to his ship, and send aid for Ife Ranee, here."
He glanced at the still unconscious figure of the victim of my menore, and then turned to me with a last warning.
"Remember,
one thing more, my friend: you have disintegrator ray equipment upon your
ship. You have the little atomic bombs that won for the Alliance the Second War
of the Planets. I know that. But if you make the slightest
effort to use them, I shall dispatch a supply
of the green death to our ships, and they will depart upon their missions at once.
You would take upon yourself a terrible responsibility by making the smallest
hostile move.
"Go,
now—and when you return, bring with you members of your great Council who will
have the power to hear our demands, and see that they are obeyed. And do not
keep us waiting overlong, for we are an impatient race." He bowed,
mockingly, and passed his left hand swiftly before his face, his people's sign
of parting.
f nodded, not trusting myself to speak, and, hemmed in by my three
black-robed conductors, was hurried down the elevator and back through the
jeering mob to my ship.
The
glass secondary door shot up to permit me to enter, and Eitel
gripped my shoulder anxiously, his eyes smoldering angrily.
"You're
hurt, sir!" he said in his odd, high-pitched voice, staring into my
bruised face. "What—"
"It's
nothing," I assured him. "Close the exit immediately; we depart at
once."
"Yes, sir!" He closed the switch, and the great threaded
plug swung gently on its gimbals and began to revolve, swiftly and silently. A
little bell sounded sharply, and the great door ceased its motion. Eitel locked the switch and returned the key to his pocket.
"Good. All men are at
their stations?" I asked briskly.
"Yes,
sir!
All except these ten, detailed to guard the exit."
"Have
them report to their regular stations. Issue orders to the ray operators that
they are to instantly, and without further orders, destroy any ship that may
leave the surface of this planet. Have every atomic bomb crew ready for an
instant and concentrated offensive directed at the Control City,
38 but command them not to act under any
circumstances unless I give the order. Is that clear, Mr. Eitel?" "Yes, sh-r
I
nodded, and turned away, making my way immediately to the navigating room.
"Mr.
Barry," I said quickly and gravely, "I believe
that the fate of the known Universe depends upon us at this moment. We will
ascend vertically, at once—slowly—until we are just outside the envelope,
maintaining only sufficient horizontal motion to keep us directly over the
Control City. Will you give the necessary orders?"
"Immediately, sir!" He pressed the attention button to the
operating room and spoke swiftly into the microphone; before he completed the
order I had left.
We
were already ascending when I reached the port forward atomic bomb station. The
man in charge, a Zenian, saluted with automatic
precision and awaited orders.
"You
have a bomb in readiness?" I asked,
returning the salute. "Those were my orders, sir." "Correct.
Remove it, please."
I waited impatiently while the crew removed the
bomb from the releasing trap. It was withdrawn at last; a fish-shaped affair,
very much like the ancient airplane bombs save that it was no larger than my
two fists, placed one upon the other, and that it had four silvery wires
running along its sides, from rounded nose to pointed tail, held at a distance
from the body by a series of insulating struts. , \
"Now,"
I said, "how quickly can you put another
object in the trap, re-seal the opening, and release the object?"
"While
the Commander counts ten with reasonable speed," said the Zenian with pride. "We won first honors in the Special
Patrol Service contests at the last Examination, the Commander may
remember."
"I
do remember. That is why I selected you for this duty."
With
hands that trembled a little, I think, I drew forth the little vial of gleaming
red metal, while the bombing crew watched me curiously.
"I
shall unscrew the cap from this little vial," I explained, "and drop it
immediately into the releasing trap. Re-seal the trap and release this object
as quickly as it is possible to do so. If you can better the time you made to
win the honors at the Examination—in God's name, do so!"
"Yes,
sir!" replied the Zenian. He gave brisk orders
to his crew, and each of the three men sprang alertly into position.
As
quickly as I could, I turned off the cap of the little metal vial and dropped
it into the trap. The heavy plug, a tiny duplicate of the exit door, clicked
shut upon it and spun, whining gently, into the opening. Something clicked
sharply, and one of the crew dropped a bar into place. As it shot home, the Zenian in command of the crew pulled the release plunger.
"Done,
sir!" he said proudly.
I
did not reply. My eye fixed upon the observation tube that was following the
tiny missile to the ground.
The Control City was directly below us. I lost sight of the vial almost instantly, but the indicating cross-hairs
showed me exactly where the vial would strike; at a point approximately half
way between the edge of the city and the great squat pile of the administrating
building, with its gleaming glass penthouse—the laboratory in which, only a
few minutes before, I had witnessed the demonstration of the death which awaited the Universe.
"Excellent!"
I exclaimed. "Smartly done, men!" I turned and hurried to the navigating room, where the most powerful of
our television discs was located.
The disc was not as perfect as those we have
to-day; it was hooded to keep out exterior light, which is not necessary with
the later instruments, and it was more unwieldy. However, it did its work, and
did it well, in the hands of an experienced operator.
With
only a nod to Barry, I turned the range hand to maximum, and brought it swiftly
to bear upon that portion of the city in which the little vial had fallen. As I
drew the focusing lever towards me, the scene leaped at me through the clear,
glowing glass disc.
Froth!
Green, billowing froth that grew and boiled and spread unceasingly.
In places it reached high into the air, and it moved with an eager, inner life
that was somehow terrible and revolting. I moved the range hand back, and the
view seemed to drop away from me swiftly.
I
could see the whole city now. All one side of it was covered with the spreading
green stain that moved and flowed so swiftly. Thousands of tiny black figures
were running in the streets, crowding away from the awful danger that menaced
them.
The
green patch spread more swiftly all ways. When I had first seen it, the edges
were advancing as rapidly as a man could run; now they were fairly racing, and
the speed grew constantly.
A ship, two of them, three of them, came
darting from somewhere, towards the administration building, with its glass
cupola. I held my breath as the deep, sudden humming from the Tamon told me that our rays were busy. Would they—
One of the enemy ships disappeared suddenly
in a little cloud of dirty, heavy dust that setded
swiftly. Another . . . and the third. Three litde streaks of dust, falling, falling.
. . .
A fourth ship, and a fifth came rushing up,
their sides faintly glowing from the speed they had made. The green flood,
thick and insistent, was racing up and over the administration building now. It
reached the roof, ran swiftly. . . .
The fourth ship shattered into dust. The
fifth setded swifdy—and
then that ship also disappeared, together with a corner of the building. Then
the thick green stuff flowed over the whole building and there was nothing to
be seen there but a mound of soft, flowing, gray-green stuff that rushed on now
with the swiftness of the wind.
I looked up, into Barry's
face.
"You're ill!" he
said quickly. "Is there anything I can
do, sir?"
40
"Yes," I said, forming the words
with difficulty. "Give orders to ascend at emergency speed!"
For
once my first officer hesitated. He glanced at the attraction meter and then
turned to me again, wondering.
"At
this height, sir, emergency speed will mean dangerous heating of the surface;
perhaps—"
"I
want it white hot, Mr. Barry. She is built to stand it. Emergency speed,
please—immediately!
"Right, sir!" he said briskly, and
gave the order.
I
felt my weight increase as the order was obeyed; gradually the familiar,
uncomfortable feeling left me. Silently, Barry and I watched the big surface
temperature gauge as it started to move. The heat inside became uncomfortable,
grew intense. The sweat poured from us. In the operating room, forward, I could
see the man casting quick, wondering glances up at us through the heavy glass
partition that lay between.
The
thick, stubby red hand of the surface temperature gauge moved slowly but
steadily towards the heavy red line that marked the temperature at which the
outer shell of our hull would become incandescent. The hand was within three or
four degrees of that mark when I gave Barry the order to arrest our motion.
When he had given the order, I turned to him
and motioned towards the television disc.
"Look," I said.
He looked, and when at last he tore his face
away from the hood, he seemed ten years older.
"What
is it?" he asked in a choked whisper. "Why—they're being wiped out;
the whole of that world—"
"True. And some of the seeds of that
terrible death might have drifted upward, and found a lodging place upon the
surface of our ship. That is why f ordered
the emergency speed while we were still within the atmospheric envelope,
Barry. To burn away that contamination, if it existed.
Now we are safe, unless—"
I pressed the attention button to the station
of the chief of the ray operators.
"Your report," I
ordered.
"Nine ships disintegrated, sir," he
replied instantly. "Five before the city was destroyed; four
later."
"You
are certain that none escaped?" "Positive,
sir." "Very good."
I turned to Barry, smiling.
"Point
her nose for Zenia, Mr. Barry," I said. "As soon as it is feasible, resume emergency speed. There are
some very anxious gentlemen there awaiting our report, and I dare not convey it
except in person."
"Yes, sir!" said
Barry crisply.
This,
then, is the history of the Forgotten Planet. On the charts of the Universe it
appears as an unnamed world. No ship is permitted to pass
41
close enough to it so that its attraction is
greater than that of the nearest other mass. A permanent outpost of
fixed-station ships, with headquarters upon Jaron,
the closest world, is maintained by the Council.
There
are millions of people who might be greatly disturbed if they knew of this
potential menace that lurks in the midst of our Universe, but they do not know.
The wisdom of the Council made certain of that.
But,
in order that in the ages to come there might be a record of this matter, I
have been asked to prepare this document for the sealed archives of the
Alliance. It has been a pleasant task; I have relived, for a little time, a
part of my youth.
The
work is done, now, and that is well. I am an old man, and weary. Sometimes I
wish I might live to see the wonders that the next generation or so will
witness, but my years are heavy upon me.
My work is done.
^Jlie
(Various C^a&e of *YJorton *J4oorne
Back
thirty years ago when Argosy
All-Story was
the best-liked adventure fiction weekly in the land, when a story came in that
didn't fit the standard categories of
Western, Detective, Adventure, or Sport, the editor would label it "A
'Different' Story" and run that phrase right under the title. It was these
"different" stones which were the forerunners of modern fantasy, they were the seeds
which grew into Weird
Tales and Amazing Stories. One of
the finds made then was a new writer named Ray Cummings who began to contribute
unusual off-trail stories with increasing regularity. "The Curious Case of Norton Hoorne"
bore the label "Different," The reader will find it still justifies
that designation.
—/DO
DO
NOT FEEL that now, after these many years, it is any breach of professional
etiquette for me to relate the case of Norton Hoorne.
It was so remarkable, so extraordinary an incident, that it seems wrong to let
it lie forever buried in the professional secrecy to
which my good friend, the late Dr. Johns, consigned it. And so now, after
nearly twenty years, I have decided to give my remembrance of the events just
as they occurred.
I
attempt no explanation. I am not psychic. Indeed, I know very little of the
subject, for it is not one that appeals to me. I have never seen a ghost, nor
have I ever talked with any one who had. You who read
this may explain it as you will. I shall merely set down for you the plain
facts; and if, by so doing, I shall have added anything of value to the
existing data on Psychical Research, I shall be amply repaid.
At
the time the incidents occurred, I remember, I had just taken my medical
degree. My mother had wanted me to become a musician. I was, and in fact always
have been, tremendously interested in music. But the career of professional
pianist, for it was that branch of the art to which I leaned, seemed to hold
little promise for a youth whose talent obviously fell far short of genius, so
I decided upon the medical profession instead.
At
the time I took my degree I had two friends who meant a great deal to my life.
They were Dr. Johns and Norton Hoorne, the latter one
of the most famous concert pianists in the country. The friendship of these two
men, and the inspiration I derived from them both, was the biggest thing in my
life at this period—excepting possibly my interest in my work.
43
It was in the spring of 1900, I remember,
that Dr. Johns and I attended one of Hoorne's
concerts in New York. I know we were both proud, as we sat in that huge,
enthusiastic audience, to feel we were the closest friends of such a man.
Norton
Hoorne was at this time at the very pinnacle of his
fame. He was about thirty-five years of age—a most picturesque figure, tall and
straight, with very black wavy hair slightly touched with gray at the temples.
His features were strong—almost rugged. Yet his mouth was sensitive as a
girl's, and his face, for all its sturdy strength, was the face of a poet. He
had never married, but lived alone in his luxurious studio on Riverside Drive
with an old housekeeper who was devoted to him.
Hoorne was unquestionably a great artist. But we
knew him also as a great man—a man big mentally, physically and spiritually;
had he been otherwise the events I am about to relate might have been less
inexplicable.
I
think it was hardly two or three days after the concert that Dr. Johns called
me up one morning shortly after breakfast.
"Something
has happened," he explained hurriedly. "Norton's housekeeper has
just phoned me. Will you come right up to his studio?"
Then he hung up without waiting for me to
reply.
When
I arrived I was ushered in at once by the frightened housekeeper. She took me
immediately to the studio and I found Dr. Johns already there. He led me across
the room without a word and pointed to the grand piano that stood in a corner
by the window. On the bench before it sat Norton Hoorne,
his body sprawled forward over the keyboard of the instrument.
How
curious it is, that in moments of great mental stress little details impress
themselves upon one's mind that in other times would pass unnoticed! I can
remember the scene in Hoorne's studio that morning as
though it had happened yesterday. It was a luxurious room, in perfect order now as always. Large French windows
opened onto the Drive, and by the piano stood a many-pillowed divan where
frequently I had lain and listened to Hoorne's
playing.
Dr.
John's had arrived but a short while before, and now in a few words he told me what had happened as far as he knew it. Hoorne was not dead as I
had supposed by my first hurried glance, but was in a most extraordinary state
of catalepsy. There was absolutely no sign of life except in so far as there was also no positive sign of death. Both pulse and respiration apparently
had ceased.
We
lifted our friend from his position at the piano and laid him prone upon the
divan. Dr. Johns had not wanted to move him, he said, until I arrived. I had a
dozen horrified questions to ask, but he would have none of them. I could see
by his manner that he knew, or suspected, the cause of Hoorne's
condition. And because he wished it so, I questioned no more, but helped him
with his further examination.
When
we had finished, at his request, I summoned the housekeeper. The poor woman
came at once; she was frightened almost out of her wits and was crying softly.
"Did Mr. Hoorne
have his dinner here last evening?" Dr. Johns began at once.
"Yes,
sir, he did." "Alone?" "Yes, sir."
"You
told me you did not notice he was ill?" "No, sir, he ate very
well." "What did he do after dinner?"
"Came right up here,
sir. I
think he spent the first part of the evening reading."
I
looked over the few books scattered on top of the library table. Lying under
the electrolier I found an opened volume of Freud's
Psychoanalysis, several sheets of music, and two or three operatic scores. I
picked up the volume of Freud and showed it to Dr. Johns.
"Very probably,"
he said, and continued his questions.
"You retired about
half past eight?"
"Yes,
sir."
"And
very soon afterward you heard Mr, Hoorne
begin playing?" "Very soon after; yes, sir."
"How long did he play?"
"I don't know, sir; I
fell asleep listening to him."
Dr. Johns looked at her curiously. "Do
you know anything about music?"
he asked. '
The housekeeper smiled a little through her
tears. "I ought to, sir, I've been with Mr. Hoorne a long time."
"I know you have—yes.
What sort of music was it he was playing?"
The
old lady thought a moment. "I don't rightly think I can say, sir,"
she replied. "I don't remember he played anything I had ever heard
before."
"If
he had played any ordinary piece—anything in his repertoire, or those he
sometimes plays for diversion—would you have recognized it?"
"Yes, sir; I think so,
sir—though I might not know its name."
"But
you are familiar with most of the standard pieces, aren't you?" pursued
the doctor.
"I
know a great many—I do love music," she added earnestly, and her eyes
filled with tears again as she looked at the motionless figure on the divan.
"What about the music,
Fred?" I asked impatiently.
Dr.
Johns raised his hand deprecatingly. "I was just recalling a conversation
I had with Norton last week. I'll tell you later." He turned back to the 8
housekeeper who stood looking at her master with pleading eyes.
"Oh,
sir," she burst out. "Isn't there something I can do? Is it right
just to let him lie there? He isn't—oh, please tell me
he isn't dead."
The doctor gently led her
to a chair and sat her down.
"No,"
he said, "he isn't dead. And there's nothing we can do just now. Don't you
worry too much—perhaps he's not in great danger. We were talking about the
music," he went on. "What sort of music was it? Did you notice
anything peculiar about it?"
"Yes, sir, I did, now that you mention
it. It was very curious music, sir."
45 .
"How
curious?"
"It
was sort of weird, sir. I never heard anything like it before. One part of it
gave me the creeps. And some of it sounded like discords, sir."
The
doctor drew a long breath. "Thank you very much, Mrs. Beacon. I think that
will do for now."
The
housekeeper rose. "Yes, sir," she said. "And if there's anything I can do—oh, you will let me help, won't you, sir?" she
pleaded.
"Yes,
Mrs. Beacon, we will let you help," he answered kindly, and closed the
door upon her pathetic figure.
"You
know, Will," he said, turning back to me, "there's something mighty curious about this—I'm hanged if I understand it."
I
was just about to reply when there happened the first of the extraordinary
incidents that made this case so remarkable. I had just seated myself on the
piano bench, with my back to the instrument. I remember I was leaning backward
with my elbows resting on the music-ledge above • the keyboard.
At Dr. John's remark I must have shifted my
position slightly, for one of my elbows slipped off the rack and hit the keys
with a thump, sending a crashing, jangling discord reverberating through the
room. At the same instant there came a sharp rap from the floor near at hand. With
the roots of my hair tingling, I turned toward the divan. Hoorne's
right hand had slipped from his side to the floor, a large seal ring he wore
striking sharply its polished surface. And as I looked at his face, I caught
just the fleeting end of a convulsive jerk of the lips as they steadied again
into immobility.
"Good
God!" ejaculated Dr. Johns, as we started toward the divan. "Did you
see that?"
We
were both trembling violently as we examined the body. The convulsion had
passed. Hoorne was in the same state of living death
as before.
That
was the first intimation I had of the connection of music with the case. What
Dr. Johns knew and conjectured he was soon to tell me.
We
were sitting beside the table, and Dr. Johns was idly fingering the volume of
Freud.
"There's something
mighty curious about this," he repeated slowly.
"You've
some idea," I pursued, "or you wouldn't have talked to Mrs. Beacon
that way."
"What I had in mind, Will," he
answered, turning the leaves of the book , in his
hand—"you know how interested Norton was in psychic phenomena?" "Of course."
"We were talking about it at the club a
week or so ago. He confided something to me then—something he said he had
never told anyone. It seems for some time he had been experimenting with a
theory that through the power of a new style of music he had evolved, the soul
could be transported temporarily out of its body and brought back at will. You
know there are peo-pic who
claim to be able to send their astral body with its soul wandering into other
planes while their human body lies inert and helpless?"
"I know."
"Well, Norton said he
had found that he could do just that by using certain
46
kinds of music. I think I offended him a little,
for I must have smiled rather skeptically. At any rate he wouldn't say much
more except that he was afraid of the power he had acquired. I told him I thought that it might prove inconvenient when he was playing in public
some time, and he replied quite seriously that was just what he feared. He
seemed to be sorry that he had told me at all—just a litde
sheepish at my ridicule—and I couldn't get him to say any more. He asked me not
to tell you about it."
Dr. Johns hesitated.
"Go on," I urged.
"That's
all he said. Only—the look in his eyes made me know there was far more to it
than that. Something so personal, so intimate, he could not even tell it to
me."
Silence fell between us.
"And you think—" I prompted
finally.
"What
do you think? He was probably reading Freud last night. You heard what Mrs.
Beacon said about the music. And now, when you happened to hit the piano—"
Dr.
Johns stopped abruptly, his face very white, and for a long time we sat and
stared at each other.
"What
are we going to do about it?" I asked, breaking a silence that had become
oppressive.
"We've
got to assume, I think," Dr. Johns said, "that Norton's theory as he
told it to me has turned to fact. He has forced or lured, or whatever you might
term it, his astral body away to another plane. And for some reason it does not
want to or cannot get back."
In
spite of the seriousness of the situation, and the intense, earnest expression
on my friend's face, I could not help smiling just a little at hearing such
words from the lips of a man so coldly scientific as he.
"Do you believe
that?" I asked when he paused.
"What
else can I believe?" he answered. "At least it is a theory that fits
the facts. Norton may have been experimenting with this thing for some time.
God knows how far along he got with it—what he was able to do."
We tried to discuss the matter calmly; but to
us it was so gruesome a subject, so darkly mysterious, so weird, that in spite
of our efforts we found ourselves frequendy at the
point of becoming unnerved. There had been no change whatever in the body on
the divan; it remained as before in a state that was the complete simulation of
death.
I do not know what feelings caused us both to
avoid suggesting the obvious
thing to do. I think perhaps it was the almost supernatural aspect of the
incident when I had unwittingly sounded a discord from the piano that made
us hesitate to repeat it. \
It was Dr. Johns who voiced
first what was in both our thoughts.
"Whatever else may be in doubt," he
began, "one thing is clear. Music has some definite connection with
Norton's condition. It is to music we must look for a solution."
"How?" I asked.
"You know a great deal about music," he replied; "we shall have to experiment."
I
jumped to my feet impulsively and struck a chord on the piano. I do
not know what I
expected, but my heart was beating furiously as the room vibrated with the music. I turned toward the divan; the body lay motionless as before.
Dr.
Johns drew a chair beside the divan and sat down, staring steadily at Hoorne's
face. "Try another," he said.
I
played several chords in both major and minor keys; there was
no effect whatever upon
the body. With a sudden inspiration I turned
around and rested my elbows on the
music-ledge. Then I brought one of them
sharply down upon the black keys. Simultaneously with the discord came a piercing shriek, followed by a low, mumbling groan, the most hideous,
horrible sound I have ever heard issue from human lips.
When
I got to the divan the body was lying on its side, the knees drawn closely up
to the chest. I caught a glimpse of the contorted, agonized face. Then, with a
convulsive jerk the legs straightened, the face relaxed. It was as though
nothing had occurred, save that now the body was lying on its side, with one of
its arms still hanging down, and the hand lying limply upon the floor.
Nothing
else of importance happened that morning; the body remained motionless, and we
were too unnerved to try any further
experiments. We pulled down the shades and sat beside the divan, looking into
the placid, ghastly white face of our friend, and talking together in low
tones. Occasionally Dr. Johns would jump up and begin nervously to pace up and
down the room, only to drop back in his chair again after a moment.
About
noon the housekeeper timidly knocked on the door and brought us lunch. Dr.
Johns agreed with me that until we considered it vitally necessary we should
not call in any assistance, for publicity of this character would be extremely
harmful to Hoorne's career. We decided therefore to
carry the case through ourselves, and cautioned Mrs. Beacon to say nothing to
the servants beyond the fact that their master was very ill, with two
physicians in attendance.
We
both felt better when we had eaten lunch. At Dr. Johns's
request Mrs. Beacon and I brought
down from one of the upper bedrooms a small cot. We undressed Hoorne and laid him on it, covering him to his neck with
its white counterpane. Then dismissing the tearful, almost hysterical housekeeper
with another admonition to say nothing concerning her master's condition, we
prepared to carry out another experiment.
It
was our plan—we had discussed it all very carefully at lunch—to begin with the
faintest possible musical sounds, and find by trial
those that would effect the body without causing the
agony we had witnessed before.
Dr.
Johns sat at the bedside and I at the piano began striking chord combinations
as softly as I could. It was not until I had evolved what amounted practically to a discord that a sharp exclamation from Dr. Johns made me stop abruptly.
"Remember that," he commanded.
"Play that again. Louder—a little
loud-
48 cr." I doubled it with my left hand, striking it
several times. An exclamation
from my companion made me leave the piano and
rush to his side.
"Look,"
he whispered; Hoorne's lips were moving, apparently
trying to form words. Dr. Johns bent over him; then he straightened up and
shook his head.
For
over an hour we worked, trying every possible kind of music I could think of,
but to no purpose; we got no further than this. Only one fact stood out
plainly. The reactions the body gave were quite consistent; I could now almost
anticipate the effect of my playing.
Then
it occurred to me to look at the music we had found lying on the center table
with the volume of Freud. The sheet music, that part of it that was in
manuscript, I could tell even at first glance was like nothing I had ever seen
before. It was not built upon the ordinary eight-note scale with its two whole
tone intervals followed by a half tone, with which we are familiar. Perhaps it
was based upon the old Chinese scale—I do not know.
One
of the sheets was a composition of Debussy. There were some songs— one of them
by Rimsky-Korsakow, I remember—and there was the
pianoforte score of Moussorgsky's "Boris Godounov." Of this latter several pages were turned
down at the corners. I opened at the places indicated and found many of the
passages marked with a pencil, with penciled notations altering slightly the
tempo and rhythm, and occasionally the harmony.
This
music, which I found after a little practice I could play indifferently well,
had far more effect upon the body than any I had hitherto been able to evolve.
I played, with trembling fingers; Dr. Johns sat at the bedside, watching the
effect of my music.
For
some time I played, softly, haltingly. The body of Norton Hoorne,
I could see it from where I sat playing, jerked convulsively. The face twitched
and from the lips issued occasional heart-rending cries that were almost more
than we could bear.
Then
all at once there came a death-like silence. The body on the bed lay quiet. A
sharp exclamation from Dr. Johns made me stop playing; in a moment I was by
his side, leaning over the bed. Hoorne's lips were
moving. We held our breaths, bending closer. From the lips came the sound of a
low, mouthing muttering, and then the words distinctly audible:
"It is all so useless."
I hardly know how to describe the tone in
which these words were uttered. It had the quality I might best describe as hollow, a cold, measured, detached intonation, devoid absolutely of every quality of inflection—a voice
forming words but embodying no human personality. I want to make this quite
clear, because I think now that this detached quality, this lac\ of personality in the voice, was significant of much that
subsequently happened.
Not
only was the fact that Hoorne spoke startling in
itself, but the weird, unearthly tones of his voice filled me with the utmost
horror. I turned and fled back to the piano, in doubt whether to wait, or
resume playing.
Then I heard Dr. Johns gently asking:
"What is all so useless?"
There was a long pause, and then In the same ghastly voice as before came the words:
"Nothing matters now!"
I
sat down on the piano bench, and turning, caught a glimpse of the passive,
livid face on the pillow, and Dr. Johns bending over it.
"What
is all so useless?" he repeated. There was no answer, though we waited a
long time, with our beating hearts audible it seemed in the heaviness of the
silence.
Then
Dr. Johns signed me to go on playing, and for perhaps ten minutes I went over and over the themes, elaborating
them at times as fancy led me.
"Stop!"
called the doctor sharply, I ceased abruptly, my hands
poised above the keyboard.
"Play
slowly, very softly,"" he commanded, and as I obeyed I heard his voice in the gentle tones one uses toward a child, asking, "Can you speak now, Norton?"
A
long pause and then came the answer: "Yes."
"What
can we do to help you?" There was no answer.
"What
can we do to help you, Norton?" repeated Dr. Johns. "Play
louder," he added aside to me.
"It is all so useless," said the voice, louder and stronger than before. I let my playing die
down a little.
"Why
is it all so useless? Why is it, Norton?" asked Dr. Johns firmly and yet
almost tenderly.
There was a longer pause
than usual, and then came the words.
"So useless. So useless, because she is not here—you must not ma\e me live!"
I
do not know whether I played wrongly at this point or that it was merely from
some other cause, but immediately after uttering these words the body was
seized with a convulsion horrible to witness. I heard Dr. Johns's sharply indrawn breath and
hrs muttered exclamation.
"Stop playing!"
he commanded.
I
did so, and hurried again to the bedside. The convulsion had ceased; the
contorted face was relaxing.
"Why
must we not make you live? Why, Norton?" Dr. Johns spoke almost in a
whisper.
Standing
directly over the bed I could see the muscles of the face as the lips parted
and the words came forth.
"Because^ she has gone. I cannot reach her now."
And then a shudder seemed to pass over the
entire body, and with more power than ever before the voice said:
"The des\. hoo\ in the des\. Use it, for God's safe use it."
The
body abruptly relaxed into immobility; we waited and waited, but there came
nothing more.
That
was the first we knew about the girl. On the desk stood a photograph —we had
not noticed it before—in a small silver frame. It was the picture of a girl
perhaps twenty-five years of age—a shy, beautiful face, with very large
50 wistful eyes and a mass
of golden hair.
She was undeniably a girl of refinement and culture. The photograph showed her
in what evidently was her own drawing-room. The fittings of the room were
distinguishable, and the girl was seated with her back to a large grand piano,
leaning an elbow upon the keyboard.
We
took the photograph from its frame; there was nothing written upon it. Then we
rummaged through the papers on the desk and came across a note written in a
woman's small script. It gave an address in the East Sixties just off Fifth
Avenue—one of the most fashionable sections of the city. It read simply:
They wish it to be otherwise so—good-by.
Elaine.
The note bore a date some three months
previous to the time at which we read it.
We located the name of the family living in
the palatial private residence at this address. It was the name of one of this
country's most prominent financiers—you would remember it now if I were to
mention it here. And I remembered then having read in the society columns of
this daughter, Elaine.
That
night Mrs. Beacon brought in our dinner and we ate it by the bedside. When we
had finished it was nearly eight o'clock. We ordered Norton Hoorne's
car, and, locking the piano, and cautioning the housekeeper to admit no one to
the studio in our absence, we drove to the address where lived this girl whose
connection with the case appeared so definite, and yet, to us, so unfathomable.
II.
After we had waited perhaps five minutes a young
man entered the room, holding in his hand the card Dr. Johns had sent up. He
was a few years younger than I—a clean cut, athletic-looking chap—a typical
rich man's son of the better sort.
"Won't you sit down, gentlemen?" He
waved us back to the chairs from which we had risen, speaking, I thought, in an
unnaturally low tone. "I am Mr. Henten—my father
is not at home."
"Dr.
Manning and myself," Dr. Johns began, when we were seated, glancing at me
an instant by way of introduction. "Mr. Henten,
we came here this evening to see your father on rather a curious matter. I am
sure you will do quite as well."
Our young host inclined his
head in agreement and waited. "I—er—must ask,
Mr. Henten, that you will keep all we say strictly
confidential?"
The
young man nodded gravely.
"Then
I will be quite frank with you. I should like to ask first—do you know Norton Hoorne?"
"I have heard of him," said the
young man. "I have been to his concerts —he is a very great artist."
I thought he spoke a little cautiously, and with a note of coldness in his
voice.
"You do not know him personally?"
"I believe—yes, I have met him—some
months ago."
Young
Mr. Henten seemed to make this admission with
reluctance. Then, a little impatiently but without dropping his politely formal
manner, he went on—
"But will you tell me what Norton Hoorne—"
"Mr.
Henten," Dr. Johns interrupted, "I shall be
still more frank with you. We are Norton Hoorne's
physicians—and his friends also. Mr. Hoorne is very
ill at this moment—very dangerously ill, I might say. This afternoon in his
delirium he spoke the name of—er—Miss Henten. There is a photograph of her standing on his desk.
From the words he spoke—incoherent—"
The
look on the young man's face made Dr. Johns stop abruptly. After an instant he
continued, speaking much more firmly than before.
"You
will pardon me, Mr. Henten. You must understand we
have not the wish—the indelicacy—to pry into Miss Henten's
affairs. What we three say here is said in the strictest confidence. We are Mr.
Hoorne's physicians. His life is in danger. The
information we seek is for his good only. I trust you will understand that and
will do what you can to help us."
"What information is it you
desire?" asked the young man.
Dr.
Johns leaned forward earnestly. "Miss Henten and
Norton Hoorne were friends?"
"They
were, but the friendship was broken off several months ago."
"Why?"
Young Mr. Henten
hesitated, "Elaine was to have married Sir Oliver Baconfield.
It was announced recently," he said finally. "Was to—?"
"My
sister died this morning," said the young man quietly. The effect of this
announcement on Dr. Johns and me must have surprised our host greatly.
"Oh,
I am very sorry, Mr. Henten," Dr. Johns hastened
to say contritely when he had recovered himself somewhat. "I can
understand now your reluctance—our coming at such a time—"
The
young man bit his lip and looked away; we could see he was struggling to
suppress his emotion.
"We
will not keep you more than a moment longer," Dr. Johns added. "There
are a few questions—I beg you will not think them irrelevant. They have, I
assure you, a direct bearing upon Norton Hoorne's
present welfare. If you will let me hurt you just a moment
more, Mr. Henten. It may be—I think it is—a matter of life or death to our patient."
The
young man bowed his head. "What is it you want to know?" he asked in
a low voice.
"I
will be as brief as possible. Was your sister ever engaged to Norton Hoorne?"
"No—not that I know of." "They were very good friends?"
"I think so—yes."
"Why was the
friendship broken off?"
52
The young man met Dr. Johns's gaze with a look of almost pleading appeal.
"Why was the friendship broken off?" persisted
the doctor. "Did they quarrel?"
"No."
The youth spoke so low we could hardly hear him. "Were they—were they in
love?"
Young Mr. Henten's
increasing agitation became manifest. "I'm sorry to hurt you, my
lad," Dr. Johns added gently. "But I must know these things. Were
they in love?" "Yes, they were."
"And it was broken off so that she could
become engaged to some one else?"
"My—my
mother wished her to marry Lord Baconfield. My father
forbade her seeing Norton Hoorne again."
Dr.
Johns sat back in his chair. "What was the cause of your sister's death,
Mr. Henten?" He tried to ask the question
quietly, but I knew by my own emotion the anxiety with which he awaited its
answer.
Young
Mr. Henten raised his head wearily. "She died of
pneumonia," he said. "She caught a severe cold. It was very
sudden—though she had not been well for some time."
Dr.
Johns thought a moment and then resumed.
"After
her friendship with Norton Hoorne was broken off, was
she—did she seem ill?"
"She
never seemed quite herself. She—she— Oh, Dr. Johns, if you please, I—" The
young man seemed at the point of breaking down.
"I'm
sorry," Dr. Johns said kindly. "If you will just bear with me a
moment more—then we will go. Your sister was musical?"
"She
would have been a very fine pianist. She was a pupil of Norton Hoorne."
"Afterward—I mean these last few
months—did she play frequently?" "Not as much as before. Only at
night sometimes, in the evening, she would go into the music-room alone and
play." "What sort of music would she play?"
"I
don't know. It was peculiar. Improvisations of
her own sometimes, I think. We did not like her to play—it was not good
for her."
"Why not?" Dr. Johns's eyes never left the young man's
face.
"It
made her ill. Once or twice she—she fainted. We found her lying there—once on
the floor where she had fallen."
Dr.
Johns rose abruptly, and crossing to where the young man sat low down in his
chair, laid an arm over his shoulder.
"We
will go now, my lad," he said gently. "I am sorry to have hurt you,
but it was necessary. I know you do not understand why I have asked these
questions. You need never understand—now. And remember—our visit here to-night
and what we have said, you have given your promise—you will tell no one?"
"No, sir, I will not mention it, if you
wish me not to." "Thank you." The doctor straightened up.
"Your sister was a very fine little woman. You know that—and we know it.
Good night, my lad." "Good night, sir," said the young man,
rising.
53
During the drive back to Norton Hoorne's studio, Dr. Johns showed a peculiar reticence in discussing the
interview we had just had. The few questions and comments I volunteered he
answered so shortly and with such abstraction of manner that I soon gave up and
remained silent.
Back
at the house on Riverside Drive, we went immediately to Hoorne's
studio. We found nothing unusual had occurred during our absence. Norton Hoorne's body still lay motionless on the cot.
After
we had dismissed the housekeeper with such assurances of her master's recovery
as we could give, and were again alone, Dr. Johns locked both doors of the
room, and turning to face me, began abruptly:
"Will,
whatever you or I may think about this case, it is obvious that theoretical
discussion of it is futile. Í am
convinced of but one thing—the secret lies with Norton; we must make him tell
us."
"Do we dare?" I asked; 1 dreaded
further musical experiments.
"We
must—there is no other way. And to do nothing—" Dr. Johns broke off and
shuddered.
"Shall I play now?" I asked. My
companion nodded and seated himself
beside the cot. ~,
Í began to play, softly at first, then louder. For what seemed ages
there was no response. Again I heard the sound of that weird voice, babbling
incoherently, with low moans, and once interrupted by a piercing shriek.
I ceased playing and heard Dr. Johns say:
"You
must speak more clearly, Norton. Now—try—what is it you want to tell us?"
In the silence that followed I played slowly
a series of soft modulations. Then I waited, and after a timé, from
the lips of Norton Hoorne came the words:
"In the des\—another drawer—the letter—for you. Use it, for God's sa\e, use it."
We found it after a long search, in a secret
drawer of the desk. It was a large envelope, sealed, and inscribed with both our names. It contained a folded sheet of music manuscript and a
letter. The letter, which was in Hoorne's
handwriting, we opened first. It contained only two lines:
I fear this thing. I cannot tell to what it
will lead. I know I can trust you both, if need arises, to use the enclosed.
That was all.
The
music was written in Hoorne's careless, hurried way,
with which I was quite familiar. It was a composition of perhaps sixty bars.
And at the top, for its tide, was the one word:
"RELEASE"
For a moment
we stared at this cryptic paper in silence. Then our glances met, and in Dr. Johns's eyes I read the same doubt of its meaning that he
must have seen in mine.
"Can you play it?" he asked; his
voice almost broke with the intensity of his emotion.
"Yes," I answered. "Shall
I?"
He
flung his hands to his head with a gesture of despair. "Play it," he
said hopelessly.
The
scene in Norton Hoorne's studio that night, as I
remember it, was fantastic and gruesome in the extreme. The room was in
semidarkness. The shades were down, and we had drawn
the heavy portieres together before the French windows. The corners of the room
and its heavily beamed ceiling were shrouded in thick, black shadows. The piano
stood quite in shadow, with only a dim glow of amber light from a lamp shining
upon its rack and keyboard.
Near by stood the white-linened
bed with the ghasdy white face of Norton Hoorne upon its snowy pillow. And from a stand at the
bedside a beam of light fell full upon the expressionless features.
At
first I was trembling so violently I would not dared have made the attempt to
play. Forcing myself to calmness, I ran my fingers silently over the keys,
staring intently at what I knew
instinctively was Hoorne's unplayed
composition, finding its extraordinary harmonies, and fixing the rhythm in my
mind.
After
many minutes of guiding my cold, trembling fingers in their unfamiliar way
over the keys, I began to play. In the hush of the room the fantastic music
welled out with a throbbing intensity. No longer was I nervous, no longer
afraid. The shadows of the studio faded into blackness— a great void of
nothingness all about me—as I abandoned myself more and more to the influence of
the strange harmonies I was creating. Now my innermost being felt their power,
for they awakened emotions my soul had never known before.
The
blackness around grew denser. My senses seemed freed of every earthly tie. The
room, the piano, everything, was blotted out. Only the music remained,
quivering out through the void, crying with the sorrow of the ages, but always
tender, inexpressibly tender, and luring—luring me on—and on—
I
shall never forget the shock to my senses when the first sharp cry from Dr.
Johns brought me to myself. The music died—throbbing away into silence. I found
myself sitting at the keyboard, cold and shivering in the hot, close air of the
room.
"Look!
Look there!" I heard Dr. Johns's low whisper as
though from a great distance.
The
corner of the room and the ceiling beyond and above Hoorne's
white, expressionless face was shrouded with a great, black, grotesque shadow.
I do not know what made me stare in that direction, but as I stared the shadow began to take form. At first it seemed merely to
waver; then it began to contract, slowly at first, then more rapidly.
Then
it seemed no longer black but vaguely luminous, like a silver fog gleaming in
the dim light of a hidden moon. And then all at once I realized that it was
taking shape. I could see plainly the tiny glowing particles
that composed it, twisting and crawling upon themselves. But the shape
remained,
55
grew more definite, until at last I recognized it
for what it was—the figure of a young girl—the girl of the photograph—the girl
whose brother we had just left.
I
do not know how long it took me to come to this realization of what I was
seeing. Probably it was only an instant; it seemed an eternity.
I
could hear Dr. Johns's labored breathing—see dimly the outlines of the cot and Hoorne's face upon its pillow. But all that remained clear and real was the
figure of this girl, quivering there in the air above the bed.
The
upper part of her body particularly was vivid; below the breasts it seemed to
melt away into the blackness of the room beyond. Her hair hung in two flowing
braids over her bare shoulders; her arms were reaching down toward the bed, and
on her beautiful face was a look
of tenderness and sorrow and unutterable longing.
And
then I saw that around her head and shoulders there hung another radiance,
dimmer far than the outlines of her form—a radiance that seemed to fade away as
I looked at it direcdy. Yet I knew it was there; and
I seemed to feel, too, rather than see, that it was not silver, but the
delicate color of a rose—a color extraordinarily beautiful, yet fragile,
wistful as the rose petals it resembled.
Then
as I sat staring I heard a whisper come up from the bed. The whisper grew
louder, and I heard that same toneless voice from the lips of Norton Hoorne, saying:
"I cannot stay here. I must go. Play—play—you must play."
I
think I must have resumed playing; I know I heard music—the same music as
before, only softer, sweeter, more tender.
And
then, from the body lying inert on the bed, I saw issue another shape —in
outline, form, and every detail the body of Norton Hoorne.
It glowed, swirled, and drifted upward. It was Norton Hoorne—its face the face of my friend
as I had always known him. After an instant his figure hung swaying above the
bed. And from it depended a thin silver cord—fine as
the finest gossamer, holding it chained to its human shell below.
The
music swelled louder. The arms of the girl reached out; her eyes seemed to cry
aloud with yearning. The man's figure pulled and strained at its leash, but the
silver cord held strong.
The
music grew still louder, thundering now in the hush of the room. The body in
the bed sat up suddenly, beating with clenched hands its naked breast. And
then, slowly it seemed, the silver cord parted.
A
look of ineffable happiness suffused the girl's face as the man's figure,
growing suddenly brighter, swirled upward and mingled with hers.
The
body on the bed fell back upon the pillow and lay motionless. The mingled
shapes above drifted away. The music ceased abrupdy.
Norton Hoorne
was—dead?
^Jhe f-^ower and the Cjiorij,
W. tiffin
The
moral implications of atomic power are haunting the capitals of the world.
Underlying all debates, all actions of nations., is
the haunting question—what will become of
us all if this atomic power gets out of hand? A force for good it could be. A
force for evil it has already been. And as the atomic bomb
progresses to ever higher stages, the clock of
history ticks louder for all humanity. The problem was not unforeseen.
Here is a short story, written and published in 1930, which outlined the whole
dreadful impasse fifteen years before it materialized. Charles W. Diffin may
have understated the difficulty of
releasing atomic energy—but he has certainly not understated the ethical
problems that now face men of science
the world over.
n
«. i
* HI
HERE
WERE papers on the desk, a litter of papers scrawled over, in the careless
writing of indifferent students, with the symbols of chemistry and long
mathematical computations. The man at the desk pushed them aside to rest his
lean, lined face on one thin hand. The other arm, ending at the wrist, was on
the desk before him.
Students
of a great university had long since ceased to speculate about the missing
hand. The result of an experiment, they knew—a hand that was a mass of lifeless
cells, amputated quickly that the living arm might be saved—but that was some
several years ago, ancient history to those who came and went through Professor
Eddinger's classroom.
And
now Professor Eddinger was weary—weary and old, he
told himself—as he closed his eyes to shut out the sight of the interminable
papers and the stubby wrist that had ended forever his experiments and the
delicate manipulations which only he could do.
He
reached slowly for a buzzing phone, but his eyes brightened at the voice that
came to him.
"I've
got it—I've got it!" The words were almost incoherent. "This is
Avery, Professor—Avery! You must come at once, You
will share in it; I owe it all to you . . . you will be the first to see ... I am sending a taxi for you—"
Professor
Eddinger's tired eyes crinkled to a smile. Enthusiasm
like this was rare among his youngsters. But Avery—with the face of a poet, a
57 ,
dreamer's eyes and the mind of a
scientist—good boy, Avery!—a long time since he had seen him—had him in his own
laboratory for two years. . . .
"What's this all
about?" he asked.
"No—no!"
said a voice; "I can't tell you—it is too
big—greater than the induction motor—greater than the electric light—it is the
greatest thing in the world. The taxi should be there now—you must come—"
A
knock at the office door where a voice said, "Car for Professor Eddin-ger," confirmed the excited words.
"I'll come," said the Professor,
"right away."
He
pondered, as the car whirled him across the city, on what this greatest thing
in the world might be. And he hoped with gentle skepticism that the enthusiasm
was warranted. A young man opened the car door as they stopped. His face was
flushed, Eddinger noted, hair pushed back in disarray,
his shirt torn open at the throat.
"Wait
here," he told the driver and took the Professor by the arm to hurry him
into a dilapidated building.
"Not
much of a laboratory," he said, "but we'll
have better, you and I; we'll have better—"
The
room seemed bare with its meager equipment, but it was neat, as became the best
student of Professor Eddinger. Rows of reagent
bottles stood on the shelves, but the tables were a litter of misplaced
instruments and broken glassware where trembling hands had fumbled in heedless
excitement.
"Glad
to see you again, Avery." The gentle voice of Professor Eddinger had lost its tired tone. "It's been two years
you've been working, I judge. Now what is this great discovery, boy? What have
you found?"
The
younger man, in whose face the color came and went, and whose eyes were shining
from dark hollows that marked long days and sleepless nights, still clung to
the other's arm.
"It's
real," he said; "it's great! It means fortune and fame, and you're in
on that, Professor. The old master," he said and clapped a hand affectionately
upon a thin shoulder; "I owe it all to you. And now I have—I have learned.
. . . No, you shall see for yourself. Wait—"
He
crossed quickly to a table. On it was an apparatus; the eyes of the older man
widened as he saw it. It was intricate—a maze of tubing. There was a glass bulb
above—the generator of a cathode ray, obviously—and electro-magnets below and
on each side. Beneath was a crude sphere of heavy lead—a retort, it might
be—and from this there passed two massive, insulated cables. The understanding
eyes of the Professor followed them, one to a terminal on a great insulating
block upon the floor, the other to a similarly protected terminal of carbon
some feet above it in the air.
The
trembling fingers of the young man made some few adjustments, then he left the instrument to take his place by an electric
switch. "Stand back," he warned, and closed the switch.
There
was a gentle hissing from within glass tubes, the faint glow of a blue-green light. And that was all, until—with a crash like the ripping
58 crackle of lightning, a white flame arced
between the terminals of the heavy cables. It hissed ceaselessly through the
air where now the tang of ozone was apparent. The carbon blocks glowed with a
brilliant incandescence when the flame, ceased with the motion of a hand where
Avery pulled a switch.
The
man's voice was quiet now. "You do not know yet, what you have seen, but
there was a tremendous potential there—an amperage I
can't measure with my limited facilities." He waved a deprecating hand
about the ill-furnished laboratory. "But you have seen—" His voice
trembled and failed at the forming of the words.
"—The disintegration of the atom," said Professor Eddinger quietly, "and the release of power unlimited.
Did you use thorium?" he inquired.
The
other looked at him in amazement. Then: "I should have known you would
understand," he said humbly. "And you know what it means"— again
his voice rose—"power without end to do the work of the world— great
vessels driven a lifetime on a mere ounce of matter—a revolution in
transportation—in living. . . ." He paused. "The liberation of
mankind," he added, and his voice was reverent. "This will do the
work of the world; it will make a new heaven and a new earth! Oh, I have
dreamed dreams," he exclaimed, "I have seen visions. And it has been
given to me— me!—to liberate man from the curse of Adam . . . the sweat of his
brow. ... I can't realize it even
yet. I—I am not worthy. . . ."
He
raised his eyes slowly in the silence to gaze in wondering astonishment at the
older man. There was no answering light, no exaltation on the lined face. Only sadness in the tired eyes that looked at him and through him
as if focused upon something in a dim future—or past.
"Don't
you see?" asked the wondering man. "The freedom of
men— the liberation of a race. No more poverty, no endless, grinding
labor." His young eyes, too, were looking into the future, a future of
blinding light. "Culture," he said, "instead of heart-breaking
toil, a chance to grow mentally, spiritually; it is another world, a new
life—" And again he asked: "Surely, you see?"
"I see," said the
other; "I see—plainly."
"The
new world," said Avery. "It—it dazzles me; it rings like music in my
ears."
"I see no new
world," was the slow response.
The
young face was plainly perplexed. "Don't you believe?" he stammered.
"After you have seen ... I
thought you would have the vision, would help me
emancipate the world, save it—" His voice failed.
"Men have a way of
crucifying their saviors," said the tired voice.
The
inventor was suddenly indignant. "You are blind," he said harshly;
"it is too big for you. And I would have had you stand beside me in the
great work. ... I shall announce it
alone. . . . There will be laboratories —enormous!—and factories. My invention
will be perfected, simplified, compressed. A generator will be made—thousands
of horsepower to do the work of a city, free thousands of men—'made so small
you can hold it in one hand."
The sensitive face was proudly alight, proud
and a trifle arrogant. The exaltation of his coming power was strong upon him.
"Yes,"
said Professor Eddinger, "in one hand." And
he raised his right arm that he might see where the end of a sleeve was empty.
"I
am sorry," said the inventor abruptly; "I didn't mean . . . but you
will excuse me now; there is so much to be done—" But the thin figure of
Professor Eddinger had crossed to the far table to
examine the apparatus there.
"Crude," he said beneath his
breath, "crude—but efficient!"
In
the silence a rat had appeared in the distant corner. The
Professor nodded as he saw it. The animal stopped as the man's eyes came upon
it; then sat squirrel-like on one of the shelves as it ate a crumb of food.
Some morsel from a hurried lunch of Avery's, the Professor reflected—poor
Avery! Yes, there was much to be done.
He
spoke as much to himself as to the man who was now beside him. "It enters
here," he said and peered downward toward the lead bulb. He placed a
finger on the side of the metal. "About here, I should think. . . . Have
you a drill? And a bit of quartz?"
The
inventor's eyes were puzzled, but the assurance of his old instructor claimed
obedience. He produced a small drill and a fragment like broken glass. And he
started visibly as the one hand worked awkwardly to make a small hole in the side of the lead. But he withdrew his own restraining
hand, and he watched in mystified silence while the quartz was fitted to make a
tiny window and a thin figure stooped to sight as if aiming the
opening toward a far corner where a brown rat sat upright in earnest munching
of a dry crust.
The
Professor drew Avery with him as he retreated noiselessly from the instrument.
"Will you close the switch," he whispered.
The
young man hesitated, bewildered, at this unexpected demonstration, and the
Professor himself reached with his one hand for the black lever. Again the arc
crashed into life, to hold for a brief instant until Professor Eddinger opened the switch.
"Well,"
demanded Avery, "what's all the show? Do you think you are teaching me
anything—about my own instrument?" There was hurt pride and jealous
resentment in his voice.
"See," said Professor Eddinger quietly. And his one thin hand pointed to a far shelf, where, in the shadow, was a huddle of brown fur and a bit of
crust. It fell as they watched, and the "plop" of the soft body upon
the floor sounded loud in the silent room.
"The law of compensation," said
Professor Eddinger. "Two sides to the medal! Darkness and light—good and evil—life . . . and death!"
The young man was stammering. "What do
you mean?—a death ray evolved?" And: "What of
it?" he demanded; "what of it? What's that got to do with it?"
"A
death ray," the other agreed. "You have dreamed, Avery—one must in
order to create—but it is only a dream. You dreamed of life—a fuller
60 life—for the world, but you would have given them, as you
have just seen, death."
The
face of Avery was white as wax; his eyes glared savagely from dark hollows.
"A
rat!" he protested. "You have killed a rat . . . and you say—you
say—" He raised one trembling hand to his
lips to hold them from forming the unspeakable words.
"A rat," said the Professor—"or a man ...
or a million men."
"We will control it."
"All
men will have it—the best and the worst . . . and there is no defence."
"It
will free the world—" "It will destroy it."
"No!"—and
the white-faced man was shouting now—"you don't understand—you can't see—"
The
lean figure of the scientist straightened to its full height. His eyes met
those of the younger man, silent now before him, but Avery knew the eyes never
saw him; they were looking far off, following the wings of thought. In the
stillness the man's words came harsh and commanding—■
"Do
you see the cities," he said, "crumbling to ruins under the cold
stars? The fields? They are rank with wild growth,
torn and gullied by the waters; a desolate land where animals prowl. And the
people—the people!—wandering bands, lower, as the years drag on, than the
beasts themselves; the children dying, forgotten, in the forgotten lands; a
people to whom the progress of our civilization is one with the ages past, for
whom there is again the slow, toiling road toward the light.
"And
somewhere, perhaps, a conquering race, the most brutal and callous of mankind,
rioting in their sense of power and dragging themselves
down to oblivion. . . ."
His
gaze came slowly back to the room and the figure of the man still fighting for
his dream.
"They
would not," said Avery hoarsely; "they'd use it for good."
"Would
they?" asked Professor Eddinger. He spoke simply
as one stating simple facts. "I love my fellow men," he said,
"and I killed them in thousands in the last war—I, and my science, and my
poison gas."
The
figure of Avery slumped suddenly upon a chair; his face was buried in his
hands. "And I would have been," he groaned, "the greatest man in
the world."
"You
shall be greater," said the Professor, "though only we shall know
it—you and I. . . . You will save the world—from itself."
The
figure, bowed and sunken in the chair, made no move; the man was heedless of
the kindly hand upon his shoulder. His voice, when he spoke, was that of one
afar off, speaking out of a great loneliness. "You don't understand,"
he said dully; "you can't—"
But
Professor Eddinger, a cog in the wheels of a great
educational machine, glanced at the watch on his wrist. Again his thin
shoulders were stooped, his voice tired. "My classes," he said.
"I must be going. . , ."
61
In the gathering dusk Professor Eddinger locked carefully the door of his office. He crossed beyond his desk and fumbled with his
one hand for his keys.
There
was a cabinet to be opened, and he stared long in the dim light at the object
he withdrew. He looked approvingly at the exquisite workmanship
of an instrument where a generator of the cathode ray and an intri-» cate maze of tubing
surmounted electro-magnets and a round
lead bulb. There
were terminals for attaching
heavy cables; it was a beautiful thing . . . His useless
arm moved to bring an imaginary hand before the window of quartz in the lead
sphere.
"Power,"
he whispered and repeated Avery's words; "power to build
a city—or destroy a civilization . . . and I hold
it in one hand."
He replaced the apparatus in the safety of its case. "The
saviors of mankind!" he said, and his tone was harsh and bitter.
But
a smile, whimsical,
kindly, crinkled his tired eyes as he turned to his
desk and its usual litter of examination papers.
"It
is Something, Avery," he whispered to that distant man, "to belong in so distinguished a group."
^Jde <\AJatlzed by. <^Z)a<
by Rutins oCona
Julius Long, who is a lawyer by profession, is better known as a detective writer than as a fantasy author.
(His terrifically exciting thriller, "Murder in Her Big Blue Eyes"
was recently published by Avon.) About a dozen
or so good weird stories were written and sold by Mr. Long quite early in his avocational writing career —for like so many, fantasy is a
labor of love, other writing, a labor for profit. "He Walked By Day" is an unusual sort of ghost story— the story of one of
the most constructive ghosts ever—a story
that is somewhat reminiscent of the
style of Ray Bradbury.
9
RIEDENBURG,
OHIO, sleeps between the muddy waters oŁ the Miami River and the rusty track of
a litde-used spur of the Big Four. It suddenly
became important to us because of its strategic position. It bisected a road
which we were to surface with tar. The materials were to come by way of the
spur and to be unloaded at the tiny yard.
We
began work on a Monday morning. I was watching the tar distributer while it
pumped tar from the car, when I felt a tap upon my back. I turned about, and
when I beheld the individual who had tapped me, I actually jumped.
I
have never, before or since, encountered such a singular figure. He was at
least seven feet tall, and he seemed even taller than that because of the uncommon
slenderness of his frame. He looked as if he had never been warmed by the rays
of the sun, but confined all his life in a dank and dismal cellar. I concluded
that he had been the prey of some insidious, etiolating disease. Certainly, I
thought, nothing else could account for his ashen complexion. It seemed that
not blood, but shadows passed through his veins.
"Do you want to see
me?" I asked.
"Are you the road
feller?"
"Yes."
"I
want a job. My mother's sick. I have her to keep. Won't you please give me a
job?"
We
really didn't need another man, but I was interested in this pallid giant with
his staring, gray eyes. I called to Juggy, my
foreman. "Do you think we can find a place for this fellow?" I asked.
Juggy stared incredulously. "He looks like he'd
break in two." "I'm stronger'n
anyone," said the youth.
He looked about, and his
eyes fell on the Mack, which had just been loaded
63 with six tons of gravel. He walked over to it, reached down and
seized the hub of a front wheel. To our utter amazement, the wheel was slowly
lifted from the ground. When it was raised to a height of eight or nine inches,
the youth looked inquiringly in our direction. We must have appeared
sufficiently awed, for he dropped the wheel with an abruptness that evoked a
yell from the driver, who thought his tire would blow out.
"We can certainly use this fellow,"
I said, and Juggy agreed.
"What's your name, Shadow?" he
demanded.
"Karl
Rand," said the boy, but "Shadow" stuck to him, as far as the
crew was concerned.
We put him to work at once, and he slaved all
morning, accomplishing tasks that we ordinarily assigned two or three men to
do.
We
were on the road at lunchtime, some miles from Friedenburg.
I recalled that Shadow had not brought his lunch.
"You can take mine," I said.
"I'll drive in to the village and eat."
"I never eat none,"
was Shadow's astonishing remark.
"You
never eat!" The crew had heard his assertion, and there was an amused
crowd about him at once. I fancied that he was pleased to have an audience.
"No,
I never eat," he repeated. "You see"—he lowered his voice—"you see, I'm a ghost!"
We
exchanged glances. So Shadow was psychopathic We
shrugged our shoulders.
"Whose
ghost are you?" gibed Juggy. "Napoleon's?"
"Oh, no. I'm my own ghost. You see, I'm dead."
"Ah!"
This was all Juggy could say. For once, the
arch-kidder was nonplussed.
"That's
why I'm so strong," added Shadow. "How long have you been dead?"
I asked. "Six years. I.was fifteen years old then."
"Tell
us how it happened. Did you die a natural death, or were you killed trying to
lift a fast freight off the track?" This question was asked by Juggy, who was slowly recovering.
"It
was in the cave," answered Shadow solemnly. "I slipped and fell over
a bank. I cracked my head on the floor. I've been a ghost ever since."
"Then why do you walk by day instead of
by night?"
"I got to keep my mother."
Shadow
looked so sincere, so pathetic when he made this answer, that
we left off teasing him. I tried to make him eat my lunch, but he would have
none of it. I expected to see him collapse that afternoon, but he worked
steadily and showed no sign of tiring. We didn't know what to make of him. I
confess that I was a little afraid in his presence. After all, a madman with
almost superhuman strength is a dangerous character. But Shadow seemed
perfectly harmless and docile.
When
we had returned to our boarding-house that night, we plied our landlord with
questions about Karl Rand. He drew himself up authoritatively, and lectured
for some minutes upon Shadow's idiosyncrasies.
64
"The boy first started telling that
story about six years ago," he said. "He never was right in his head,
and nobody paid much attention to him at first. He said he'd fallen and busted
his head in a cave, but everybody knows they ain't no caves hereabouts. I don't know what put that idea in his
head. But Karl's stuck to it ever since, and I 'spect
they's lots of folks round Friedenburg
that's growed to believe him—more'n
admits they do."
That
evening, I patronized the village barber shop, and was careful to introduce
Karl's name into the conversation. "All I can say is," said the
barber solemnly, "that his hair ain't growed any in the last six years, and they was nary a
whisker on his chin. No, sir, nary a whisker on his
chin."
This
did not strike me as so tremendously odd, for I had previously heard of cases
of such arrested growth. However, I went to sleep that night thinking about
Shadow.
The
next morning, the strange youth appeared on time and rode with the crew to the
job. "Did you eat well?" Juggy asked him.
Shadow shook his head. "I never eat none."
The crew half believed him.
Early
in the morning, Steve Bradshaw, the nozzle man on the tar distributer, burned
his hand badly. I hurried him in to see the village doctor. When he had dressed
Steve's hand, I took advantage of my opportunity and made inquiries about
Shadow.
"Karl's
got me stumped," said the country practitioner. "I confess I can't
understand it. Of course, he won't let me get close enough to him to look at
him, but it don't take an examination to tell there's
something abnormal about him."
"I
wonder what could have given him the idea that he's his own ghost," I said.
"I'm
not sure, but I think what put it in his head was the things people used to say
to him when he was a kid. He always looked like a ghost, and everybody kidded
him about it. I kind of think that's what gave him the notion."
"Has he changed at all
in the last six years?"
"Not a bit. He was as
tall six years ago as he is today. I think that his abnormal growth might have
had something to do with the stunting of his mind. But I don't know for
sure."
I
had to take Steve's place on the tar distributer during the next four days, and
I watched Shadow pretty closely. He never ate any lunch, but he would sit with
us while we devoured ours. Juggy could not resist the
temptation to joke at his expense.
"There
was a ghost back in my home town," Juggy once
told him. "Mary Jenkens was an awful pretty
woman when she was living, and when she was a girl, every fellow in town wanted
to marry her. Jim Jenkens finally led her down the
aisle, and we was all jealous—especially Joe Garver.
He was broke up awful. Mary hadn't no more'n come back from the Falls when Joe was trying to make
up to her. She wouldn't have nothing to do with him.
Joe was hurt bad.
"A year after she was married, Mary took
sick and died. Jim Jenkens was awful put out about
it. He didn't act right from then on. He got to imagining things. He got
suspicious of Joe.
" 'What you got to worry about?' people would ask
him. 'Mary's dead. There can't no harm come to her
now.'
"But
Jim didn't feel that way. Joe heard about it, and he
got to teasing Jim.
" 'I was out with Mary's ghost last night,' he
would say. And Jim got to believing him. One night, he lays low for Joe and
shoots him with both barrels. 'He was goin' to meet
my wife!' Jim told the judge."
"Did they give him the chair?" I
asked.
"No, they gave him life in the state
hospital."
Shadow
remained impervious to Juggy's yarns, which were told
for his special benefit. During this time, I noticed something decidedly
strange about the boy, but I kept
my own counsel. After all, a contractor can not keep
the respect of his men if he appears too credulous.
One
day Juggy voiced my suspicions for me. "You
know," he said, "I
never saw that kid sweat.
It's uncanny. It's ninety in the shade today, and Shadow ain't
got a drop of perspiration on his face. Look at his shirt. Dry as if he'd just
put it on."
Everyone
in the crew noticed this. I think we all became uneasy in Shadow's presence.
One
morning he didn't show up for work. We waited a few minutes and left without him. When the trucks came in with their
second load of gravel, the drivers told us that Shadow's mother had died during
the night. This news cast a gloom over the crew. We all sympathized with the
youth.
"I wish I hadn't kidded him," said Juggy.
We
all put in an appearance that evening at Shadow's little cottage, and I think he was tremendously gratified. "I won't be working no
more," he told me. "There ain't no need for me now."
I
couldn't afford to lay off the crew for the funeral, but I did go myself. I even accompanied Shadow to the cemetery.
We
watched while the grave was being filled. There were many others there, for one
of the chief delights in a rural community is to see how the mourners
"take on" at a funeral. Moreover, their interest in Karl Rand was
deeper. He had said he was going back to his cave, that
he would never again walk by day. The villagers, as well as myself, wanted to
see what would happen.
When
the grave was filled, Shadow turned to me, eyed me pathetically a moment, then
walked from the grave. Silently, we watched him set out across the field. Two
mischievous boys disobeyed the entreaties of their parents, and set out after
him.
They
returned to the village an hour later with a strange and incredible story. They had seen Karl disappear into the
ground. The earth had literally swallowed him up. The youngsters were terribly
frightened. It was thought that Karl had done something to scare them, and
their imaginations had got the better of them.
But the next day they were asked to lead a
group of the more curious to the spot where Karl had vanished. He had not
returned, and they were worried.
In a ravine two miles from the village, the
party discovered a small but penetrable entrance to a cave. Its existence had
never been dreamed of by the farmer who owned the land. (He has since then
opened it up for tourists, and it is known as Ghost Cave.)
Someone
in the party had thoughtfully brought an electric searchlight, and the party
squeezed its way into the cave. Exploration revealed a labyrinth of caverns of
exquisite beauty. But the explorers were oblivious to the esthetics of the
cave; they thought only of Karl and his weird story.
After
circuitous ramblings, they came to a sudden drop in the floor. At the base of
this precipice they beheld a skeleton.
The
coroner and the sheriff were duly summoned. The sheriff invited me to accompany
him.
I regret that I cannot describe the gruesome,
awesome feeling that came over me as I made my way through those caverns.
Within their chambers the human voice is given a peculiar, sepulchral sound.
But perhaps it was the knowledge of Karl's bizarre story, his unaccountable
disappearance that inspired me with such awe, such thoughts.
The
skeleton gave me a shock, for it was a skeleton of a man seven feet tall! There
was no mistake about this; the coroner was positive.
The
skull had been fractured, apparently by a fall over the bank. It was I who
discovered the hat near by. It was rotted with decay,
but in the leather band were plainly discernible the
crudely penned initials, "K.R."
I
felt suddenly weak. The sheriff noticed my nervousness. "What's the
matter, have you seen a ghost?"
I
laughed nervously and affected nonchalance. With the best off-hand manner I
could command, I told him of Karl Rand. He was not impressed.
"You don't---- ?" He did not wish to insult my intelligence by
finishing his
question.
At
this moment, the coroner looked up and commented: "This skeleton has been
here about six years, I'd say."
I
was not courageous enough to acknowledge my suspicions, but the villagers were
outspoken. The skeleton, they declared, was that of Karl Rand. The coroner and
the sheriff were incredulous, but, politicians both, they displayed some
sympathy with this view.
My
friend, the sheriff, discussed the matter privately with me some days later.
His theory was that Karl had discovered the cave, wandered inside and come upon
the corpse of some unfortunate who had preceded him. He had been so excited by
his discovery that his hat had fallen down beside the body. Later, aided by the
remarks of the villagers about his ghostliness, he had fashioned his own
legend.
This,
of course, may be true. But the people of Friedenburg
are not convinced by this explanation, and neither am I. For
the identity of the skeleton has never been determined, and Karl Rand has never
since been seen to walk by day.
Origin ai Sin
bit S.
ZĎJ-owfer lAhlglit
0 |
Connoisseurs
of the science-fiction novel have rejoiced to see „S. Fowler Wright's "The World Below" returned to print in a new book edition (Shasta Publishers, Chicago). For that novel of a million
years to come is possibly one of the finest and most unforgettable portraits
of a really remote future that has ever been produced . . . ranking with Olaf Stapledon's epics. S. Fowler Wright is a prolific writer, however, and unfortunately
for us many of his novels are simply detective stories or adventure with but a passing nod to fantasy. His short story "The Rat" is a classic terror tale which has often been reprinted. And we now have the
pleasure of bringing you another fine short story, a perhaps tongue-in-cheek
tale of two people in Utopia . . . and of the dreadful crime called love.
AM XP4378882. I write this with a pen, on sheets of paper
in the old way, instead of speaking it into a recorder, because I want it to
have a chance of survival, even though a time should
come when no more of those instruments can be made or preserved; and because it
is a very private thing. If this should be seen by one who could read its
words, my death would be nearer even than are those of the men and women among
whom I move.
I
am writing on the 28th day of September, 2838, being nineteen years of age
yesterday, and my friend Stella being two minutes younger than I. We two are
the youngest people now alive in the world, having been born somewhat after
our time, though there may be eight millions of those who are not more than
fourteen days older than we.
For
when men conquered disease, and the life of a healthy child became a certain thing, there was a law made that no parents should have more
than three (though they could have less if they would, and there were always
some that were barren; but there was margin enough for that, and for such as
died young, being scalded, or burnt, or perhaps choked with a bone); and then
it was soon seen that it was a foolish thing for these children to be born
whenever their parents would, as in the old disorderly days, and there was a further law that there should be a space of five years during which all
married people might have what children they would (being it not more than
three), and after that there should be a period of twenty-five years when none
should be born at all.
This
worked well in more ways than might be thought at the first, for the children
bred were all 'of a like age, and could be taught at one time, and would
advance in a level way, whether at task or game, and the training of each year
was in no more than three grades, and they were of a like
68 age to wed when the time came, an'd would be still in their youth
when the law was that they might have children themselves. There was time to
plan how the next generation should be reared and taught, and each was divided
from each in a clear way.
So
it has been now for three hundred years, and each generation has been born into
a fairer world. There is no disease. There is no dirt. There is no hunger or
thirst. There is no pain. There is enough for all of all things that a man can
need, so that there is no cause either to envy or hate, either to strive or
long.
Men
have learnt to see that they need not die till their strength fail, and then
death can be made pleasant enough; but the question of why they live has been
left unsolved, and it is one which has been asked in an ever more urgent way.
It
is over a century ago that the Doctrine of Futility was first discussed, in
records two of which still remain. It was not regarded seriously at first, and
was freely allowed. But there came a time when it became a cult which some
strongly held, and others disliked with the emphasis which the Law of
Moderation forbids.
Consequently,
it was banned, and all recordings erased, excepting only those which were
preserved in the Great Museum at Timbuctoo.
There
was cause for this law, as it had been found that men might hold different
opinions with an obstinacy of assertion which would lead to violent quarrels,
when wounds might be given, even such as would cause death; and there had been
a general determination to remove all occasions of premature decease from the
world.
Opinions
must not be publicly expressed, except those on which all men were united, or
excepting only such a minority as would not dare to dissent aloud, lest they
should provoke the Law for the Elimination of Pests, which no one would wish to
do.
But
these prohibitions were revised every twenty-five years, and it was a
remarkable observation that the great majority of controversial questions would
become innocuous in such a period, like a wasp that had lost its sting.
This
did not happen so quickly to the Doctrine of Futility, but at each successive
revision it was regarded by the Guardians of Public Tranquillity
with an increased benevolence, until, at the fourth review, there was the
necessary unanimous agreement that few would dissent from, and no one would be
likely to be seriously disturbed by, the theory which it propounded.
That,
briefly stated, was that sentient life on the Earth, and particularly the
forecasting and introspective self-consciousness of mankind, is an evolutionary
blunder or, at best, a futility, inevitably destined to be corrected by the
deliberate action of its own products so soon as they should reach an intellectual
maturity sufficient to enable them to recognize both their own abortion, and
their power to terminate it.
Sooner or later, it was argued, mankind must
reach a maturity of thought which would recognize the vanity of the procession
of life and death, and, by its own deliberate and orderly extinction, restore
the Harmony of the Uni-
69
verse, which had been momentarily disturbed by the flicker of sentient life on
the planet on which we live.
This
theory, being released anew by the Guardians of Public Tranquillity
as a harmless, and even obvious proposition, was
accepted at first with the passive assent due to that which all men can clearly
and equally see. But that mood was quickly succeeded by one of excited
interest, as it was realised that it offered a
prospect of affirmative action to men whose whole lives had been negative till
that hour.
The
elimination of every kind of adversity from the experience of human life had
left it both emotionally and intellectually barren, without hope and without
fear, fts futility had an indisputable quality. Men
felt that they had already arrived on the crest of the wave of life—a crest
where they scarcely were or did.
But
here was something that could be done; something to break the monotony of
eventless days. With alacrity, even with enthusiasm, men caught at the idea,
discussed, approved, planned; As they did so, their
eyes brightened, their listless motions quickened, their voices stirred
slightly from their accustomed drawl. Paradoxically, life became faintly
valuable again, as the prospect of its destruction engaged their minds.
Should
they attempt the extinction of life of every kind ? It
might be beyond human power. It would certainly be an enterprise of
extraordinary difficulty. Actually, all the higher forms of life, apart from
mankind, had, for reasons of safety, prudence, or sanitation, been eliminated
during several previous centuries. Only its more rudimentary forms remained,
and these in severely restricted forms. To sterilise
every germ of life in ocean and land and air— no, it could not be done. But
such as would remain would be elementary in character: they would be of
doubtful consciousness, and surely incapable of the curse of thought. They must
be left to blunder to their own ends in their own ways.
But
the futility of human life, all its aimless recurrences, could be ended now.
And
though, as has been said, as men planned thus, they began paradoxically to
feel that they had some purpose in life again, so that, with the thought of its
destruction, its value rose, yet they did not therefore weaken in their
resolve, for to do so would be to sink back into the.sorrowless,
joyless atrophy which, as they thus became half-awake, was their greatest
dread.
Such
has been the talk around us for the last year, while plans for its realization
have been developed and approved. It was a doom which even the young accepted with
some degree of, pleasant excitement rather than sharp demur, for when nothing
has happened for nineteen or twenty years of monotonous days—I will not say
that I did not accept it myself until the plan was announced in detail, and
Stella drew me apart to a secret place, where our whispered voices could not be
overheard or recorded in any way, and said, very quietly. "Don't you see what that means for us?" And
then: "Don't spea\ to me again, or give any sign if you mean to do what I hope you will. You'll throw away the last chance if you do. But I had to let you kjnow how I feel, or you might not have guessed you could count on me."
70
It is only a week till
it will happen now, and no one has guessed what is in my mind, nor has the plan
been altered in any way that would make it vain. I have not looked at Stella,
nor, I think, has she looked at me, nor given any sign
of what I know she is thinking and hoping now. But she can't be sure, because
it must depend upon me. I might leave her alone, and I wonder what she would do
then? Or, of course, before that, I might give her away. While I don't, she
must see reason to hope . . .
The
plan is that the oldest ones will go first, while all comforts remain. There is
evident sense in that and, in any case, their time for liquidation would be
very near.
After
that, the younger ages will go, working progressively downward, and the means of
sustaining life will be destroyed in the same progressive manner, so that, when
it will come to those of our own age, if we do not destroy ourselves, it will
be impossible to live as we do now.
In
particular, the means of regulating temperature will be gone, so that we should
only be able to resist cold or heat in the old crude ways—by clothes or roofs
and walls, or the lighting of fires. And the provision of food would present
such difficulties that it is hard to see how they could be overcome. It seems
absurd to think that any one should be willing to remain alive under such
conditions as that. But, if Stella thinks it may be worth
while— after all, we can always die.
It has begun, and the first million, or more,
are already dead. The method is that each in turn shall receive an injection
from the one next below him on the list, after which he will pass into pleasant
dreams. It is a drug that is often used, so that its effects are exactly known.
There is an antidote by which men can recover without evil effect, if it be
given within two or three hours, but, if they be left without it, their sleep
drifts into death.
The
injection is best given in the spinal column, so that it can be done better by
a man's neighbour than by himself.
Elaborate
arrangements for the comfort of all have been made, and the routine is swift,
so that it will be no more than three days before my turn and Stella's will
come. But we had a fright this morning, and the fact that I found it to be a
fright showed me for the first time, with certainty, what I really wish to
happen.
We
were called, Stella and I, before the Council of Routines. They told us that we
were last on the list, which might be an alarming position, we being as young
as we were, though it is evident that someone must be there. They said they had
discussed changing our places with others of the previous generation, who had
volunteered to relieve us.
I
thought it best to seem indifferent, and only said that they needn't trouble as
far as I was concerned: I couldn't see that it mattered one way or other.
They
turned to Stella, and she said: "Oh, don't change it for me! I don't mind
being last of all. I rather like the idea."
Anyone
would have thought they would have been too lethargic to say any more after
that, but the liveliness with which she spoke seemed to rouse
71
the Second Councillor
up. He looked at her, almost alertly, and asked: "You will be last of all.
How will you give yourself the injection? Have you thought of that?"
"Oh,
yes," she said readily, "we've discussed that. I shall give it to Cerdic, and then, before it has any effect on him, he'll
have time to give it to me."
The
Councillors didn't look pleased at her use of my
familiar name instead of my official number. It showed lack of respect for
them, as she should have known. But even they may have seen the humour of making trouble on such a point, when it was not
more than thirty hours, or two days at most, before they would extinguish
themselves.
Stella said: "I guessed that. Didn't
you?"
We
had just heard that there had been trouble over the two who had been proposed
to take our places at the end of the list. They had been missing when their
turn had come—missing, and hard to find. It came out then that it had been
their own proposal to the Council of Routines that they should be put last on
the list in place of ourselves, and everyone was saying that the Council had
shown its wisdom in rejecting their plea.
I
was alarmed at first, for I feared that it might lead to some precaution being
taken against evasion of the law of extinction by those who would be last on
the list, for it was agreed that their purpose had been to attempt to remain
alive, and it was said that that would destroy the self-justification of what
we did.
For
it was obvious that if the human race should perpetrate its own complete
self-destruction, it would have demonstrated its own futility in an unanswerable
manner, which would be the justification of what it did. But if two should
remain alive, and should become the parents of a new race, the whole action
would be abortive, and this might be held to be the condemnation of those who
did it, rather than of the creation to which they belonged.
This
being the prevailing view, it might have been reasonably anticipated that the
discovery of unwilling individuals, even two among millions, might have led to
some precautionary action which would have been difficult to evade, but I found
that opinion was taking another direction, ridiculing the folly of the detected
two, and emphasizing how short a time they would have outlived their fellows,
and how sharply the pain and misery in which they would have died would have
led them to repent their choice.
It
was pointed out that it was to avert the possibility of such survivals that all
the requirements of human existence were being systematically destroyed, so
that, as the final exits were made, it would be impossible for any man or woman
to remain alive for more than a few further hours except under conditions of
intolerable discomfort, such as, even if they should attempt to endure them,
would be promptly fatal.
This
is not a view which holds much comfort for us, and though it must be true that
our ancestors experienced such conditions in earlier periods, it must be
different for us, who have not experienced adverse temperatures or imperfect
foods. . . . Well, it is a risk which we must have courage to face, and may
have vigour to overcome.
The two who rebelled did not make any great
trouble after they were found, and their folly had been fully explained to
them. It is said that they took their turns like lambs, as the saying is. (I am
not clear as to what a lamb was, but these sayings outlast the meaning, which
was doubtless clear to those by whom they were first used.) They are dead by
now, and our time is not more than a few hours ahead.
It is done. And we are alone in an empty
world. There was an incident at the last which I did not like, but it cannot be
altered now.
The
time came when there were only six to whom the fatal injection had not been
given. And then five—and then four. Rida, who was the last except ourselves, drove the needle
into the neck of the one who came before her, and I saw her hand shake as she
did it. He lay down in his own place, and it was my turn to deal with her.
I picked up the syringe and refilled it and
as I did so I had a feeling of revulsion at what I was expected to do. Why
should I not let her live ? Why not at least give her
the choice—the chance? She looked frightened. She might be glad.
The
fact that we were not accepting the law—that we were not intending to kill
ourselves—seemed to make it different for me from what it had been for the
others. Of course Stella would have no such difficulty. There would be nothing
for her to do. But I felt that I should be a murderer if I did not at least ask
Rida if she would be willing to live. And she was one
whom I liked in some ways better than Stella. Anyone would.
As
1 filled the syringe Stella was watching me with alert impatient eyes. They met
mine and I was sure that she read my thoughts.
Rida had turned her back to me now. I could see
her trembling. She said: "I don't like waiting. Be quick."
I
lifted the syringe, hesitating. Stella's eyes were on me, bright, hard,
insistent.
I
said: "I think you ought to know that there's another course you can take
if—" I didn't get further than that.
Stella
reached over, and grasped my hand. The fatal pressure came from her, not from
me. It was done in a second.
She
said: "Cerdic had it an inch too low." I
don't know whether Rida heard. She went to lie down
without looking round. What could anything, after that, matter to her?
I
haven't quarrelled with Stella. What use would it be?
And when you're alone in the world, and got to be very quick to find means to
live—
Should
we survive, and found a new race, we ought to make a better world than it was before. But it seemed to me that it was a bad start.
^Jbe ^Jhina ^Jltat lAJafhed on the lAJind
The
very prolific August Derleth, poet, novelist,
publisher, and anthologer, was greatly influenced in
his formative years by the writings of two famous fantasists, H. P, Lovecrap and Algernon Blackwood. The story of the thing
that walked on the wind is evidence of both influences. It is a story inspired
by "The Wen-digo" and the Cthulhu mythos together—a neat little pastiche.
TATEMENT
of John Dalhousie, division chief of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police issued
from temporary quarters at Navissa Camp, Manitoba,
10/31/31:
This
is my final word regarding the strange circumstances surrounding the
disappearance of Constable Robert Norris from Navissa
Camp last March 7th, and the discovery of his body on the 17th of this month in
a snow bank four miles north of here.
My
attitude in the matter will be clearly seen by the time the end of this
statement is read. For the assistance of those to whom this matter is not so
familiar, I want to chronicle briefly the facts leading
up to it. On the 27th of February last, Robert Norris sent me the appended
report, which apparently solved the now famed Stillwater mystery, a report
which for reasons that will be obvious, could not be released. On the 7th of
the following month, Robert Norris vanished without leaving a trace. On the
17th of this October, his body was found deep in a snow bank four miles north
of here.
Those
are the known facts. I append herewith the last report made to me by Robert
Norris:
"Navissa Camp, 27 February, 1931: In view of the extreme
difficulty of the task which lies before me in writing to you what I know of
the mystery at Stillwater, I take the liberty of copying for you in shortest
possible form, the account which appeared in the Navissa Daily under
date of 27 February, 1930, exactly a year ago at this writing:
"
'Navissa Camp, February 27: An as yet unverified
story regarding the town of Stillwater on the Olassie
trail thirty miles above Nelson has come to the editors of the Daily.
" 'It is said that no single inhabitant
can be found in the village, and that travelers coming through the district can
find no signs of anyone having left
74 * ■
it. The village was last visited on the night
of February 25th, just prior to the storm of that date. On that night all was
as usual, according to all reports. Since then, nothing has been seen of the
inhabitants.'
"You
will remember this case at once as the unsolved mystery which caused us so much
trouble, and which earned us so much undeserved criticism. Something happened
here last night which throws a faint light on the Stillwater mystery,
affording us some vague clues, but clues of such nature that they can help us
not at all, especially so far as staving off press criticism is concerned. But
let me tell this from the beginning, just as it happened, and you will be able
to see for yourself. •
"I
had put up with Dr. Jamison, in whose house at the northern end of the village
I had been staying for years whenever I stopped over in Navissa
Camp. I came to the Camp in early evening, and had
hardly got settled when the thing happened.
"I
had stepped outside for a moment. It was not cold, nor yet particularly warm. A
wind was blowing, yet the sky was clear. As I stood there, the wind seemed to
rise, and abruptly it grew strikingly cold. I looked up into the sky, and saw
that many of the stars had been blotted out. Then a black spot came hurtling
down at me, and I ran back toward the house. Before I could reach it, however,
I found my path blocked; before me, the figure of a man fell gently into the
snow banks. I stopped, but before I could go to him, another form fell with
equal softness on the other side of me. And, lastly, a third form came down;
but this form did not come gently—it was thrown to the earth with great force.
.
"You can imagine my amazement. For a moment, I confess that I did not know
just what to do. In that brief space of my hesitation, the sudden wind went
down and the sharp cold gave place to the comparative mildness of the early
evening. Then I ran to the closest form, and ascertained at once that the man
was still living, and was apparently unhurt. The second, also a man, was
likewise unhurt. But the third body was that of a woman; she was stone cold—her
skin to the touch was icy to an astounding degree—and she had the appearance of
having been dead for a long time.
"I
called Dr. Jamison, and together we managed to get the three into the house.
The two men we put to bed immediately, and for the woman, we called the
coroner, the only other doctor in Navissa Camp. We
also had to summon other help, and Dr. Jamison called in two nurses. A quick
examination proved that the men were, as I conjectured, very little hurt. The
same examination disclosed another astonishing point—the identification of
these two men.
"You
will remember that at about the time of the Stillwater case, on the night of
the 25th of February, in fact, two men had left Nelson for Stillwater, and had
vanished as mysteriously as the inhabitants of that town. These two men had
given their names in Nelson as Allison Wentworth and James Macdonald;
identification papers found on the bodies of these strange visitors from above
proved conclusively that at least two of the men who were supposed to have been
in Stillwater at the time the mysterious tragedy occurred had returned, for our
visitors were none other than Wentworth
75 .
and Macdonald. You can easily visualize with
what anticipation I looked for a solution
to the Stillwater mystery from these two men when once they regained
consciousness.
"I
resolved, in consequence, to keep a bedside
watch. The doctors told me that Wentworth showed the best signs of coming out
of his unconscious delirium first, and I took my place at his side, one of the
nurses ready to take down anything Wentworth might say. Shortly after I had taken my position there, the body of the girl was identified by a
resident of Navissa Camp who had already heard of her
and had come to look at the body. The girl was Irene Masitte,
the only daughter of the Masitte who ran the tavern
at Stillwater. This indicated conclusively that the two men had been in
Stillwater at the time of the inexplicable tragedy which swept its inhabitants
off the face of the earth, and very probably were in the tavern at the moment
the tragedy occurred, perhaps talking with this girl. So I thought at the moment.
"Naturally,
I was deeply perplexed as to where the men and the girl might have come from,
and also as to why the men were practically unhurt and the girl dead, dead for
a great length of time, said Dr. Jamison, perhaps preserved by the cold. And,
why and how did the men come gendy
to the earth, and why was the girl literally dashed to the ground? But all
these puzzling questions were for the time being shoved into the background, so
eager was I to get at the mystery which surrounded the Stillwater case.
"As
I have already written, I had
taken my place beside the bed of Wentworth, and listened eagerly for any hint
he might drop in his delirium, for as he became warmed, he began to talk a
great deal, though not always intelligibly. Some sentences and phrases could be
made out, and these the nurse took down in shorthand. I copy a few of the sentences I heard as we bent over the bed:
" 'Death-Walker . . . God of the Winds, you who walk
on the wind . . . adoramus te . . . adoramus te . . . adoramus te. . . .
Destroy these faithless ones, you who walk with death, you who pass above the
earth, you who have vanquished the sky. . . . Light gleams from the mosques of
Baghdad ... stars are born in the
Sahara . . . Lhassa, lost Lhassa,
worship, worship, worship the Lord of the Winds.'
"These
enigmatic words were followed by a deep and profound silence, during which the
man's breathing struck me as highly irregular. Dr. Jamison, who was there,
noticed it also, commenting on it as a bad sign, though there was no intimation
as to what might have brought on this sudden irregularity unless it were some
unconscious excitement. The delirious jumble meanwhile continued, even more
puzzling than before.
"Wind-Walker,
disperse the fogs over England . . . adoramus te. . . . It is too late to escape . . . Lord of the
Winds. . . . Fly, fly or He will come. . . . Sacrifice, sacrifice ... a sacrifice must be, yes, must be made.
... Chosen one, Irene. Oh,
Wind-Walker, sweep over Italy when the olive trees blossom . . . and the cedars
of Lebanon, blue in the wind . . . cold-swept Russian steppes, over
wolf-infested Siberia . . . onward to Africa, Africa. . . . Blackwood has
written of these things . . . and there are
76
others ...
the old ones, elementáis
. . . and back to Leng, lost Leng, hidden Leng, whence sprung Wind-Walker . . . and other. . . .'
"Dr. Jamison was much interested in the
mention of elementáis,'
and since he appeared to
know something of them, I asked him to explain. It seems that there still
exists an age-old belief that there are elemental spirits —of fire, water, air
and earth—all-powerful spirits subject to no one, spirits actually worshipped in
some parts of the world. His excitement I thought rather exaggerated, and I
shot questions at him.
"It
is very difficult for me to chronicle what came out finally in answer to all my
questions. It is something that had been kept carefully away from us, though
how it could have been is puzzling to me. Even I hesitated at first to believe
Dr. Jamison, though he appears to have known it for some time, and assures me
that a number of people could tell odd stories if they wanted to. I remember
that several anonymous reports of a highly suggestive nature were turned in to
us, but I hardly dared suspect what lay behind them at the time.
"It
seems that the inhabitants of Stillwater to a body performed a curious
worship—not of any god we know, but of something they called an air elemental!
A large thing, I am told, vaguely like a man, yet infinitely unlike him.
Details are very distorted and unreliable. It is said to have been an air
elemental, but there are weird hints of something of incredible age, that rose
out of hidden fastness in the far north, from a frozen and impenetrable
plateau up there. Of this I can venture nothing. Dr. Jamison mentions a
'Plateau of Leng,' of which I have never heard save
in the incoherent babblings of Wentworth. But what is most horrible, most
unbelievable in the mystery of this strange communal worship,
is the suggestion that the people of Stillwater made human sacrifices to their strange god!
"There
are queer stories of some gigantic thing that these people summoned to their
deeply hidden forest altars, and still weirder tales of something seen against
the sky in the glare of huge pine fires burning near Stillwater by travelers on
the Olassie trail; How much credence it is advisable
to give these stories you must decide for yourself, for I am, frankly, in view
of later developments which I will chronicle in their order, unable to give any
opinion. Dr. Jamison, whom I regard as a man of great intelligence, assures me
that the elemental stories are sincerely believed hereabouts, and admitted to
my surprise that he himself was unwilling to condemn belief without adequate
knowledge. This was in effect, admitting that he himself might believe in
them.
"The
man Wentworth suddenly became conscious, and I turned from Dr. Jamison. He asked,
naturally, where he was, and he was told. He did not seem surprised. He then
asked what year this was, and when we told him expressed only an irritated
surprise. He murmured something about, 'An even year, then,' and aroused our
interest the more.
"
'And
Macdonald?' he asked then.
" 'Here,' we answered.
" 'How did we come?' he asked.
" 'You fell from the sky.'
" 'Unhurt?' He puzzled over this for a moment. Then he
said, 'He put us down, then.'
"
'There
was a girl with you,' said Dr. Jamison.
" 'She was dead,' he answered in a tired voice.
Then he turned his strangely burning eyes on me and asked, 'You saw Him? You
saw the thing that walked on the wind? ...
Then He will return for you, for none can see Him and escape.'
"We
waited a few moments, thinking to give him time to become more fully conscious,
but alas, he lapsed into a semi-conscious state. It was then that Dr. Jamison,
after another examination, announced that the man was dying. This was naturally
a great shock to me, and this shock was emphasized when Dr. Jamison added that
the man Macdonald would in all probability die without ever gaining
consciousness. The doctor could not guess at the cause of death, beyond
referring vaguely to an assumption that perhaps these men had become so inured
to cold that they could no longer stand warmth.
"At
first I could not guess the significance of this statement, but it came to me
suddenly that Dr. Jamison was simply accepting the notion, which had occurred
to all of us, that these two men had spent the year just passed above the
earth, perhaps in a region so cold that warmth would now affect them in the
same manner as extreme cold.
"Despite
Wentworth's semi-conscious state, I questioned him, and, surprisingly enough,
got a rather jumbled story, which I have pieced together as well as I could
from the notes the nurse took and from my own memory.
"It
appears that these two men, Wentworth and Macdonald, had got into Stillwater
quite late, owing to a sudden storm which had come up and put them off the
trail for a short time. They were eyed with distinct disfavor at the tavern,
but insisted on remaining for the night, which the tavern-keeper, Masitte, did not seem to like. But he gave them a room,
requesting them to remain in it, and to keep away from the window. To this they
agreed, despite the fact that they regarded the landlord's proposal as somewhat
out of the ordinary.
"They
had hardly come into the room when the inn-keeper's daughter, this girl, Irene,
came in, and asked them to get her away from the town quickly. She had been
chosen, she said, to be sacrificed to Ithaqua, the
wind-walking elemental which the Stillwater people are said to have worshipped,
and she had decided that she would flee, rather than die for a pagan god, of
whose existence even she was not too sure.
"Yet,
the girl's fear must have been convincing enough to impress the two men into
going away with her. The inhabitants had recently, it seems, been working
against the thing they had worshipped, and its anger had been felt. Because
that night was the night of sacrifice, strangers were frowned upon. According
to suggestions Wentworth made, he discovered that the Stillwater people had
great altars in the pine forests nearby, and that they worshipped the thing
they called variously Death-Walker or Wind-Walker at these altars. (Though you
can imagine my skeptical view of this entire matter, this does seem to tie up with the stories of giant fires
78 which Dr. Jamison mentioned travelers on the
Olassie trail as having seen.)
"There was also some very incoherent
mumbling about the thing itself, vague and horrible thoughts which seemed to
obsess Wentworth, something about the towering height of the thing seen
against the sky in the hellish glow of the nocturnal fires.
"Exactly what happened, I hardly dare
venture to guess at. Out of Went-worth's incoherent and troubled speech, there
came only one positive statement, the substance of which was simply, that the
three of them, Wentworth, Macdonald, and the girl, did flee the sacrificial fires and the village, and had been caught on the Olassie trail on the way to Nelson by the thing, which had
picked them up and carried them along.
"After this statement, Wentworth became
steadily more and more incoherent. He babbled a horrible story of the thing
that swooped down after them as they fled in terror along the Olassie trail, and he blurted out, too, some terrible
details of the mystery at Stillwater. From what I can make out, the thing that walked on the wind must have avenged
itself, on the villagers not only for their previous coldness toward it, but
also because of the flight of Irene Masitte, who had
been chosen for the sacrifice. At any rate, between hysterical wails and
shuddering adulations of the thing, there emerged from Wentworth's distorted
speech a graphic and terrible picture of a giant monstrosity that came into
the village from the forest, sweeping the people into the sky, seeking them
out, one by one.
"I don't know how much of this I should
chronicle for you, since I can understand what your attitude must be. Could it
have been some animal, do* you think? Some prehistoric animal which had lain
hidden for years in the depths of the pine forest near Stillwater, that perhaps
had been preserved alive by the cold and revived again by the warmth of the
giant fires to become the god of the mad Stillwater people? This seems to me
the only other logical explanation, but there still remain so many things not
yet accounted for, that I think it would be much better to leave the Stillwater
mystery among the unsolved cases.
"Macdonald died this morning at 10:07. Wentworth had not spoken since dawn, but he
resumed shortly after Macdonald's death, repeating again the same vague
sentences which we first heard from him. His incoherent mur-murings
leave us no alternative in regard to where he spent the past year. He seems to
believe that he was carried along by this wind thing, this air elemental.
Though it is fairly certain that neither of the missing men was anywhere
reported throughout the past year, this story may be simply the product of an
overburdened mind, a mind suffering from a great shock. And the
seemingly vast knowledge of the hidden places of the earth, as well as the
known, may have been derived from books.
"I say may have been derived, because in view of Wentworth's suggestive, almost
convincing, murmurings, it becomes only a tentative
possibility. I know of no book which chronicles the mystic rites at the
Lamasery in Tibet, which tells of the secret ceremonies of the Lhassa monks. Nor do I know of any book which reveals the
hidden life of the African Impi, nor of any pamphlet
or monograph even so much as hinting at the forbidden and ac-
79 cursed designs of the Tcho-Tcho
people of Burma, nor of anything ever written which suggests that there are
strange hybrid men living under the snow and ice of Antarctica, that there
exists today a lost kingdom of the sea, accursed R'lyeh,
where slumbering Cthulhu, deep in the earth beneath
the sea, is waiting to rise and destroy the world. Nor have I ever heard of the
shunned and forbidden Plateau of Leng, where the
Ancient Ones once ruled.
"Please
do not think I exaggerate. I have never heard of these things before, yet
Wentworth speaks as if he had been there, even hinting that these mysterious
people have fed him. Of Lhassa I have heard vague
hints, and of course I do remember having once seen a cinema containing what
the producer called 'shots of Africa's vanishing fmpi.'
But of the other things, I know nothing. And if I can assume anything from the
shuddering horror in Went-worth's semi-conscious voice as he spoke of these
sudden things, I do not want to know anything.
"There
was a constant reference, too, in Wentworth's mutterings, to a Blackwood, by whom
he evidently meant the writer, Algernon Blackwood, a man who spent some time
here in Canada, says Dr. Jamison. The .doctor gave me one of this man's books,
pointing out to me several strange stories of air elementáis, stories remarkably similar^ in character to
the curious Stillwater mystery, yet nothing so paradoxically definite and
vague. I can refer you to these stories if you do not already know them.
"The
doctor also gave me several old magazines, in which are stories by an American,
a certain H. P. Lovecraft, which have to do with Cthulhu,
with the lost sea kingdom of R'lyeh and the forbidden
Plateau of Leng. Perhaps these are the sources of
Wentworth's apparently authentic information, yet in none of these stories
appears any of the horrific details of which Wentworth speaks so familiarly.
"Wentworth
died at 3:21 this afternoon. An hour before, he passed into a coma from which
he did not emerge again. Dr. Jamison and the coroner seemed to think that the
exposure to warmth had killed the two men, Jamison telling me candidly that a
year with the Wind-Walker had so inured the men to cold, that warmth like ours
affected them as extreme cold would affect us normal men.
"You
must understand that Dr. Jamison was entirely serious. Yet, his medical report
read that the two men and the girl had died from exposure to the cold. In
explanation he said, T may think what I please, Norris, and I may believe what
I please—but I dare not write itj' Then, after a
pause, he said, 'And, if you are wise, you will withhold the names of these
people from the general public because questions are certain to arise once they
become known, and how are you people going to explain their coming to us from
the sky, and where they spent the year since the Stillwater mystery? And
finally, how are you going to react against the storm of criticism which will
fall on you once more when the Stillwater case is reopened with such strangely
unbelievable facts as we have gathered here from the lips of a dying man?'
"I
think Dr.
Jampón is
right. I have no opinion to offer, absolutely none, and I am making this report
only because it is my duty as an officer to do so, and I am making it only to
you. Perhaps it had better be destroyed, rather
80
than kept in our files from which it might at some future time be resurrected by a careless official or an inquiring newspaper man.
"As
I have already told you, any opinion that I have to offer would be worthless. But,, in
closing, I want to point out two things to you. I want to refer you first to the report of Peter
Herrick, in charge of the investigation at Stillwater last year, under date of 3 March, 1930. I quote from the report which I have at hand:
" 'On the Olassie trail,
about three miles below Stillwater, we came upon the meandering tracks of three
people. An examination of the tracks seemed to indicate that there were two men
and one woman. A dog sled had been left behind along the trail, and for some
inexplicable reason these three people had started running along the trail
toward Nelson, evidently away from Stillwater. The tracks" halted
abruptly, and there was no trace of where they might have gone. Since there had
been no snow since the night of the Stillwater mystery, this is doubly
puzzling; it is as if the three people had been lifted off the earth.
"Another
puzzling factor is the appearance, far off to one side of this point in the
trail, in a line with the wandering footsteps of the three travelers, of a huge imprint, closely resembling the foot of
a man—but certainly a giant— which appears to have been made by an unbelievably
large thing, and the foot, though like that of a man, must have been webbed!'
"To
this I want to add some information of my own. I remember that last night, when
I threw that startled glance into the sky and saw that the stars had been blotted
out, I thought that the 'cloud' which had obscured
the sky looked curiously like the outline of a great man. And I remember, too,
that where the top of the 'cloud' must have been, where the head of the thing
should have been, there were two gleaming stars, visible despite the shadow,
two gleaming stars, burning bright—life eyes!!
"One more thing. This afternoon, a half mile behind Dr.
Jamison's house, I came upon a deep depression in the snow. I did not need a
second glance to tell me what it was. A half mile on the other side of the
house there is another imprint like this; I am only thankful that the sun is
rapidly distorting the outlines, for I am
only too willing to believe that I have imagined them. For they are the imprints oj gigantic feet, and the feet must have been webbed!"
Thus
ends Robert Norris's strange report. Because he had carried it for some time
with him, I did not receive the report until after I had learned of his
disappearance. The report was posted to me on the 6th of March. Under date of
March 5th, Norris has scrawled a final brief and terrible message in a hand
which is barely legible:
"5
March—Something is pursuing me! Not a night has passed
since the occurrence at Navissa Camp to give me any
rest. Always I have felt strange, horrible, yet invisible eyes looking down at
me from above. And I remember Wentworth saying that none could live who had
seen the thing that walked on the wind, and I cannot forget the sight of it
against the sky, and its burning eyes looking down like stars in the haunted
night! It is waiting."
It
was this brief paragraph which caused our official physician to declare
81
that Robert Norris had lost his mind, and had
wandered away to some hidden place from which he emerged months later only to
die in snow.
I
want to add only a few words of my own. Robert Norris did not lose his mind.
Furthermore, Robert Norris was one of the most thorough, the keenest men under
my orders, and even during the terrible months he spent in far places, I am sure he did not lose possession of his senses. I grant our physician
only one thing: Robert Norris had gone
away to some hidden place for those months. But that hidden place was not in
Canada, no, nor in North America, whatever our physician may think.
I
arrived at Navissa Camp by plane within ten hours of
the discovery of Robert Norris's body. As I flew over the spot where the body
was found, I saw far away on either side, deep depressions in the snow. I have
no doubt what they were. It was I, too, who searched Norris's clothes, and
found in his pockets the mementoes he had brought with him from the hidden
places where he had been: the gold plaque, depicting in miniature a struggle between
ancient beings, and bearing on its surface inscriptions in weird designs, the
plaque which Dr. Spencer of Quebec University affirms must have come from some
place incredibly old, yet is excellendy preserved;
the incredible geological fragment which, confined in any walled place, gives
off the growing hum and roar of winds far, far beyond the rim of the known
universe!
/^aidera o( the l/jniverAea
bu 2)onafc/ %'i/ani/rei
We
have always felt that something has been lost in the transition of
science-fiction from its pioneer phase to its modern streamlined form. Just
what that something is is hard to define, but we
might begin by saying it is the touch of
the breath-taking, the sense of wonder,
the hint of the saga. It is that that makes "Raiders of the Universes" something just a bit
more than a formula pulp story. For the author, Donald Wandrei, started his
literary career as a young poet, a weird tales enthusiast, and his earliest
efforts were prose-poetry about the ultimate fate of the cosmos. This story, the story of Phobar and the Dark Star, clearly
belongs to his period of transition,
the conscious effort to write to fit a magazine's demands—in this instance, the
very early "Clayton" Astounding Stories—in which story there is reflected nevertheless the deep velvet of a poet's far-space thoughts.
T WAS IN THE thirty-fourth century that the
dark star began its famous conquest, unparalleled in stellar annals. Phobar the astronomer discovered it. He was sweeping the
heavens with one of the newly-invented multipowered Sussendorf comet-hunters when something caught his eye—a
new star of great brilliance in the foreground of the constellation Hercules.
For
the rest of the night, he cast aside all his plans and concentrated on the one
star. He witnessed an unprecedented event. Mercia's nullifier had just been
invented, a curious and intricate device, based on four-dimensional geometry,
that made it possible to see occurrences in the universe which had hitherto
required the hundreds of years needed for light to cross the intervening space
before they were visible on Earth. By a hasty calculation with the aid of this
invention, Phobar found that the new star was about
three thousand light years distant, and that it was hurtling backward into
space at the rate of twelve hundred miles per second. The remarkable feature of
his discovery was this appearance of a fourth-magnitude star where none had
been known to exist. Perhaps it had come .into
existence this very night.
On
the succeeding night, he was given a greater surprise. In line with the"
first star, but several hundred light-years nearer, was a second new star of
even more brightness. And it, too, was hurtling backward into space at approximately
twelve hundred miles per second. Phobar was
astonished. Two new stars discovered within twenty-four hours in the same part
of the heavens, both of the fourth magnitude! But his
surprise was as nothing when on the succeeding night, even while he watched, a
third new star appeared in line with these, but much closer.
At midnight he first noticed a pin-point of
faint light; by one o'clock the
83
star was of eighth magnitude. At two it was a brilliant sun of the second magnitude blazing away from Earth like the
others at a rate of twelve hundred miles per second. And on the next evening,
and the next, and the next, other new stars appeared until there were seven in
all, every one on a line in the same constellation
Hercules, every one with the same radiance and the
same proper motion, though of varying size.
Phobar had broadcast his discovery to incredulous
astronomers; but as star after star appeared nightly, all the telescopes on
Earth were turned toward one of the most spectacular cataclysms that history
recorded. Far out in the depths of space, with unheard-of regularity and
unheard-of precision, new worlds were flaming up
overnight in a line that began at Hercules and extended
toward the solar system.
Phobar's announcement was immediately flashed to
Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, the other members of the Five World
Federation. Saturn reported no evidence of the phenomena,
because of the interfering rings, and the lack of Mercia's nullifier.
But Jupiter, with a similar device, witnessed the phenomena and announced
furthermore that many stars in the neighborhood of the novae had begun to
deviate in singular and abrupt fashion from their normal positions.
There
was not as yet much popular interest in the phenomena. Without Mercia's
nullifier, the stars were not visible to ordinary eyes, since the light-rays
would take years to reach the Earth. But every astronomer who had access to
Mercia's nullifier hastened to focus his telescope on the region where"
extraordinary events were taking place out in the unfathomable gulf of night.
Some terrific force was at work, creating worlds and disturbing the positions
of stars within a radius already known to extend billions and trillions of
miles from the path of the seven new stars. But of the nature of that force,
astronomers could only guess.
Phobar took up his duties early on the eighth
night. The last star had appeared about five hundred light-years distant. If
an eighth new star was found, it should be not more than a few light-years
away. But nothing happened. All night Phobar kept his
telescope pointed at the probable spot, but search as he might, the heavens
showed nothing new. In the morning he sought eagerly for news of any discovery
made by fellow-watchers, but they, too, had found nothing unusual. Could it be
that the mystery would now fade away, a new riddle of the skies?
The
next evening, he took up his position once more, training his telescope on the
seven bright stars, and then on the region where an eighth, if there were one,
should appear. For hours he searched the abyss in vain. He could find none. Apparently
the phenomena were ended. At midnight he took a last glance before entering on
some tedious calculations. It was there! In the center of the telescope a
faint, hazy object steadily grew in brightness. All his problems were forgotten
as Phobar watched the eighth star increase hourly.
Closer than any other, closer even than Alpha Centauri, the new sun appeared,
scarcely three light-years away across the void surrounding the solar system.
And all the while he watched, he witnessed a thing no man had ever before
seen—the birth of a world!
By one o'clock, the new star was of fifth
magnitude; by two it was of the first. As the faint flush of dawn began to come
toward the close of that frosty, moonless November night, the new star was a
great white-hot object more brilliant than any other star in the heavens. Phobar knew that when its light finally reached Earth so
that ordinary eyes could see, it would be the most beautiful object in the
night sky. What was the reason for these unparalleled births of worlds and the
terrifying mathematical precision that characterized them?
Whatever the cosmic force behind, it was
progressing toward the solar system. Perhaps it would even disturb the balance
of the planets. The possible chance of such an event had already called the
attention of some astronomers, but the whole phenomenon was too inexplicable to
permit more than speculation.
The next evening was cloudy. Jupiter reported
nothing new except that Neptune had deviated from its course and tended to
pursue an erratic and puzzling new orbit.
Phobar pondered long over this last news item and
turned his attention to the outermost planet on the succeeding night. To his
surprise, he had great difficulty in locating it. The ephemeris was of absolutely
no use. When he did locate Neptune after a brief search, he discovered it more
than eighty million miles from its scheduled place! This was at one-forty. At
two-ten he was thunderstruck by a special announcement sent from the Central
Bureau to every observatory and astronomer of note throughout the world,
proclaiming the discovery of an ultra-Plutonian planet. Phobar
was incredulous. For centuries it had been proved that no planet beyond Pluto
could possibly exist.
With
feverish haste, Phobar ran to the huge telescope and
rapidly focused it where the new planet should be. Five hundred million miles
beyond Neptune was a flaming path like the beam of a giant searchlight that
extended exactly to the eighth solar planet. Phobar
gasped. He could hardly credit the testimony of his eyes. He looked more
closely. The great stream of flame still crossed his line of vision. But this
time he saw something else: at the precise farther end of the flame path was a
round disk—dark!
Beyond
a doubt, a new planet of vast size now formed an addition to the solar group.
But that planet was almost impervious to the illuminating rays of the sun and
was barely discernible. Neptune itself shone brighter than it ever had, and was
falling away from the sun at a rate of twelve hundred miles per second.
All
night Phobar watched the double mystery. By three
o'clock, he was convinced, as far as lightning calculations showed,
that the invader was hurtling toward the sun at a speed of more than ten
million miles an hour. At three-fifteen, he thought that vanishing Neptune
seemed brighter even than the band of fire running to the invader. At four, his
belief was certainty. With amazement and awe, Phobar
sat through the long, cold night, watching a spectacular and terrible catastrophe in the sky.
As
dawn began to break and the stars grew paler, Phobar
turned away from his telescope, his brain awhirl, his heart filled with a great
fear. He had witnessed the devastation of a world, the ruin of a member of his
own plane-
85 <
tary system by an invader from outer space. As
dawn cut short his observations, he knew at last the cause of Neptune's
brightness, knew that it was now a white-hot
flaming sun that sped with increased rapidity away from the solar system.
Somehow, the terrible swathe of fire that flowed from the dark star to Neptune
had wrenched it out of its orbit and made of it a molten inferno.
At
dawn came another bulletin from the Central Bureau. Neptune had a surface temperature of 3,000° C, was defying all laws of celestial
mechanics, and within three days would have left the solar system for ever. The
results of such a disaster were unpredictable. The entire solar system was
likely to break up. Already Uranus and Jupiter had deviated from their orbits.
Unless something speedily occurred to check the onrush of the dark star, it was
prophesied that the laws governing the planetary system would run to a new
balance and that in the ensuing chaos the whole group would spread apart and
fall toward the gulfs beyond the great surrounding void.
What
was the nature of the great path of fire ? What force
did it represent ? And was the dark star controlled by
intelligence, or was it a blind wanderer from space that had come by accident?
The flame-path alone implied that the dark star was guided by an intelligence
that possessed the secret of inconceivable power. Menace hung in the sky now
where all eyes could see in a great
arc of fire!
The
world was on the brink of eternity, and vast forces at whose nature men could
only guess were sweeping planets and suns out of its path.
The
following night was again cold and clear. High in the heavens, where Neptune
should have been, hung a disk of enormously greater size. Neptune itself was
almost invisible, hundreds of millions of miles beyond its scheduled position.
As nearly as Phobar could estimate, not one hundredth
of the sun's rays were reflected from the surface of
the dark star, a proportion far below those for the other planets. Phobar had a better view of the flame-path, and it was with
growing awe that he watched that strange swathe in the sky during the dead of
night. It shot out from the dark star like a colossal beam or huge pillar of
fire seeking a food of worlds.
With
a shiver of cold fear he saw that there were now three of the bands: one toward
Neptune, one toward Saturn, and one toward the sun. The first was fading, a
milky, misty white; the second shone almost as bright as the first one
previously had; and the third, toward the sun, was a dazzling stream of orange
radiance, burning with a steady, terrible, unbelievable intensity across two
and a half billions of miles of space! That gigantic flare was the most
brilliant sight in the whole night sky, an awful and abysmally prophetic flame
that made city streets black with staring people, a radiance whose grandeur and
terrific implication of cosmic power brought beauty and the fear of doom into
the heavens!
Those
paths could not be explained by all the .physicists and all the astronomers in
the Five World Federation. They possessed the properties of light, but they
were rigid bands like a tube or a solid pillar from which only the faintest of
rays escaped; and they completely shut off the heavens behind them. They had,
moreover, singular properties which could not be described, as if a new force were
embodied in them.
86
Hour after hour humanity watched the
spectacular progress of the dark star, watched those mysterious and threatening
paths of light that flowed from the invader. When dawn came, it brought only a
great fear and the oppression of impending disaster.
In
the early morning, Phobar slept. When he awoke, he
felt refreshed and decided to take a short walk in the familiar and peaceful
light of day. He never took that walk. He opened the door on a kind of dim and
reddish twilight. Not a cloud hung in the sky, but the sun shone feebly with a
dull red glow, and the skies were dull and somber, as if the sun were dying as
scientists had predicted it eventually would.
Phobar stared at the dull heavens in a daze, at the
foreboding atmosphere and the livid sun that burned faintly as through a smoke
curtain. Then the truth flashed on him—it was the terrible path of fire from
the dark star! By what means he could not guess, by what appalling control of
immense and inconceivable forces he could not even imagine, the dark star was
sucking light and perhaps more than light from the sun!
Phobar turned and shut the door. The world had seen
its last dawn. If the purpose of the dark star was destruction, none of the
planets could offer much opposition, for no weapon of theirs was effective
beyond a few thousand miles range at most—and the dark star could span
millions. If the invader passed on, its havoc would be only a trifle smaller,
for it had already destroyed two members of the solar system and was now striking
at its most vital part. Without the sun, life would die, but even with the sun
the planets must rearrange themselves because of the destruction of balance.
Even
he could hardly grasp the vast and abysmal catastrophe that without warning had
swept from space. How could the dark star have traversed three thousand
light-years of space in a week's time? It was unthinkable! So stupendous a
control of power, so gigantic a manipulation of cosmic forces, so annihilating
a possession of the greatest secrets of the universe, was an unheard-of
concentration of energy and knowledge of stellar mechanics. But the evidence of
his own eyes and the path of the dark star with flaming suns to mark its
progress, told him in language which could not be refuted that the dark star
possessed all that immeasurable, titanic knowledge. It was the lord of the
universe. There was nothing which the dark star could not crush or conquer or
change. The thought of that immense, supreme power numbed his mind. It opened
vistas of a civilization, and a progress, and an unparalleled mastery of all
knowledge which was almost beyond conception.
Already
the news had raced across the world. On Phobar's
television screen flashed scenes of nightmare; the radio spewed a gibberish of terror. In one day panic had swept the Earth;
on the remaining members of the Five World Federation the same story was
repeated. Rioting mobs drowned out the chant of religious fanatics who hailed
Judgment Day. Great fires turned the air murky and flame-shot. Machine guns
spat regularly in city streets; looting, murder, and fear-crazed crimes were
universal. Civilization had completely vanished overnight.
The
tides roared higher than they ever had before; for every thousand people
drowned on the American seaboards, a hundred thousand perished in
87
China and India. Dead volcanoes boomed into the worst
eruptions known. Half of Japan sank during the most violent earthquake in
history. Land rocked, the seas boiled, cyclones howled out of the skies. A
billion eyes focused on Mecca, the mad beating of tomtoms
rolled across all Africa, women and children were trampled to death by the
crowds that jammed into churches.
"Has man lived in vain?" asked the.philosopher.
"The world is doomed. There is no
escape," said the scientist.
"The
day of reckoning has come! The wrath of God is upon us!" shouted the
street preachers.
In
a daze, Phobar switched off the bedlam and, walking
like a man asleep, strode out, he did not care where, if only to get away.
The
ground and the sky were like a dying fire. The sun seemed a half-dead cindei*. Only the great swathe of radiance between the sun
and the dark star had any brilliance. Sinister, menacing, now larger even than
the sun, the invader from beyond hung in the heavens.
As Phobar watched it, the air around him prickled strangely. A
sixth sense gave warning. He turned to race back into his house. His legs
failed. A fantastic orange light bathed him, countless needles of pain shot
through his whole body, the world was darkened.
Earth
had somehow been blotted out. There was a brief blackness, the nausea of space
and of a great fall that compressed eternity into a moment. Then a swimming confusion, and outlines which
gradually came to rest.
Phobar
was too utterly amazed to cry out or run. He stood inside the most titanic
edifice he could have imagined, a single
gigantic structure vaster than all New York City. Far overhead swept a black roof fading into the horizon, beneath his feet was the same metal
substance. In the midst of this giant work soared the base of a tower that
pierced the roof thousands of feet above.
Everywhere loomed machines, enormous dynamos,
cathode tubes a hundred feet long,
masses and mountains of such fantastic apparatus as he had never encountered.
The air was bluish, electric. From the black substance came a phosphorescent
radiance. The triumphant drone of motors and a terrific crackle of electricity
were everywhere. Off to his right purple-blue flames the size of Sequoia trees
flickered around a group of what looked like condensers as huge as Gibraltar. At the base of the central tower
half a mile distant Phobar could see something that
resembled a great switchboard studded with silver controls. Near it was a
series of mechanisms at whose purpose he could not even guess.
All
this his astounded eyes took in at one confused glance. The thing that gave him
unreasoning terror was the hundred-foot-high metal monster before him. It
defied description. It was unlike any color known on earth, a blinding color
sinister with power and evil. Its shape was equally ambiguous— it rippled like
quicksilver, now compact, now spread out in a thousand limbs. But what appalled
Phobar was its definite possession of rational life.
More, its very thoughts were transmitted to him as
clearly as though written in his own English:
"Follow me!"
Phobar's mind did not function—but his legs moved
regularly. In the grasp of this mental, metal monster he was a mere automaton. Phobar noticed idly that he had to step down from a flat
disk a dozen yards across. By some power, some tremendous discovery that he
could not understand, he had been transported across millions of miles of
space—undoubtedly to the dark star itself!
The
colossal thing, indescribable, a blinding, nameless color, rippled down the
hall and stooped before a disk of silvery black. In the center of the disk was
a metal seat with a control board nearby.
"Be seated!"
Phobar sat down, the titan flicked the controls—and
nothing happened. Phobar sensed that something was
radically wrong. He felt the surprise of his gigantic companion. He did not
know it then, but the fate of the solar system hung on that incident.
"Come!"
Abruptly
the giant stooped, and Phobar shrank back, hut a
flowing mass of cold, insensate metal swept around him, lifted him fifty feet
in the air. Dizzy, sick, horrified, he was hardly conscious of the whirlwind
motion into which the giant suddenly shot. He had a dim impression of machines
racing by, of countless other giants, of a sudden opening in the walls of the
immense building, and then a rush across the surface of metal land. Even in his
vertigo he had enough curiosity to marvel that there was no vegetation, no
water, only the dull black metal everywhere. Yet there was air.
And then a city loomed before them. To Phobar it seemed a city of gods or giants. Fully five miles
it soared toward space, its fantastic angles and arcs and cubes and pyramids making the dimensions of a totally alien
geometry. Tier by tier the stupendous city, hundreds
of miles wide, mounted toward a central tower like the one in the building he
had left.
Phobar never knew how they got there, but his numbed
mind was at last forced into clarity by a greater will. He stared about him.
His captor had gone. He stood in a huge chamber circling to a dome far
overhead. Before him, on a dais a full thousand feet in diameter,
stood—sat—rested, whatever it might be called—another monster, far larger than
any he had yet seen, like a mountain of pliant thinking, living metal. And Phobar knew he stood in the presence of the ruler."
The
metal Cyclops surveyed him as Phobar might have
surveyed an ant. Cold, deadly, dispassionate scrutiny came from something that
might have been eyes, or a seeing intelligence locked in a metal body.
There
was no sound, but inwardly to Phobar's consciousness
from the peak of the titan far above him came a command:
"What are you
called?"
Phobar opened his lips—but even before he spoke, he
knew that the thing had understood his thought: "Phobar."
"I am Garboreggg, ruler of Xlarbti,
the Lord of the Universes." "Lord of the Universes?"
"I and my world come
from one of the universes beyond the reach of your
89 telescopes." Phobar somehow
felt that the thing was talking to him as he would to a new-born babe.
"What do you want of me?"
"Tell
your Earth that I want the entire supply of your radium ores mined and placed
above ground according to the instructions I give, by seven of your days
hence."
A
dozen questions sprang to Phobar's lips. He felt
again that he was being treated like a child.
"Why do you want our radium ores?'
"Because
they are the rarest of the elements on your scale, are absent on ours, and
supply us with some of the tremendous energy we need."
"Why don't you obtain the ores from
other worlds?"
"We
do. We are taking them from all worlds where they exist. But we need yours
also."
Raiders
of the universe! Looting young worlds of the precious radium ores! Piracy on a
cosmic scale!
"And if Earth refuses your demand?"
For
answer, Garboreggg rippled to a wall of the room and
pressed a button. The wall dissolved, weirdly, mysteriously. A series of vast
silver plates was revealed, and a battery of control levers.
"This will happen to all of your Earth
unless the ores are given us."
The
titan closed a switch. On the first screen flashed the picture of a huge tower such as Phobar had seen in the
metal city.
Garboreggg adjusted a second control that was something
like a range-finder. He pressed a third lever—and from the tower leaped a surge
of terrific energy, like a bolt of lightning a quarter of a mile broad. The
giant closed another switch—and on the second plate flashed a picture of New
York City.
Then—waiting. Seconds, minutes drifted by. The atmosphere
became tense, nerve-cracking. Phobar's eyes ached
with the intensity of his stare. What would happen?
Abruptly it came.
A
monstrous bolt of energy streaked from the skies, purple-blue death in a pillar
a fourth of a mile broad crashed into the heart of New York City swept up and
down Manhattan, across and back, and suddenly vanished.
In
fifteen seconds, only a molten hell of fused structures and incinerated
millions of human beings remained of the world's first city.
Phobar was crushed, appalled, then utter loathing
for this soulless thing poured through him. If only—
"It
is useless. You can do nothing," answered the ruler as though it had
grasped his thought.
"But
why, if you could pick me off the Earth, do you not draw the radium ores in the
same way?" Phobar demanded.
"The
orange-ray picks up only loose, portable objects. We can and will transport the
radium ores here by means of the ray after they have been mined and placed on
platforms or disks."
"Why did you select me
from all the millions of people on Earth?"
"Solely because you were the first
apparent scientist whom our cosmotel
90 chanced upon. It will be up to you to notify
your Earth governments of our demand."
"But afterwards!" Phobar burst out
aloud. "What then?" "We will depart"
"It
will mean death to us! The solar system will be wrecked with Neptune gone and
Saturn following it!"
Garboreggg made no answer. To that impassive, cold,
inhuman thing, it did not matter if a nation or a whole world perished. Phobar had already seen with what deliberate calm it
destroyed a city, merely to show him what power the lords of Xlarbti controlled. Besides, what guarantee was there that
the invaders would not loot the Earth of everything they wanted and then annihilate
all life upon it before they departed? Yet Phobar
knew he was helpless, knew that the men of Earth would be forced to do
whatever was asked of them, and trust that the raiders would fulfill their
promise.
"Two
hours remain for your stay here," came the
ruler's dictum to interrupt his line of thought. "For the first half of
that period you will tell me of your world and answer whatever questions I may
ask. During the rest of the interval, I will explain some of the things you
wish to learn about us."
Again
Phobar felt Garboreggg's disdain,
knew that the metal giant regarded him as a kind of childish plaything for an
hour or two's amusement. But he had no choice, and so he told Garboreggg of the life on Earth, how it arose and along
what lines it had developed; he narrated in brief the extent of man's
knowledge, his scientific achievements, his mastery of weapons and forces and
machines, his social organization.
When
he had finished, he felt as a Stone Age man might feel in the presence of a
brilliant scientist of the thirty-fourth century. If any sign of interest had
shown on the peak of the metallic lord, Phobar failed
to see it. But he sensed an intolerant sneer of ridicule in Garboreggg,
as though the ruler considered these statements to be only the most elementary
of facts.
Then,
for three quarters of an hour, in the manner of one lecturing an ignorant
pupil, the giant crowded its thought pictures into Phobar's
mind so that finally he understood a little of the raiders and of the sudden
terror that had flamed from the abysses into the solar system.
"The
universe of matter that you know is only one of the countless universes which
comprise the cosmos," began Garboreggg. "In
your universe, you have a scale of ninety-two elements,
you have your color-spectrum, your rays and waves of many kinds. You are
subject to definite laws controlling matter and energy as you know them.
"But
we are of a different universe, on a different scale from yours, a trillion
light-years away in space, eons distant in time. The natural laws which govern
us differ from those controlling you. In our universe, you would be hopelessly
lost, completely helpless, unless you possessed the knowledge that your people
will not attain even in millions of years. But we, who are so much older and
greater than you, have for so long studied the nature of the other universes
that we can enter and leave them at will, taking what we wish, doing as we
wish, creating or destroying worlds whenever the need arises, coming and
hurtling away when we choose.
91
"There is no vegetable life in our
universe. There is only the scale of elements ranging from 842 to 966 on the
extension of your own scale. At this high range, metals of complex kinds exist.
There is none of what you call water, no vegetable world, no animal kingdom.
Instead, there are energies, forces, rays, and waves, which are food to us and
which nourish our life-stream just as pigs, potatoes, and bread are food to
you.
"Trillions
of years ago in your time-calculation, but only a few dozen centuries ago in ours, life arose on the giant world Kygpton in our universe. It was life, our life, the life of
my people and myself, intelligence animating bodies of
pliant metal, existing almost endlessly on an almost inexhaustible source of
energy.
"But
all matter wears down. On Kygpton there was a variety of useful metals, others that were valueless. There was
comparatively little of the first, much of the second. Kygpton
itself was a world as large as your entire solar system, with a diameter
roughly of four billion miles. Our ancestors knew that Kygpton
was dying, that the store of our most precious element Sthalreh
was dwindling. But already our ancestors had mastered the forces of our universe,
had made inventions that are beyond your understanding, had explored the limits
of our universe in spacecars that were propelled by
the free energies in space and by the attracting-repelling influences of stars.
"The
metal inhabitants of Kygpton employed every invention
they knew to accomplish an engineering miracle that makes your bridges and
mines seem but the puny efforts of a gnat. They blasted all the remaining ores
of Sthalreh from the surface and interior of Kygpton and refined them. Then they created a gigantic
vacuum, a dead-field in space a hundred million miles away from their world.
The dead-field was controlled from Kygpton by
atomic-projectors, energy-absorbers, gravitation-nullifiers and cosmotels, range-regulators, and a host of other
inventions.
"As
fast as it was mined and extracted, the Sthalreh
metal was vaporized, shot into the dead-field by interstellar rays, and
solidified there along an invisible framework which
we projected. In a decade of our time, we had pillaged Kygpton
of every particle of Sthalreh. And then in our skies
hung an artificial world, a manufactured sphere, a giant new planet, the world
you yourself are now on—Xlarbti!
"We
did not create a solid globe. We left chambers, tunnels, passageways,
storerooms throughout it or piercing it from surface to surface. Thus, even as Xlarbti was being created we provided for everything that
we needed or could need—experimental laboratories, sub-surface vaults, chambers
for the innumerable, huge ray dynamos, energy storage batteries, and other
apparatus which we required.
"And
when all was ready, we transferred by space-cars and by atomic individuation
all our necessities from Kygpton to the artificial
world Xlarbti. And when everything was prepared, we
destroyed the dead-field by duplicate control from Xlarbti,
turned our repulsion-power on full against the now useless and dying giant
world Kygpton, and swung upon our path.
"But
our whole universe is incredibly old. It was mature before ever your young suns
flamed out of the gaseous nebulae, it was decaying when your
92 molten planets were flung from the central
sun, it was dying before the boiling seas had given
birth to land upon your sphere. And while we had enough of our own particular
electrical food to last us for a million of your years, and enough power to
guide Xlarbti to other universes, we had exhausted
all the remaining energy of our entire universe. And when we finally left it to
dwindle behind us in the black abysses of space, we left it, a dead cinder,
devoid of life, vitiated of activity, and utterly lacking in cosmic forces, a
universe finally run down.
"The
universes, as you may know, are set off from each other by totally black and
empty abysms, expanses so vast that light-rays have not yet crossed many of
them. How did we accomplish the feat of traversing such a gulf? By the simplest
of means: acceleration. Why? Because to remain in our universe
meant inevitable death. We gambled on the greatest adventure in all the
cosmos.
"To
begin with, we circled our universe to the remotest point opposite where we
wanted to leave it. We then turned our attraction powers on part way so that
the millions of stars before us drew us ahead, then we gradually stepped up the
power to its full strength, thus ever increasing our speed. At the same time,
as stars passed to our rear in our flight, we turned our repulsion-rays
against them, stepping that power up also.
"Our
initial speed was twenty-four miles per second. Midway in our universe we had
reached the speed of your light—186,000 miles per second. By the time we left
our universe, we were hurtling at a speed which we estimated to be
1,600,000,000 miles per second. Yet even at that tremendous speed, it took us
years to cross from our universe to yours. If we had encountered even a
planetoid at that enormous rate, we would probably have been annihilated in
white-hot death. But we had planned well, and there are no superiors to our
stellar mechanics, our astronomers, our scientists.
"When
we finally hurtled from the black void into your universe, we found what we had
only dared hope for: a young universe, with many planets and cooling worlds
rich in radium ores, the only element in your scale that can help to replenish
our vanishing energy. Half your universe we have already deprived of its ores.
Your Earth has more than we want. Then we shall continue on our way, to loot
the rest of the worlds, before passing on to another universe. We are a planet
without a universe. We will wander and pillage until we find a universe like
the one we come from, or until Xlarbti
itself disintegrates and we perish.
"We
could easily wipe out all the dwellers on Earth and mine the ores ourselves.
But that would be a needless waste of our powers, for since you can. not defy
us, and since the desire for life burns as high in you as in us and as it does
in all sensate things in all universes, your people will save themselves from
death and save us from wasting energy by mining the ores for us. What happens
afterwards, we do not care.
■"The
seven new suns that you saw were dead worlds that we used as buffers to slow
down Xlarbti. The full strength of our
repulsion-force directed against any single world necessarily turns it into a
liquid or gaseous state depending on various factors. Your planet Neptune was
pulled out of the
93 solar system by the attraction of Xlarbti's mass. The flame-paths, as you call them, are
directed streams of energy for different purposes: the one to the sun supplies
us, for instance, with heat, light, and electricity, which in turn are stored
up for eventual use.
"The
orange-ray that you felt is one of our achievements. It is similar to the
double-action pumps used in some of your sulphur
mines, whereby a pipe is inclosed in a larger pipe,
and hot water forced down through the larger tubing returns sulphur-laden
through the central pipe. The orange-ray instantaneously dissolves any
portable object up to a certain size, propels it back to Xlarbti
through its center which is the reverse ray, and here reforms the object, just
as you were recreated on the disk that you stood on when you regained
consciousness.
"But
I have not enough time to explain everything on Xlarbti
to you; nor would you comprehend it all if I did. Your stay is almost up.
"In
that one control-panel lies all the power that we have
mastered," boasted Garboreggg with supreme
egotism. "It connects with the individual controls throughout Xlarbti."
"What
is the purpose of some of the levers?" asked Phobar,
with a desperate hope in his thoughts.
A
filament of metal whipped to the panel from the lord of Xlarbti.
"This first section duplicates the control-panel that you saw in the
laboratory where you opened your eyes. Do not think that you can make use of
this information—in ten minutes you will be back on your Earth to deliver our
command. Between now and that moment you will be so closely watched that you
can do nothing and will have no opportunity to try.
"This
first lever controls the attraction rays, the second the repulsion force. The
third dial regulates the orange-ray by which you will be returned to Earth. The
fourth switch directs the electrical bolt that destroyed New York City. Next it
is a device that we have never had occasion to use. It releases the Krangor-wave throughout Xlarbti.
Its effect is to make each atom of Xlarbti, the Sthalreh metal and everything on it become compact, to do
away with the empty spaces that exist in every atom. Theoretically, it would
reduce Xlarbti to a fraction of its present size, diminish its mass while its weight and gravity
remained as before.
"The
next lever controls matter to be transported between here and the first laboratory.
Somewhat like the orange-ray, it distintegrates the
object and reassembles it here."
So
that was what Phobar's captor had been trying to do
with him back there in the laboratory! "Why was I not brought here by that
means?" burst out Phobar.
"Because you belong to
a different universe," answered Garboreggg.
"Without
experimentation, we cannot tell what natural laws of ours you would not be
subject to, but this is one of them." A gesture of irritation seemed to
come from him.
"Some
laws hold good in all the universes we have thus far investigated. The
orange-ray, for instance, picked you up as it would have plucked one of us from
the surface of Kygpton. But on Xlarbti,
which is composed entirely
94 of Sthalreh,
your atomic nature and physical constitution are so different from ours that
they were unaffected by the energy that ordinarily transports objects
here."
Thus
the metal nightmare went rapidly over the control-panel. At length Phobar's captor, or another thing like him, re-entered when
Garboreggg flicked a strange-looking protuberance on
the panel.
"You
will now be returned to your world," came the
thought of Garboreggg. "We shall watch you
through our cosmotel to see that you deliver our
instructions. Unless the nations of Earth obey us, they will be obliterated at
the end of seven days."
A
wild impulse to smash that impassive, metallic monster passed from Phobar as quickly as it came. He was helpless. Sick and
despairing, he felt the cold, baffling-colored metal close around him again;
once more he was borne aloft for the journey to the laboratory, from there to
be propelled back to Earth.
Seven
days of grace! But Phobar knew that less than ten
minutes remained to him. Only here could he possibly accomplish anything. Once
oil the surface of Xlarbti, there was not the
remotest chance that all the nations of Earth could reach the invaders or even
attempt to defy them. Yet what could he alone do in a week, to say nothing of
ten minutes?
He
sensed the amused, supercilious contempt of his captor. That was really the
greatest obstacle, this ability of theirs to read thought-pictures. And already
he had given them enough word-pictures of English so that they could
understand. . . .
In
back of Phobar's mind the ghost of a desperate
thought suddenly came. What was it he had learned years ago in college?
Homer—"The Odyssey"— Plutarch. . . . From rusty, disused corners of
memory crept forth the half-forgotten words. He bent all his efforts to the
task, not daring to think ahead or plan ahead or visualize
anything but the Greek words.
He
felt the bewilderment of his captor. To throw it off the track, Phobar suddenly let an ancient English nursery rime slip into his thoughts. The disgust that emanated from
his captor was laughable; Phobar could have shouted
aloud. But the Greek words. . . .
Already the pair had left the mountain-high
titan city far behind; they rippled across the smooth, black surface of Xlarbti, and bore like rifle bullets down on the
swiftly-looming laboratory. In a few minutes it would be too late forever. Now
the lost Greek words burst into Phobar's mind, and,
hoping against hope, he thought in Greek word-pictures which his captor could
not understand. He weighed chances, long shots. Into his brain flashed an idea.
. . . But they were upon the laboratory; a stupendous door dissolved weirdly
into shimmering haze; they sped through.
Phobar's hand clutched a bulge in his pocket. Would
it work? How could it?
They
were beyond the door now and racing across the great expanse of the floor, past
the central tower, past the control-panel which he had first seen. ...
And as if by magic there leaped into Phobar's mind a clear-cut, vivid
95
picture of violet oceans of energy crackling and streaking from the heavens to
crash through the laboratory roof and barely miss striking his captor behind.
Even as Phobar created the image of that terrific
death, his captor whirled around in a lightning
movement, a long arm of metal flicking outward at the
same instant to drop Phobar to the ground.
Like
a flash Phobar was on his feet; his hand whipped from
his pocket, and with all his strength he flung a gleaming object straight toward the fifth lever on the control-panel a
dozen yards away. As a clumsy arrow would, his oversize bunch of
keys twisted to their mark, clanked, and spread against the fifth control,
which was the size regulator.
As rapidly as Phobar's
captor had spun around, it reversed again, having guessed the trick. A tentacle of pliant metal snaked toward Phobar like a streak of flame.
But
in those few seconds a terrific holocaust had taken place. As Phobar's keys spattered against the fifth lever, there came
an immediate, growing, strange, high whine, and a sickening collapse of the
very surface beneath them. Everywhere outlines of objects wavered, changed,
melted, shrank with a steady and nauseatingly swift
motion. The roof of the laboratory high overhead plunged downward; the
far-distant walls swept inward, contracted. And the metal monsters themselves
dwindled as though they were vast rubber figures from which the air was
hissing.
Phobar sprang back as the tentacle whipped after
him. Only that jump and the suddenly dwarfing dimensions of the giant saved
him. And even in that instant of wild action, Phobar
shouted aloud—for this whole world was collapsing, together with everything on
it, except he himself who came of a different universe and remained unaffected!
It was the long shot he had gambled on, the one chance he had to strike a blow.
All
over the shrinking laboratory the monsters were rushing toward him. His
dwindling captor flung another tentacle toward the control-panel to replace
the size-regulating lever. But Phobar had anticipated
that possibility and had already leaped to the switchboard, sweeping a heavy
bar from its place and crashing it down on the lever so that it could not be
replaced without being repaired. Almost in the same move he had bounded away
again, the former hundred-foot giant now scarcely more than his own height. But
throughout the laboratory, the other metal things had halted in their tasks and
were racing onward.
Phobar always remembered that battle in the
laboratory as a scene from some horrible nightmare. The catastrophe came so
rapidly that he could hardly follow the whirlwind events. The half dozen great
leaps he made from the lashing tentacles of his pursuer sufficed to give him a
few seconds' respite, and then the weird howling sound of the tortured world
swelled to a piercing wail. His lungs were laboring from the violence of his
exertions; again and again he barely escaped from the curling whips of metal tentacles.
And now the monster was hardly a foot high; the huge condensers and tubes and
colossal machinery were like those of a pygmy laboratory. And overhead the roof
plunged ever downward.
But Phobar was
cornered at last. He stood in the center of a circle of the foot-high things.
His captor suddenly shot forth a dozen rope-like arms toward him as the others
closed in. He had not even a weapon, for he had dropped the
bar in his first mad bound away from the control-panel. He saw himself trapped
in his own trick, for in minutes at most the laboratory would be crushing him
with fearful force.
Blindly
Phobar reverted to a primitive defense in this moment
of infinite danger and kicked with all his strength at the squat monster before
him. The thing tried to whirl aside, but Phobar's
shoe squashed thickly through and in a disorder of quivering pieces, the metal
creature fell, and subsided. Knowing at last that the invaders were vulnerable
and how they could be killed, Phobar went leaping and
stamping on those nearest him. Under foot, they disintegrated into little pulpy
lumps of inert metal.
In
a trice he broke beyond the circle and darted to the control-panel. One quick
glance showed him that the roof was now scarcely a half dozen yards above. With
fingers that fumbled in haste at tiny levers and dials, he spun several of
them—the repulsion-ray full—the attraction-ray full. And when they were set, he
picked up the bar he had dropped and smashed the controls so that they were
helplessly jammed. He could almost feel the planet catapult through the
heavens.
The
laboratory roof was only a foot over his head. He whirled around, squashed a
dozen tiny creeping things, leaped to a disk that was now not more than a few
inches broad. Stooping low, balancing himself precariously, he somehow managed
to close the tiny switch. A haze of orange light enveloped him, there came a
great vertigo and dizziness and pain, he felt himself falling through
bottomless spaces . . .
So
exhausted that he could scarcely move, Phobar blinked
his eyes open to brilliant daylight in the chill of a November Indian summer noon. The sun shone radiant in the heavens; off in the distance he heard a pandemonium of bells and whistles. Wearily he
noticed that there were no flamepaths in the sky.
Staggering
weakly, he made his way to the
observatory, mounted the steps with tired limbs, and wobbled to the eyepiece of his telescope which he had left focused on
the dark star two hours before. Almost trembling, he peered through it.
The
dark star was gone. Somewhere far out in the abysses of the universe, a runaway world plunged headlong at ever mounting speed
to uncharted regions under its double acceleration of attraction and
repulsion.
A
sigh of contentment came from his lips as he sank into a heavy and profound
sleep. Later he would learn of the readjustments in the solar system, and of
the colder climate that came to earth, and of the vast changes permanently made
by the invading planet, and of a blazing new star discovered in Orion that
might signify the birth of a sun or the death of a metallic dark world.
But
these were events to be, and he demanded his immediate reward of a day's
dreamless slumber.
Z7he ^JdouSe oj- Sltacloivô
fttf ll'jaru é^iizabetL CotmSefman
Here is one of those delightful little stories with which ghost lore abounds—one of those anecdotes, told with a tear in the eye, a touch of pathos, and a stinging little shock at the end.
HE TRAIN pulled up with a noisy jerk and
wheeze, and I peered out into the semi-gloom of dusk at the
little depot. What was the place?— "Oak
Grove." I could read dimly the sign on the station's roof. I sighed
wearily. Three days on the train! Lord, I was tired of the lurching roll, the
cinders, the scenery flying past my window! I came to a sudden decision and hurried down the aisle to where the conductor was
helping an old lady off.
"How long do we stop here?" I asked
him quickly.
"About
ten minutes, ma'am," he said, and I stepped from the train to the smooth sand
in front of the station. So pleasant to walk on firm ground again! I breathed
deeply of the spicy winter air, and strolled to the far side of the station. A
brisk little wind was whipping my skirts about my legs and blowing wisps of
hair into my eyes. I looked idly about at what I could see of Oak Grove. It was
a typical small town—a little sleepier than some, a little prettier than most. I wandered a
block or two toward the business district, glancing nervously at my watch from
time to time. My ten minutes threatened to be up, when I came upon two dogs
trying to tear a small kitten to pieces.
I
dived into the fray and rescued the kitten, not without a few bites and scratches in the way of service wounds, and put the little
animal inside a store doorway. At that moment a long-drawn,
it seemed to me derisive, whistle from my train rent the quiet, and as I tore
back toward the station I heard it chugging away. I reached the tracks just in
time to see the caboose rattling away into the night.
What
should I do? Oh, why had I jumped off at this accursed little station ? My luggage, everything I possessed except my
purse, was on that vanished train, and here I was, marooned in a village I had
never heard of before!
Or had I? "Oak
Grove" . . . the name had a familiar
ring. Oak Grove
93
. .
. ah! I had it! My roommate at college two years
before had lived in a town called Oak Grove. I darted into the depot.
"Does
a Miss Mary Allison live here?" I inquired of the station-master.
"Mary Deane Allison?"
I
wondered at the peculiar unfathomable look the old man gave me,
and at his long silence before he answered my question. "Yes'm," he said slowly, with an odd hesitancy that was
very noticeable. "You her kin?"
"No,"
I smiled. "I went to college with her. I ...
I thought perhaps she might put me up for the night. I've . . . well, I was
idiot enough to let my train go off and leave me. Do you ... is she fixed to put up an unexpected
guest, do you know?"
"Well"—again
that odd hesitancy—"we've a fair to middlin'
hotel here," he evaded. "Maybe you'd rather stay there."
I
frowned. Perhaps my old friend had incurred the disapproval of Oak Grove by
indiscreet behavior—it seems a very easy thing to do in rural towns. I looked at him coldly.
"Perhaps you can direct me to her
house," I said stiffly.
He did so, still with that strange
reluctance.
I
made my way to the big white house at the far end of town, where I was told
Mary Allison lived. Vague memories flitted through my mind of my chum as I had
seen her last, a vivacious cheerful girl whose home and family life meant more
to her than college. I recalled hazy pictures she had given me of her house, of
her parents and a brother whose picture had been on our dresser at school. I
found myself hurrying forward with eagerness to see her again and meet that
doting family of hers.
I
found my way at last to the place, a beautiful old Colonial mansion with tall
pillars. The grounds were overgrown with shrubbery and weeds, and the enormous
white oaks completely screened the great house from the street, giving it an
appearance of hiding from the world. The place was sadly
in need of repairs and a gardener's care, but it must have been magnificent at
one time.
I
mounted the steps and rapped with the heavy brass knocker. At my third knock
the massive door swung open a little way, and my college friend stood in the
aperture, staring at me without a word. I held out my hand, smiling
delightedly, and she took it in a slow incredulous grasp. She was unchanged, I
noticed—except, perhaps, that her dancing bright-blue eyes had taken on a vague
dreamy look. There was an unnatural quiet about her manner, too, which was not
noticeable until she spoke. She stood in the doorway, staring at me with those
misty blue eyes for a long moment without speech; then she said slowly, with
more amazement than I thought natural, "Liz! Liz!" Her fingers
tightened about my hand as though she were afraid I might suddenly vanish.
"It's . . . it's good to see you! Gosh! How . . . why did
you come here?" with a queer embarrassment.
"Well, to tell the truth, my train ran
off and left me when I got off for a breath of air," I confessed
sheepishly. "But I'm glad now that it did . . . remembered you lived here,
so here I am!" She
merely stared at me strangely,
99 still cluching my
hand. "There's no train to Atlanta till ten in the morning," I
hesitated, then laughed, "Well, aren't you going to ask me in?"
"Why
. . . why, of course," Mary said oddly, as if the idea was strange and had
not occurred to her. "Come in!"
I
stepped into the great hall, wondering at her queer manner. She had been one of
my best friends at college, so why this odd constraint? Not quite as if she did
not want me around—more as if it were queer that I should wish to enter her
house, as if I were a total stranger, a creature
from another planet! I tried to attribute it to the unexpectedness of my visit;
yet inwardly I felt this explanation was not sufficient.
"What
a beautiful old place!" I exclaimed, with an effort to put her at ease
again. Then, as the complete silence of the place struck me, unthinkingly I
added, "You don't live here alone, do you?"
She
gave me the oddest loqk, one I could not fathom, and
replied so softly that I could hardly catch the words, "Oh, no."
I laughed. "Of course!
I'm crazy . . . but where is everybody?"
I
took off my hat, looking about me at the Colonial furniture and the large
candelabra on the walls with the clusters of lighted candles which gave the
only light in the place—for there were no modern lighting fixtures of any kind,
I noted. The dim candle-light threw deep shadows about the hall —shadows that
flickered and moved, that seemed alive. It should have given me a sense of
nervous fear; yet somehow there was peace, contentment, warmth about the old
mansion. Yet, too, there was an incongruous air of mystery, of unseen things in
the shadowy corners, of being watched by unseen eyes.
"Where is everybody? Gone to bed?"
I repeated, as she seemed not to have heard my question.
"Here
they are," Mary answered in that strange hushed voice I had noticed, as if some one were asleep whom
she might waken.
I
looked in the direction she indicated, and started slightly. I had not seen
that little group when I entered! They were standing scarcely ten feet from me
just beyond the aura of light from the candle, and they stared at me silently,
huddled together and motionless.
I
smiled and glanced at Mary, who said in a soft
voice like the murmur of a light wind, "My mother ..."
I
stopped forward and held out my hand to the tall kind-faced woman who advanced
a few steps from the half-seen group in the shadows. She seemed, without
offense, not to see my hand, but merely gave me a beautiful smile and said, in that same hushed voice Mary used, "If
you are my daughter's friend, you are welcome!"
I
happened to glance at Mary from the corner of my eye as she spoke, and I saw my
friend's unnatural constraint vanish, give place to a look, I thought
wonderingly, that was unmistakably one of relief.
"My
father," Mary's voice had a peculiar tone of happiness. A tall distinguished-looking
man of about fifty stepped toward me, smiling gently. He too seemed not to see
my outthrust hand, but said in a quiet friendly voice, "I am glad to know
you, my dear. Mary has spoken of you often."
100
I made some friendly answer to the old
couple; then Mary said, "This is Lonny . . . remember his picture?"
The
handsome young man whose photograph I remembered stepped forward, grinning
engagingly.
"So
this is Liz!" he said. "Always wanted to meet one girl who isn't
afraid of a mouse . . . remember? Mary told us about the time you put one in
the prof's desk." He too spoke in that
near-whisper that went oddly with his cheery words, and I found myself
unconsciously lowering my voice to match theirs. They were unusually quiet for
such a merry friendly group, and I was especially puzzled at Mary's hushed
voice and manner—she had always been a boisterous tomboy sort of person.
"This is Betty," Mary spoke again,
a strange glow lighting her face.
A
small girl about twelve stepped solemnly from the shadows and gave me a grave
old-fashioned curtsey.
"And
Bill," said Mary, as a chubby child peeped out at me from behind his
sister's dress and broke into a soft gurgling laugh.
"What darling kids!" I burst out.
The
baby toddled out from behind Betty and stood looking at me with big blue eyes,
head on one side. I stepped forward to pat the curly head, but as I put out a
hand to touch him, he seemed to draw away easily just out of reach. I could not
feel rebuffed, however, with his bright eyes telling me plainly that I was
liked. It was just a baby's natural shyness with strangers, I told myself, and
made no other attempt to catch him.
After
a moment's conversation, during which my liking for this charming family grew,
Mary asked if I should like to go to my room and freshen up a bit before
dinner. As I followed her up the stairs, it struck me forcibly— as it had
before only vaguely—that this family, with the exception of Mary, were in very
bad health. From father to baby, they were most pasty-white of complexion—not
sallow, I mused, but a sort of 'translucent white like the glazed-glass doors
of private offices. I attributed it to the uncertain light of the candles that
they looked rather smoky, like figures in a movie when the film has become old
and faded.
"Dinner
at six," Mary told me, smiling, and left me to remove the travel-stains.
I
came downstairs a little before the dinner hour, to find the hall deserted—and,
woman-like, I stopped to parade before a large cheval-glass in the wall. It was
a huge mirror, reflecting the whole hall behind me, mellowly
illumined in the glow of the candles. Turning about for a back-view of myself,
I saw the little baby, Bill, standing just beside me, big eyes twinkling
merrily.
"Hello
there, old fellow," I smiled at him. "Do I look all right?" I
glanced back at the mirror . . . and what it reflected gave me a shock.
I
could see myself clearly in the big glass, and most of the hall far behind me,
stretching back into the shadows. But the baby was not reflected in the glass
at all! I moved, with a little chill, just behind him . . . and I could see my
own reflection clearly, but it was as if he was simply not there.
At that moment Mary called us to dinner, and
I promptly forgot the dis-
101 turbing
optical illusion with the parting resolve to have my eyes examined. I held out my hand to lead little Bill into
the dining-room, but he dodged by me with a mischievous gurgle of laughter, and toddled into the room ahead of me.
That was the pleasantest meal I can remember.
The food was excellent and the conversation cheery and light, though I had to
strain to catch words spoken at the far end of the table, as they still spoke
in that queer hushed tone. My voice, breaking into the murmur of theirs,
sounded loud and discordant, though I have a real Southern voice.
Mary
served the dinner, hopping up and running back into the kitchen from time to
time to fetch things. By this I gathered that they were in rather straitened
circumstances and could not afford a servant.
I chattered gayly to Lonny and Mary, while the baby
and Betty listened with obvious delight and Mary's parents put in a word
occasionally when they could break into our chatter.
It was a merry informal dinner, not unusual
except that the conversation was carried on in that near-whisper. I noticed
vaguely that Mary and I were the only ones who ate anything at all. The others
merely toyed with their food, cutting it up ready for eating but- not tasting a bite, though several times they would raise a fork to their lips and put
it down again, as though pretending to eat. Even the baby only splashed with
his little fork in his rice and kept his eyes fixed on me, now and then
breaking into that merry gurgling laugh.
We wandered into the library after the meal,
where Mary and I chatted "of old times. Mr. Allison and his wife read or
gave ear to our prattling from time to time, smiling and winking at each other.
Lonny, with the baby in his lap and Betty perched on the arm of his chair,
laughed with us at some foolish tale of our freshman days.
At
about eleven Mary caught me yawning covertly, and hustled me off to bed. I
obediently retired, thankful for a bed that did not roll me from side to side
all night, and crawled in bed in borrowed pajamas with a book, to read myself to sleep by the flickering candle on my bedside
table.
I
must have dropped off to sleep suddenly, for I awoke to find my candle still
burning. I was about to blow it out and go back to sleep when a slight sound startled the last trace of drowsiness from me.
It was the gentle rattle of
my doorknob being turned very quietly.
An
impulse made me feign sleep, though my eyes were not quite closed and I watched
the door through my eyelashes. It swung open slowly, and Mrs. Allison came into
the room. She walked with absolute noiselessness up to my bed, and stood
looking down at me intently. I shut my eyes tightly so my eyelids would not
flutter, and when I opened them slightly in a moment, she was moving toward the
door, apparently satisfied that I was fast asleep. I thought she was going out
again, but she paused at the door and beckoned to some one
outside in the hall.
Slowly
and with incredible lack of sound, there tiptoed into my room Mr. Allison,
Lonny, Betty, and the baby. They stood beside the bed looking down at me with
such tender expressions that I was touched.
102
I conquered an impulse to open my eyes and
ask them what they meant by this late visit, deciding to wait and watch. It did
not occur to me to be frightened at this midnight intrusion. There swept over
me instead a sense of unutterable peace and safety, a feeling of being watched
over and guarded by some benevolent angel.
They
stood for a long moment without speaking, and then the little girl, bending
close to me, gently caressed my hand, which was lying on the coverlet. I
controlled a start with great effort.
Her
little hand was icy cold—not with the coldness of hands, but with a peculiar windy coldness. It was as if some one had merely
blown a breath of icy air on me, for though her hand rested a moment on mine,
it had no weight!
Then,
still without speaking but with gentle affectionate smiles on all their faces,
they tiptoed out in single file. Wondering at their actions, I dropped off at
last into a serene sleep.
Mary
brought my breakfast to my bed next morning, and sat chattering with me while I
ate. I dressed leisurely and made ready to catch my ten o'clock train. When the
time drew near, I asked Mary where her family was—they were nowhere in the
house and I had seen none of them since the night before. I reiterated how charming they were, and how happy my visit had been. That
little glow of happiness lighted my friend's face again, but at my next words
it vanished into one that was certainly frightened pleading. I had merely
asked to tell them good-bye.
That
odd unfathomable expression flitted across her face once more. "They . . .
they're gone," she said in a strained whisper. And as I stared at her
perplexedly, she added in confusion, "I ...
I mean, they're away. They won't be back until . . . nightfall," the last
word was so low it was almost unintelligible.
So
I told her to give them my thanks and farewells. She did not seem to want to
accompany me to the train, so I went alone. My train was late, and I wandered to the ticket window and chatted with the station-master.
"Miss
Allison has a charming family, hasn't she?" I began conversationally.
"They seem so devoted to each other."
Then
I saw the station-master was staring at me as if I had suddenly gone mad. His
wrinkled face had gone very pale.
"You stayed there last
night?" His voice was almost a croak.
"Why yes!" I
replied, wondering at his behavior. "I did. Why
not?"
"And . . . you saw . .
. them?" his voice sank to a whisper.
"You
mean Mary's family?" I asked, becoming a little annoyed at his foolish
perturbation. "Certainly I saw them! What's so strange about that? What's
wrong with them?"
My
approaching train wailed in the distance, but I lingered to hear his reply. It
came with that same reluctance, that same hesitancy, after a long moment.
"They
died last year," he whispered, leaning forward toward me and fixing me
with wide intent eyes. "Wiped out—every one of 'em exceptin' Mary—by
smallpox."
ence |
^Jlie
Ship oj? Siie
-Afbrt Richard Wet},
s |
We needn't tell you of the mystery of the Mary Celeste, because Albert Richard Wetjen
tells you about it and its companion vessels in the story of "The Ship of Silence." Suffice to say that the ocean is a place of many mysteries, that men who sail above
the unplumbed depths are known for their unwillingness to scoff at
superstitions and hints of the
inexplicable, and that perhaps they have good reason to keep open minds on such
subjects.
ECAUSE
this is a true story, there is no ending. ...
It was early in the night and very hot, the sticky tropical darkness pressing
all about us, seeming to muffle the lights of the city ashore and rendering to
a soft velvet the waters of the harbor as they rippled through the anchor
chains and along the hull of the little coffee freighter that had brought me to
Santos, Brazil. I had been sitting with Captain Massey and old Billings under
the awning of the after-deck, drinking long, cold gin tonicas and talking of the sea in general and of ships that had vanished into
its mysterious immensity. Old Billings never romanced, let it be said. He was a
dignified man, red of face and with silvery hair, in his eightieth year and at
that time the Lloyds surveyor and agent at Santos. He had followed the sea for
some forty years before leaving it to take his present position, and so he
spoke as a sailor.
"It's
not so hard perhaps to account for the foundering of most ships," he said.
"They get into bad weather and have their hatches burst in; or they're
built or loaded top-heavy and capsize. That's all in the run of the game. What
isn't so easy to explain is how they can sometimes drop out of sight without
leaving a trace, especially in these days of wireless and with the regular
sea-lanes all well traveled. But we know they do. And we know too that it's
hard to sink a vessel without something floating clear—a boat, lifebuoys,
hatches, oars and what-not. Of course the sea's big and it's not hard to
believe that searching vessels can overlook such small things. You've only a
visibility of from ten to fifteen miles on the clearest of days from a ship's
deck, and hatches and lifebuoys and even bodies are level with the water,
easily hidden behind the swells.
"Yet
even at that it seems curious that nothing comes to light. Take the Waratah now. You'll remember her—a modern liner of over fifteen thousand tons,
newly built and on her second voyage. Carrying over two hundred souls, what
with passengers and crew, and running on a regular route, down the coast from
Durban to Capetown in South Africa. Of course she
carried no wireless. That was before the day it became compulsory for liners to
carry it, and it hadn't come into general use.
104
"But there she was, on a thickly traveled run. Soon after leaving Durban she speaks to the
freighter Clan Mclntyre, drops her astern and then proceeds to disappear. Of course there was a
heavy gale reported soon after and it seems reasonable to suppose she
foundered. But a new ship, remember— absolutely vanished! They sent out
searching vessels, of course, when she was reported overdue. For months
Government and private craft patrolled the coast waters. One vessel searched
for over ninety days and covered close to twenty thousand miles of sea, and
there was even a vessel sent to follow the normal
current-drift far to the south. But nothing was ever found. Not a body, not a hatch, not a plank!
"Then
there was that American transport the Cyclops that
dropped out of sight—and she did have
wireless. Then only this year there was that Danish training-ship the Kobenhaven, clearing from Buenos Aires for Australia. Been overdue for months and
nothing found; must have gone down—and she's taken the flower of Danish youth
with her, sons of the best families. My personal opinion is that she got too
far southerly, into the Antarctic ice, struck a berg and crumpled. You know.
"But
that isn't really what I started out to tell you. You can set up some sort of
reasonable explanation for ships that just vanish. It's the other vessels that
make the real mystery—the ships that don't drop out of sight, but turn up like
a lot of wandering ghosts, sound above and below but without a soul on board.
In '23 or '24, I forget which, there was a schooner picked up off Diamond
Shoals, to the north. Sails set, boats in place, no unreasonable amount of
water below. But never a sign of her men. . . . Why? Foundering doesn't cover that—for there's the ship!
"Somewhere
in the records too you'll find notice of a Japanese steamer discovered drifting in the South Atlantic. Carried a
crew of forty-odd and all they found were eight dead men on the main deck, and
nothing to show how they had died. Boats all in place there
too. No sign of heavy weather. No sign of fire or disease. . . . Queer,
isn't it? And then of course there was the Mary Celeste in
the '70's; I suppose she's the classic of what I am trying to say.
"They
found her in mid-Atlantic in calm weather, you'll remember, with all the usual
signs of mystery. Everything in order. Hull and spars
sound. Fair-weather sails set; not a lifeboat missing. Everything as it should
be, except she had no crew. What makes her case a classic are the number of altogether peculiar features.
"There
were the men's clothes hung on a line
to dry. Breakfast, half eaten, was on the fo'c'sde
and the main cabin tables; and the food was still good, proving she had not
long been abandoned. Under the needle of a sewing-machine in the Captain's room was a child's dress, half-finished, where the Captain's wife had obviously
hurriedly left it. Then they found a cutlass
in its scabbard, with stains like blood on the blade, and on the rail in the
starboard bow they found a deep new cut with stains about it also. Cut into the bow itself, a little
above the water-line, were two deep grooves, gouged out each side, as it were,
and quite fresh. Most curious of all, the only thing missing on board was the
chronometer. But again—why? ... Why?
105
"Where
had everyone gone? There was no sign of mutiny or of a raid, shall we say, by
pirates. How had the men left the ship—and why had they left, it, obviously in
haste, in the middle of breakfast? We don't know. There have been a lot of
theories put forward, but for one reason or another they can be discounted. If
it were only the Mary Celeste we might let the matter go, just write it off. But there are all those
other ships, not only those that drop out of sight, without trace, but those
that are found, abandoned for no earthly reason. New cases still turn up too,
once every decade or so— and there you are.
"I
think I'm a hard-headed man. I've had lot of experience one way and the other.
I don't take much stock in ghosts and I believe everything has a reasonable
explanation if we could locate what it is. And yet sometimes—well, I don't
know. The sea is pretty big and we haven't learned much about it and what's in
it. Remember the land only covers one-fifth, or is it a quarter, of the earth's
surface—and we haven't fully explored the land yet. As for the sea, we have
only gone down a few hundred feet—a few hundred feet in five miles of depth,
remember. Ships stick to narrow and clearly defined lanes as a rule. There are
tremendous areas where I suppose vessels only wander once in fifty years, or
perhaps never go into at all and never have been.
"Is
it something in the sea that comes out and loots these abandoned ships of their
men? I know and you know that there are queer things in the sea. There're the
giant squids on which the sperm whales feed; I've heard they sometimes are a
hundred feet from the tip of one arm to the other. Then there's the
sea-serpent. Yes, I know landsmen laugh at us for believing in that. But why
shouldn't we believe in it? It's been known from ancient times. It's been seen
more than once, even if we acknowledge that a length of kelp, a
barnacle-covered log or a school of porpoises in line might often have been
mistaken for it. But how can you argue away the report of the Daedalus?
"Here
is a British warship, certainly in command of a reliable man, certainly
officered by some few gentlemen whose integrity cannot be questioned. They sight a long snakelike animal, observe it for some time and
are even able to sketch it. The scientists and public may laugh, but you can't
argue away the testimony of a whole ship's crew. Nor is it only the crew of the
Daedalus you have to figure on. Captain Hope of
another British war vessel, the Fly, saw
a large animal with the body of a crocodile, a long neck and four paddlelike arms, in the Gulf of California. A Lieutenant
Hayne, in command of the yacht Osborne, sighted
something as queer, but I forget where. There are two other men who filed a
joint report also, and they were members of the Zoological Society cruising in
a yacht off the coast of Brazil. They saw a creature with a neck seven or eight
feet long alone and as thick around as a man's body. I say you can't laugh away
all this, and you can read the full accounts yourself if you doubt me. I've
gone into the matter pretty thoroughly because—well, you'll understand in a
minute.
"I
don't say, mind, that any sort of animal such as the giant squid or the
sea-serpent can account for these mysterious and deserted ships, nor for the
106
actual complete disappearances. I don't know. No
one knows, and we can only wonder. I do hear that some scientists have recently
suggested the survival in deep waters of some of those gigantic animals that
occupied the world in ancient times, before man came. It doesn't seem
unreasonable to~me.
"But
we'll let that pass. What I wanted to tell you when I started out was of an
experience that came to me. I shall never forget it. No man could. It was one
of those nightmarish things that remain with a man all his life,
and I suppose everyone goes through something as ghastly at least once before
he dies, if he follows the sea. . . . Yes, I'll take another drink!.
"It
all happened a long time ago. I was just a young third mate then, around
twenty, serving my first voyage as an officer on the bark Doyon out of Sydney for Callao. We had good sailing weather, as I remember,
and we were coming up to the South American coast after a couple of weeks out,
when we sighted just such a ship as I have been talking of.
"I
don't want to exaggerate or to imagine things after all these years, but I'll
swear there was something eerie about her from the moment we first saw her. ft was early in the morning, as I recall, and I had just
come up from breakfast to take over from the mate—a decent sort of chap named
Mathews, tall and well-built, not many years older than I was myself but very
highly strung, as I afterwards discovered.
" 'That's a queer-looking packet ahead of us,' he
remarked when I joined him on the poop. He had been staring through the glasses
and now he handed them to me. 'Looks like she's not under control,' he said. I
stared through the glasses myself and saw a small barkentine
some distance ahead of us and apparently crossing our bow. She was under plain
sail but her after-booms were jarring crazily and it was obvious that she was
yawing all over the sea. I could discover no sign of life on her decks, nor
could I locate anyone at her wheel and I suggested to Matthews that he'd better
call the skipper.
" 'I've sent for him,' he observed and so we both
continued to inspect the strange ship until the skipper came on deck. The
morning was very calm, with a gentle wind from the south. There was no sea,
just a long oily swell almost a bottle-green in color, and the sky was a clear
blue dotted with a few clouds on the weather horizon. It was warm, too, but I
remember I felt uneasy and a little chilled, just as if I had a presentiment of
what was to come. The skipper came on the poop rubbing his eyes, for he always
slept late, and he took the glasses from the mate with considerable impatience.
"'What
is it now?' he said bad-temperedly, and he stared through the glasses for some
time. Then he said, 'By George, it looks like she's abandoned!' and I knew from
the sound of his voice he was feeling pleased, thinking of the salvage.
"Well,
to cut a long story short, we hove the Doyon to
and the skipper sent the mate and myself away in our
longboat, together with four of the men. We came up under the barkentine's counter aad read her
name, painted in white letters, 'Robert Sutter—San
Francisco,' and it didn't need a second look to tell
she was abandoned all right. One of the men got aboard over her midship rail when she rolled down, and he threw us a line
so the rest of us could swing up. We left two men in the boat and proceeded to
inspect
107 our prize, telling the two men who had
boarded with us to look over the fo'c'stle while
Mathews and myself went aft.
"It
is a curious thing—but I swear I had gooseflesh all over from the first moment
I put foot on the Robert Sutter's main deck. There was something so lonely about her, so—how shall I say?—uncanny! You could feel by the swing of her she was not water-logged. There was
no sign of fire that a first casual inspection brought to light, and she was
clean and had evidently been newly painted. Every rope and line was in place
and her two boats were secure in their chocks on top of the galley house. We
searched her from stem to stern and found no hint of life, save that in a large
iron cage, suspended from a hook outside the galley 'midships,
there was a parrot.
"The
bird seemed in a bad way. It was crouched down on the bottom of the cage, lying half on its side and sort of pulsing all over, its
eyes glazed and half closed. From the look of it—it was all but bald—it was a
very old bird and it made no move when we approached it. 'It needs some water,'
said Mathews, a fact which was obvious, and after we had brought it water,
which it eagerly dragged itself up to, we went on with our search.
"Near
the break of the poop, on the starboard side, we discovered what must have once
been a cat. The creature had been smashed flat—as flat as a pancake, I tell
you! It was just a thin sheet of black fur and dried flesh, literally sticking
to the planking. But there was nothing to show how it had been killed, and at
the time we did not pause to ask ourselves about it. We had to complete our
searching and get back to the Doyon to
make our report, you understand.
"Well,
in the scuppers right opposite the port galley door we found a revolver, a
bright nickel affair somewhat rusted and with every shell fired. And that was
all, except that over the whole vessel there hovered a curious sort of smell,
dried-up, if you know what I mean, like the stale, weedy, fishy smell you get
from mud-flats when the tide runs out. But even that we didn't particularly
notice at the time.
"Anyway,
that was all, as I said. The ship's cargo was cut lumber, which we ascertained
by lifting the hatches, and when we sounded the well we found only the usual
amount of bilge water which every healthy wooden ship will take through her
seams. It was all very mysterious, though, and if you can picture us staggering
about the swaying deck with the spars jarring above us, the canvas thundering
and slatting, the wheel and rudder creaking, every
block and line making its own individual noise, and not a soul to be found, you
can understand how we felt. Mathews was getting the jumps even before we were
through with the inspection and I noticed he wiped the sweat from his face
repeatedly.
"We went back to the Doyon at last and made our report, and the skipper didn't take much stock in
what we had to say. 'She must have had a third boat,'
he observed carelessly. 'They probably thought she was foundering or something
and just left her. I've known whole crews to panic before. You say there's no sign of disease, and no bodies? Well, there's
nothing to be afraid of, then!' He did admit it was queer that we had found her
hull sound and that none of her navigation instruments appeared to be missing.
Even in
108 a panic
the master and the officers of a vessel
are not liable to forget their working-tools. And then in the log-book we'd
discovered and brought back there was no hint of anything amiss. It was written
up to within four days previously and reported only fair weather. I remember I
pointed out to the skipper that no crew would be likely to abandon a vessel and leave the logbook and ship's papers behind, but he brushed
all that aside. Fie was a man almost completely without imagination, and all he
could think of was salvage.
" 'I'll give you six men,' he said to Mathews, 'and
you can take the third mate along with you. Bring her to Callao arid we can go
into the whole matter there with the port officials.'
"Mathews
wasn't a bit pleased with the prospect, though most mates would have jumped at
the opportunity of making themselves a nest-egg
and enjoying a first command, even if it would be only for a
short time. 'I don't like the idea at all, sir,' he said. 'There's something
queer about the whole business!'
"The skipper waved all that away. 'Nonsense!' he said. 'You ought to thank your stars for
the chance!' But then, you see, he hadn't been on board the Robert Sutter, and
we had to admit—now we were back on the Doyon, surrounded by the curious crew—that our feelings did seem rather silly.
So the long and short of it was we picked out six men, or rather the skipper
appointed the six most useless we had on board, and we pulled back to the
deserted barkentine, four other men coming with us in
the longboat to take it back. The Doyon squared
away on her course again and I can remember that Mathews and I stood on the Robert Sutter's poop
and watched her with something of the feeling of being deserted to our fate.
"There
wasn't any use of our worrying about that, however. There we were with a
perfectly sound and well-built ship, amply found with water and provisions,
rolling at will on a bottle-green sea and with a fair wind blowing for Callao. Mathews pulled himself together and we got
the vessel on a course, set watches, wound up the rundown
chronometers, setting them from a spare
one we had brought from the Doyon, and
so prepared to make port.
"It
was somewhat uncanny to clear out two of the cabins below ready for our
occupancy, for the gear of the previous inhabitants was scattered about, and in
the room I chose, which had been the mate's, there was even the imprint of his
head still on the pillow and a half-whittled plug of chewing-tobacco tossed on
the blankets, together with an open clasp-knife. I shook off my feelings
however, before very long. I was young, healthy, usually in good spirits and it
was not long before I was whisding to myself. Mathews
came and stood in the doorway while I was fixing my bunk and his face was very
serious, more serious than I had ever seen it. 1 think
I have said he was a highly strung man.
" 'I don't see how the devil you can whistle!' he
brust out irritably. 'Good God, man, doesn't it
bother you? The crew—fourteen men, according to the
articles—all gone!'
"I
stopped whistling and looked at him. 'It is queer,' I
agreed. 'But it doesn't do us any good to worry about it.'
"Mathews shivered and looked over his
shoulder. 'But where did they
109 go?' he said, his voice dropping. 'Where and why? It's all right for the skipper to talk of a
third boat, but this ship carried no third boat. I've been over her again.
There isn't a sign of one.' He went away and I could hear him muttering to
himself as he straightened up the room that had been the Captain's.
"A
fine sort of business, wasn't it? Yet we could have probably carried on all
right and accepted things as we found them, if it hadn't been for Mathews
and—something else. When I went on deck I found Mathews staring down at the
splotch of black fur and dried flesh that must have once been a cat.
" 'You can figure it out,' he told me in a strained voice. 'That poor little
devil was running away from something and then it was killed. Think how fast it
must have been, whatever it was killed it. You know how a frightened cat can
run.'
" 'What makes you think it was frightened?' I asked him. But he only shook his
head. Since that time I have seen a python smash flat a running dog with a blow
of its snout—and that was quick work. Yet a dog isn't as agile as a cat. You
see what f mean? And that python's snout only caught
the dog in the small of the back. This, that was stuck to the deck, was all flattened, head, body and tail, and all about it there was a faint but
perceptible depression in the hard teak planking, a sort of circle about four
feet across.
" 'Then there's this gun,' said Mathews later on,
coming back to the subject. He held in his hand the nickel-plated revolver we
had found in the scuppers. 'Every shot fired. What at? Why?'
"I
tried to talk him out of his somber mood, but each time I did so he would only
shake his head and ask further questions—until I swear he had the whole crew of
us completely jumpy when we might easily have forgotten the matter, or at
least relegated it to the back of our minds. . . . Until, of course, the next
thing occurred.
"This
was late that same afternoon, or rather close to evening. The men had gone for'ard, all except the helmsman, of course, and Mathews
and I were pacing up and down the poop waiting for the seaman we had delegated
as cook, to serve supper. The day was still fair, the sea calm and smooth. We
were under full sail and making about six knots before a freshening wind which
was coming up with the approach of nightfall. And then, all of a sudden, there
came the most terrible scream and quite distinctly some one
shouted, 'My God, Collins!'
"I
can't describe the electrifying effect of the thing. That scream sent all our
spines cold, froze the very blood in our veins. And that voice! There was
everything in it that told of utter terror. More than that, it was a strange
voice—it belonged to no one of the men we had with us.
"Mathews
and I had stopped pacing the poop and were riveted to the planking. 'Good heavens!' said Mathews in a strained voice at last.
'What— who was that?'
"Before
I could even venture a reply there came a whole series of screams, splitting
our very ear-drums. And then we heard another voice, a different voice from the
first: 'It's coming aft. It's coming aft!' And
if ever there was sheer, pitiful and desperate horror in any man's tones there
was in these. The
110 crew had come running up from the fo'c'stle. The cook had come out his galley and was
standing open-mouthed, looking dazedly around, one hand clutching his apron and
the other holding a cleaver.
"Mathews
let out an oath and dropped down the poop companion to the main deck. He was
badly shaken, and he ran 'midships toward the men. I
was close behind him too!
" 'Who the hell's making that racket?' he shouted
hysterically.
"No
one answered him. The men had stopped and were looking uneasily about. Again came those awful screams, ringing all over the ship, and the
strange voice thick and hoarse with utter fear: 'It's coming aft! It's coming aft!'
"Mathews
stopped short and stared about him. 'My God!' he
whispered to me. 'Am I going mad?' And then we both saw the men were pointing
at something and after a moment the cook exclaimed in a relieved voice, 'Why,
it's only the parrot, sir!'
"I
can remember the vast flood
of relief that came over me. I stopped shaking and let out a big sigh, and I
could see that Mathews visibly relaxed. I'd forgotten the parrot,' he said with
a queer laugh, and he walked round to the forepart of the galley where the
bird's cage hung. The men gathered about too and some of them laughed, though
there was nothing of mirth in the sound and not much of reassurance. Mathews
looked into the cage and 1 peered over his shoulder. Since we had given the
bird some water that morning it had apparently recovered, for now it was
sitting on its swing perch—but sort of crouched down. And I tell you it acted
like no parrot I have ever seen, before or since.
"Every
one of its tattered remaining feathers was erect. Its eyes were fixed and
staring and did not blink. It shivered the whole length of its body at regular
intervals and did not move when Mathews shoved a tentative finger through the
bars and spoke to it in a soothing voice. Even as we watched it the bird crouched lower, opened its beak and gave vent to
one of those horrible screams. And this time it was the sound of a man in awful pain, wave on wave, abruptly cut off. There was an aching
silence for a second and then the parrot croaked
distinctly, with a queer tremulous catch in its voice: 'You can't shoot it! You can't shoot a thing li\e that!' And
the voice was again strange, the third we had heard, distinct in timbre and pitch. The voices of three separate men!
"I
can remember that for at least a minute
there was a tense and frozen silence. I could hear my heart thumping and the
cold sweat was running down my throat. Mathews had pulled his finger back from
the cage as if it burned him and he was the first to speak. 'I never thought of
it,' he said, his words flat and strangely without expression. 'I never thought
of it, but it's simple enough. . . . He knows what it's all about! He knows
what happened. He saw!' He spoke like a man half asleep, staring
wide-eyed and ashen-faced at the crouching, shivering parrot. The men began to
stir uneasily and one or two of them looked hastily over their shoulders.
"I
nudged Mathews in the back. 'Pull yourself
together,' I whispered. 'We can't have the men getting all jumpy.'
Ill
"But
you couldn't get him away. You couldn't get the men away either; they all
seemed riveted to the spot, watching that poor devil of a parrot. It mumbled to
itself nearly all the time. Then, it would chatter out some words we could not
understand—not English words. Nor did it always use the same language. Mathews
had a little command of Spanish and swore the bird often talked in that tongue.
I am certain I caught German words and once or twice certain phrases in
Polynesian which I'd picked up while on a trading-schooner through the Islands.
"You
understand that the parrot was certainly old, incredibly old, I would say. It
was almost featherless; it must have had many masters in its time. You know
they say those birds live for a century or longer. And God knows where this
bird had been and what it had seen. The things it muttered must have come from
its ancient memory of many masters of many nationalities. And between its
mutters it would let out those awful screams, exquisitely different
screams—the screams of different men in agony and terror. And immediately
after each scream it would choke out some phrase, not always in English, as
I've said, but in other languages too.
"I
don't know if a bird can go insane, but if one can that parrot was very close to it. There was only one
thing we could deduce from its actions. It had been frightened almost out of
its life, and the screams it gave and the words it shouted had been hammered
into its head by some awful happening. The words it muttered half-mechanically were
from long ago; the words it shouted
were of recent memorizing. It was horrifying. It seemed trying to tell us something. From behind its fixed, unwinking eyes there seemed to hover a shadow;
I even felt there was an uncanny flicker of pleading. It wanted
to make us understand that it had seen something no
living thing had seen before, something so monstrous and ghasdy
it had penetrated at once and indelibly even into its own cynical and calloused
brain.
"How
long we all remained about that cage, silent and
shuddering, I do not know. But it was the night chill
coming into the wind that roused us, that
and the smell of the supper burning on the galley stove. We had all insensibly crowded together, as if each man feared to stand alone. The
man at the wheel began to shout, his voice frightened. He wanted to know what was the matter and he wanted to be relieved. I told one of
the other men to go aft and he went, but only with the greatest reluctance, his
hand on the haft of his sheath-knife and his head continually turning to glance
over his shoulder or at the darkening sea. And still at irregular intervals
that crazy parrot let out its blood-curdling screams and shouted blindly at us:
'lis coming aft. It's coming aft!' or
that desperate, 'My God, Collins!' or that flat, despairing, 'You can't shoot it. You can't shoot a thing li\e that!'
"I
shook Mathews finally and told him we ought to be getting back to the poop. We
hadn't eaten yet, and it was getting dark. 'Eaten?' he said, literally
staggering as he went aft with me. 'Eaten? How can you talk of eating?' He
stumbled up on the poop and leaned against the main cabin skylight, mopping his
wet forehead. 'What was it that came aft?' He whispered hard, shivered and
tried to straighten himself. 'The mate of this ship,
was named Collins, according to the articles we found,' he said. 'And only
112 the Captain would be likely to call him Collins. So it was the Captain who called out,
"My, God Collins!" And what was it that came aft?'
" 'You're acting like a damned fool!' I told him
bluntly, though I was all but unnerved myself. You would have been too, to hear
those terrible screams ringing through the ship every minute or so, and those
strange voices of vanished men repeating those terror-stricken words! But I
still had enough sense to face the fact it was only a parrot talking and that
we had to get the Robert Sutter into port. I got Mathews below at last and we had a stiff drink
together, after which we ate some canned beef and sea biscuit, the supper that
had been preparing in the galley being hopelessly ruined. We knew for certain
now there had been no third boat!
"Well,
that night we faced another complication, for none of the men would remain for'ard, but insisted on bringing their mattresses aft and
crouching down by the break of the poop. The helmsmen refused to be left alone
and we had to let two men steer through the dark hours. Neither Mathews nor myself could sleep, with those screams ringing out, and we
paced the night away together. It was uncanny to be on deck. We all had the
feeling that at any moment something would loom up out of the sea and come
toward us.
"You'd
have thought that parrot would have grown tired, or
that its throat would have worn out. But it never ceased its clamor. Hour after
hour there was that terrible screaming, exquisitely depicting everything that
vanished crew must have. suffered in that last hour or
those last minutes. And between the screaming, the voices and words of dead men
shouted across the noises of the flying ship! Can you wonder we all had the
same terrors a child has in the dark, a darkness it peoples with dragons and
burning-eyed bogies? f have always considered myself a moderately courageous
man, but I tell you that on the Robert Sutter I really knew fear, the sort of utter fear
that gets you by the throat and turns your stomach and knees to Water.
"As
for Mathews, he was half insane, and he kept going below for a drink until he
finally brought the bottle on deck with him. 'We ought
to kill the damned thing!' he kept saying over and over. 'We ought to kill it!'
But no one would go 'midships and kill it. I would
not have gone 'midships myself that night for all the
money in the world. And by the time the dawn came the sheer panic of the night
had subsided enough to give Mathews some element of reason. Perhaps it was the
whisky he had consumed, but he certainly evidenced more control with the coming
of the tropical sun all red and gold along the horizon. And still, remember,
that parrot was screaming and shouting, with never a let-up! I would never
have thought any creature could survive such exhaustion as must have sapped
its body.
" 'No, you're right, we can't kill the damned
thing,' Mathews agreed after we'd talked it over. 'It's the only clue we have.
We've got to turn it over to the authorities and let them see what they can
make of it.' He swore thickly to himself. 'But I'll go mad if it doesn't stop!'
He plugged up his ears with some oakum, but he did not seem able to shut out
the noise. He looked exhausted, drained out by the light of
dawn. I think we were all drained out and I gave the men a tot
of whisky apiece and made them go for'ard.
113
"We
tried every means to make that confounded parrot shut up. We covered its cage
with a cloth, which only seemed to drive it into new frenzies; and we tried
lowering it in the hold on top of the cargo, but that had an even worse effect.
It would not eat but occasionally would dip its beak in water. And nearly all
the time, pulsing and rising and falling, the ship was wracked with screaming
and the voices of those dead men. Mathews went below, half drunk and with a
false bravado at last, and with his ears still stuffed up he managed to fall
asleep. With the coming of full morning and the continued repetition of that
parrot's noise I recovered some of my nerve.
"I
drew some comfort from the
fact that we were fully a hundred miles from the spot where we had picked up
the Robert Sutter, and
whatever it was that had made her a crewless derelict, was far away. I went 'midships, shuddering, to listen to the bird with the same morbidness that draws you to the scene of a murderer's
crime, and tried to count the different remarks it kept making. There were, as
I have said, only three in English but there were several in frenzied Spanish
and one of the seamen who had been on German vessels assured me there were at
least a dozen words shouted in that tongue. I thought I caught snatches of
French too, but I was not sure. I am speaking now only of those words obviously
registered on the bird's memory in that time of. recent
horror.
"I
got hold of a copy of the ship's original articles and discovered that to judge
from the names she must have carried a mixed crew all right, as most vessels
do. There had been a cook named Jose Alvarez, obviously Spanish. There had been
two men with Teutonic names, and one with a French-sounding name. I judged the
officers had been Americans and it seemed reasonable to suppose that each man,
in the moment of stress, would have reverted to his native tongue.
"The
more I thought of the matter, under the comforting bright sun of day, the more
I began to see the possibilities, and to grow curious. Somewhere in all that
jargon the mad parrot kept giving forth there must be a clue, must be some word
that would tell what it was that had come aft. It was not unreasonable to
suppose that while the men were running madly about the deck some one of them
must have shouted out a word, a sentence or a fragment giving a hint as to its
appearance. And if that were so such a sentence or fragment might have
registered on the quivering parrot's brain to be eventually spewed forth. I
thought to myself: 'If once we get that damned bird to Callao alive there'll be
linguists to take down everything it's shouting out. Then we might know!'
"You
see, it really was intriguing, apart from all the terror and horror those
racking words and screams provided—coming, as it were, out of nothing. We were
on the track of a genuine mystery. We might have in our grasp the clue that
would account for those other ships that had been found as we'd found the Robert Sutter. We
might even be able to understand why ships had totally disappeared, without
trace. We might catch a glimpse of Something that
should have died in the youth of the world. The parrot knew! Why had those men
vanished? What was it that had come on them out of the calm sea, sending them
into stark convulsive terror, causing one of them,
114 undoubtedly the Captain, to empty a
nickel-plated revolver at Something which someone else
had declared you could not shoot? The parrot knew—-and it was trying to tell
us.
"Mathews came on deck soon after noon,
quite drunk, his whole body shaking and his eyes burning in his face. The parrot had not fallen silent at all, and
it kept up its incredible screaming and shouting all through the day. I could
hear Mathews grinding his teeth together as he paced up and down, his fingers
twitching, and he kept saying to himself, 'If it would only shut up until we
get to port! If it would only shut up!' But it didn't
shut up and I began to find myself twitching and grinding my teeth too. I knew
that Mathews would never stand the strain. Nor could he. . . . About three
bells in the first dog-watch he stopped pacing and gave a terrific oath. 'I
can't stand this!' he jerked out suddenly—and he took a running jump down the
poop companion to the main deck and raced 'midships. 'It's coming aft. It's coming aft!' screamed the parrot and then I saw Mathews rip one of the fire-axes from
its metal holder on the bulkhead of the galley house. He disappeared round the
house and there came the furious sound of metal on metal. The screaming rose
continuously: 'It's coming aft! It's coming aft!— and then sudden new words, words in English we had not heard before,
thick, choking, horribly sickening and despairing, 'Collins! Collins! It's got me!' What else there was, was drowned out by the high-pitched hysterical
swearing of Mathews and the vicious noise of the swung ax. And then there was
silence—sudden, almost ominous—and Mathews staggered back into view, rocking as
if hardly able to keep his feet, and backing right to the rail against which he
leaned, breathing hard, the fire-ax limp in one shaking hand. 'Throw the damned
thing overboard!' he said viciously and I saw one of the men go reluctantly
forward, very slowly, to drag to the side a mangled iron cage in which, bloody
and limp, was what was left of the parrot.
"We
all watched in utter silence as the cage curved up in the air and fell into the
sea. And it seemed as if with the splash there was something oppressive lifted
from the ship. She seemed to pick up, grow more buoyant.
"Probably
I was the only one on board the Robert Sutter who had even a faint tinge of regret, and
that mine was perhaps morbid I must admit. But I could not help reflecting that
we might have found some clue, a clue to the mysteries of the sea, if we could
only have brought that parrot into Callao and before men who knew languages.
But there you are. The bird was gone—and we took that barkentine
into port without further mishap.
"I
remember I told the story to the consul there, told him what I had wondered and
hoped, and he laughed at me for a fool. Mathews did not even mention the
matter. He was, I fancy, rather ashamed of it. He wanted to forget it. And so
whatever it was that befell the Robert Sutter remains unknown to this day. I cannot even
guess. I have given up trying to guess. . . . Nobody knows. But that parrot
knew, and there are times when I wake up at night, in a cold sweat, and can
hear its clamor, and see its crouching, palpitating body, and feel ringing in
my ears those wild, mad words of men who had been dead for days, screaming
while It came aft—and trying to shoot Something which couid
not be shot!"
115
^Jlie
Street <ljlial lAJaJn't lie re
by Clifford Si malt and Carl ^acobl
The
world of philosophy is divided
between two opposing concepts—materialism and idealism. The basic principle of materialism is that the world is a
definite and real thing, existing independently of our senses. The basic theme of idealism is that the world's existence
is dependent on our methods of
perception—that it is only the idea ilrnt counts. The astute philosopher can boil all existing schools of thought down to one of these two fundamental and contradictory
axioms. In this story, two
science-fiction writers pose a problem in idealism versus materialism. It's a
fascinating mental game and makes a really off-trail story.
tR. JONATHAN CHAMBERS left his house on Maple
Street, at exactly seven o'clock in the evening and set out on the daily walk
he had taken, at the same time, come rain or snow, for twenty solid years.
The
walk never varied. He paced two blocks down Maple Street, stopped at the Red
Star confectionery to buy a Rosa Trofero perfecto,
then walked to the end of the fourth block on Maple. There he turned right on
Lexington, followed Lexington to Oak, down Oak and so by way of Lincoln back
to Maple again and to his home.
He
took his time. He always returned to his front door at exactly
seven-forty-five. No one ever stopped to talk with him. Even the man at the Red
Star confectionery, where he bought his cigar, remained silent while the
purchase was being made. Mr. Chambers merely tapped on the glass top of the
counter with a coin, the man reached in and brought forth the box, and Mr.
Chambers took his cigar. That was all.
For
people long ago had gathered that Mr. Chambers desired to be left alone. The
newer generation of townsfolk called it eccentricity. Certain uncouth persons
had a different word for it. The oldsters remembered that this queer-looking
individual with his black silk muffler, rosewood cane and bowler hat once had
been a professor at State University.
A
professor of metaphysics, they seemed to recall, or some such outlandish
subject. At any rate a furore of some sort was
connected with his name—:at the time an
academic scandal. He had written a book, and he had taught the subject matter
of that volume to his classes. What that subject matter was had been long
forgotten, but it had been considered sufficiently revolutionary to cost Mr.
Chambers his post at the University.
A
silver moon shone over the chimney tops and a chill, impish October wind was
rustling the dead leaves when Mr. Chambers started out at seven
116
o'clock. It was a good night, he told himself, smeHing
the clean, crisp air of autumn and the faint pungence
of distant wood smoke.
He
walked unhurriedly, swinging his cane a bit less jauntily than twenty years
ago. He tucked the muffler more securely under the rusty old topcoat and
pulled his bowler hat more firmly on his head. He noticed that the street light
at the corner of Maple and Jefferson was out, and he grumbled a little to
himself when he was forced to step off the walk to encircle a boarded-off
section of newly laid concrete work before the driveway of 816.
It seemed that he reached the corner of
Lexington and Maple just a bit too quickly, but he told himself that this
couldn't be. For he had never done that. For twenty
years, since the year following his expulsion from the University, he had lived
by the clock. The same thing, at the same time, day after
day. He had not deliberately set upon such a life of routine. A
bachelor, living alone with sufficient money to supply his humble needs, the
timed existence had grown on him gradually.
So
he turned on Lexington and back on Oak. The dog at the corner of Oak and
Jefferson was waiting for him once again and came out snarling and growling,
snapping at his heels. But Mr. Chambers pretended not to notice and the beast
gave up the chase.
A radio blared down the street and faint
phrases floated to Mr. Chambers.
".
. . still taking place . . . Empire State building disappeared . . . thin air .
. . famed scientist, Dr. Edmund Harcourt . . ."
The
wind whipped the muted words away and Mr. Chambers grumbled to himself. Another one of those fantastic radio dramas, probably. He remembered
one from many years before, something about the Martians. And Harcourt! What
did Harcourt have to do with it? He was one of the men who had ridiculed the
book Mr. Chambers had written.
But
he pushed speculation away, sniffed the clean, crisp air again, looked at the
familiar things that materialized out of the late autumn darkness as he walked
along. For there was nothing, absolutely nothing in the world, that he would
let upset him. That was a tenet he had laid down twenty years ago.
There
was a crowd of men talking excitedly in front of the drugstore at the corner of
Oak and Lincoln. Mr. Chambers caught sentences: "It's happening everywhere
. . . What do you think it is . . . The scientists
can't explain . . ."
But
as Mr Chambers neared them they fell into what seemed
an abashed silence and watched him pass. He, on his part, gave them no sign of
recognition. That was the way it had been for many years, ever since the
people had become convinced that he did not wish to talk. One of the men half
started forward as if to speak to him, but then stepped back and Mr. Chambers
continued on his walk.
Back
at his own front door he stopped and, as he had done a thousand times before,
drew forth the heavy gold watch from his pocket.
He started violently. It
was only seven-thirty!
For long minutes he stood
there staring at the watch in accusation.
117
The timepiece had not stopped, for it still
ticked audibly. But fifteen minutes too soon! For twenty years, day in, day
out, he had started out at seven
and returned at quarter of eight.
ft was not until then that he realized
something else was wrong. He had no cigar. For the first time he had neglected
to purchase his evening smoke.
Shaken,
muttering to himself, Mr. Chambers let himself into his house and locked the
door behind him. He hung his hat and coat on the rack in the hall and walked
into the living room. Dropping into his favorite chair, he shook his head in
bewilderment.
Silence
filled the room, a silence measured by the ticking of the old fashioned
pendulum clock on the mantelpiece. But silence was no strange thing to Mr.
Chambers. Once he had loved music, the kind of music he could get by tuning in
symphonic orchestras on the radio. But the radio stood silent in the corner,
the cord out of its socket. Mr. Chambers had pulled it out many years before,
on the night when the symphonic broadcast had been interrupted to give a news flash.
He
had stopped reading newspapers and magazines, too, had exiled himself to a few city blocks. And as the years flowed by,
that self-exile had become a prison,
an intangible, impassable wall bounded by four city blocks by three. Beyond
them lay utter, unexplainable terror. Beyond them he never went.
But recluse though he was, he could not on
occasion escape from hearing things the newsboy
shouted on the streets, things the men talked about on the drugstore corner
when they failed to see him coming. And so he knew that this was the year 1960
and that the wars in Europe and Asia had flamed to an end to be followed by a
terrible plague, a plague that even now was sweeping through
country after country like wildfire, decimating populations, a plague
undoubtedly induced by hunger and privation and the miseries of war.
Those
things he put away as items far removed from his own small world. He
disregarded them. He pretended he had never heard of them. Others might discuss
and worry over them if they wished. To him they simply did not matter. But
there were two things tonight that did matter. Two curious,
incredible events. He had arrived home fifteen minutes early. He had
forgotten his cigar.
Huddled
in the chair, he frowned slowly. It was disquieting to have something like that
happen. There must be something wrong. Had his long exile
finally turned his mind—perhaps just a very little—enough
to make him queer? Had he lost his sense of proportion, of perspective?
No,
he had not. Take this room, for example. After twenty years it had come to be
as much a part of him as the clothes he wore. Every detail of the room was
engraved in his mind with clarity: the old center leg table with its green
covering and stained glass lamp; the mantelpiece with the dusty bric-a-brac;
the pendulum clock that told the time of day as well as the day of the week and
month; the elephant ash tray on the tabaret and, most
important of all, the marine print.
118
Mr. Chambers loved that picture. It had
depth, he always said. It showed an old sailing ship in the foreground on a
placid sea. Far in the distance, almost on the horizon line, was the vague
outline of a larger vessel. There were other pictures, too. The forest scene
above the fireplace, the old English prints in the corner where he sat, the
Currier and Ives above the radio. But the ship print was directly in his line
of vision. He could see it without turning his head. He had put it there
because he liked it best.
Further
reverie became an effort as Mr. Chambers felt himself succumbing to weariness.
He undressed and went to bed. For an hour he lay awake, assailed by vague fears
he could neither define nor understand.
When
finally he dozed off it was to lose himself in a
series of horrific dreams. He dreamed first that he was a castaway on a tiny
islet in mid-ocean, that the waters around the island teemed with huge
poisonous sea snakes, hydrophinnae, and that steadily
those serpents were devouring the island.
In another dream he was pursued by a horror
which he could neither see nor hear, but only could
imagine. And as he sought to flee he stayed in the one place. His legs worked
frantically, pumping like pistons, hut he could make no progress. It was as if
he ran upon a treadway.
Then
again the terror descended on him, a black, unimagined thing and he tried to
scream and could not. He opened his mouth and strained his vocal cords and
filled his lungs to bursting with the urge to shriek, but not a sound came from
his lips.
All
next day he was uneasy and, as he left the house that evening at precisely
seven o'clock, he kept saying to himself: "I must not forget tonight! I
must remember to stop and get my cigar!"
The
street light at the corner of Jefferson was still out and in front of 816 the
cemented driveway was still boarded off. Everything was the same as the night
before. And now, he told himself, the Red Star confectionery is in the next
block. I must not forget tonight. To forget twice in a row would be just too
much. He grasped that thought firmly in his mind, strode just a bit more
rapidly down the street.
But
at the corner he stopped in consternation, and stared down the next block.
There was no neon sign, no splash of friendly light upon the sidewalk to mark
the little store tucked away in this residential section.
He
stared at the street marker and read the word slowly: GRANT. He read it again,
unbelieving, for this should not be Grant Street, but Marshall. He had walked
two blocks and the confectionery was between Marshall and Grant. He hadn't come
to Marshall yet—and here was Grant.
Or
had he, absent-mindedly, come one block farther than he thought, passed the
store as on the night before?
For
the first time in twenty years, Mr. Chambers retraced his steps. He walked back
to Jefferson, then turned around and went back to Grant again and on to
Lexington. Then back to Grant again, where he stood astounded while a single,
incredible fact grew slowly in his brain:
There was no confectionery! The blocks from Marshall to Grant had disappeared!
Now he understood why he had missed the store
on the night before, why
he had arrived home fifteen minutes early.
On
shaky legs he stumbled back to his home. He slammed and locked the door behind
him and made his way unsteadily to his chair in the corner.
What
was this? What did it mean? By what inconceivable necromancy could a paved
street with houses, trees and buildings be spirited away and the space it had
occupied be closed up? Was something, happening in the
world which he, in his secluded life, knew nothing about?
Mr.
Chambers shivered, reached to turn up the collar of his coat, then stopped as he realized the room must be warm. A fire
blazed merrily in the grate. The cold he felt came from something, somewhere
else. The cold of fear and horror, the chill of a half whispered thought.
A
deathly silence had fallen, a silence still measured by the pendulum clock, and
yet one that held a different tenor from any he had ever sensed before. Not a
homey, comfortable silence—but a silence
that hinted at emptiness and nothingness.
There
was something back of this, Mr. Chambers told himself. Something
that reached far back into one corner of his brain and demanded recognition.
Something tied up with the fragments of talk he had heard on the
drugstore corner, bits of news broadcasts he had heard as he walked along the street, the shrieking of the newsboy calling his
papers. Something to do with the
happenings in the world from which he had excluded himself.
He
brought them back to mind now and lingered over the one central theme of the
talk he overheard: the wars and plagues. Hints of a Europe and Asia swept almost clean of human life, of the plague ravaging
Africa, of its appearance in South America, of the frantic efforts of the
United States to prevent its spread into that nation's boundaries.
Millions
of people were dead in Europe and Asia, Africa and South America. And somehow
those gruesome statistics seemed tied up with his own
experience. Something, somewhere, some part of his earlier life, seemed to hold
an explanation.
The pendulum clock struck slowly, its every other chime as usual setting up a sympathetic
vibration in the pewter vase that stood upon the mantel.
Mr.
Chambers got to his feet, strode to the door, opened it and looked out.
Moonlight tessellated the street in black and silver, etching the chimneys and
trees against a silvered sky. But the house directly across the street was not
the same. It was strangely lop-sided, its dimensions out of proportion, like a
house that suddenly had gone mad.
He
stared at it in amazement, trying to determine what was wrong with it. He
recalled how it had always stood, foursquare, a solid piece of mid-Victorian architecture.
Then,
before his eyes, the house righted itself again. Slowly it drew together,
ironed out its queer angles, readjusted its dimensions, became
once again the stodgy house he knew it had to be.
With
a sigh of relief, Mr. Chambers turned back into the hall. But before he closed
the door, he looked again. The house was lop-sided—as bad as, perhaps worse than
before!
Gulping in fright, Mr. Chambers slammed the
door shut, locked it and double bolted it. Then he went to his bedroom and took
sleeping powders.
His
dreams that night were the same as on the night before. Again there was the
islet in mid-ocean. Again he was alone upon it. Again the squirming hydrophinnae were eating his foothold piece by piece.
He
awoke, body drenched with perspiration. Vague light of early dawn filtered
through the window. The clock on the bedside table showed seven-thirty. For a
long time he lay there motionless.
Again
the fantastic happenings of the night before came back to haunt him and, as he
lay there staring at the windows, he remembered them, one by one. But his mind,
still fogged by sleep and astonishment, took the happenings in its stride,
mulled over them, lost the keen edge of fantastic terror that lurked around
them.
The
light through the windows slowly grew brighter. Mr. Chambers slid out of bed
and crossed to the window, the cold of the floor biting into his bare feet. He
forced himself to look out.
There
was nothing outside the window. No shadows. As if there might be a fog. But no
fog, however thick, could hide the apple tree that grew close against the
house.
But the tree was there—shadowy, indistinct in the gray, with a few withered apples still
clinging to its boughs, a few shriveled leaves reluctant to leave the parent
branch. The tree was there now. But it had not been there when he first had
looked. Mr. Chambers was sure of that.
And
now he saw the faint outlines of his neighbor's house—but those outlines were
all wrong. They didn't jibe and fit together, they were out of plumb, as if
some giant hand had grasped the house and wrenched it out of true, like the
house he had seen across the street the night before, the house that had
painfully righted itself when he thought of how it should look.
Perhaps
if he thought of how his neighbor's house should look, it too might right
itself. But Mr. Chambers was very weary. Too weary to think
about the house. He turned from the window and dressed slowly. In the
living room he slumped into his chair, put his feet on the old cracked ottoman.
For a long time he sat, trying to think.
And
then, abruptly, something like an electric shock ran through him. Rigid, he sat
there, limp inside at the thought. Minutes later he crossed the room to the old
mahogany bookcase that stood against the wall. There were many volumes in the
case: his beloved classics on the first shelf, his many scientific works on the
lower shelves. The second shelf contained but one book around which Mr.
Chambers' entire life was centered.
Twenty
years ago he had written it and foolishly attempted to teach its philosophy to
a class of undergraduates. The newspapers, he remembered, had made a great deal
of it at the time. Tongues had been set to wagging. Narrow-minded townsfolk failing
to understand either his philosophy or his aim, but seeing in him another
exponent of some antirational cult, had forced his expulsion from the school.
It was a simple book, really, dismissed by
most authorities as merely the
121 vagaries of an
over-zealous mind. Mr. Chambers took it down now, opened its
cover and began thumbing through the pages. For a moment the memory of happier
days swept over him.
Then
his eyes found the paragraph, a paragraph written so long ago that the very
words seemed strange and unreal:
Man himself, by the power of mass suggestion, holds the physical fate of this earth, yes, even of the universe. Millions of minds seeing trees as trees, houses as houses, streets as streets, and not as something else. Minds that see things as they are and have \ept things as they were. . . . Destroy those minds and the entire foundation of matter, robbed of its regenerative power, will crumple and slip away li\e a column of sand. . . .
His eyes followed down the page:
Yet this would have nothing to do with matter itself, but only with matter's form. For while the mind of man through long ages may have moulded an imagery of that space in which he lives, mind would have little conceivable influence upon the existence of that matter. What exists in our \nown universe shall exist always and can never be destroyed, only altered or transformed.
But in modern astrophysics and mathematics we gain an insight into the possibility and probability that there are other dimensions, other brackets of time and space impinging on the one we occupy. If a pin is thrust into a shadow, would that shadow have any knowledge of the pin? It would not, for in this case the shadow is two dimensional, the pin three dimensional. Yet both occupy the same space.
Granting then that the power of men's minds alone holds this universe, or at least this world in its present form, may we not go farther and envision other minds on some other plane watching us, waiting, waiting craftily for the time they can ta\e over the domination of matter? Such a concept is not impossible. It is a natural conclusion if we accept the double hypothesis: that mind does control the formation of all matter; and that other worlds lie in juxtaposition with ours.
Perhaps we shall come upon a day, far distant, when our plane, our world will dissolve beneath our feet and before our eyes as some stronger intelligence reaches out from the dimensional shadows of the very space we live in and wrests from us the matter which we \now to be our own.
He
stood astounded beside the bookcase, his eyes staring unseeing into the fire
upon the hearth. He had written that. And because of those words
he had been called a heretic, had been compelled to resign his position at the
University, had been forced into this hermit life.
A
tumultuous idea hammered at him. Men had died by the millions all over the
world. Where there had been thousands of minds there now were one or two. A feeble force to hold the form of matter intact. The plague
had swept Europe and Asia almost clean of life, had blighted Africa, had
reached South America—might even have come to the United States. He remembered
the whispers he had heard, the words of the men at the drugstore corner, the
buildings disappearing. Something scientists could not explain. But those were
merely scraps of information. He did not know
122 the whole story ... he could not know. He never listened to the radio, never read
a newspaper.
But
abruptly the whole thing fitted together in his brain like the missing piece of
a puzzle into its slot. The significance of it
all gripped him with damning clarity. There were not sufficient minds in
existence to retain the material world in its mundane form. Some other power
from another dimension was fighting to supersede man's control and ta\e his universe into its own plane!
Abruptly
Mr. Chambers closed the book, shoved it back in the case and picked up his hat
and coat. He had to know more. He had to find someone who could tell him. He
moved through the hall to the door, emerged into the street. On the walk he
looked skyward, trying to make out the sun. But there was no
sun—only an all pervading grayness that shrouded everything, not a fog, but a gray
emptiness that seemed devoid of life, of any movement.
The
walk led to his gate and there it ended, but as he moved forward the sidewalk
came into view and the house ahead loomed out of the gray, but a house with
differences.
He
moved forward rapidly. Visibility extended only a few feet and as he approached them the houses materialized like two
dimensional pictures without perspective, like twisted cardboard soldiers
lining up for review on a misty morning. Once he stopped and looked back and
saw that the grayness had closed in behind him. The houses were wiped out, the
sidewalk faded into nothing.
He
shouted, hoping to attract attention. But his voice frightened him. It seemed
to ricochet up and into the higher levels of the sky, as if a giant door had
been opened to a mighty room high above him.
He
went on until he came to the corner of Lexington. There, on the curb, he
stopped and stared. The gray wall was thicker there but he did not realize how
close it was until he glanced down at his feet and saw there was nothing,
nothing at all beyond the curbstone. No dull gleam of wet asphalt, no sign of a street. It was as if all eternity ended here at the corner of Maple and
Lexington.
With
a wild cry, Mr. Chambers turned and ran. Back
down the street he raced, coat streaming after him in the wind, bowler hat
bouncing on his head.
Panting,
he reached the gate and stumbled up the walk, thankful that it still was there.
On
the stoop he stood for a moment, breathing hard. He glanced back over
his shoulder and a queer feeling of inner numbness seemed to well over him. At
that moment the gray nothingness appeared to thin, the enveloping curtain fell
away, and he saw ...
Vague
and indistinct, yet cast in stereoscopic outline, a gigantic city was limned
against the darkling sky. It was a city fantastic with cubed domes, spires, and
aerial bridges and flying buttresses. Tunnel-like streets, flanked on either
side by shining metallic ramps and runways, stretched endlessly to the
vanishing point. Great shafts of multicolored light probed huge streamers and
ellipses above the higher levels.
123
And beyond, like a final backdrop, rose a titanic wall. It was from the crenelated
parapets and battlements of that wall that Mr. Chambers felt the eyes peering
at him, thousands of eyes glaring down with but a single purpose. As he
continued to look, something else seemed to take form above that wall-—a design
this time, that swirled and writhed in the ribbons of radiance and rapidly
coalesced into strange geometric features, without definite line or detail. A
colossal face, a face of indescribable power and evil, it was, staring down
with malevolent composure.
Then
the city and the face slid out of focus; the vision faded like a darkened
magic-lantern, and the grayness moved in again.
Mr.
Chambers pushed open the door of his house. But he did not lock it. There was
no need of locks—not any more.
A
few coals of fire still smouldered in the grate and
going there, he stirred them up, raked away the ash, piled on more wood. The
flames leaped merrily, dancing in the chimney's throat. Without removing his
hat and coat, he sank exhausted in his favorite chair, closed his eyes, then opened them again.
He
sighed with relief as he saw the room was unchanged. Everything in its
accustomed place: the clock, the lamp, the elephant ash tray, the marine print
on the wall. Everything was as it should be. The clock measured the silence
with its measured ticking; it chimed abruptly and the vase sent up its usual
sympathetic vibration.
This was his room, he thought. Rooms acquire
the personality of the person who lives in them, become a part of him. This was
his world, his own private world, and as such it would be the last to go.
But how long could he maintain its existence?
Mr.
Chambers stared at the marine print and for a moment a little breath of
reassurance returned to him. They couldn't
take this away. The rest of the world might dissolve because there was
insufficient power of thought to retain its outward form. But this room was
his. He alone had furnished it. He alone, since he had first planned the
house's building, had lived here. This room would stay. It must stay on, it
must . . .
He
crossed the room to the bookcase, and stood staring at the second shelf with
its single volume. His eyes shifted to the top shelf and swift terror gripped
him.
For
all the books were not there. A lot of books were not there! Only
the most beloved, the most familiar ones. So the change already had
started here! The unfamiliar books were gone and that fitted into the
pattern—for it would be the least familiar things that would go first.
Wheeling,
he stared across the room. Was it his imagination, or did the lamp on the table
blur and begin to fade away? But as he stared at it, it became clear again, a
solid, substantial thing.
For
a moment real fear reached out and touched him with chilly fingers. He
understood that this room no longer was proof against the thing that had
happened out there on the street.
Or
had it really happened? Might not all this exist within his
own mind? Might not the street be as it always was, with laughing
children and bark-
124 ing
dogs?
Might not the Red Star confectionery still exist, splashing the street with the
red of its neon sign?
Could
it be that he was going mad? He had heard whispers when he had passed, whispers
the gossiping housewives had not intended him to hear. And he had heard the
shouting of boys when he walked by. They thought him mad. Could he be really
mad?
He
was sure he was not mad. He knew that he perhaps was the sanest of all men who
walked the earth. For he, and he alone, had foreseen this very thing. And the
others had scoffed at him for it.
Somewhere
else the children might be playing on a street. But it would be a different
street. And the children undoubtedly would be different, too. For the matter of
which the street and everything upon it had been formed would now be cast in a
different mold, stolen by different minds in a different dimension.
Perhaps we shall come upon a day, jar distant, when our plane, our world will dissolve beneath our feet and before our eyes as some stronger intelligence reaches out from the dimensional shadows of the very space we live in and wrests from us the matter which we kjiow to be our own.
But
there had been no need to wait for that distant day. Scant years after he had
written those prophetic words the thing was happening. Man had played
unwittingly into the hands of those other minds in the other dimension. Man
had waged a war and war had bred a pestilence. And the whole vast cycle of
events was but a detail of a cyclopean plan.
He
could see it all now. By an insidious mass hypnosis minions from that other
dimension ... or was it one supreme intelligence . . . had deliberately sown the seeds
of dissension. The reduction of the world's mental power had been carefully
planned with diabolic premeditation.
On
impulse he suddenly turned, crossed the room and opened the connecting door to
the bedroom. He stopped on the threshold and a gasp forced its way to his lips.
There
was no bedroom. Where his stolid four poster and
dresser had been there was grayish nothingness.
Like
an automaton he turned again and paced to the hall door. Here, too, he found
what he had expected. There was no hall, no familiar hat rack and umbrella
stand.
Nothing. . . .
Weakly Mr. Chambers moved back to his chair
in the corner. "So here I am," he said, half aloud.
So there he was. Embattled
in the last corner of the world that was left to him.
Perhaps
there were other men like him, he thought. Men who stood at
bay against the emptiness that marked the transition from one dimension to
another. Men who had lived close to the things they loved, who had
endowed those things with such substantial form by power of mind alone that
they now stood out alone against the power of some greater mind.
The
street was gone. The rest of his house was gone. This room still retained its
form.
This room, he knew, would stay the longest.
And when the rest of the room was gone, this corner with his favorite chair
would remain. For this was the spot where he had lived for
twenty years. The bedroom was for sleeping, the kitchen for eating. This
room was for living. This was his last stand. These were the walls and floors
and prints and lamps that had soaked up his will to make them walls and prints
and lamps.
He
looked out the window into a blank world. His neighbors' houses already were
gone. They had not lived with them as he had lived with this room. Their
interests had been divided, thinly spread; their thoughts had not been
concentrated as his upon an area four blocks by three, or a room fourteen by
twelve.
Staring
through the window, he saw it again. The same vision he had looked upon before
and yet different in an indescribable way. There was the city illumined in the
sky. There were the elliptical towers and turrets, the cube-shaped domes and
battlements. He could see with stereoscopic clarity the aerial bridges, the
gleaming avenues sweeping on into infinitude. The vision was nearer this time,
but the depth and proportion had changed, as if he were viewing it from two
concentric angles at the same time.
And
the face, the face of magnitude, of power of cosmic craft and evil. . . .
Mr.
Chambers turned his eyes back into the room. The clock was ticking slowly,
steadily. The grayness was stealing into the room. The table and radio were the
first to go. They simply faded away and with them went one corner of the room.
Now
as he sat there it did not seem queer to be without the table or the radio. It
was as if it were something quite normal. Something one could expect to happen.
Perhaps, if he thought hard enough, he could bring them back. But, after all,
what was the use? One man, alone, could not stand off the irresistible march of
nothingness. One man, all alone, simply could not.
He
wondered what the elephant ash tray looked like in that other dimension. It
certainly would not be an elephant ash tray, nor would the radio be a radio,
for perhaps they did not have ash trays or radios or elephants in the invading
dimension.
He
wondered, as a matter of fact, what he himself would look like when he finally
slipped into the unknown. For he was matter, too, just as the ash tray and
radio were matter. He wondered if he would retain his individuality, if he
still would be a person. Or would he merely be a thing?
There was one answer to all
of that. He simply didn't know.
Nothingness
advanced upon him, ate its way across the room, stalking him as he sat in the
chair underneath the lamp. He waited for it.
The room, or what was left
of it, plunged into dreadful silence.
Mr.
Chambers started. The clock had stopped. Funny . . . the
first time in twenty years.
He leaped from his chair
and then sat down again.
The clock hadn't stopped.
It wasn't there.
There was a tingling
sensation in his feet.
The
End
126
Jot- Ifnt'tfue treading
entertainment,
W)e J^nvite
\jour____ attention to ^Jhede
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* * * * * * *f\ * * * * * ★**
The use
of siren
spells and love
charms to win endearment
and riches continues to
attract thčVçnjnd and heart of modern men and women.
For beneath
the surface
of our
workaday
deeds—is instilled
in each
of us
by the
mankind-old lore of
It is no wonder
therefore that fantasy, stories dealing
with the witchery of the past
and the
romantic mystery of the future, continues to dominate and
fascinate the public.
ROBERT E. HOWARD SEABURY OUINN RAY CUMMINGS
SEWELL P. WRIGHT
RAY
BRADBURY H. P. LOVECRAFT MILES J. BREUER A. MERRITT
AND
MANY OTHERS
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