Contents
THE
ROBOT EMPIRE by
Tran Belknap Long...................................................... 3
Copyright, 1934, hy Street
& Smith Publications Inc. for Astounding Stories. By permission of the
author.
P. N. 40 by S. Fowler Wright.............................................................................
13
Copyright, 1949, by S.
Fowler Wright, for "The Throne of Saturn". By permission of Arkham
House.
THE MASTER ANTS by Francs Flagg.................................................................
34
Copyright,
1927, by E. P. Co., Inc.; reprinted by permission of the heir through arrangement
with the Ackerman Fantasy Agency.
IN THE WALLS OF ERYX by Kenneth Sterling and H. P.
Lovecrajt.. 59 Copyright, 1939, by Weird Tales; copyright,
1943, 1947, by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei. By permission of Arkham
House.
THE BLACK STONE STATUE by Mary Elizabeth Counselman.... 81 Copyright, 1937, by The Popular Fiction
Publishing Company for Weird Tales Magazine.
THE PLANET OF DREAD by R. F. Starzl............................................................
91
Copyright, 1930, by the Clayton Magazines. By permission of the
author through arrangement with the Ackerman Fantasy Agency.
THE ALIEN VIBRATION by Hannes Bo............................................................... 104
From "Future",
for February, 1942, by permission of the author and Columbia Publications Inc.
THE ULTIMATE PARADOX by Thorp McClusky................................................. 117
Copyright, 1945, by Weird Tales Magazine.
AVON SCIENCE-FICTION READER NO. 3 COPYRIGHT,
1952, BY AVON NOVELS, INC. PRINTED IN U. S. A.
The Robot Empire
By Frank Belknap Long
The
far, jar future is veiled from us by a darker
curtain than any that ever shut out the ancient past. We (now from whence we came, we know our past limitations, but
there will be no limitations in the future. Where, for instance, will be the
end of robotics, of cybernetics, of the human body? We
have in this story a vision of a
future where man has followed two trends—both unnatural, both divorced from the
fleshly sensations, both frustrated by the cold arts of metal. The story of
the primitive woman and the ruler of
the Asian Free Brains is almost a prose-poem of
the rebirth of emotion in a world
drowned by the
passion of conquest.
T
JLHE
PRIMITIVE woman danced before the Asian free brain. Her pale face was uplifted
to the great horned moon, and her arms were rhythmically weaving serpents in
the pale light. Calcon, the Asian free brain, rested immobile in his metallic
casing and watched her as she whirled about.
A great responsibility
weighed upon him.
The
primitive woman knew that Calcon was the undisputed master of three hundred
million human brains. In the terraced tower cities of Asia the brains waited
impatiently in their cases for his grim decision.
The
bodylike cases, she knew, were similar in structure to the one which inclosed
the massive complex brain of Calcon. Fashioned of Alugan, a heat-resisting
metal invented by Mongolian scientists during the ages of Mongolian supremacy,
they were equipped with food and lymph tubes, mechanical palates, flexible metal
limbs, and revolving wheels for long-distance locomotion.
The
primitive woman had viewed no one but Calcon, but she had been taught about the
others. She knew that all men and women had once possessed bodies. For hundreds
of thousands of years they had possessed strong, robust limbs, and walked
freely about the world, conquering and destroying others of their kind in
merciless physical combat. The primitive woman even knew when and how the race
had emerged from a slavish dependence on the physical.
Titanic
world conflicts had stimulated the inventive genius of the war makers and paved
the way for the rise to world supremacy of the Asian
free brains. Through miracles of surgery human
brains were transplanted at birth into prepared Alugan bodies that could resist
the extremes of heat and cold and the sinister flame-weapons of the war lords.
The
great continent of Asia was inhabited by three hundred million Al-ugan-bodied tree brains. Far away, on the
northwestern continent, sprawled Asia's enemy in its immense mountain city.
Incased in an impregnable shell of earth and rock this enemy, the Great Brain,
was issuing switt commands to its dependent ganglia. The acquisition of a new
destructive technique had given a fresh impetus to its dream of world
absorption. It was reaching out to enslave and absorb all the free brains of
Asia.
From
the complex and prodigious central cortex of the Great Brain there radiated
thousands of ganglion-flecked filaments. Each ganglion had once lived an
independent existence. Lulan, the primitive woman, shuddered as she danced in
mental recoil from the horror that loomed. She knew that if the Great Brain
triumphed, all the Asian free brains and all the primitive men and women would
be swallowed up in that sinister mental unit.
The
Great Brain had absorbed the individualities of two hundred million human
beings. Only Calcon now dared to dely and oppose it, but Calcon was not a puny
opponent. With a single fervent command he could release planet-devouring
turies.
Lulan
was a lowly servant of the Asian free brains. She was one of the hopeless,
primitive ones. The surgeon assigned to her at birth had botched the operation
which had so profoundly transformed the majority of her kind. At a critical
moment his hand had wavered, and the delicate transposing filaments had been
prematurely severed. She had grown up free-limbed and robust, with a rebellious
mind.
As she danced for Calcon to please and divert
him while he pondered his grim plans, her gaze was riveted on Mago, who
crouched in the shadows behind the Asian free brain's massive Alugan case. Though she danced for Calcon. she
had eyes only for Mago.
Mago
was a primitive man. But unlike most of his fellow servitors he despised and
hated the dominant free brains. In a moment of embittered wrath he had once
declared: "Our day will come. They call us primitives, but we are glad
that we have limbs and can sing and dance beneath the stars of heaven. They
think of us as slaves, but when they rejected nature's gifts they enslaved
themselves. When the day of reckoning comes there will be no slaves in
Asia."
The
muscles rippled silkily in Mago's broad,
sun-bronzed shoulders as he
crouched in the shadows. Fie was tall anil lithe limbed, with clear brown eyes.
Calcon
turned toward him suddenly, said: "Come here, Mago." Mago advanced
and knelt beside Calcon's case. Calcon said: "You will pilot the rocket
plane."
Mago
bowed his head in grim silence. The burnished blue metal surface on which he
was kneeling reflected his great muscular form and the box-Jike body case of
Calcon. The huge audition hall was as silent as the shadows of
the primitive man and the primitive girl, who now stood immobile, frozen with
fright.
Calcon said: "Turn on the telecurrents,
Mago."
Mago
nodded and withdrew again into the shadows. Presently a low humming filled the
roofless rectangular hall. Throughout the vast continent of Asia the pathways of
the ether had been cleared for Calcon's message. At the summit of the audition
hall a revolving wireless transmitter hummed a vibrant warning to the millions
of listening brains. Across mountains and winding water courses, and the
sun-scorched Gobi, went the vibrant drone on swift waves of sound.
Calcon motioned to the primitive woman, and she bowed low and passed quickly to Mago's side.
Calcon then attached the tip of a swinging metallic tube to the oral orifice at
the summit ol his case and announced his decision. Up above, the gigantic
transmitter took up the message and sent it forth.
"The
Great Brain must be destroyed," affirmed Calcon. "A primitive man
will pilot the rocket plane across Asia, Europe, and the Atlantic Ocean. He
will destroy the nerve filaments with flame and gas bombs."
Behind
the raised platform where Calcon rested, the primitive man was whispering
fervent words into Lulan's ear. He had taken her gently by the arm and drawn
her toward him. Her head rested now upon bis chest,
and her arms were about his shoulders.
"I will destroy the Great Brain," he said.
"The bondage that it seeks to
impose upon us would be more intolerable than-- "
Pie
stopped. Calcon had turned about on his metallic limbs and was regarding him
with cold fury. The crystal emotion-indicator on his forehead had turned an
ominous purple.
"You
will enter the rocket plane and ascend immediately," he said. "You
will take the course charted by Free Brain E56."
Mago
whispered: "1
may not return. If I do
not, will you remember Mago?"
Lulan
clutched his arm and caressed his bearded cheeks with her slender fingers.
Gently Mago freed himself, implanted an ardent kiss on her soft lips, and
walked resolutely from the chamber.
As
soon as he vanished Calcon descended from his dais and advanced toward her. The
deep purple of his emotion-indicator was shot with turbulent streaks of yellow
and crimson. He seized her wrist and forced her to her knees.
"My
slaves do not embrace in my presence," he rasped. "Have you no
respect for me at all?"
Lulan
looked up at him. Her pale face was distorted with fright. "He will never
return," she said. "You sent him away because you are envious of his
strength and wisdom."
Calcon flung her from him with an infuriated
oath. As she sank limply to the floor, Mago, who was unaware of her plight,
climbed swiftly into the rocket plane. It was lying in a deep black hollow on a
seaward slope. It was
Supporting
rail and watching
the far stars swing about and seemingly shift their
positions in the firmament above him. He had exhausted five of the explosive
packets, and the rocket was now lighter, more responsive to guidance. He
piloted it with a firm hand and turned occasionally to look at the location
index on the panel at his elbow.
Across
the surface of that luminous disk flowed a continuous stream of pictures. The location engine generated waves of photostatic energy that recorded minutely every variation
in the landscape beneath. The waves swept the earth and were drawn back into
the rocket by powerful receivers that transformed them into pictures on the
flickering disk.
Deserts
and mountains, bleak, dismal seas, the wide wastes of the old continent of
Europe, the long, marsh-tipped archipelago called Scaudava, the black shallow
waters of the Baltic Sea, the Atlantic Ocean turbulent with its immense storm
areas and belching volcanoes, had passed in rapid sequence before the luminous
disk.
But
though the vistas were desolate and awe-provoking beyond belief, Mago did not
experience fright. He had gazed upon the bleak and forbidden outlands too
often in a telluric recorder in the dwelling of Calcon. It was only when the
low-lying eastern marshes of the northwestern continent swept into view that
his fingers tightened on the pilot bars, and a tense, somber look came into his face.
The
rocket plane pierced the stratosphere above the desolate eastern marshes at an
unwavering altitude of fifteen miles until a vista appeared on the disk which
caused the blood to mount and then slowly ebb in Mago's checks.
Nestling
immense and forbidding in the cone of an extinct volcano, the dark abode of the
Great Brain seemed a thing alien to the sane and ordered world which Mago knew.
So fantastic and distorted were its dimensions, so ominous with a kind of
geometrical insanity, that Mago shuddered and drew in his breath sharply as it
usurped the white opacity of" the location screen.
With thudding pulses he gripped the pilot bar
and sent it spinning. The fate of a world hung perilously in the balance as the
huge cylindrical rocket plane descended through fleecy layers of sun-flecked cirrus clouds.
It
descended twelve
miles, in a swift curve,
and circled about in the clear, cold air directly above the sinister mountain. The day was one of perfect stillness.
Within
on his platform Mago suddenly released long red tongues of destruction with
his little primitive hand. From the base of the plane small,
cubical flame-and-gas bombs issued in a continuous stream. Descending
swiftly they exploded with a thunderous roar. A spire of fire enveloped the
mountain's crest.
In far off Asia, by the turbulent waters of
the gale-lashed Pacific, Calcon gazed into the telluric recorder at the
conflict which he had ordained. Colossal transmitters had sent
waves of photostatic energy encircling the globe, cylindrical in
shape, with glistening metallic rotor blades on its burnished summit.
Mago
heaved himself up till his limbs were abreast of the square, casementlike
entrance, and crawled on his hands and knees into the electrically illuminated
interior.
Beneath him, fitted snugly into an Alugan compartment at the base of the
projectile, reposed fifteen oblong packets of high-powered explosive.
Standing
on a pilot's platlorrn just beneath the curving summit, Mago took firm hold of
the ignition lever and thrust it vigorously forward.
As
the first of the rocket packets ignited, the Alugan pivot at the base of the
plane began speedily to revolve. For a moment the plane remained in the hollow,
pivoting on its axis. Then a long flicker of scarlet flame enveloped it. and it shot swiftly skyward.
Mago
stood on the pilots platform clinging to a supporting
metallic rod and stared with a kind of savage exaltation into the stratospheric
mists. A sense of expansion and release flooded his being. Eight miles beneath
him the squat, roofless dwellings of Calcon sprawled in the moonlight beside
the black, continent-laving Pacific.
He
knew that it was the abode of empire, and his heart froze at the thought of it.
Froze and then thawed with the sweet, solacing
memory of Lulan's fervent embraces. Through a circular glass
window he stared at the swinging constellations, the thought of Lulan warming
his heart, his mind aflame with a high relentless purpose. He was more powerful
than Calcon now, for he held the destiny of a world in his lean and primitive
hands.
Up,
up the rocket soared, eight miles, and then ten, and then fifteen. Mago
continued to stare outward from beneath heavy brows, his eyes narrowed in
speculative concern. Suddenly he turned and revolved a dial in the square dark
frame at his elbow.
An
instant later the plane's trajectory altered. The great cylindrical frame
ceased to mount into the chill cold of outer space. Swinging downward in a slow
arc it settled into a horizontal position and seemed to hang for a moment
suspended in the ether.
Mago
thrust the ignition switch forward. There ensued a momentary thrumming followed
by a flicker of swift scarlet flame. The platform which supported the primitive
man had reversed its position in response to the tilt of the plane. As the
projectile assumed a horizontal position Mago's body swung about inside, and his eyes came abreast of another window directly
beneath the rotor blades on the summit. The summit was now pointing westward.
Mago
drew in his breath sharply as the projectile shot forward. The ignition of the
second explosive packet was always a hazardous undertaking. Sometimes the
packet missed fire; sometimes the plane assumed a wrong angle and could not be
righted. A surge of confidence went through Mago's being
as the danger receded and vanished.
For five hours he remained rigidly alert on his
platform, grasping the and the waves were now
returning. Transformed into visual images on the telluric screen they filled
Calcon with a wild elation.
The
luminous telluric recorder rested on a raised platform beside the storm-whipped
ocean. Calcon stood grimly before it, his massive case vibrant with emotion,
his Alugan hand gripping Lulan's arm.
"When
he has blown away the cone," he said, "the Great Brain's flame planes
will bring him down."
He
raised his free hand and pointed at three wavering dots near the center of the
screen. The dots had issued from a funnellike vent in the summit of the flame-wreathed
mountain.
Her
lips bloodless, Lulan watched them approach Mago's rocket. For a moment she stared in mute agony. Then a cry
of exultation burst from her lips. "See," she cried, "he has
destroyed the planes!"
As
Calcon watched the three planes drop earthward in blazing spirals, his metallic
lingers tightened on Lulan's fragile wrist till she winced with pain.
"He will not escape this time," he
said.
He
pointed, and Lulan perceived with terror that another and larger plane had
issued from the vent and was circling in the air above the rocket. The rocket
swooped and darted toward it. But unlike its ill-fated predecessors, the plane
did not advance to meet Mago's flame guns. Instead, it darted downward in a slow arc, and hung for a moment suspended in the smoke-darkened air above the crater. Then its
summit tilted, and it soared swiftly skyward.
An
exclamation of amazement came from Calcon's mouth tube as it vanished from sight. He pulled a lever and shifted the telluric focus.
When the plane came into view again it was flying high above the clouds in an
easterly direction. Calcon stared at it for a moment in silence; then shifted
the focus back to the crater.
As Mago's rocket appeared on the screen a
great burst of yellow flame
shot heavenward from the gaping mouth of the dead volcano. Calcon knew
then that one of Mago's bombs had ignited the gas in the enormous lethal
chamber where the Great Brain anesthetized and absorbed its free-brained
captives. •
"It
is the end!" he exclaimed. "The Great Brain will not survive that
explosion." His voice was vibrant with a savage triumph.
Lulan said: "If Mago
does not return I shall surely die."
In
his momentary exultation Calcon had forgotten the enmity which he bore Mago.
But Lulan's brief assertion was a weapon with nine points. Each word pierced
him, stinging his senses to a fury ol hatred.
Venomously
he stared at the victorious rocket. It was rising now, rising swiftly, and
suddenly as he watched it a burst of crimson flame belched from its base. Mago
had exploded another packet and was ascending into the stratosphere. Far
beneath, a mountain that had once flowered redly blossomed again, but its
skyward surging flames were no longer of nature's sowing.
Calcon threw back a lever, and the image dimmed and vanished. Lulan was
now kneeling on the damp soil a few feet away, her eyes misty with suspense and
anguish. For an instant the great lord of Asia, whose will engirdled the
continents gazed down at his little primitive servant and knew in his inmost
being that he envied Mago with every drop of his tube-channeled blood.
"Look
at me, Lilian' he said, and his voice was no longer harsh and vindictive.
The film vanished from Lilian's eyes. She
looked up at him, her face twitching.
"I love you, Lulan," said Calcon simply.
Lulan
made no response. She merely continued to gaze at him, and presently as he
watched her in an agony of suspense he perceived that her thoughts were
elsewhere, and that she had already forgotten that he was standing there beside
her.
Wilh a groan of despair Calcon turned and
moved sluggishly toward the long, roolless audition hall. Up a black gravel
slope he climbed in the moonlight, the sea spray glistening on the broad back
and tapering sides of his swaying Alugan case.
He
looked almost pathetically little and awkward as he toiled up the bleak
hillside, which was dotted here and there with ocean-tossed shells and gleaming
iridescent jellies.
Presently the dark soil deepened in hue till
it shone like black quartz in the moon glow, and the outer corridor of the
audition hall echoed to his ponderous tread. Two primitive men came forward as
he advanced into the building and knelt at his feet.
Calcon said: "Turn on the
telecurrents."
The
primitive men nodded and moved swiftly to obey. Calcon relaxed wearily on his
dais and waited. A gull screamed in the distance above the black ocean as he
waited there in his abode of empire. This proud and lonely being, whose rule
was absolute, whose power would have stunned and frightened the world-subduing
Fascist dynasts of the ancient world, sat shivering and miserable and consumed
with envy of the lowliest of his minions.
Presenily a low humming announced that the
pathways of the ether had been cleared for his message. With an effort he
attached the tip of the swinging tube to his oral orihee and spoke into the
mouthpiece.
"The Great Brain is
dead." he said simply.
Throughout
the terraced tower cities of Asia three hundred million Alu-gan-incased brains
throbbed with a wild and savage joy. During many somber months the thought oi
extinction had weighed less heavily on the free brains of Asia than the hideous
menace of the Great Brain's magnetically controlled planes.
As
they awoke to a stunned realization that the Great Brain's planes would never
darken Asian skies again, a retrospective ecstasy flowed through them. They
recalled past perils with a kind of vicarious pleasure mingled with relief.
They recalled the sinister air raids, the snatching up of relatives and
friends, the agonizing speculation as to the Great Brain's surgical techniques,
and the final dark mystery of absorption.
The
horror had lifted now. They were free—really free, forever now. A great joy
flowed through them.
But
Calcon knew no joy. He sat brooding in his case, wretched, witii-drawfi.
For several hours he did not move. Then something seemed to rouse him from his
lethargy. He arose and looked about him.
The hall was deserted. He was about to summon
his primitive servitors when an obtrusive wisp of a memory which had been
lurking in a corner of his mind assumed menacing proportions. It was like a
fly, buzzing about in his brain in an insistent bid lor attention. He had tried
to drive it away, to sink back into his lethargy. But now it was buzzing,
lighting. His mind filled with it, with the immense, buzzing weight of it.
Calcon
arose and speedily left the hall. He descended the black, seaward slo[>e, his Alugan body-case quivering with dread and
terror. The dawn was breaking over the sea as he came abreast of the telluric
screen.
He
did not even glance at the slumbering form of Lulan that reposed beneath a
little sloping rock shelter a few feet away. Clutching one of the telluric
levers he thrust it forward. Light and shade appeared on the screen; then, more
slowly, dark land masses, islands and archi|>clagocs, fleecy wavering
clouds beneath a star-powdered sky.
He
manipulated various levers in frantic haste. He saw curling breakers on a
storm-lashed coast, billowing masses ol cumulus clouds, the starglitter of far
nebulae on deep waters. And then suddenly, amid the surge and turmoil of alien
vistas, he saw it clearly. High above the clouds it sped—a long, fly-shaped thing with vibrant wings. It
was the last emissary of the Great Brain, roaring through the ether toward
Asia.
Calcon
threw back the lever, and the image vanished. A groan
issued from his Alugan mouthpiece. Lulan awoke at the sound, awoke and sat up.
Her thin tunic was drenched with sea spray. For five hours she had been keeping silent vigil near the screen. She had not
dared to manipulate the levers, but to her the screen was a precious mystic
link with the unknown. When she slept beside it Mago seemed
somehow nearer and his plight less hazardous. It was a woman's foolish
whim, but it sustained and upheld her.
When
Calcon saw her his body swayed. He advanced to where she was silting and took
her naked little feet in his hands.
"I
am afraid Lulan," he murmured. ''The last plane
that left the Great Brain is still flying eastward. It is very near now."
Lulan's
eyes widened. "If it is just a flame plane there is surely nothing to
fear," she murmured. "It will be sighted, attacked."
"The
Great Brain was wiser than I," said Calcon, in a voice which trembled with
a terror-provoked humility. "1 have
destroyed it, but this plane, this last terrible emissary, may—destroy
me."
Lulan's
eyes grew suddenly hard. "Does the master of Asia fear death?" she
asked.
Calcon said: "I did not until now,
Lilian. Rut now I know that the most glorious solace life can bestow has been
withheld from me."
As he spoke his rigid metallic arms encircled
her slim waist and tightened
about her till she screamed and strained madly away from him. "I cannot
die until I know------ "
The sentence was never finished. As Lulan
struggled to free herself the sky burst into flames above them. A yellow mist
descended, slowly enveloping the dark Asian sea slope and the spray-enshrouded
headlands beyond. The two little figures by the telluric recorder ceased to
struggle even as the clouds of saffron rolled downward.
Calcon
fell forward, clutching at the bare rocks with his long metallic fingers while
the emotion indicator above his mouth-tube turned green and then yellow and at
last faded slowly to a dull gray, flecked with crimson.
He
dragged himself toward the screen, his whole body-case trembling. He seemed to
experience difficulty in moving his limbs. They responded jerkily to the
control mechanism within, and as he raised his arms frantically skyward in a gesture of fierce imprecation, something burst inside of him.
He
groaned and fell backward, clutching the edge of the screen. For a moment he
hung there, in sick agony. Then he drew himself erect with an effort and pulled
frantically on one of the levers. Light and shadows flickered on the luminous
disk. FIc swayed and clutched another lever. As he did so a red froth appeared on his mouth-tube.
As
the long plane swooped downward and passed above the audition hall with a steady, even drone, Lulan sank slowly to the
ground in a dead faint. The plane sped onward toward the
terraced tower cities of Central Asia.
When Mago's rocket plane descended from the
stratosphere above the bleak, ocean lashed coast, the land below was hid in a
deep orange mist.
The
rocket came slowly to rest on the sloping seaward landing base with a thunderous droning of rotor blades, and revolving auto-gyro vanes. An instant
later Mago descended and ran up the dark hill toward the audition hall. His
heart was pounding so loudly he feared it would burst in his bosom. Fie was
puzzled and frightened by the saffron mist and the strange, pungent odor which
surged heavily on the sea-tainted air. Above all, he was concerned about Lulan.
For
an eternity as he clambered upward his mind was darkened with a sense of grim foreboding, of nameless fear.
And then, suddenly, he caught sight of her. She was standing on a flat gray
boulder looking down at him. Her lips were parted, and there was an exultant
glow in her primitive blue eyes.
Before
he could recover his breath she was in his arms. Eagerly he kissed her mouth
and ran his fingers in rapture through her long silky hair. Pier arms tightened
about him till his torso ached.
"The
tower cities are in ruins, and all the free brains are dead," she murmured.
"The Great Brain sent a detached
ganglion over Asia in a plane.
ft was equipped with a new and terrible kind of vapor-bomb.
The vapor
corrodes Alugan, dissolves, and destroys it."
Slipping
quickly from bis embrace she gripped his hand and led him downward again toward
the sea. She led him along a pebblc-incrusted beach and through shallow rock
pools in the shelving strand. As they drew near to the telluric screen, a
hideous odor smote upon their nostrils.
A
sharp indrawn sound came from Mago's lips when he saw what was lying before the
screen. The great Alugan body case was corroded and eaten away, and the thing
that had once been the Asian free brain was a seething mass of corruption.
In
the cold light of the moon the proud and lonely master of the planet was
returning slowly to the elements, his prolonged mortality but a pitiful mockery
now to the vast impersonal forces whose sovereignty he had defied.
The
illuminated screen showed a towering volcanic mountain rimmed with black ash
and charred ribbons of a dark granular substance that descended in all
directions from the circular cone. The ribbons were flecked at intervals with
thousands of tiny glittering blebs.
"He
sat there and watched the Great Brain die," said Lulan. "He watched
the swollen fires subside, and the seared and writhing brain substance crawl
out over the crater's rim. He gloated with a savage malice on the death of his
enemy while his own body-case dissolved about him and his own brain decayed. He
was a strange creature, Mugo—cold and proud and without compassion lor any
living thing. But at the last I ceased to hate him.
"All
the great beauty of the world meant nothing to him, Mago. He lived a sterile
and empty* life because the love of power was like a fire in his veins. He
lived for nothing else until—until something happened, Mago."
Mago
gazed at her, and a look of understanding came into his face. He took her
gently by the shoulder and turned her about till the sea was at her back, and
Orion winked redly at her from beyond the crest of the high hill.
"Up
there," he said, "we shall build a new world. All the primitive men
and women of Asia, all the lowly disinherited, will help us build it. It will
be a world of gardens and sunlight, of beauty and peace and comradeship. The
war makers will have no place in it, Lulan."
Lulan
looked up at him, and he perceived with amazement and a sudden breathless awe
that his vision was already prefigured in her eyes.
P. N. 40--------------------------------------------------------------
by S. Fowler Wright
The
science of selective breeding was
invented as a means of developing
commercially valuable varieties o cows, horses, pigs, poultry, etc. It operates
by means of limiting reproduction to
selected parents, individuals possessing Specific qualities the breeder wishes
to perpetuate or utt cut. Such as speed in race horses. Its
theoretical application to humanity is l(nou'n
as eugenics und its advocates propose it us a means of bettering humanity. The problem that then has arisen is—what
are
j we looking jor in human animals? What are the desirable qualities? Tailless? Blond ness? Do we want
only brainy people? Artistic talents? What? At once we
run into a dispute which has no solution. Eugeni-cisfs can agree on weeding out
hereditary diseases—and who would not? but what would
constitute a better man, und would it be worth
| the sacrifice oj love, affection, juniity ties, which would be the inevitable price o such
experiments. Let S. Towler Wright,
who wrote The World
Ik-low, tell
you. . . .
In TP1E ninety-third year, (second period), of the Eugenic Era, there lived
a girl named P.N. 40, who was, on the fifteenth of April of that year, within a
lortnight of the age and ordeal of marriage.
For,
(as we know), the Eugenist government of that time had decreed that every girl
who was sufficiently sound in health and ancestry should marry between the
first and tenth days of the May following her twenty-second birthday. The
intention being that her first child should be born in the early spring, which
Sir Mordith Blinkwell had shown to be the ideal period for such nativities.
The
custom was subsequently modified when the statistics of twenty years showed
that 67.(H per cent of first-born children had
appeared in the inferior months of the year. Such is the perversity of women.
P.N.
40 was an exceptionally beautiful girl, which is an attractive subject for
contemplation* but on the morning on which we first regard her she was an
acutely miserable one, which is less so. The two statements may seem
contradictory, but they are actually consequent.
She
sat on the sunlit loggia of her ground-floor bedroom, in the early hours of
that mid-April morning, gazing upon the 46.3 perches of ground which was the
allotted portion for the back of every bungalow, with its two regulation trees
and one bush, so planted as not to obstruct the light nor a duly assorted
entrance of the four winds, and her mouth, which was
made for a quite different purpose, was shut very
savagely, and her,eyes were sullen.
The
Eugenist government, being laudably anxious to improve the quality of the race,
had realized that it cannot be done very rapidly under a strictly monogamous regime. It is a lamentable fact, illustrating how
much Nature has yet to learn, that the two sexes are born in approximately
equal numbers. In some cases, as with cattle or poultry, the position may be
improved by slaughtering the less desirable of the calves or cockerels, (the
males getting the worst of it, as usual), but, after three bills to deal with
human babies in this logical and eugenic manner had been defeated in successive
years, it was recognized that the problem must be attacked by different
methods.
The
prohibition of the marriage of the unfit, which had been enacted at the
commencement of the second era, was of no assistance to the solution of this
difficulty, for they were found to be of about equal numbers in either sex. The
mutilation of the superfluous was hardly likely to be proposed again, alter the
massacre of the seventh year, which had followed the introduction of a bill of
this purpose, and which had rendered necessary the election of a new
parliament, from which most of the familiar faces were unavoidably absent.
It
was the epoch-founding brain of Professor Gested, working with its usual
mathematical precision, which had resolved the problem. He perceived that the
Potential Maximum Fecundity of women is not increased by a multiplication of husbands, whereas a plurality of wives may lead to a
substantial increase in the P.M.F. of mankind.
Building
upon the solidity of this premise, he evolved a plan by which such a plurality, up to a maximum of six, should be allotted to those members
of his own sex who were beyond criticism either in individual or ancestral
health.
He
proposed that men who were over the age of forty-two should be exempt from
these inflictions, but it was only the slanderous venom of his enemies which
pointed out that he was then on the threshold of his forty-third year.
By
a contrary provision, men of inferior physical grades were allotted less than
one complete unit of feminine companionship, to a minimum of one sixth, by
which means he contrived:
(1)
That
a large majority of the next generation would
be the children of a selected parentage.
(2)
That
all members of the community would be married (more or less), so that a minimum
of opposition was aroused among the selfish anti-social voters who had done so
much to retard the racial progress for winch he toiled and pondered, for
(3)
By
this process of grading there would be no difficulty in avoiding an unallocated
surplus, either of men or women, as the fraction of wife allowed to men of
intermediate grades could be varied according to the number of women available.
Forty years had passed, and though the
enforcement of this law had not been unopposed, nor
always bloodless, yet it had been asserted successfully. The common sense of
the race, with its dread of the old barbarisms still refreshed by the teaching
of the intermediate seminaries, hail been sufficient to discipline the
rebellious reactions of youth, or the selfish criminality of discontented
women. But it had been found necessary to segregate the young of either sex
with an almost absolute division. A great national ideal cannot be reached
without individual sacrifice, which, as Professor Gested had pointed out in his
initial essay upon the subject, should be endured with equanimity, if not with
joy.
11
But P.N. 40, however superficially
attractive, had a mind which was destitute of the higher
patriotism. I Ier heart did not beat more rapidly when she considered the
P.M.F. of her sex.
It
beat faster at the foolish imagination that 48 V.C.
had regarded her with
unusual interest as he had assisted her last February from the monoplane which
had descended so unexpectedly (to him) on the shore of Llangorse, in
Brecknockshire. 48 V.C, whose ancestry included an epileptic great-aunt, and
who wore the pink-and-yellow arm-stripes which graded him for one-fourth of a
wife at the next allotment.
P.N.
40 did not curse, for she had never heard of bad language, nor could she have
imagined its possibilities adequately. The interjection was deleted from the
vocabulary of an enlightened state. Even the wail of infancy had been stilled
by a corporal punishment which descended automatically as it was electrically
stimulated by the sound. She did not curse, but her thoughts were murderous.
It
was the night before, in the common-room, that she had been publicly rebuked
lor seditious indecency by the Instructress, because she had expressed the
opinion that a girl could choose her husband much better than the Board of
Allocation would be likely to do.
"A
pure minded woman," she had been told severely, "does not discriminate
between one man and another, if he be chosen as fit for fatherhood, nor does
she rebel because she will only receive a fraction of his attentions."
Well, if that were so. she was not pure-minded. Very far from it.
. . .
The
P.N. 40 branded
beneath her chin was indelible. It would always proclaim her as the bearer of a
health-proud name. Only the children of 47 L.K.-Z.V. 5 could claim a physical
preference,—and 47 L.K. was not only of a stainless ancestry lor four
generations on either side—in fact, since the first stud-book of the present
series had been commenced,—he was of a personal development so exceptional that
when the Ministry of Pig breeding, which was the most important government
office under that which was held by the Premier, (unless preference be given,
in spite of its inevitable unpopularity, to that of the Ministry of Insight),
had been awarded to him, it had been generally regarded as an exceptionally
seemly choice.
And
47 L.K. still lived a life of robust vigour, though his years were seventy. One
of his six wives, although themselves the cream of the community,
had shown an inferior vitality. She had died last year,—died shamefully of a
nameless cause, so that all her descendants had trembled lest the small red
letter should be added to their branded names which would consign them to a
childless end.
If
there were truth in the envious whisperings of the common-room, she herself,
P.N. 40, was selected for the high honour of the vacant place.
On
the first of May, at the festival of the Branding of Brides, she would receive
her husband's number beneath her chin, behind the place on which her own
appeared already.
At
the day's end, in the solitude of her own room, she would be able to look in
the mirror, and learn to whom she had been consigned. Modesty did not admit of
an earlier curiosity.
Then
there would be a period of ten days, during which she would be entitled, at any moment, to require an aeroplane to convey her to her
husband's home. If the eleventh day came, and she had not departed,—well,
there would be no order to delay the fumigation of a section which should be no longer occupied.
. .
. She knew that this allocation was not inevitable. Degeneration of character
may disqualify the most physically-perfect lor the honour of a Sixth-Grade marriage. She might do outrageous
things during her last fortnight of freedom, such as would insure that she
would never know the dignity of being the youngest wife of 47 L.K. She might
even, by a diabolical
ingenuity of graded follies, contrive to be classified with the Fourth-Grade
women, who are the sole wives of a single husband.
But
this thought brought no comfort. She did not merely wish to be a monogamous wife. She wanted (with an almost
obsolete vulgarity) to be the wile of a particular man whom she should never
have seen,—would, very certainly, never have seen, but for the maniac folly of
P.T. 69, who had persuaded her to join in that disastrous escapade.
Besides,
she was not free from the natural vanity of women. She could not easily endure
the degradations which follow from a Fourth-Grade marriage. Girls of that
class might be content enough, for they had expected nothing more, but she had
been brought up dirferendy. To pick her clothes on the fourth day, after the
three upper grades had chosen all the lovelier colours! To sit in the back rows
of the theatre, the solitary companion of the man beside you, and watch the
grouped seats of the Sevens, Fives, and Threes, that graded backward, proclaiming
the physical ignominy of the place to which you were relegated!
Such
sacrifices have been made by women of ancient days (or so romance will have it)
to secure the man of their choosing, but not, even by them, for a precarious
difference in the percentage of a stranger's love.
in
The English schoolmasters in the public
schools of the nineteenth century found that they could
save themselves much trouble in the teaching of Greek and Latin (which were
believed to be essential to the intellectual welfare of their pupils) if they
stimulated their curiosity by providing them with the most indecent books which
have survived in those languages, the vicious consequences of which procedure
always filled them with a very innocent wonder.
It
has to be chronicled, with whatever reluctance, that the seminaries of the
Second Era were not free from a very similar obliquity. The study of the older forms of the English language was stimulated by the use of indecent
text-books, one of the worst of which—entitled The Oxford Boo oj English Verse—P.N. 40 hail nefariously retained at the
conclusion of her literary instructions. This book, though still used in
schools, was not one which any decent woman would allow on the tables of her
reception rooms. It is largely occupied with lauding the consequences of Self-selection, or with the advocacy of unions in conditions
of precarious poverty; and it will even treat its most tragic imaginations—such
as the mating of immature women—with an obtuse levity, subversive of every
purer instinct in the mind that reads it. The great subjects of poetry, such as
The Intervals between Meals, and the Proper Spacing of Children, are not even
mentioned in these crude songs ol a forgotten barbarism.
Cultivating
her sorrow, as folly will, P.N. 40 went inside, seeking the hidden book, with
which she returned, and sat down to the idle turning of its familiar pages.
She
knew that she could not be overlooked, except from the air, which, at this
hour, was empty of random traffic on the lower air-ways. It was true that she
might be under the observation of the Ministry of Insight, but that (she
supposed) was arithmetically improbable, and, anyway, it was a risk which was
never absent.
There
was the case last year of the third wife of 60 S.V.K..
who had made complaint that she was ignored by her
husband, and bailed by his other wives in various illegal ways. Naturally, he
had denied it. Naturally, also, if the other wives were of the disposition
alleged against them, they had supported his denials. But her
own evidence was given with such an air of sincerity, with such an
accumulation of circumstance, that it had been almost impossible to disbelieve
it. It seemed incredible that it should have been invented without some impulse
of suffered wrong, so that the denials with which it was met were discredited
by their own emphasis. Anyway, the Assessors had decided in her favour, and it
was only when 60 S.V.K. had been condemned, and was awaiting sentence, that the
M.I. had ordered a further investigation, at which it had confronted the woman
with a photographic record of herself and her husband in an attitude of
affectionate intimacy. Threatened with the production of every moment of her
life for the period in question, she had collapsed, and confessed the jealous origin
of her baseless tales. . . .
No one had guessed, till then, the extent of
the oversight which was exercised by this Ministry. Even now, it was surmise only as to
whether it were casual or ubiquitous in the taking ol such records. No one
knew.
But
P.N. 40 was in a mood to be reckless, and, anyway, there is little gain in
stealing a book which is never read.
She
loved those old poems, just as she
hated the modern ones, which she had been forced to learn in the seminaries.
There was The
Regulated Altar-Flame, which
every girl was expected to recite Irom memory on her lour-teenth birthday. An
interminable, sickening poem:
"She hath no came for secret shame, The
Regulated Altar-Flame!'
How she loathed the reiteration of that
refrain! ";; fifteen years five children came." Probably they did. She didn't care, either
way. Her mind was more occupied with a satislactory
adjustment of the conditions precedent to such advents.
It
will be seen that the selection of such a book indicated that she was making
little effort to prepare herself for the high destiny of the marriage for which
she had been physically qualified by the discretions of lour precedent
generations.
48 V.C., perilously watching from the evergreen
shelter of a spruce-fir (it was a regulation that one of
the two trees should be a conifer)
came lo that conclusion, and was encouraged to the temerity of revealing his
presence to the unconscious girl.
Stated
in advance of explanation, it may occasion more surprise that 48 V.C. should have been able to read the title of the book from such a distance, than that he should have been encouraged by the thought of its
licentiously headstrong monogamies. Yet the explanation is simple.
Like
the muscles of the athlete, or the suppleness of the acrobat, his eyesight had
been trained and perfected lrom his earliest childhood, to fit him for his
intended occupation, which was to be that of an air-pilot. The theory of
selection which had so destined him from infancy had been justified in its
results, for, at the age of twenty-three, which was that of male maturity and
marriage at this period, he had gained the rare honour of being appointed to
one of the Condor patrol-planes, of which there were but twelve, and which
exercised a final control and supervision over the airways of the world.
The
Condors were single-seaters. They were in all ways self-sufficient. They were
so swift that they could circle round an inter-continental liner as a swallow
passes an express train. By right of office, they were exempt from the
traffic-laws of the air. All gave way before them when their sirens shrilled to
the instruments in the ears of a thousand pilots, or their twin blue lights
(intcrbarred with the warning pink) (lashed, halcyon, through the night. Like
shining minnows in the swaying weeds ol the shallows, they twinkled nightly
through the crowded planes of the port-ways as they swayed and strained
rhythmically upon their anchors before the stresses of
the
equal wind. They could talk with each other through a separation of ten
thousand miles. They could command, and the haughtiest liner must change its
course, or pause motionless in the void. They were independent of extraneous
fuel, and, when their pilot needed rest, or would survey his patrol from a
steady point, they could rise above the highest levels of traffic, and hang
stationary, or drift idly upon the wind, for a week if need be.
48
V.C. might have been bolder yet had he known that this last attribute of his
Condor had impressed the imagination of P.N. 40 so much that the sheet of paper
closed between the printed leaves held the commencement of a poem which he had
been inspired to attempt in the quaint, archaic diction of the book she !.:■■
. I so foolishly, and in which she compared him to the
frigate-bird (or was ii the albatross?) of the Southern seas. Her mind
had not been Lumbered with useless knowledge, so she
avoided nouns of exact identification.
As
that strong bird that dwells above the deep, Lord of the wide wind-spaces of the
sry, Rests on sufficient
wings in careless sleep. Above the summer clouds securely high. Unseen beneath
the emulous surges leap, Noise of contending
navies comes not nigh. . . .
She hadn't got any further. The construction
was becoming conscious of some grammatical embarrassment, and, of course, it
was really nonsense, like the pastoral of a seventeenth-century poet. There
were no navies now, contentious or amicable. . . . Besides, she did not think
of him most often as resting in the high solitudes of the air, but rather as he
darted, meteor-bright and meteor-swift, among the crowded traffic of the night;
or as he descended, bolt-like, to her rescue from the empty sky on the windy
shore of Llangorse. . . .
She
turned the pages idly to pause at The Lady of Shafott, with its quaint unreal echo of a misery kindred to, yet so different from her own.
And
sometimes thro' the mirror
blue The
(nights come riding two and two. She hath no loyal night
in view,* . .
. . . She knew the voice that called her name
from the shadow of the fir-branches, and her body thrilled with a sudden
terror, and her heart beat chokingly. She did not know that she answered, but
when 48 V.C. descended, and crossed the lawn toward her, she found words in an
agony of fearful protest.
"Oh, but you must not!—if you were
seen!—come inside!—come
quickly!---- "
* This emendation u due to Professor Garbit, who pointed out that royalty implies truth, and
that the «reat Victorian poet could not have been guilty of so needless a
tautology as is exhibited in the traditional version.
19
In the shelter of her own room they looked at one
another without speech for some moments.
Wild
joy contended in her heart with utter terror at the audacity of his presence in
that forbidden place, within ten miles of which no man had ever been known to
trespass: where men only came when the bride-season was ended, and the
apartments were delivered to the periodical fumigators. They stood under the
shadow of a penalty that they could only guess, but which could be no less than
the shattering of the lives they knew, if any life should be left them, not
knowing but that an official of the M.I. might be recording every word and
motion on the plates of his laboratory-instrument in Ilampstead, scarcely
thirty miles away. . . . And he was the only man to whom she had ever spoken
intimately, or on a basis of equality!
If
there were less lear in his equal silence, there was
an even greater diffidence. To find the vision of his hopeless dreams within
the reach of his hand. . . . To have dared so much,
and to be conscious of the utter madness of the offer that he had come to
make. . . . To be sickeningly conscious of the pink-and-ycllow band upon his
arm, which proclaimed him unfit to consort with such as she, and his children
after him, . . . O, unscalable heaven! . . .
She recovered her self possession first, as a
girl will.
"How did you find me?" she asked,
in a very natural wonder.
"I
saw your number," he said simply, and the words, which explained
everything, brought a flood of shame to her face, such as she had never known
before. Had
she lifted her chin? She
had been taught from childhood that it is the lowest shame of womanhood. To
lift her chin to a man to show him the letter-number by which he may trace and
find her. A woman may call with her eyes, she may beckon with her hand, and it
may be no worse than an idle teasing—but to lift her chin!
He
saw the confusion he had caused, though he only vaguely comprehended it, for
the teaching of the women's schools was outside his experience, and he added
hastily:
"It
was when I was lifting you out of the smash. I couldn't help seeing—
really." And then, with a sudden honesty of laughter: "I didn't try,
either."
She
looked down silently, but without sign of resentment at this last audacious
avowal, and he was emboldened to add:
"I would have found you, anyway, if I
had had to search the world."
She
gave him her eyes then for a moment, and thrilled deliciously at what she saw
in those that met them. She half lifted her hands, and threw them apart in a
gesture of impotence. It was no time for love's finesses.
"It's
no use," she said, "no use! You know it's useless. I can't think why
you came."
Her
voice reproached him, as though he had been guilty of a needless cruelty, but
her words told him that which gave him courage to speak his purpose.
"Of
course it's use, if you'll come. We've only got to wait for a bad night."
"Come where?" she said, with a direct
brevity which is as commendable as it is rare in the mouths of women. There was
a trembling dawn of hope behind the puzzled wonder of her eyes.
"To
the forest reservation in Brazil," he answered, with equal directness, but
an inward terror as to how his suggestion would be received, which was very
quickly ended.
"Of
course I'd come," she said. "Rather. But how could we? If we got
there, we should be traced for certain."
"I
don't think so," he answered, with a stubborn determination to smother the
doubt in his own mind. In abrupt and eager phrases he told her the plan which
he had formed for her abduction.
Ten
years belore, alter the draining of the great swamps of the Upper Amazon, the
forests had been cleared of human life, partially destroyed and replanted, and
then relegated to a solitude ol fifty years, lor certain experimental purposes,
which are not without interest, but which would involve too much explanation
for the brevity of this narrative to contain it.
If
she could join him under the boundary ol the aerodrome thirteen miles away, on
a night ol cloud and storm (the worse the belter, for his purpose) —and,
fortunately, the coming nights would be moonless—he did not doubt that they
could escape unseen and unfollowed. He supposed (foolishly enough) that even the
M.I. would be unlikely to have its attention concentrated upon them at such
a time. He was, indeed, more concerned lor the conditions of the wild life that
they must be prepared to face together than for the perils of the journev in
his familiar element.
Nor
did she think much of the danger of the flight itself, though she had a greater
lear and a greater knowledge of the powers that ruled
them. She thought of the flashing speed of Condor 5 . . . they would estape in the night unnoticed, and v ho should follow?
The) would be almost there in the morning!
"I'm
afraid," he said, with his irrepressible t ruth fulness, "it won't be
so easy as you think. We shall have to try it in a
Kestrel."
"In
a Kestrell" Wonder contended with dismay in the voice with which she answered, and
there w r- good cause for her protest.
Everyone
knew the Kestrels. They were the on'y forni of plane that everyone was trained
to handle. Thev were fool-proof and simple. When th.*y
had risen, they would not readilv descend, without deliberate mininuli-tions,
too low for a parachute to be used with «alety. But they were built for short
flights on the afternoon ol a summer day: diey were forbidden to go over any
considerable stretch of water: and though the difficulty ol fuel did not arise,
and they were swallow-swift in • quiet ;iir,
they were unfit either in strength or power ol flight lor any ocean passage,
where their parachutes would be useless. Then speed and direction were controlled by a degree of muscular exertion that made a prolonged llight
an arduous enterprise.
To
consider one for sikh i purpose was as th •;'•>')
.> gnat should calculate its miles of motion, spinning in sunlit clusters,
and conclude its fitness for a non-stop flight across the breadth of England.
Yet there was no other way. 48 V.C. had
judged coolly enough that, even could he descend in his own machine, and take
the girl unobserved, its disappearance would lead to a world-search, and an
almost certain finding. He might not even be able to destroy it effectively, or
to hide it among the forest trees, before its location would have been
observed, and their fate be certain. He must make
excuse to put up Condor 5 for repairs, and when on the free leave which would result, he could
easily have one of the very numerous Kestrels so placed that it could start
unnoticed in the night.
There
was one point in their favour. The Kestrels, though small, had a roomy car, being built for summer picnics in
the air, whereas the Condors were for work and speed, and had a seating space
for one only. Also, with sufficient skill (which he must contrive,— and who could fail with such reward on landing?) the
Kestrels were capable of a very high speed indeed, though it was seldom
attempted. But, most important of all, he intended his plan to succeed by its
incredibility. If the flight were known, and the
disappearance of the Kestrel discovered, no one (he thought) would dream of
looking for them more than a hundred miles away.
Yet
it was with a natural doubt that he looked at P.N. 40 as he confessed his plan. Suicide was not a popular enterprise, even under
the conditions of life which have been vaguely indicated, and no man can invite
a young lady he scarcely knows to join him in a very probable drowning without some natural doubt as to the nature of
her reply.
But
P.N. 40 did not hestitate. Perhaps she did not realize the utter madness of
the project as clearly as she would have done had she had a wider experience of the air. Perhaps she had a confidence in this
audacious lover which might not have been felt by a more indifferent auditor.
"Oh,
yes, if you think a Kestrel's best. You ought to know," she answered
easily. "But you'd better go now, or we'll neither of us go anywhere. The
disk's changed colour twice already."
She
pointed to the signal which had twice reminded her of her remissness in
approaching the morning meal—a remissness of which she had not been guilty in a
score of previous years, and which could not continue for many seconds longer
without some emphatic interruption resulting.
48
V.C. turned reluctantly. He wanted to make clearer arrangements for meeting. He
wanted permission to come again, if the chance should offer. He wanted . . .
But the girl had no mind for a needless peril.
"Come
again? Of course not. Are you quite mad? Of course I
shall find it. I'm not a fool, really. The first night the indicator shows
below two-seven, I shall be there at half-past three. You needn't look for me
earlier. If the nights are fine till the twenty-eighth, I'll come then anyway.
. . . You'd better go while the sky's clear."
He
did not want to go. . . . He wanted to say good-bye, and lacking practice, he
was not sure how to begin. A night-passage to Brazil seemed a less formidable
enterprise.
He
looked uncertainly at the empty sky, and back into the room—and found it empty
also.
Then he went.
P.N. 40 might be willing to risk her life for
a lover. She might (which seemed to her a more serious consequence) he prepared
to abandon the amenities of civilized lite for his companionship. She was not
in the least disposed to risk everything which was at stake because he could
not understand that it was time to go.
iv
P.N. 40 entered the breakfast-hall bravely enough,
though she was conscious of the puzzled wonder of a hundred pairs of eyes that
were directed upon her, and her heart might well have failed at the thought
that she had already drawn inquiry, which might so easily turn to suspicion, in
her direction.
She was three minutes late, in a world in
which unpunctuality was as rare as manslaughter.
There
had been a period of many centuries during which men had learnt to rely upon
mechanical instruments, not only for recording, but lor notifying them of the
passage of time, and had become consequently almost insensitive to its
durations.
Then
a country schoolmaster, a Mr. Alfred Borton, had immortalized himself, and
revolutionized the organization of society, by observing that, if he
established a habit of feeding his flock of geese at seven minutes to four,
they would appear at his back-door at that time, neither before nor after, with
an exact punctuality. He had reflected that what is possible to a goose should
not Ik impossible to a man, and he had iirst
experimented with one of his own family, a child of three years, who had learnt
that it must leave its nursery at exact periods, ot which no indication was
given, for an adjoining meal-room, if it were to obtain the quantities of food
that it required, or the delicacies that it coveted. It was found that children
so trained could achieve automatic habits which would not vary more than from
seven to thirteen seconds from exact punctuality. They would observe the regularities
of an ordered household with no more conscious thought than they would give to
the separate movements of the limbs that bore them to the waiting table.
It
was natural, therefore, that Instructress 90 should have been alarmed and
puzzled as three successive minutes passed, at the end of each of which she had
given the signal, which should have been so needless, and which, she knew, must
have discoloured and agitated the warning disk which was fitted into every
bedroom to deal with such an emergency, belore P.N. 40 approached the table,
unaware of how successfully she was concealing the perturbations of her secret
mind.
The
Instructress was a lady of seventy, wearing the white dress of widowhood,
below the rose-pink collarette of honour which was the badge of the Sixth-Grade
Women. The lour red stars on her right sleeve were the number of her living
children. There were no grey disks of the dead. She was now a tall, somewhat
angular woman, with a rather long nose, and a high crown of greying hair. In
younger days, she had been a famous athlete.
She
had been born in the early days of the Second Era. She believed in it
absolutely.
The
glance which she gave to the approaching girl was shrewd, but kindly. She
guessed that some abnormal mental disturbance must have occasioned so startling
a breach of ordered living. It was not unusual for her to have to deal with
such a difficulty among the lower girls, though she had never before known it
to occur to one of her own grade, nor to have so disconcerting an evidence. A
Sixth-Grade girl was usually too sensible of the honour which was before her.
Also, they were not numerous. This year, P.N. 40 was the only one at the table
of Instructress 90.
"What
has happened?" she asked, as P.N. 40 lilted her chin courteously, and
seated herself at her right-hand.
"I was thinking ... I forgot."
The Instructress considered this impossible
answer.
"I trust it was not done deliberately?
After the scene of last night "
"Oh, no, Instructress. I am very sorry. 1 didn't
mean it at all. It won't happen again."
There
was an evident sincerity in the voice that answered. A
sincerity of regret which was unmistakable. And the tone was more
satisfactory than had been usual from P.N. 40. The matter must be reported. It
was too serious for a mere reprimand to condone it. But it might be less so
than she had feared. Perhaps an instinct of rebellion had culminated in this
outrageous breach of etiquette, and had produced a natural reaction. She said
no more.
P.N.
40 had to exercise a more severe self-discipline to avoid the friendlier
queries of her right-hand neighbour. R.E. 7 was a rather
heavily built girl, with very light hair, and small eyes. She was
wholesome and healthy, but not outwardly attractive. She wore the badge of the
Fifth-Grade only, her lack of physical beauty having excluded her from the
highest rank, to which she would otherwise have been eligible. The two girls
had been at the same seminary, and there was a tested and confident friendship
between them. P.N. 40 had been the captain of the Hockey Team which had won the
World Championship for three successive years, at Buda-Pesth, at Stockholm,
and at Pretoria. The success of this team was commonly attributed to P.N. 40
herself, who, from her forward position of inside-left, had shot more goals
than had been credited to a single player since the present championship had
been established. But P.N. 40 knew that the stability of the team, and the bulk
of her own opportunities, came from the rock like defence, and the skilful
feeding of the centre-hall-back behind her. In other ways, too numerous to
detail, too different tor brevity, she had learnt the reliability of her
companion. She would have told her all, when the opj>or-tunity came, with an
absolute confidence both in the reticence and the loyalty of the friendship
that would receive it. But the fear of the M.I. was upon her. The spoken word
might not be safe, in whatever privacy; even the articulated thought. . . .
R.E.
7 saw that her curiosity was unwelcome. She became silent, and P.N. 40 was
quickly joining in a foolish discussion which arose among the lower-grade girls
as to why the law did not allow an uneven number of wives (the gradations were
six, four, two, one, one-quarter and one-sixth), ami whether the single wife
allocated to Grade Three infringed this rule— a discussion which was allowed
good-humouredly by the Instructress, until it touched the borders of
impropriety, when she intervened with the silencing remark that such subjects
were more suitable for the class-room than the breakfast-table, and that she
would deal with it sufficiently at a future session, when the Routines of
Matrimony would be the subject of the day.
v
The days passed without any disturbing
incident, but also without the break ol weather for which P.N. 40 was watching
with a concealed anxiety, until the 27th of April, when the skies clouded
heavily and a cold tempestuous wind, veering unsteadily from one point of the
compass to another, resulted in the air-warning which brought all the
pleasure-planes to the crowded anchorages, and caused the freight-planes to
descend to the lower levels which the pleasure-planes had vacated. Only the
mile-high continental liners continued their scheduled way. indifferent
to any elemental discord.
That afternoon. Condor 5 descended to its aerodrome, reporting a strain on the hinge-expander of
the falling-tail, which would take two days to repair.
That
night, at 11:45, when, for three-quarters of an hour, the long lines of the
sleeping-bungalows had been dark and silent, P.N. 40, bare-headed, but clothed
in a suit of waterproofs, and with her most precious possessions slung from her
shoulders in an oilskin satchel, opened her bedroom window, and stepped quietly
out into the blackness of the driving rain.
The
method by which the grazing-park, which surrounded the great circle of the
sleeping-bungalows, was drained and irrigated does not concern us, except to
remark that it simplified the difficulty of finding a twelve-mile way through
the blinding rain which she had never traversed before, and for which her only
guidance was the red lights of the landing-platforms of the aerodrome she was
seeking.
This
aerodrome was, in fact, no more than a depot for pleasure-Kestrels, and a
government repairing-shed for planes of the lighter patterns. It had no
accommodation except for such as could easily come to earth, or which were so
built that they could settle on the landing-platforms. The flat fields of
Middlesex offered no security of anchorage for the larger airships, such as can
be found in the Devon coombes, or the valleys of Wales, where the largest plane
may inflate its buoys, and swing on shortened cables in defiance of storms from
whatever quarter. The nearest airport (and that an inferior one) was in the
Chillern Hills.
Yet,
however small in comparison with the major ports, the aerodrome was of
sufficient extent to make the place of appointment somewhat vague, even had
there been light to aid her. But P.N. 40 had spoken truly enough when she said
that she was no fool, and she now applied a simple logic to the problem before
her. He would know the path by which she would come, and she was here on the
night, and at the time, she had promised. She did not want to advertise her
presence. Secrecy was vital. She looked across the phosphorescent luminosity of
the boundary, waiting in the darkness (or any voice or movement to call her.
But
nothing stirred. There was only the scream of the wind through the
plane-platforms, and the nearer rattle of the rain.
Should
she call aloud, and perhaps bring the discovery which would be ruin ?
Should
she return, to lose the wild hope which she had hidden during those waiting
days? Perhaps to find that her absence had been discovered,
and to meet some terrible or shameful penalty?
She could not wait here for ever. . . .
Had he forgotten his promise?
Perhaps he thought the storm too bad for so
perilous an adventure. Perhaps he was asleep and unheeding, or far away in his
Condor, resting above the storm.
What
did she know of men, that she should trust him with her life so lightly? Sin,
as she had been taught from childhood. Folly, with its inevitable
fruit of pain.
So her thoughts warred, while she stood
patient and resolute in the storm. Lightning flickered, and a dark shape
showed, not fifty yards over the boundary.
Surely a Kestrel; and Kestrels are not left
out in such positions without reason through a night of storm. She had been a
fool, after all. But why had he given no signal?
She
must have stood so silently that he had supposed that she had not come.
So
they must have waited, each for the other, not fifty yards apart! And the vital
moments were passing. Thinking thus, she went confidently forward.
She
came to dim bulk of the Kestrel, for such it was. She had been right so far.
"Forty-eight," she
whispered, but there was no answer. Fearful, and trembling with an anxiety
which she could control no longer, she felt for the lighting-switch, and
illuminated the interior of the car. It was rainsoaked, and empty.
The
significance was too clear for any hope to survive it. If this were the chosen
car, it would at least have had a store of provisions and water, if not of a
hundred .things that they would need in their forest solitudes. . . .
She
heard the beat of the balance-wings as Condor 5 came to the ground beside her. It came down
with no pretence of concealment. Its landing-lights shone through the rain. She
was aware of the wail of the signal-sirens, and of long arms of light that
rose, stabbing the storm.
"Quick,"
said the voice of 48 V.C., "heave these things in. We've got two minutes,
with luck."
In the barbarous period of the twentieth
century, it had been customary to choose a Premier for his capacity to talk
loudly enough to engage the attention ol a numerous audience, vaguely enough to
avoid the danger of any absolute statement, and cunningly enough to conceal the
emptiness of his declarations. Having these qualifications, he might be a
lawyer or an iron founder, or (and more probably) a man of University
education, who was destitute of any practical knowledge, and without any
specialized occupation.
In the Second Eugenic Era such a leadership
would have been regarded with an astonishment which might not be entirely
unmerited. A government has many responsibilities. It must have many
departments. Hut, of all these, the most important must surely be the care of
the physique of the race itself, for the benefit of which the other departments
exist, and a man without expert knowledge on that greatest of earthly subjects
could be little fit to guide its destinies further.
Prolessor
Pilphit (66 D.T.) who held that office in the ninety-third year of that era,
was so conscious of the importance of the subject in which he had specialized
very brilliantly that he had himself taken charge of the Physical and Selection
Department, which had never been more vigorously administered than when under
his enthusiastic direction.
He had himself shown, in his well-known
monograph On the Psychology of the Adolescent, that the atavistic impulses of youth can be controlled without too
serious difficulty, providing that there be no discernible possibility of their
realization. A hope, however slender, that the law of allocation could be
successfully evaded, would be the cause of a multitudinous unrest, which might
require a stern severity of repression, or would cause the precarious
foundations of the youthful civilization which he controlled to shake beneath
him.
It
followed that every instance of erratic contact, however casual or trivial,
between the youths and girls of the separated seminaries, was regarded with the
importance of a seed from which a crop might develop which would choke the
healthy growth of the entire community. Professor Pilphit had given orders that
such instances should be reported instantly to himself,
and the escapade in which P.N. 40 had been involved with P.T. 69 had naturally
come before him. It had been shown that P.T. 69 had been primarily responsible
lor that incident, and she had been degraded accordingly, but P.N. 40 had
escaped any serious penalty, though her subsequent conduct had been very
closely watched, as had that of the youthful pilot who had effected her rescue.
The
report that the girl had been late for breakfast, without any credible
explanation, within a fortnight of the Branding Festival, had caused an instant
requisition upon the Ministry of Insight to expose the truth ol her conduct.
The
apparatus of the Ministry of Insight, at this period, had reached a point of
excellence of which it was difficult to take the fullest advantage.
Ic was no longer obstructed by intervening walls,
nor dependent upon visible light-rays for the photographs which it obtained. In theory, it could, and did, record every
incident ol the lives of every individual from Penzance to Wick, and it could
reproduce every audible sound they made from its records, not only of the
moving lips, but ol the diaphragm from which it came.
But
the very extent and quality of this success produced its own difficulty. How
could so vast an accumulation of records be stored, tabulated, developed?
There were difficulties not merely in their use, but even in their retention.
Without the application of a newly-discovered element of comparative rarity,
they faded within a few hours of their production.
The
result was that the records actually retained related to events of national
importance, to specimen records of selected lives, and to periodic photography
of the interiors of the bodies of the nation, this census being taken at
intervals of six or seven years, without public knowledge of the lime of its
incidence.
The
demand for the exposure of the actions of P.N. 40 on the occasion of her unpunetuality was made within seven minute*;
ol the circumstance coming to the Premier's knowledge, and within twenty-four
hours of its occurrence. Everything possible was done to supply his
requirements, but the result was incomplete, although sufficiently dreadful in
its disclosures to prove the use. indeed the
necessity, of these records, if anyone then living had been sufficiently
foolish to question it.
The
picture of the bedroom itsell had laded into a dim scene ol two figures which
did not appear to move about more than a little, or to approach very closely.
Nothing could be recovered of speech, or even of expression or gesture. But there was 3 clear record ol 48 V.C. leaving the
window, and making his covert return to the aerodrome. The expression of
his face was not that of one who has been suitably rebuked lor a very shameful ; e-j< is-..
Considering
this sinister episode, Professor Pilphit gave instructions for 7 special photograph of P.N. 40 to he taken,
and being satisfied therefrom tint she had, at least, preserved her physical
integrity, he decided to do nothing further for the moment, but to watch the
delinquents very closely until she should have passed into the care ol her
selected husband.
The reports he received were satisfactory until
the morning of the 27th 01 April.
P.N. 40 was punctual in attendance ai her meals and classes. She seemed placid
and cheerful. She look an intelligent interest in the
instructions she was receiving in the Seven Duties of Marriage. 48 V.C. was
occupied on his patrol, and had shown no disposition to descend to the aerodrome,
nor consciousnc.: oi the existence ol P.N. 40. There had certainly been no communication between them. Professor
Pilphit began to hope that the incident might pis; without consequence If so, ii would be best for many reasons that nothing should
be done to revive it.
When,
on the morning of the 27th, he heard that V.C. had descended with a report of
damage to his machine, he was cautious, but not alarmed. He inquired as to the
nature of the alleged damage, and learnt that it wm certainly genuine. It did not render the machine unfit for flight, but
it might render landing dangerous in a rough wind. 48 V.C.
had been right to report
it. It might have been wiser to do so earlier. Certainly, it would have been
wrong to continue Hying in the storm which had now risen, with such a delect unremedied.
All
this seemed right enough, but the Premier took no risks. He ordered a
police-officer to remain in the company of 48 V.C. until he should return to
the air, and to report telepathicaliy to his private instrument, to avoid the
delay of communicating through the Ministry of Insight, should any suspicious
circumstance require it. It is to his lasting honour that the possibility did
not enter his mind that P.N. 40 could be so shameless
as to go out into the night to seek her lover.
It followed that when 48 V.C. strolled into
the mess-room, having (very fortunately) already arranged, on some plausible
pretext, for a carefully-selected Kestrel to be left lor the next twenty-four
hours near the boundary of the aerodrome, he found a certain Police-Inspector,
17 T.P., with whom he already had some acquaintance, had developed a
friendliness which he was very disinclined to welcome, but which he found it
impossible to shake off.
Alter some hours of abortive fencing, when
the necessity of obtaining supplies lor the Kestrel was becoming desperately
urgent, he attacked his persecutor with a direct inquiry.
"You
seem very fond of me today, Inspector. Have you been told to watch me?"
"Yes," said the Inspector.
"Why," asked 48 V.C.
"I don't know."
"Are you reporting everything I
do?" "Yes."
"Everything I say?" "No."
"Well, that's something."
48
V.C. had exceptionally good nerves, or he would not have been a Condor-pilot at
twenty-three. He showed no sign of more annoyance than would be natural under
such circumstances. Very quickly, he thought of an audacious expedient.
"Well,
il you've got to come around with me, you might lend
me a hand. I'm going to load up Condor 5, ready to fly as soon as the repair is
finished."
"She'd
fly all right now, if you wanted to get away from me," said the Inspector.
"Yes, but I don't," said 48 V.C.
lie
commenced, with his companion's help, to load the well of the Condor with an
unusually well-assorted store of food and water. He thought ol tools, and many
miscellaneous things, which might be useful in the air. He explained that he
never knew what accidents he might have to succour, or in what distant places.
"Are you reporting all this?" he
asked pleasantly.
"Yes," said the Inspector.
"You
might tell them that it looks as though I mean
to disappear altogether."
"You couldn't do that," said the
Insjiector. "Not in a Condor, anyway."
"I suppose not," said 48 V.C.,
laughing. "I'd better alter my plans."
The
Inspector laughed also. He did not take him seriously. They both knew that in
the chartroom or the Ministry of the Air, the location of every machine with a
metallically-responsive hull could be told at any moment, within half-a-mile in
either altitude or direction. Only the Kestrels were built of the commoner
metals, and their little Hutterings were outside the knowledge, as they were
beneath the notice, of the chartroom records.
It
was after three a.m. when 48 V.C. rose from his berth in the dormitory, and
commenced dressing.
"What's the game?" inquired the
Inspector, rising with an equal alertness.
"It's
the weather," said 48 V.C. "I think the things in the Condor may need
moving."
"Are
you gone crazy?" said the Inspector. He began to understand why he had
been detailed to watch this young pilot, in whom insanity was developing so
rapidly. A sad case. He followed him out into the
storm.
"Inspector,"
said 48 V.C. from his seat in the Condor, "it's a bad night for flying.
You weren't told to come with me, were you? You'd better go back and report."
"I
can report without going back," said the Inspector grimly. He wiped the
rain from his eyes to watch the Condor as it rose abruptly into the air, and
circled back to the further side of the aerodrome. There was something here for
which prompt action might be needed. The next moment his whistle shrilled
through the darkness. For the last news he had sent had closely followed an
alarming telepathic report from Instructress 90 that the room of P.M. 40 was
empty, and orders had come to arrest the fugitives by any method, without
regard to their lives, if they should attempt resistance, or their flight
continue.
There were running feet within ten yards as
the Kestrel felt the impulse of the release, and rose clear of the hands that
clutched in vain in the rain-drenched darkness for the mooring-ropes, which
they guessed that she must be trailing behind her.
"Won't
they follow?" she asked, as he switched off the car-light, and the
darkness closed them. Harshly, through the noises of the storm, there came the
useless barking of an Elston gun.
"Not
in Condor 5," he
answered. "I've seen to that. They may in others, but they won't have them
out for five minutes yet, and how will they find us then?"
He
laughed excitedly, and then became tense and cool, as he saw a streak of light
that searched the sky turn from white to orange-red as he watched ir. The
Kestrel swerved to his steering, so th.it the g'rl was thrown against the
side ol the ear in the darkness-.
"What's
the matter?" she said, laughing at the mishap, in contempt of a bruised
shoulder. "Do you usually steer like thai?"
"I may do it worse." he answered.
"Don't talk now. Get the straps on quickly. Don't switch the light."
She
knew that it was no lime for talking, as she groped in
the dark lor the first strap she could find which would serve to hold her in
the swaying plane.
Overhead, the red light moved incessantly,
probing the night.
Flying
low, with frantic dashes, right or left, as the blind search pursued them, the
Kestrel dodged like a snipe, till, perilously low, it passed over the great
circle of the sleeping-bungalows, and the public halls which they surrounded,
with the lighted tower in the centre.
P.N. 40 spoke at last, with a natural
question.
"Did
it matter so much if they saw us? They knew we were there." She was
puzzled, realizing that they must have circled round, while they might have
been filty miles away.
He
answered: "I didn't think they'd have done that. We're
safe now, if we fly low lor a time, but I had
to get the rise of the land between us. No, the searchlight wouldn't have
mattered. Not while it was white. But the orange-red is meant to kill. We
should have shrivelled up like a cinder if it had once settled upon us. . . .
Do you mind?"
He
spoke with a sudden contrition for the reckless perils into which he had lured
her. . . . Her of whom he had dreamed, unhoping. . . . This
stranger who touched his knee.
She
did not answer in words, but he had switched on the car lights, and her eyes
spoke clearly.
"We
shall be steadier now, for a time," he said, "if the wind holds as it
is." They began to plane upward. Side by side, they settled themselves
into the seats in such comfort as the space allowed. For ecstatic breathless moments
they forgot everything but themselves. The wonder of the new
companionship; the joy of the distant goal.
The
speed increased to the maximum. They knew now that they were out over the
Channel. The light in the open car made the surrounding blackness more
absolute. There was no steadiness in the wind, which drove gustily. Out of the
darkness the storm came in heaving oceans ol air through which the flying speck
of the little Kestrel fought, and swayed, and faltered. It was colder now, and
the rain had become sleet in their faces.
"They won't find us?" she asked.
"Not
they," he said confidently. He felt fairly sure of that, during the
darkness at least—though he had been startled by the use of the orange ray, and
the ruthless purpose which it showed. Fie meant to be very lar
across the sea before the light should aid them.
But
he knew that there was an even greater peril in the flight itself—a peril which
he could only guess, for no one had ever put a Kestrel to such a test before .
. . and in such weather as this, with the length of the Atlantic before them!
"Can I help?" she
said, after a time.
"Not
yet," he answered. "I can keep on for a long while yet. I'll tell you
when I get tired. You'd better sleep now."
Soaring
still, the straining body of the little Kestrel fought its bitter way through
the storm, and she slept beside him. Should it fail, as at any moment it
might, should the frail parts snap at pressures which they had not been made to
meet—well, it would be useless to wake her. He knew they could not go on for
very long like this. There might be better weather if he still went upward. He
knew that he had reached a level where there was an added danger in the
darkness. Any moment an air-liner, shouldering its smooth contemptuous passage
through the night, might strike them broken-winged to the water, and pass on,
unaware of their triviality. But it was the only chance they had. His foot
pressed harder on the soaring-lever, and the wing-beats quickened. They went
upward through the storm.
vm
There was a murmur of protest in the
Telescenic Laboratory. • "They want us to find a Kestrel—in
the night!" "Where?"
"Within fifty miles of
Brentwood."
"It
can't be done. . . . There's no responsive metal in a Kestrel. How can we tell
where to look?"
"Why
can't they wait till morning? We can't miss it when it comes down. A Kestrel
can't go far."
"They say it first circled low, and then
rose, and headed south."
"Well, we've got to try."
"South? It can't go far that way. Does it want to fall into the Channel?"
The
operators might murmur, but the words of protest were over in ten seconds, and
already the crackling sounds of the batteries, and the droning of the great
disks, showed that the search had started.
For
twenty minutes the swift miles of magnetic air passed before the eyes of the
operators, luminous as though unaware either of storm or darkness, before they
found the speck they sought in the immensity of the night.
Nearly two miles up, they reported, heading south-west for the Channel.
Can it last? came the query.
may be blown bac{. It is facing the storm. But it is making for the open sea.
Can it live, if it docs not return to land?
On the screen, the Chief Operator studied the
driving blur of the storm for some minutes further before he answered the
query. A wind-tossed Kestrel showed faindy. Lightning flickered around it.
Knowing
that it had no electric control, he looked for it to crumple and disappear, but
it still kept onward.
Its course was rapid, but so erratic at times
that they had difficulty in keeping the sights upon it.
He
noticed that it was still climbing upward, between the bufferings of the storm.
Then
he saw that it was falling—falling fast. Was it injured? He thought it righted
for a moment, and then he lost it.
They
searched for it to the limits of height which they could reach, and downward
till they skimmed the blackness of the heaving sea,
but they could not find it again.
Did
it matter whether it were already beneath the waters, or a windblown atom in
the screaming heights? There could be only one end. He ordered them to give up
the useless search.
He reported: It is out of
sight, and is probably sun already. If
it be still flying, it must return, or fail and perish. It is unfit far such a
flight, and the air to southward is foul with crossing storms.
He
spoke of failure, not understanding that they had triumphed already. For all
men die, but few live.
ik
Far
up, far over the Atlantic wastes, the little craft, with ks two warmhearted
lovers, beat upward through the snow-swept night, upward against the fury of
the freezing wind, still upward . . . upward ...
to over-ride the storm.
The Master
Ants---------------------------------------
by Francis Fla&fc
Every
now uml again we wilt read someone's alarmist speculations concerning the
insect menace. Anyt,nc who has ever had to worry about
termites, ants, roaches, and crop pests, will understand perfectly just how
tough an opponent the insect world is. Hut are insects capuhle o] intelligence?
In one of the interesting boo(S written
about the lying saucers, Gerald Heard has ad vain ed a
serious case in favor of the intellectual
standing of bees and ants. If sack be the case, the failure of these insects to seiiouslv menace us may
be merely a mutter of bad eyesight—they
can't recognize us for what we are. tram is Hugg's speculation on the mustering ants
is food for thought.
T
JL
HE thing is a hoax." "Palpably a hoax." "And yet the handwriting
is theirs." "Or a forgery."
"A clever forgery
then.
Schultz is a handwriting expert, you know, and he declares
the signatures to be genuine." "But the thing is incredible."
The
two men looked at each other helplessly. One was a Doctor of Science; the other
a nationally-known criminal lawyer. Several days before a strange thing had
happened. The nationally-known lawyer had been dining with his family in his
home on Tanglewood Road, Berkeley, California, when what was at first taken to
be an infernal machine of some sort dropped in the midst of the dinner table
with a crash, upsetting the table and narrowly missing injuring the diners with
its flying wreckage. Yet, as it was the rainy season and the evening was damp
and raw, no windows had been open; nor did investigation show any ol the panes
or sashes to have been broken, as would have been the case had the machine been
hurled through them. In short, save tor some spatters ol lood and a few dents
in the walls made by the flying metal, the room was
intact. Only one door had been open at the time, the door leading into the kitchen;
and the kitchen had been occupied by the cook, a middle aged lady who had been
in the employ of the lawyer tor five years.
Seemingly, the infernal contraption had materialized out of thin air. As if
this were not startling enough, there was the manuscript.
"I found it," said the lawyer,
"in the midst of the wreckage." The third member of the party, an
ordinary practising M.D., examined
the
manuscript with curiosity. It had evidently been tightly rolled and was yellow,
as if with age.
"You
say," he said, "that this purports to be a message from two men who
dropped out of existence some twelve months ago. As I am only visiting in the
East Bay for a few weeks, I am not acquainted with the facts of their
disappearance. If it wouldn't be too much trouble . . ."
"Not
at all," replied the Doctor of Science. "John Reubens was a fellow
professor of mine at the University and held the chair of Physics. Raymond Bent
was a student, working his way through college by doing secretarial work for
him. Reubens was a man of about forty-odd, well-known in scientific circles as
a brilliant, if somewhat eccentric, physicist. In fact, he had studied under,
and once collaborated with, Jacques Loeb, before the death of that great
mechanist. He lived with his widowed sister in a large, old-fashioned house on
Panoramic Way, and had a splendidly equipped laboratory there in which he
carried out strange experiments of his own. I will frankly confess that while
we acknowledged him to be a brilliant man in some respects, the majority of
other professors thought him a nut because ol wild theories he was wont to
voice in relation to time. On the other hand, he made no secret of regarding us
as so many 'Dumb Doras' without vision enough to see beyond the tips ol our
noses. That's the best picture I can give you of the man who went into his
laboratory with his secretary on the 14th of October, 1926, and never came out
again! But let his sister give you her version of the affair. I clipped this
interview with her out of the San Francisco Examiner and saved it."
The M.D. took and read the proffered piece of
paper.
"At
four o'clock Raymond Bent came and I let him in by way of the side door. He
chatted with me a few minutes belore going to the laboratory, where my brother
was. The laboratory is on the second floor and I had occasion to pass it
several times on my way to and from my bedroom. My brother never told me about
his experiments, and it was understood I was never to enter his workroom. One
time the door was ajar and I saw the two of them standing by some sort of a
machine. That is all, except, at about four-thirty, when I was passing the
laboratory door on my way downstairs, I heard a terrible crash. I guess it was
a pretty bad one, because all the plaster was knocked oil the ceiling in the
room below. When my brother didn't answer my call, I got frightened and went
in. Things were upset— you know, basins and things—but neither Bent nor my
brother was there."
The
article went on to state that Reuben's sister admitted that the machine had
also disappeared.
"Some
bright reporters," remarked the Doctor of Science, "got to speculating
if the professor hadn't hopped off in some sort ol an airship he had built; but
the theory wouldn't stand up against the fact that while one end of the
laboratory was all glass, and the great door-like windows swung wide open, a
crow could hardly have winged its way through the iron grilling, which
protected them on the outside."
"Wasn't
there talk of missing money in connection with the affair?" asked the M.D.
"Seems to me, now, that I do recall reading the case. Only . . ."
The nationally-known lawyer nodded.
"Unfortunately, yes. At the time of his disappearance, the professor had
drawn twenty thousand dollars of his sister's money from the bank for
reinvestment. The money had been issued to him in Treasury notes of one
thousand dollars each. Some people were uncharitable enough to find in this
fact full explanation of his disappearance. However, notes bearing the serial
numbers of those issued to him have never appeared on the market, as far as is
known."
At
this juncture the doorbell rang and a few minutes later the president ol the
university and two members of the faculty were ushered in. When they were
seated, the lawyer addressed the gathering.
"I
take it that everyone of you is aware of why I have
asked you here tonight." He held up the manuscript. "My letters, I
believe, explained adequately how this document came into my possession. It
only remains lor me to say that I have submitted it, with specimens of the
handwritings of Professor Reubens and Raymond Bent, to Herman Schultz, the
chirograph-ist, and he pronounces the writing and signatures in the manuscript
to be identical with that of the specimens submitted."
The
president of the university nodded. "1 believe
that is clear to all of us. The manuscript is held to have been written in the
hand of Raymond Bent, and bears both his signature and that of Professor
Reubens. Very well, then. We are acquainted with the
peculiar manner in which you received it, but as yet are unaware of its
contents. If you would kindly read the communication to us . . ."
Thus
bidden, the lawyer cleared his throat and read what is probably the strangest
document ever penned by human hand:
Whether
any human eye, in the age 1 have left behind me forever, may chance to read
this writing, I do not know. 1 can only trust to Providence and send what I
have written into the past with the Itrvent prayer that it will lull into the
hands of intelligent people and be made known to the American public.
When
I came into the Professor's laboratory on the afternoon of October 14, 1926, I
had not the slightest inkling of the terrible fate that was so soon to befall
me. If I had, I would probably have fled in horror from the place. The
Professor was so absorbed in tinkering with the mechanism ol the machine which
had engrossed his interest for nearly two years, that
he did not at first notice my entrance. I picked up a book lying open on a
stand to one side of him. It was H. G. Wells' "The Time Machine." I
smiled at the absurdity of a great professor being interested in such truck.
The Professor turned and caught me smiling. "Impossible fiction," I
remarked, with what, God help me, was an illy-concealed sneer.
"Fiction, yes," replied the
Professor, "but why impossible?"
"Surely you don't think there is
anything possible about this?" I exclaimed.
"Yes, I do."
"But to travel in something that has no
reality!"
"What is reality? The earth on which we stand? The sea on
which we sail? The air through which we
fly? Have they any existence outside of the attributes with which our
senses endow them?"
"Hut
I can touch the earth," I protested, "I can feel the sea, but I
cannot touch or handle time."
"Neither
can you touch or handle space," said the Professor dryly, "but you
move in it: and if you were to move through space, say from this spot to the
City Hall in Oakland, you would probably calculate the journey took you fifty
minutes of time. In that sense time would have a very real significance (or
you, and you would have moved in it to the extent of fifty minutes. But if I
ask you why it isn't possible to move ahead in time not fifty minutes, but
fifty centuries, you consider me insane. Your trouble is that of most people,
my boy; the lack of enough imagination to lift your brains out of the
accustomed rut."
"Perhaps
so," I replied, reddening angrily; "but, save in fiction, who has
ever invented a time machine?"
"I
have," answered the prolessor. He smiled at my look of disbelief.
"Now this thing," he added, patting the mechanical creation
affectionately, "is a Time Machine."
It
was the first time he had ever told me what his invention was supposed to be.
"You mean it will travel into the
future?" I asked skeptically. "If my calculations are correct—and I
have every reason to believe they are —then this machine will take us into the
future." "Us!" I echoed.
He
walked over and shut the door with a bang. "Have you any objections to
taking such a trip?"
"None at all," I lied, thinking the
chances of doing so were very remote.
"That
is splendid. Then there is nothing to prevent our giving the machine a trial
this afternoon."
The
machine had two seats, with backs probably two feet high. The Professor sealed
me in one of them, while he occupied the other. "Just as a precaution to keep
you from falling out," he smiled, buckling me in with a broad leather
belt. In front of himself he swung a shell-like section of the apparatus on
which was arranged a number o! dials and clock-like
instruments. In some respects—save for the clocks—the shelf resembled the
surface of a radio board. Whatever cogs and wheels there might be were hidden
in the body of the machine, under our feet.
"That,"
said the Prolessor, indicating a dial, registers the years and centuries; the
one next to it, the weeks, days and hours; and this handle," he touched a
projecting lever, "controls the machine." Before sitting down, he had
lilted the bottom from his seat and revealed below it a hollow space filled
with tools and provisions. "It is the same with your chair," he said
with satisfaction, "and if you examine the leather belt, which holds you
in, you will discover that it also acts as the holster for a Colt automatic and
a box of spare cartridges." He settled himself comfortably in his seat and
grasped the lever. "Arc you ready, my boy?"
So
business-like was his manner, so self-assured, that for a moment a qualm of
doubt assailed me. What if the confounded thing were to work! Then my
commonsense got the upper hand again. Of course it wouldn't! Already I began to
feel sorry for the professor. At my nod of assent, he pressed down on the
lever. The machine shook; there was a purring
noise; but that was all. I smiled, partly with relief, partly with derision.
"What's the matter?" I asked; and even as I spoke the whole room spun
like a giddy top and dissolved into blackness. The
roaring of a million cataracts dazed, and stunned me. There was an awful
sensation of turning inside out, a terrible jolt, and then it was all over and
I was lying sprawled out and half senseless in a wreck of disintegrating iron and steel. My first thought, of course, was
that we were still in the laboratory. The machine had turned over, or exploded,
and nearly killed me. That's what
came of listening to bughouse professors and their crazy inventions! I felt my
head and limbs blindly. Sound enough, I seemed, save for a few scratches and
bruises. I struggled to sit up; as I did so, I came face to lace with an old man with a tangled mane of gray hair and an unkempt beard. It was several minutes
before I realized that I was looking at the professor. Even as I did so, I became conscious of the fact that black
whiskers hung down on my own breast and that the top of my head was as bald as
a billiard ball. I looked around and saw that we were lying on a prairie-like expanse of country. Some trees were far off to one side and
the immediate plain was covered with stunted bushes and tufts of grass.
Anything more different from the laboratory could not well be imagined. As I
stared stupefied, not yet realizing the awful truth, the Professor gave a
deprecating cough.
"I'm
afraid," he said in a voice that was his, yet curiously changed, "I'm
afraid I overlooked a very vital thing." He shook his head. "How I
was so stupid as not to think of it, I can't
understand."
"Think of what?"
I mumbled.
"Of the almost elementary fact that as we journeyed into the future
our bodies would age."
His words brought me to my senses. Incredible
as it seemed, this was the future. At least we had come to rest on some other
spot than that of the laboratory. And undoubtedly physical changes had taken
place in the Prolessor and myself.
"We must return at
once!" I cried.
"Of course,"
replied the Professor, "at once. Put how?"
I looked at him dumbly.
"As
you see," he remarked, picking up a piece of rusted, crumbling metal,
"the machine just kept going until it was so old it fell to pieces. My
boy, we have had a lucky escape."
"A
lucky escape!" I echoed.
"Yes;
for if the machine had not worn out when it did we would have gone on until we
perished from old age."
"But
I thought you told me once that old age was not caused by the passing of
time."
"1 did; but you can readily understand that in our journey through time wc encountered more or less friction from environment. Of
course the faster we traveled through a century, say. the
less action of environment on our bodies there would be in a given period of
lime. But still there would be enough to age us after awhile. At least, such
seems to have been the case." "How far have we come?" I asked.
"I
don't know. All my instruments are destroyed. As you see, the machine is
junk."
"But we can build another." "What with?"
I groaned. Machine, tools, weapons, all were
gone. Cod knows how many centuries in the future, we stood on a bleak prairie, middle-aged and old, the rotting clothes
billing from our backs, with only our bare hands to protect us from whatever
dangers might lurk lor us in this new and unknown age. With despairing eyes 1 stood up and scanned the horizon. "Look, professor, look!" 1 cried, seizing him by the shoulder. "Aren't those men running
towards us?"
The
professor focussed his eyes in the direction my finger pointed. Perhaps a hall
mile away, having seemingly just topped a rise, was a body of what appeared to
be men. Even at that distance something about them looked peculiar; and when
they came nearer we saw that they were running with bowed backs, their heads
jutting at almost right angles with their bodies, and their arms dangling
loosely in front of them.
"Those
are the queerest looking men I've ever seen," I said in alarm, looking
around lor a weapon to defend myself with in case of attack, and plucking up
the only thing available, a piece of rusted iron. The professor did likewise.
Thus armed, we stood up to await their approach, for there
was no place to hide, and nothing behind which we could find shelter. Perhaps
three hundred yards away the odd men spread
out into a semi-circle. There were probably twenty-five or thirty ol them, naked, with not even a breach-clout, shaggy ol hair and beard, and with hair almost as heavy as
fur running down their backs and on the weather sides oi their arms and legs.
They continued coming at a last gallop; but just when it seemed they would run
on and over us, they reared back—much as do horses when reined in—and came to
an abrupt stop, shaking their heavy manes, and pawing at the ground with their
feet.
"Very
peculiar; very peculiar indeed." said the Prolessor thoughtfully.
"Except lor the clearly defined features of their faces and the general
structure ol their bodies, one would not take them lor men at all."
"They
seem more like apes." I retorted.
"I hope they're not as savage as they look. Speak to them. Professor, before they start something, and see if they can't talk."
The
Professor held up one hand in a peaceful gesture and look a step forward. He raised his voice so as to make it
carry across the thirty or forty feet which still separated the shaggy men from
us.
"We
are American travelers!" he shouted. "Is there any among you who can
talk English?"
The only response to this was a snorting and
a rearing, accompanied by a
rustling sound which affected the nerves disagreeably. Several of the shaggy
men broke from the circle, doing a great deal of plunging and rearing before
reluctantly coming back into formation again.
"By
God, Professor," I said fervently, the goose-flesh appearing on my body, "1 don't like this at all."
The
Professor repeated his question in French, Spanish, Italian; he asked it in Portuguese, and in what he later told me were several Indian
dialects; but all to no purpose. Only every time he paused to catch his breath,
there came that dry rustling as of the rasping of metal on metal. Suddenly he
stepped back and caught me by the shoulder.
"Those
creatures," he whispered, gesturing towards the shaggy men, "are
controlled."
"Controlled!" I exclaimed. "What do you mean?"
"That there is something on their shoulders."
I
thought the Professor was taking leave of his senses. "What could it
possibly be," I began, then stopped, for the
shaggy men were in motion. They divided, one group going to the right of us and
the other to the left. In our rear they joined ranks and made us retreat before
them. It was then I caught my first glimpse of the unbelievable riders that
perched on their shoulders and rode them, much as human beings ride horses.
Long antennae reached down on either side of the shaggy men's faces, gripping
the corners of their mouths and serving to guide them as with bit and bridle.
Other antennae waved in the air, or rubbed one on the other, producing the
rasping noise which had so grated on my nerves. The bodies to which these antennae
were attached were about a foot in length.
"In
the name of God, what are they, Professor?" I screamed, half raising my
piece of iron as if to throw it at the slowly advancing horrors. But the
Professor gripped my arm. "Don't start fighting," he warned sternly,
"unless you have to. As to what they are, I'm not certain, but I believe
them to be some sort of ant-like insects."
We
retreated, slowly at first, then at a brisk walk, finally at a trot. When we
moved in a given direction the insects were content to keep their steeds at a
distance; but when we veered from it they urged on the shaggy men to head us
off.
"1
believe those insects are driving us in front of
them as men herd cattle," gasped the Professor.
We
topped a rise and saw stretching away before us a level plain. Far out on this
plain—several miles away, perhaps—were numerous mounds, and it did not take us
long to suspect that they were our destination. Several times the Professor
sank to the earth, utterly winded, unable to run another step. At such times, I
stood over his body with my iron club, determined to sell our lives dearly, but
there was no need to fight. The shaggy men were brought to a halt and their
uncanny riders waited patiently until the Professor could regain his feet,
when we were once more urged ahead at a brisk pace.
Night
had fallen and it was almost too dark to see when we finally staggered through
a narrow gap into a large enclosure and were left to our own devices. The
splash of water led us to a stream, where we slaked our thirst and bathed our
sore and swollen feet; and then, too miserable and tired to care what further
happened to us, we huddled together for warmth and fell
asleep.
Several hours later, the Professor and I
awoke, chilled to the bone. And no wonder! For we were
practically naked, only shreds of cloth clinging to our backs. The moon
was riding high overhead, making the enclosure as light as day. Now and then
the silence would be broken with a shrill scream or a heavy snort. Once or
twice we heard the metallic slithering of antennae; and once, in looking up, I
saw an insect crawling on top of a mound, its sinuous body etched sharply
against the sky. I shivered with more than the cold. "Professor," I
whispered, "is this a nightmare or am I really
awake?"
"I'm
very much afraid that both of us are wide awake," said the Professor with
a sigh.
"But
it doesn't seem possible," I exclaimed. "Those bugs
. . . My God, Professor, what has happened to the world!"
The
Professor pulled thoughtfully at his unkempt beard. "I don't know. In our
day there were scientists who held insects to be a growing menace to man's
rule. Perhaps . . . But you could see for yourself that those ants rode
men!"
"Were they men?"
"Yes; I believe they
were."
"But their hair?"
"Could be accounted for by the fact that they were exposed, naked,
to all kinds of weather. The fit, in this case, the strong, hairy ones, would survive and breed.
A few centuries of such breeding could possibly produce the type we saw."
The thought of a world in which insects were
the dominant species and men subject to them as beasts of burden, filled me
with horror. If such were the case, what would our fate be? In spite of the
chill night wind, in spite of the lact that we were cold and hungry, I dreaded
the morning. But daylight came at last, and then we were better able to
examine our surroundings. The enclosure was probably a half mile square and
fenced in with an irregular line of mounds anywhere from ten to twenty feet
high. Across the stream from us, bedded against the walls of a mound, were
several hundred of the shaggy men. Soon after daylight they were afoot and came
down to the stream to drink, wading into the water, in some cases, up to the
waist, and drinking with an animal-like abandonment that filled me with
disgust. It couldn't be possible that those creatures had once been human
beings like the professor and myself. No, no! It
seemed incredible that mankind could ever have fallen so iow.
Some of the shaggy men crossed the stream to
view us more closely. Most of these were females, stooping forward as they
walked. One of them came quite close to us, uttering plaintive cries, and the
Professor stepped forward in an attempt to speak to her. At this a great
hulking bull of a fellow, with fiery red hair that glinted in the sun, and who
would have stood well over six feet if he had straightened up, rushed at the
Professor with a roar. The latter retreated hastily; whereupon
the leader of the herd—for you could have called the gathering of shaggy men
nothing else than a herd, and the red-haired giant the leader of
it—turned upon the females, and with blows of his fists and sundry kicks of his
splay feet, drove them back across the stream where they all, men, women and
children, took to grubbing in the ground for some sort of roots.
"And you call them human," I said
to the Professor.
"They once were."
I shook my head. "Those creatures are
bent almost double. Even the children are so formed, and the posture seems a
natural one to them." "Perhaps they were bred for that
characteristic." "Bred!"
"Why not? If things arc as I suspect, then those men
have become the domestic animals of the insects. In the beginning they were
probably bent double by bearing the weight of their riders. Acquired
characteristics are, of course, generally conceded to be uninheritable, but
little is known of the possibilities of variation—what effects
the constant doing of a thing may have on the germ-plasm. It is possible that
mutations with certain peculiari-ics of structure were born and men, such as
you see, bred from them."
Before
I could make reply, we had our first leisurely view of one of the ant like
insects. It suddenly appeared on top of a ten-foot mound a few yards from where we stood. Its body was in three segments of an
almost metallic blackness, being raised, on stilted feet, about eight inches
from the ground. Four feelers, or antennae, waved in the air or rasped one on
the other, and were attached to a mobile head. There was no indication of eyes,
yet the weird thing paused in one spot for all ol five minutes, as if intently
regarding us, and I, for one, believed that it could see. Other
insects appeared on the mounds, and soon the air was lull of metallic
slithering. At the sound, the males of the shaggy herd pricked up their ears,
stamped the ground with their feet, and then continued feeding. On the other
hand, the females ran towards the mounds, stretching up their hands to the
insects on top of them, and calling out with imploring cries. Then we witnessed
a strange sight. The ants crawled down the wall
in one stream, paused beside a female for a moment or two, and then crawled up the wall again in another. It was a few minutes before the reason for this dawned on me.
"Good Lord, Protessor!" I exclaimed
suddenly, "they're milking them!"
It
was true. The females of the shaggy men were so many cows being milked. Again
the horror of our position came over me. We were castaway
in a future age where man no longer was lord and master. Instead, be was a beast to be driven like a horse, milked like a
cow, and—since ants ate meat, or used to—slaughtered like an ox. I wiped the
cold sweat from my forehead.
"Professor," I said, "we must
escape from here." "Of course," replied the Professor; "but
how—and where to?" There was no answer to make. The mounds hemmed us in;
and even if we could get beyond them and away from our present captors, there
were doubtless other mounds and other insects who
would capture us. If the world was really in the hands of ants, then we were
animals to be hunted down, tamed or killed. This age into which we had
blundered was not safe for man—at least, not for civilized man. I closed my
eyes to shut out the horrible sight of crawling insects. I tried to shut my
ears to the sound of insane slithering, but heard readily enough when the
Professor said somewhat nervously, "My boy, I believe they're coming over
here." Three of the ants had mounted on the backs of shaggy men and were
trotting them towards us. I looked desperately around for my piece of iron. It
was gone. So was the Professor's. Someone or something had removed them while
we slept. Nor was there anything else that could be used as a weapon. In this
dilemma we turned and ran, but were soon overtaken. Two of the shaggy men
closed in on me, while the third held the Professor powerless. I fought like a fiend; but the four hands of the shaggy men were like iron bands, the
grip of their fingers like vises. In a few minutes I was helpless. Then came the crowning horror. One of the insects dismounted from
the back of its steed and climbed on mine. At the feel of its suction-like legs
on my flesh I went crazy. The muscles writhed in horrified protest under my
skin. I bit and screamed and lashed out with my feet. All to
no avail. Relentlessly, the loathsome thing clambered upwards until it
had settled itself firmly on neck and shoulders. Two antennae reached down my
cheeks, gripping the corners of my mouth and clamping themselves there. Almost
at the same instant the shaggy men loosed their grip of men and I was free. For
a moment I stood still, dazed and trembling;
then the antennae gave a pull at my mouth, wrenching the head back with a cruel
jerk. With a scream of pure terror, I plunged forward in a mad leap, clawing upwards with my hands at the awful incubus on my
shoulders, tearing futilely at the antennae which gripped my mouth. And as I
fought to unseat the inhuman rider perched on my shoulders, I knew what I was:
I was a horse being broken, a wild mustang, knowing
for the first time the torture of bit and saddle, of spur and quirt; I was an
inferior animal being conquered, beaten, trained by a superior one. The blind,
unreasoning fear I felt, a thousand
wild horses being brought under the yoke of all-powerful man must have felt. I
ran—it seemed lor ages—goaded, spurred, until I could run no more. My gait
slackened, became a trot, a walk. Finally I stood still, frothing blood and
saliva at the mouth, gulping painfully lor air, trembling in every limb. The
incredible insect breathed me for a few minutes before again urging me into a
trot. I made no protest. I was beaten, cowed. The antenna on the left pulled; I
went to the left. The one to the right tugged; I went to the right. My rider
drove me past mounds where ants perched watching, much as cowboys of the past
were wont to straddle corral fences and observe one of their number
perform. They slithered what was undoubtedly their applause. For about twenty
minutes I was put through my paces; made to walk, canter, circle, wheel and
stop at command. Finally the insect slid from my shoulders and I sank to the
ground, too miserable and distraught to care whether 1 lived or died. I flinched and closed my eyes when it patted me with its
antennae and slithered soothingly, much as a man might pat a horse and at the time say, "There,
there, old hoy, don't be afraid." Afterwards a quantity of raw vegetables
and what appeared to be coarse grain cakes were tossed to me and the insect
went away. I lay there for a long time, hardly stirring a
linger, when the Professor
came up and sat down beside
me.
"No," he said, "they didn't
ride me. Too old, perhaps." He picked up a grain
cake and gnawed at it hungrily. "Try one, my boy, they're not hall bad.
Besides you'll feel better if you eat something."
I
suppose it seems queer to tell it, but we sat there on the rough grass, with
the slithering ants coming and going about their business, and ale those cakes.
Neither one of us had tasted food since the day before—or was it several
centuries before?—and were hall starved. Only hunger could make eating at all
bearable with my sore and lacerated mouth. Suddenly the Prolessor spoke to me
in an odd tone.
"My
dear boy, I don't like to arouse any false hopes, but will you take a look at that thing in the air and tell me
what you think it is."
1 glanced up apathetically enough; then at
sight of what I saw I leaped to my feet with a wild cry; lor, soaring through
the air at a height of about seventy leet from the ground was a craft of
shining metal.
"An airship!" I shouted deliriously. "An
airship!"'
Yes, it was an airship. There could be no
doubt of that. And where there was an
airship, there must be human beings, men.
"Then
civilized people are still living on the earth," cried the Professor
exultantly. "Quick, my boy, shout and attract the
driver's attention."
He
had no need to urge me. Pain, weariness and despair were forgotten as I waved madly. "Help! I shouted, dancing up and down. "Help!"
The
strange craft jerked to a pause in mid-air, hung motionless for a moment, then sank directly earthwards lor
what must have been forty feet or more. Over the side looked a girl, her
beautilul face wearing a look of amazement.
"For
God's sake, help us!" I shouted again, "or the ants . . .' ' I got no
further, fear throttling my voice, for the ants were
coming. Thousands of them suddenly appeared in sight, literally covering the
tops and sides of the mounds. They saw the airship; there could be no doubt of
that. A hall million antennae reached threateningly heavenwards, and the angry
slithering of them appalled the ears. The woman shouted something, what I could
not hear, and waved her hand. Even as some of the insects surged down lrom the
mounds and made for us, the airship dropped. It was a close thing. We leaped
and clutched the metal sides, hanging on with the grip of desperation, as the
strange craft brushed the earth like a lealher and soared alolt again. I felt
ihe sucking claws ol an insect fasten to one leg and kicked out in a vain
endeavor to rid myself of it. Suddenly a withering ray flashed lrom a cone in
the girl's hand and played on the insect. There was an acrid smell of burning,
a little flash of light, and the grip on my leg relaxed. With a sob of relief, 1 stumbled over the side of the car and fell in a heap on the floor. "Safe, my boy, safe!" exulted the
Professor, who had preceded me; then, turning to the girl, who was regarding us
with wide-eyed wonder, he asked, "What year is this?"
"2450," she answered in perfect
English.
"A.D.?"
"Yes."
"Hum,"
muttered the Professor, making a quick
mental calculation. "Five hundred and twenty-five years in the
future."
But
I was too busy adjusting myself to this sudden
change in our fortunes to give him much heed. Far below us the earth was
unrolling like a checkered carpet, mounds, hillocks, trees
sweeping by at considerable speed. What power was driving the airship, I wondered. There was no sign of a propeller;
neither did the craft possess wings and a rudder; nor any of the other
properties associated in my mind with flying machines. Only the girl stood in
front of a square box and now and then shifted a small lever. She was, I judged, twenty-one or two, with red-gold hair, eyes like slanted
almonds, and skin of yellow ivory. Her lithe body was of medium height and clad
in a loose-flowing robe of some scarlet-colored material.
"Where are we going?" I asked her.
"To the Castle," she answered.
As she regarded me, I realized for the first
time that I was naked; but the Professor seemed
blissfully unconscious of the lack of any clothes.
"We
have to thank you for rescuing us from a very
dangerous and awkward position," he said courteously.
"I
took you for beast men at
first," she replied, "and if you hadn't called out in English, I
shouldn't have stopped. Tell me, where do you come from and how did you fall
into the hands of the Master Ants?"
"We
came from the past," replied the Professor, "and landed on the plain
about seven miles lrom where you picked us up. The insects—what you call Master
Ants—captured us there."
"The past?" questioned the girl.
"Where is that? Over the sea?"
"No,"
answered the Prolessor. "In another age, an earlier one
than this. Out of the past, you know."
The
girl didn't know. She stared at the Professor as if she thought the hardships
we had undergone had unbalanced his mind. As for me, I was content to sink into
a seat and wonder what kind of place was this Castle she was taking us to, and
what manner of people were they who inhabited it in the year ol our Lord, 2450.
1 had not long to wonder. About an hours flight
brought us in sight of a vast structure which crowned the top of a high hill.
Its walls glittered like dull silver under the rays of the afternoon sun, and
its roof seemed to be one large garden or park. Never had I seen anything more beautiful or bizarre. Here and there domes of silver
towered among swaying palm trees, spruce and live oak. The car swooped down like
a homing bird and came gently to rest on a wide plaza and was immediately surrounded by a crowd of curious people
of all ages and both sexes. The women were clad in gay-colored dresses; the men
wearing white trousers, with soft linen tunics. Both men and women went
bareheaded and barefooted, and the men were clean-shaven. At
sight of us. the women and children fell back with cries of alarm, and
some of the men made as if they wo.: i attack
us forthwith; but the girl cried out that we were not beast men, but
English-speaking travelers whom she had rescued from the Master Ants. At this
announcement hostility ceased, but the amazement with which we were regarded
deepened.
"How
is this possible?" said one handsome young fellow. "Save for ourselves, there are no English-speaking people leit alive
in the two Americas, and for three hundred years no word has come from Europe.
The Master Ants rule this country, and perhaps the world. Where,
then, could these men have come from unless it be from the ranks of the beast
men?"
"We are Time Travelers," began the
Professor; "we come from . . ."
But a tall, commanding man of about sixty
interrupted him.
"Our
guests are worn and weary. Time enough tor questions after they have bathed and
led and rested. Come, come! Are we of Science Castle so inhospitable as to
leave two wayfarers to faint at our very door?"
At
these words, the young fellow fell back abashed and willing hands lilted us
from the aircraft. It is hard to tell of the exquisite enjoyment of the next
lew hours. We were led into a central roof building of dull silver and bathed
and washed. Soothing lotions were applied to my wounds. Our bodies were
anointed with refreshing balms and swathed in soft robes. Tangled beards were
clipped to the skin and our laces shaved. Alter all these ministrations, I
glanced in a mirror and saw the reflected Icatures of a man ol about forty-odd,
bald of head, yet not entirely unreminiscent of the youth 1 once had been. Food was served to us as we lay on soft couches. First a
thick broth, aromatic, satisfying; then various dishes whose names I did not
know; but all were palatable. After eating, we fell asleep and slept, we discovered later, until eight o'clock of the next morning.
Without a doubt, our couches had been
enclosed by four walls when we fell
asleep. What miracle was this? We were lying in an open space with only some
green shrubbery between us and the wide plaza on one side, and walks and
gardens on the other three. Children were romping in the plaza, evidently
laughing and shouting, yet their voices came to us but faintly.
"I
suppose we're not dreaming," said the Professor, lie got up and took a few
steps forward; then came to an abrupt halt. "This is very odd," he said; and even as he spoke, the four walls magically enclosed us, the
Professor standing with his face against one of them.
"Good
morning," said a laughing voice. "I forgot your room was to be left opaque and turned on the ray."
It was the handsome youth who had questioned
us the day before.
"The ray?" asked the Professor.
"Oh,
I forgot!" exclaimed the youth. "Everything is probably strange to
you. The ray is what makes the walls transparent, so that one can look through
them."
"But what is it?"
The youth looked puzzled. "Why I don't
know that I can tell you, offhand." He scratched his
head in perplexity. "I
guess it's like electricity
used to he. Thousands of people turned it on every day, but nobody could tell
you what it was."
We
dressed ourselves in white trousers and soft tunics of a fair fit and followed
him to a central dining room. It was strange to walk through what was
undoubtedly the corridor of a large building and yet never be certain whether
one were indoors or out. Two or three hundred people were breakfasting in this
central room and I noticed that they seemed to be a mingling of all races.
There were some with the slanted eyes and yellow skin of the Chinese; others,
plainly, had more than a drop of Negro blood in their veins; yet all were
mingling with their white companions on terms of perfect equality. In Science
Castle, I was to learn later, no distinction was made
as to race or color. Among the early inhabitants had l>een numbered
Japanese, Negroes, and Chinese, as well as whites. A common foe, a common vital
danger had served to weld the various strains together. "Race and color
antagonisms," a Scientian told us, "would have proved fatal to the
small community. Of necessity a mingling of races took place. My grandfather
was a Negro. The girl who rescued you has Chinese blood in her veins. Whatever
differences existed among our people in the early days has been ironed out by
centuries of a common culture and environment." But I am anticipating.
Breakfast
consisted of fruit, cereal, scrambled eggs, and milk, and we served ourselves
cafeteria fashion. After eating, we repaired to the plaza where several hundred
people were gathered, seated on the grass or on rustic benches. Seats were
given us on what was evidently the raised platform of a speaker's rostrum. The
tall, elderly man who had spoken for our welfare the
night before, received us kindly.
"My
name," he said, "is Soltano, Director of Science in Science Castle. I am speaking for my companions as well as for myself when I assure you that you are welcome to our home and retuge, and need fear no
harm. However, you must realize that it has been centuries since strangers like
yourselves have entered Science Castle, and understand that your rescue and
coming has caused us untold amazement. Now that you arc clothed and shaved, wc readily perceive you to be, not beast men, but civilized
beings like ourselves. Yet are we puzzled as to whence you could have come.''1
The
Professor replied courteously: "My companion and myself
thank you for your kindnesses to us and gratefully receive your assurances of
future asylum and safety. A little of your curiosity, I can understand, and
shall do my best to satisly it."
He
had raised his voice so that the words might carry to the people below.
"There
is no need to pitch your voice above its ordinary key," explained Soltano.
"This rostrum is really an instrument which broadcasts anil magnifies it.
Everyone—even those ot us who are employed elsewhere—will pick up what you say
by means of ear-phones."
I noticed, then, that the attentive people in the plaza were holding round
devices to their ears and ceased wondering how some of them, leaning on the parapet two hundred yards away, expected to hear.
"Splendid,"
said the Professor. "Some sort of an amplifying, radio machine, I see." He beamed on Soltano. "I merely talk to you, is
that it? and all will hear." For a moment I thought he was going to interrupt the interview long enough to
examine the platform; but if he wanted to do so, he conquered the temptation. "My name," he said, "is John
Reubens, late Professor of Physics at the University of California, and this
lad here is Raymond Bent, my secretary. We are Time Travellers."
"Time Travellers!" echoed Soltano.
"Yes," replied the Professor,
"from the year 1926. This means, of course, that we have come five
centuries and a quarter out of the past."
There
was a stir in the crowd below. Soltano looked
amazed, as well he might. "This is a strange thing
you are telling us, John Reubens," he said at last, "and welbnigh
incredible. Much simpler would it be to believe that you had managed to come
over the sea from Europe or from Asia. Never have we listened to such a tale before."
"Nor
anybody else," replied the Professor with
dignity, "as
we are the first human
beings ever to make such a trip."
"And how did you come?"
"By means of a Time Machine, the remains of which lie rotting on
the spot where the Master Ants discovered us." He then proceeded to tell of the building of
the Time Machine, of our incredible rush through space and of our awakening in
another age. Then he told of our subsequent capture by, and experiences with,
the insects. When he had finished, excited talking and gesturing broke out
among the people below. Evidently there were doubting Thomases among them, who
discounted our story. But the Professor was not disturbed.
"If
you are amazed at what I have told you," he said, "how much more
amazed are my companion and myself to find ourselves in a future where ants ride men as steeds and human beings live penned in
such a castle is this. Such a state of affairs was not even dreamed of when
we left our own day and age. Naturally we are curious to learn how it has come
about."
"Our historians are not quite clear as
to that," replied Soltano. "If you came through time from 1926, then
you left your period years before the ants began their attack on mankind. It
was in 1955 that the papers printed news of a queer happening in South America. Natives came fleeing from the jungles
with stories of how the white ants were eating everything up in the
forests—even men! In the United States no one paid much attention to the news.
The world, at that time, was in a state of political unrest and the government
and people were watching Europe and building up a great air force, they were too busy to give heed to preposterous yarns
emanating from Latin America. A year later the newspapers again flamed into
headlines with news from Argentina, Peru, and Brazil. Small towns in the
interior of these countries were being devastated. It had always been known
that termites would destroy things carelessly left exposed in the fields or
jungles; but now they were eating up brick and stone. Buildings collapsed at
the touch of a hand. Men woke and turned to wake a sleeping companion who dissolved into dust at a pressure. Sunday supplements carried lurid stories and sensational
pictures for the edification of their readers. Then all such nonsense was swept
into oblivion by the outbreak of war. In the United States ensued what were
called prosperous times. Munition factories provided well-paid work tor
thousands of workers and made millions of dollars for hundreds of millionaires.
Everybody was busily employed and had no time to think of crazy happenings
reported from crazier republics. Only a few
scientists from the Smithsonian and other institutes went down to South America
to investigate and wrote back long reports which were read with foreboding by a few learned men and ignored by everybody else. The papers they wrote
—the records of those days—are preserved in our library."
"But
the Master Ants," asked the Professor, "where did they come from, and
how did they overwhelm the United States?"
Soltano
waved his hand. *'I am coming to that. The Master Ants were first noticed six
years after the depredations of the white ants commenced. Mow they came nobody
knows. Only in the nests of the termites, in the little galleries and chambers
underground, something stupendous was taking place, something fraught with
disaster for the human race. During thousands of years the white ants had
undoubtedly been changing, evolving, acquiring, God
only knows, what knowledge. It is all speculation, of course, but you doubtless
recollect how the bees, by feeding their larvae different foods, will produce
at will a queen, a drone, or a worker. Well, the white ants had discovered how to make such
food—and to feed it to their larvae. At any rate, the Master Ants appeared. No
one had ever seen them before. They swarmed down from the jungles by the
hundreds ol thousands, and wherever they went the people were stricken and fell
in the fields and the streets. We now know that the termites bit them,
injecting a subtle poison into their systems which induced a species ol
paralysis; but at the time it was only known that of every three that fell, two
were devoured, and that the third one recovered, stupid, beast-like, to become
the creature of the Master Ants. In vain the southern republics sent their
soldiers to battle the insects. Guns crumbled to pieces in their hands. Armies
lay on the ground to bivouac and only one soldier out of every three ever rose
again—and he rose to bear an ant on his shoulders and chase his fleeing
countrymen. Panic spread. Natives fled to the seashore and put to sea in all
kinds of unscaworthy crafts—only to drown by the thousands. When the Master
Ants finally occupied the crumbling ruins of Rio de Janeiro, the whole world
was forced to realize that something terrible was happening in South America;
and when fifteen years later, all South America having come under their sway,
the termites were reported to be making inroads on the Canal Zone, a feeling
of uneasiness swept through the people of the United States. Still it seemed
impossible that the mighty northern nation could be invaded and flouted by such
an insignificant thing as an ant. Newspapers ran articles written by government
experts, pointing out how absurd it was to even entertain the thought. South
America had succumbed, said the experts, because she had been a tropical
wilderness without proper chemical defense. Elaborate plans were drawn up,
showing how the border states were protected from
invasion by systems of pipes and ••prays; showing how fleets of airships were
prepared to drop tons of chemicals and explosives. Only the scientists who had
studied the tactics and methods of the ants knew how futile these preparations
were; but they and their suggestions were ignored by the petty politicians and
nincompoops who were directing the affairs of the country."
Soltano paused. I stared at him. wide eyed.
"And the ants came," breathed the
Professor.
"Yes,
the ants came. Millions of them were killed with explosives, with gases and
poisonous chemicals, but their numbers seemed as exhaustless as the sands on
the seashore. In the space of a year they ate up the pipes and put the sprays
out of commission. But you will have to read the history of those times lor a
more detailed account. Then you will learn how the United States soldiers
marched against the invaders and met the same late as had previously befallen
the armed forces of South America and Mexico. The scientists had suggested that
the soldiers go mailed in a composite metal they had made from the blend of
three other metals, comprehensive experiments having shown it to be the only
substance the ants could not devour. Guns, pipes, everything possible, they
said, should be protected with a casing of this metal. No one paid any
attention to them. Rebuffed, a group of them interested financial backing and
retired to this hill. Here they congregated machines and workers and started
building the castle you now see. It was intended at first for an observation
base, merely; an outpost, as it were, from which to
spy on and study the habits of the insects. But as the years passed, and it become increasingly clear that the country was doomed, the
place became thought of as a permanent home and retuge. Commenced in 1975, it
was not finished until the year 2000. For some reason the ants were, comparatively
speaking, slow in intesting North America. Perhaps the cooler climate had
something to do with this. For instance, they swept through south Texas and all
ot the southern states before they fared further
north. When their coming finally drove the inhabitants of this vicinity panic
sticken belore them, the scientists—those of them who still lived—entered the
Castle, accompanied by the workers and their lamilies, and we, whom you see
today, are their descendants."
"But the rest of the
people!" cried the Prolessor. "What became of them?"
"They
went crazy with tear." replied Soltano. "For fifty years the United
States was increasingly the habitat of terrified mobs. The economic life of the
country became disrupted. Citizens, white and black, fled from the southern
states and added to the congested panic of northern cities. Famine raised its
gaunt head; crime became prevalent. Hundreds of thousands died of hunger, of
disease epidemics. Those who could beg. borrow or steal a passage abroad, fled to Europe, to Asia.
Out ol what was estimated to be a population of a hundred and fifty millions in
1950, only seven millions were living in America when the ants turned
north."
"And now?" asked
the Professor.
"In the whole western hemisphere there
are probably a few hundred thousand beast men bred by the Master Ants for food
and transportation."
I
stared at the Prolessor with horror. Only yesterday, it seemed, we had left a
populous, thriving America. Great industrial cities had sent their smoke and
ash into the sky; giant locomotives had carried thousands of people on two
ribbons of steel over thousands of miles of country; and now . . . now ... it was all as if it had never been.
Could it be possible that five hundred years bad dissipated an empire? Five
hundred years!
"Come,"
said Soltano; "enough of such matters for the nonce. You will learn more
of us as the days pass, as you become better acquainted with us individually.''
He
led the way down into the plaza where we were immediately surrounded by the
crowd and warmly greeted.
When I stepped down from the rostrum on that
first day in Science Castle, it was to meet the girl who had rescued the
Professor and myself from the Master Ants. Her name
was Theda. If anything, she looked more beautiful than she did the day before.
"You have gone through
much danger, Raymond," she said shyly.
"It was worth it, if
it brought me to you," I replied; and meant it.
She did not seem displeased.
"It is the hour for
bathing. Let us go to the pool."
I looked around for the Professor; but he was
walking away with a group of elderly Scientians, who were evidently bent on
entertaining him. "Very well," 1 said.
The pool was an artificial pond perhaps fifty
yards square. I plunged after her into the pool. When 1 drew myself, panting, out of the water at the
other end ol the pond, it was to find mysell sprawling beside the handsome lad
who had called me to breakfast. His name, I learned, was Servus, and he was I heda's twin brother. Their parents, he informed me, were both dead.
Theda and he were enthralled with my accounts of the life and customs of 1926.
By the time we were ready to dress for lunch, the three of us were firm
friends.
In the days that followed, I learned a great
deal about Science Castle anil its inhabitants. With Theda and Servus 1 walked the parapets which circled the rool ol the Castle and looked down
the steep sides that fell a sheer eight hundred feet
before thev touched earth. From the foot of the Castle, the hill sloped away.
To the east, as far as the eye could see, stretched a level waste; and to the northwest lay a range of somber hills. On the
plain, twenty-five hundred leet below, grew nothing
green. The sight reminded me of something about which I had wondered more than
once.
"How do you get water?" I asked
Servus.
"In
the early days," he replied, "we relied on wells, boring as deep as
four thousand leet; but two hundred years ago they began to fail us. There was a terrible lime, I believe, when we were laced with a water famine.
Efforts were made to bring water from distant lakes, but without success. Then
just in time, our chemists discovered how to make water."
"Make water!" I exclaimed.
"Yes,
from hydrogen and oxygen, you know. Now all the water we use is manufactured
and stored in great tanks far down in the depths of the Castle, from whence it
is raised by means of force pumps."
"Wonderful,"
I said, marveling at such ingenuity. But
wonderful things were what one learned to expect at Science Castle. For
instance, the Professor and I were
invited one day to he present at a history review to
he given to the children of the Castle. The walls of the classrooms were made
transparent by means ot the ray and there was all the
illusion of being outdoors. Highly perlected projecting devices showed moving
pictures depicting the building ol the Castle. It made me gasp with awe when I
realized that the opening reels of this stupendous picture had been taken five
hundred and fifteen years before. One saw the motor caravan of scientists and
workers coming to the hill and watched breathlessly as the earth was broken by
great steam-shovels. One saw the vast walls of the Castle growing upward foot
by foot, and fin.dlv the finished structure being lurnished and stored with all
the myriad inventions and devices of the twentieth anil twenty first centuries.
In the same manner we were shown how the Castle was enlarged in 2075. Workers
sheathed in protecting metal armor labored to raise walls. When these walls
were finished and floors installed, they were scoured with flaming rays which
hardened the metal am! destroyed whatever insect lile
might have gotten inside them. So inch by inch we watched the pictured story of
how the Castle hail grown to its present proportions.
"Some
moving picture," I breathed to the Professor. "What a
knockout that would be for Cecil B. DeMille! Did you notice the scene where the
panic stricken people rushed by pursued by the ants?" I shuddered. "And the one where the scientists and
workers were hoisted up the walls into the Castle? What 1 can't understand is why the ants couldn't have swarmed over the walls
and wiped everyone of them out."
Soltano overhead me. "Because," he replied, "the walls were electrified.
Nothing could have lived on them after the current was turned on."
About
a week alter this the Professor and I were taken into
the body of the Castle proper. Far down under the fairy-like buildings and
blooming gardens on its roof, were the machine-shops,
the laboratories which made possible the pulsing life above. Idere we saw great
dynamos and whirring machines at whose'(unctions I could not even guess. In one
vast room men were putting the finishing touches to what were evidently a
number of airships; in another, workers were manufacturing crude oils and thick
greases. Whole floors were given over to experimental and research work of too
complicated a nature lor me to attempt to describe. The Proles.sor was
enthralled. lie was in his element here and hated to
go on.
"What do you do lor metal?" he
asked suddenly. "Iron, tin, zinc?"
"Hemmed
in as we are." replied Soltano. "sufficient
metal has always been difficult to obtain. However, we have managed it. A great
deal ol our tanks, wheels, shalls, and so forth, are made from pulp, from trees
grown in the gardens above, anil even Irom vegetable tops, leaves and vines
which, treated by a chemical process we have discovered, serve our purpose very
well. Iron is the one metal, however, for which we must mine. In those hills
north-west of us arc old mines which we still work when ore i- needed. The work
is hard iii I dangerous. The men engaged at it must go clothed in protecting metal and
he constantly prviio.ted with (laming ray.v However, some day when ore .'s needed, you ::: , go with us in the a , -hips and
sec the whole process tor your .ell."
He
Jismissed the subjec • i.si:ly, evidently
having something of furthei interest to show us.
"Th.it.*"'
he said, pointing to great metal tanks and a mass of complicated pipes and
whirring wheels. ">s whore the water is made."
He
pressed a hulton. The walls surrounding us became transparent, and looking out
we could see the brown slope ol the hill. Suddenly I locussed
my gaze. About twenty feel from where we stood was a small mound.
Something behind it stirred. I caught
a glimpse of a metallic body, of waving antennae. "Yes." said Sol t a
no, ":t is a Master Ant; they are all around us.
But I did not bring you down to show you them; I am going to show you something
lar more deadly." I le guided us into a large
lift. "Under us, the foundations ol the Castle sink into die ground lor a
hundred feet. It is where we manufacture the composite metal when needed."
The lilt sank silently into blackness; the noise of clanging machinery above
grew fainter, seemed farther away, almost ceased. We stepped forth into a
wilderness of massive columns. Soltano pressed the now familiar button and the
walls faded. We could see the black earth beyond them, and even, it seemed, a foot or two into it. Something gray out there was
moving and turning along little runways and tunnels. Millions
and millions ol tiny things were ceaselessly burrowing and gnawing. For
a moment 1 did not understand, then Soltano spoke and enlightenment came to me.
There were the termites—the while ants.
"Behold the enemies wc fight." said
Soltano solemnly. "The insects out there are lar more dangerous to us than
the Master Ants, whose creators they are. Those termites arc seeking to
demolish the very foundations on which the castle rests by eating away the
earth from under them."
I lelt the gooseflesh rise
on my skin.
"Three
times in the last one hundred years have we had to sink our foundations further
into the earth. Originally, this basement was only
fiftv feet deep. Now it is a hundred. In a lew years it will be more than
that."
"But good Cod!" I cried;
"can't you do something to stop them?"
He
shrugged his shoulders. "So tar—no! However, our chemists, our various
scientists, are busy experimenting night and day. It is hoped that we may
perfect a poison, a ray th u will kill them off. prevent them from coming near the castle walls."
"And ¡1 you cannot?" asked the
Professor.
"It
we cannot," replied Soltano; "then some day . . ." He made a
fatal gesture with his hand.
I thought of the busy, joyful life far above,
of the green gardens and the laughing women and children. I thought of Theda,
and I suddenly realized how much she had grown to mean to me.
"Professor,"
I said that night when we had retired to our room, "with all those
machines and tools at your command, couldn't you make another Time
Machine?"
"I possibly could," replied the
Professor.
"Then why don't you?"
"Perhaps
I shall. Soltano has promised to put a laboratory at my disposal, you
know."
Much
relieved, I turned away. Here was a way out for Theda and myself. I fell asleep
and dreamed 1 had taken her back on a time machine to 1926 and was showing her
the University campus and pointing out the time on the campanile clock. At
breakfast, Theda stood behind the counter and rilled my tray with cereal,
fruit, toast and eggs. That was one thing I had early noticed: there were no
idlers tolerated in Science Castle. All worked at something useful. One week
Servus, for instance, washed dishes three hours a day: the next he would he
tending to the vegetable gardens; bringing in the fresh heads of cabbage and
lettuce, gathering the firm, red carrots, or digging potatoes. At my own
request, I was given such work. I was amazed at the fertility of those gardens,
amazed that fruit trees would grow at all under such conditions.
"Is the soil renewed very often?" I
asked Servus.
He shook his head. "It is never
renewed."
"Then you must have good
fertilizers?"
"We have—electricity."
'"Electricity!" I exclaimed.
"Why,
yes. Taken from the air by means of magnetism. Rut you
shouldn't marvel at that so much. Didn't a German
engineer do as much in your day? But whereas he got two crops from sandy soil,
we get seven."
So
it went. 1 had noticed no animals of any sort in Science Castle, not even cows,
yet there was no lack of eggs, butter, milk or meat. Servus again explained
the mystery. "Milk is made from turnips and potatoes," he explained.
"I believe a man named Ford did that in 1^26. Eggs and meat are manufactured
synthetically.' Fie went into technical details which there
is no need to set down here.
Truly a wonderful place, this Science Castle. It was difficult to realize that its
brilliant inhabitants were chained to a hill-top by insects which lor centuries
had been man's hopeless inferiors. But were they so chained! Hadn't Theda
rescued the Professor and me by means of an aircraft? And hadn't Soltano shown us others in the process of being built? And hadn't we
been invited to take trips in them? One night while I sat with her on the
parapet in the moonlight, I asked Theda about it. "Yes," she replied,
"we have air vessels; but save for mining ore they do not do us much
good."
"Why not?" I asked.
"Because outside of Science Castle there
is hardly a spot they dare land." "But there is Europe and
Asia," I exclaimed. "Perhaps the ants do not control there."
"On the average of once in every ten
years," she replied, "expeditions have left here lor over the
seas—and never returned. My father commanded the last aircraft to attempt the
flight. That was five years ago," she added softly. I pressed her hand.
"Hut
they seem to be wonderfully well-controlled machines," I said. "What
drives them?"
"Radio power. Waves are sent from a
controlling center in the Castle here and received by a device incorporated in
the airships themselves. Complete control ol the machine is invested in
the driver by means of a lever which operates a very simple mechanical
arrangement. For a radius of several hundred miles, and in lair weather, the
aircraft are absolutely safe and easily handled. Many of us use them lor
pleasure rides. But beyond that—" She shook her head. "Perhaps
atmospheric conditions interfere with the waves when sent over too great a
distance; perhaps the receiving apparatus fails to operate beyond a certain
point, though theoretically they should pick up power waves lour thousand miles
Irom the sending station. All we know, however, is that those who venture too far—vanish.
Perhaps they fall into the sea and are drowned. Or worse still, on the plains,
and the Master Ants. . . ." Her voice shivered to silence. For comfort
against a black spectre which took on the hideous form of an insect, we drew
together.
"Theda," I said unsteadily. "O
Theda! Would you . . . will you . . ."
In answer she kissed me.
Under the thin metal roof which is all that
shuts away from us the hordes of conquering ants, I am seated, putting the finishing touches to this manuscript. Ot the terrible catastrophe which has occurred, I can hardly
write. We were standing one day by the parapet when a young Scientian who had
gone on a pleasure spin, planed down from the sky and landed on the plaza. His
face was ashen-grey.
"What is it?" demanded Soltano
sharply.
"The
ants!" gasped the breathless youth. "The ants have taken to the
air!" "To the air! What do you mean?"
"That
they have mounted the back of insects, of wasps a yard long, and are
flying!"
Instantly
the Castle was in an uproar. From every direction the Scicntians came rushing;
from the depths of the Castle, from the gardens and the pool. They assembled in
the plaza and listened to the tale the youth had to tell. Attracted by strange
activities among the mounds, he had Mown nearer the
ground than usual, when great insects had spread gossamer wings and pui sued
him. Fortunately, the speed of the airship had outdistanced them, though at
first it had been a close chase! When he finished speaking, Soltano mounted the
rostrum ami addressed the gathering.
"Fellow
Scientians," he said, "it what we have just heard be true, then
Science Castle is in immediate and grave danger. You will remember tint we have
often discussed the possibility of an alliance between the Master Ants and
other insects. Now it seems they have enslaved or enlisted a winged insect,
probably ol the bee family. Not only that, they have evidently fed them with
special foods until monsters, capable of bearing a Master Ant aloft, have been
produced. Sooner or later we shall be attacked. The great cone must be manned
at once; the chemical pumps made ready. Let everyone hasten to his post, for
we are lacing the gravest crisis in our history."
I stared at the Professor with fear. He stared back at me grimly.
"What do you think?" I asked with
dry lips.
"That the situation is desperate."
"But the ray cones, the acids!"
"My
boy," he said solemnly, "if those insects have really taken to the
air, then (rod
help us!"
I sank nervelessly into a seat; then sprang up
again as the remembrance oi something sent a thrill of hope through my heart.
"The Time Machine!" I cried.
"Surely you have finished it by this time!"
The Professor nodded. "Yes," he
said, "it is ready."
"Then we can make our escape by means of
it."
Lie looked at me pityingly. "I'm afraid
not."
"What's the matter with it?"
"Nothing. Only you forget something."
"Forget what?"
"How we aged when we travelled in it
before." "Well!"
"Don't you see? It would have the same
effect on us again."
For
a moment I did not understand; then the appalling truth staggered me like a
bolt from the blue. The Professor read the dawning comprehension on my face.
"Yes,"
he said slowly, "yes. If age is caused by the action of environment, then
the same friction would be encountered by the body whether it traveled forward
in time or backward. In returning to 1926, we would be subjected to the same
resistance, the same wear and tear, as we were in coming from it. That would
mean annihilation for me, death. For yourself and Thcda, would it be much
better? You could expect to find yourself an old man of eighty or ninetv,
penniless, unknown, in charge ol a middle aged woman. What good would that do
either you or Thcda? Besides, there is something else to consider. Do you
realize that it was only a miracle wc escaped death
when our Time Machine fell to pieces on the plain out there? Yet there is no
way of returning a machine to 1926, save by hurling it back in time until it,
too, disintegrates from old age!"
As
I stood glaring at him in horror, there came the terrified clamor of hundreds
ol voices.
"Look!" cried a woman's shrill
voice. "Look!"
Far
out on the plain had risen what seemed an eddying cloud. Even as we gazed,
petrified, there rose another, and yet another, until the sky was black with
them. The Master Ants were coming to the attack!
Of
the ghastly fight which took place on the roof, there is little to say. The
millions of insects, with their winged steeds, simply fell upon the giant ray
cone and smothered it to ineffectiveness with their charred bodies. Nearly two
hundred of the Scientians fell in battle, stung to death by the swordlike
stings of the flying insects. The remainder fled panic-stricken from the roof
into the interior of the Castle and sealed up the entrance with impregnable
composite metal. By means of the transparent ray it is possible to look through
the walls and ceiling. The once fair garden is being eaten and destroyed. The
fruit trees are crumbling into dust. All that is vulnerable is a decaying
wreck. As I look at the scene of unutterable desolation, despair grips my
heart, and a wild desire to strap myself in the Time Machine and quit this
terrible future lor the past, almost overwhelms me. But that is impossible. There
is nothing to do but stay and face whatever the future holds in store for us.
Soltano maintains that our siturtion is not yet hopeless. Those Scientians
amaze me. Their courage and optimism in the face of disaster arc wonderful. Now
I know what their religion is: It is an abiding faith in the power ol their
science to aid and uphold them. The Professor tells me of an intricate
arrangement for supplying us with air; I do not understand it yet very well,
but it is made clear to me that we can live in the interior of the Castle
indefinitely. Water and synthetic foods can be made. Meantime, in the
splendidly equipped laboratories and machine shops, the scientists and
inventors are rushing forward experiments which may release, they say, the
energy in the atom and give us possession of weapons which will destroy the
ants and return the lordship of America to man. But as to this, I do not know;
I hardly dare hope. Theda leans over me and presses her solt cheek against
mine, and though I do not feel at all heroic, I am comforted and made stronger
by her love.
Escape
or help seems impossible. Nevertheless, I am going to tie this manuscript in
the Time Machine, which stands ready at my side, and send it back to the period
I have left forever. I repeat my hope that it will fall into the hands of
intelligent people and that its contents will be made known to the public. It
may be that we shall overcome the ants in the inevitable final conflict between
men and insects. In that case we will try to communicate with the twentieth
century again. If not, then we bid a final farewell to the people of 1926.
Signed: Professor
John Reubens, Raymond Bent.
The nationally known lawyer laid down the
incredible document. For a moment there was complete silence in the room.
Finally the President of the University spoke.
"I
suppose you wish our advice as to what disposition to make of this . . . this .
. ."
"Exactly," returned the lawyer.
"I am positive it is a hoax; and yet . . ."
"And
yet," finished the Doctor ot Science, "
'there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than arc dreamt of in your
philosophy!" as Hamlet said!"
The
ordinary M. D. coughed. "There is something fishy about this whole affair,"
he said, "casting no reflections on our host, whose account of how the
manuscript came into his possession I believe absolutely. Perhaps someone is
trying to cover up the fact that twenty thousand dollars disappeared.
1
But
that doesn't sound plausible either. My advice is to lock the manuscript up in
a safe. Time enough to publish its contents to the world if
any queer happenings should occur—in South America, for instance."
The
five other men gave hearty approval to this plan, and there the matter rests,
except that there are at least three men in Berkeley, California, who carefully
scan the press every day for any strange news from Latin America.
The End
In the Walls of Eryx--------------------------------------------
by Kenneth Sterling and H. P. Lovecraft
Although many of Lovecraft's weird epics may be described as science-i fiction by the manner in which he made his horrors credible, he never
once laid a story on the surface of
another world. This tale would seem to be the exception. Laid on the planet
Venus and involitng space-borne explorers if
was originally dialled by Kenneth Sterling, at that time a student in
Providence, Lovecraft's home city. Sterling persuaded Lovecraft to revise his
short story and so thoroughly did the master do so. that
the young author insisted that the tale should carry both by-lines. Thus we
have the one and only planet story to bear the signature of the master eif eerie lore. The young student of those
days is incidentally now a lull-fledged M.D.
engaged in cancer research.
13eF0RE I try to rest I will set down these notes in preparation for
the report I must make. What [ have found is so
singular, and so contrary to all past experience and expectations, that it
deserves a very careful description.
1 reached the main landing on Venus March 18,
terrestrial time; VI-9 of the planet's calendar. Being
put in the main group under Miller. I received my equipment—watch tuned
to Venus's slightly quicker rotation—and went through the usual mask drill.
After two days I was pronounced fit for duty.
Leaving
the Crystal Company's post at Terra Nova around dawn, VI-12, I followed the southerly route which Anderson had mapped out lrom the air.
The going was had, for these jungles are always half impassable after a rain.
It must be the moisture that gives the tangled vines and creepers that leathery
toughness; a toughness so great that a knife has to
work ten minutes on some of them. By noon it was dryer—the vegetation getting
soft and rubbery so that the knife went through it easily, but even then I could not make much speed. These Carter oxygen masks are too heavy —just
carrying one half wears an ordinary man out. A Dubois mask with
sponge-reservoir instead of lubes would give just as good air at half the
weight.
The
crystal detector seemed to function well, pointing in a direction verifying
Anderson's report. It is curious how that principle of affinity works, without
any of the fakery of the old divining-rods back home. There must be a great
deposit of crystals within a thousand miles, though I suppose those damnable man-lizards always watch and guard it. Possibly
they think we are just as foolish for coming
to Venus to hunt the stuff as we think they are for groveling in the mud
whenever they sec a piece of it, or for keeping the great mass on a pedestal in
their temple.
I
wish they'd get a new religion, for they have no use lot the crystals except to
pray to them. Burring theology, they would let us take all we want; and even if
they learned to tap them lor power there'd he more than enough ior their planet
ind the earth besides. I lor one am tired of pacing up the main deposits and
merely seeking separate crystals out of jungle river-beds. Sometime III urge
the wiping out ol these scaly beggars bj a i;ood stiil
army from home. About twenty ships could bring enough tr
ops a-toss to turn the trick. One can't call the damned
things men, fir all their "cities" and lowers. They haven't any skill
except building — md using swords and poison darts—and I don't believe their
so-called "cities" mean much more than ant-hills or heaver-dams. 1 doubt il they even have a real language—all the talk about psychological communication
through those tentae'es down their chests strikes me as bunk. What misleads
people is their upright posture; just an accidental physical resemblance to
terrestrial mam
I'd
iike to go through a Venus jungle lor once without having to watch out lor
skulking groups ol them or dodge their cursed darts.
They may have been all right before we began to take the crystals, but they're
certainly a bad enough nuisance now. with their
dart-shooting and their cutting ..; our water pipes. More and more 1 come to believe that they have a .pecr.d sense like our crystal detectors. No one ever knew them to
bother a man—apart from long-distance sniping—who didn't have crystals on him.
Around
1 p.m. a dart nearly took my helmet off. and I
thought for a .c nnd one of my oxygen tubes was punctured.
The sly devils hadn't made a sound, but three of them were closing in on me. I
got them all by -••eeping in a circle with my flame-pistol, lor even though
their color Mended with the jungle. I could spot the moving creepers. One of
them was fullv eight feet tall, with a snout like a tapir's. The other two were
average seven-looters. All that makes them hold their own is sheer numbers
—even a single regiment ol flame-gunners could raise hell with them, li is
curious, though, how they've come to be dominant on the planet. Not another
living thing higiier than the wriggling akmans and skorahs, or the Hying tukahs
of the other continent—unless of course those holes in the Diouuran Plateau
hide something.
About two o'clock my detector veered
westward, indicating isolated .ry.tals abend on the
right. This checked up with Anderson, and I turned my course accordingly. U was harder going—not only because the i»...;i:i.l
was rising, but because the animal li!c and carnivorous plants were thicker. I
was always slashing ugrats and stepping on skorahs, and mj leather suit was all
speckled Irom the bursting darohs which struck ii from all sides. The sunlight
was all the worse because of the mist, and did not seem to dry up the mud in
the least. Every time I stepped my leet sank down five or six inches, and there
was a sucking sort ol blup every lime I pulled (hem out. I wish
somebody would invent a safe kind of suiting other than leather for this climate. Cloth of course would rot;
but some thin metallic tissue that couldn't tear—like the surface of this
revolving decay-proof record scroll—ought to be feasible sometime.
I ate about 3:30, if slipping these wretched
food tablets through my mask can be called eating. Soon after that I noticed a
decided change in the landscape—the bright, poisonous-looking
flowers shitting in color and getting wraith-like. The outlines ol everything
shimmered rhythmically, and bright points of light appeared and danced in the
same slow, steady tempo. After that the temperature seemed to fluctuate in
unison with a peculiar rhythmic drumming.
The
whole universe seemed to be throbbing in deep, regular pulsations that filled
every corner of space and flowed through my body and mind alike. I lost all
sense of equilibrium and staggered dizzily, nor did it change things in the
least when I shut my eyes and covered my ears with my hands. However, my mind
was still clear, and in a very lew minutes I realized what had happened.
1
had encountered at last one of those curious mirage-plants about which so many
of our men told stories. Anderson had warned me of them, and described their appearance very closely—the shaggy stalk, the spiky
leaves, and the mottled blossoms whose gaseous, cream-breeding exhalations
penetrate every existing make of mask.
Recalling
what happened to Bailey three years ago, I fell into a momentary panic, and
began to dash and stagger about in the crazy, chaotic world which the plant's
exhalations had woven around me. Then good sense came back, and I realized all
1 need do was retreat from the dangerous blossoms, heading away from the source
of the pulsations and cutting a path
blindly, regardless of what might seem to swirl around me, until safely out ol
the plant's effective radius.
Although
everything was spinning perilously, 1 tried to start in the right direction and
hack my way ahead. My route must have been far from straight, lor it seemed
hours before I was tree of the mirage-plant's pervasive influence. Gradually
the dancing lights began to disappear, and the shimmering spectral scenery
began to assume the aspect of solidity. When I did get wholly clear I looked at
my watch and was astonished to find that the time was only 4:20. Though eternities had seemed to pass,
the whole experience could have consumed little more than a halt hour.
Every
delay, however, was irksome, and 1 had
lost ground in my retreat from the plant. I now pushed ahead in the uphill
direction indicated by the crystal detector, bending every
energy toward making better time. The jungle was still thick, though
there was less animal life. Once a carnivorous blossom engullcd my right foot
and held it so tightly that 1 had to hack it free with my knife, reducing the
flower to strips before it let go.
In less than an hour I saw that the jungle
growths were thinning out, and by five o'clock, alter passing through a belt of
tree-terns with very little underbrush, 1 emerged on a broad mossy plateau. My
progress now became rapid, and I saw by the wavering of my detector-needle that
I was getting relatively close to the crystal I sought. This was odd, for most
ol the scattered, egg-like spheroids occurred in jungle streams of a sort not
likely to be found on this treeless upland.
The
terrain sloped upward, ending in a definite
crest. I reached the top about 5:30, and saw ahead of me a very extensive plain
with lorests in the distance. This, without question, was the plateau mapped by
Matsugawa from the air filty years ago, and called on our maps "Hryx"
or the 'F.rycinian Highland." Rut what made my heart leap was a smaller detail, whose position could not have been far from the plain's
exact center, ft was a single point of light, blazing through the
mist and seeming to draw a piercing concentrated luminescence from the
yellowish, vapor-dulied sunbeams. This, without doubt, was the crystal I
sought—a thing possibly no larger than a lien's egg. yet
continuing enough power to keep a city warm for a year. 1 could hardly wonder,
as I glimpsed the distant glow, that those miserable man-lizards worship such
crystals. And yet they have not the least notion of the powers they contain.
Breaking
into a rapid run, 1 tried to reach the unexpected prize as soon as possible:
and was annoyed when the firm moss gave place to a thin, singularly detestable mud studded with occasional patches of weeds
and creepers. But I splashed on heedlessly, scarcely thinking to look around
lor any of the skulking man lizards. In this open space I was not very likely
to be waylaid. As I advanced, the light ahead seemed to grow in size and
brilliancy, and I began to notice some peculiarity in its situation. Clearly,
this was a crystal of the very finest quality, and my
elation grew with every spattering step.
It is now that I must begin to be careful in
making my report, since what I shall henceforth have to say involves
unprecedented—though fortunately verifiable—matters. I was racing ahead with
mounting eagerness, and had come within a hundred yards or so of the crystal—whose position on a sort of raised
place in the omnipresent slime seemed very odd —when a sudden, overpowering
force struck my chest and the knuckles of my clenched fists and knocked me over
backward into the mud. The splash of my lall was terrific, nor did the softness
ol the ground and the presence of some slimy weeds and creepers save my head
from a bewildering jarring. For a moment 1 lay supine, too utterly startled to think. Then I half mechanically
stumbled to my feet and began to scrape the worst of the mud and scum from my
leather suit.
Of
what I had encountered I could not form the faintest idea. I had seen nothing
which could have caused the shock, and I saw nothing now. Had I, after all,
merely slipped in the mud? My sore knuckles and aching chest forbade me to
think so. Or was this whole incident an illusion brought on by some hidden
mirage-plant? It hardly seemed probable, since I had none of the usual
symptoms, and since there was no place near by where so vivid and typical a
growth could lurk unseen. Had I Iieen on the earth, I would have suspected a
barrier of N-torce laid down by some government to mark
a forbidden zone, but
in this humanless region
such a notion would have been absurd.
Finally
pulling myself together, I decided to investigate in a cautious way. Holding my knife as far
as possible ahead of me, so that it might be first to feel the strange force, I started
once more for the shining crystal, preparing to advance step by step with the
greatest deliberation. At the third step I was brought up short by the impact
of the knifepoint on apparently solid surlace—a solid surface where my eyes saw nothing.
After
a moment's recoil 1 gained boldness. F_xtending
my gloved left hand, I verified the presence of invisible solid matter—or a
tactile illusion of solid matter—ahead of me. Upon moving my hand
I found that the barrier was of substantial extent, and of an almost glassy
smoothness, with no evidence of the joining of separate blocks. Nerving mysell for further experiments. I removed a glove
and tested the thing with my bare hand, ft was indeed hard and glassy, ami of a
curious coldness ;k contrasted
with the air around. I strained my eyesight to the utmost in an effort to glimpse- some trace of the obstructing substance, but could discern nothing whatsoever. There was not even any evidence of refractive power as judged by the aspect of the landscape ahead. Absence
of refiectiw power was proved by the lack of a glowing image ol the sun at any point.
Burning
curiosity began to displace all other feelings, and I enlarged my investigations as best I could. Exploring with my hands, I found that
the barrier extended from (he ground to some level higher than I could reach,
and that it stretched off indefinitely on both sides. It was, then, a wail of
some kind—though all guesses as to its materials and its purpose were beyond me. Again I thought of the mirage plant and the dreams it induced, but a moment's reasoning put this out of my head.
Knocking
sharply on the barrier with the hilt of my knife, and kicking at it with my
heavy boots, I tried to interpret the sounds thus mack. There was
something suggestive of cement or concrete in these reverberations, though rny
hands had lound the surlace more glassy or metallic in feel. Certainly, I was
confronting something strange beyond all previous experience.
The
next logical move was to get some idea of the wall's dimensions. The height problem would be hard if not insoluble, but the length and shape problem could perhaps
lie sooner dealt with. Stretching out my arms and pressing close to the
barrier, I began to edge gradually to the left—keeping very careful track ol
the way I faced. After several steps I concluded that the Wall was not straight, but that I was following part of some vast circle or
ellipse. Ami then my attention was distracted by something wholly different—something connected with the still-distant
crystal which had formed the object of my quest.
I
have said that even from a greater distance the shining object's position seemed indefinably queer—on a slight mound rising from the
slime. Now, at about a hundred yards, I could see plainly despite the engulfing
mist just what that mound was. It was the body of a man in one of the Crystal
Company's leather suits, lying on his back, and with his oxygen mask half buried in the mud a few inches away. In his right hand, crushed convulsively against his
chest, was.the crystal which had led me here—a spheroid of incredible size, so
large that the dead fingers could scarcely close over it. liven
at the given distance I could see that the body was a recent one. There was little
visible decay, and I reflected that in this climate such a thing meant death not more than a day
before. Soon the hateful farnoth-rlies would begin to cluster about the corpse.
I
wondered who the man was. Surely no one I had seen on this trip. It must have
been one of the old-timers absent on a long roving commission, who had come to
this special region independently of Anderson's survey. There he lay, past all
trouble, and with the rays of the great crystal streaming out from between his
stiffened lingers.
For fully five minutes I stood there staring
in bewilderment and apprehension. A curious dread assailed me, and 1 had an unreasonable impulse to run away. It could not have been done by
those slinking man-lizards, for he still held the crystal he had found. Was
there any connection with the invisible wall? Where had he found the crystal?
Anderson's instrument had indicated one in this quarter well belore this man
could have perished. I now began to regard the unseen barrier as something
sinister, and recoiled from it with a shudder. Yet I knew I must probe the
mystery all the more quickly and thoroughly because of this recent tragedy.
Suddenly,
wrenching my mind back to the problem I faced, I thought of a possible means of
testing the wall's height, or at least of finding whether or not it extended
indefinitely upward. Seizing a handlul of mud, I let it drain until it gained
some coherence and then flung it high in the air toward the utterly transparent
barrier. At a height of perhaps tourteen feet it struck the
invisible surlace with a resounding splash, disintegrating at once and
oozing downward in disappearing streams with surprising rapidity. Plainly, the
wall was a lofty one. A second handlul, hurled at an even sharper angle, hit
the surlace about eighteen feet from the ground and disappeared as quickly as
the first.
I
now summoned up all my strength and prepared to throw a third handlul as high as I possibly could. Letting the mud drain, and
squeezing it to maximum dryness, I flung it up so steeply that I feared it
might not reach the obstructing surlace at all. It did, however, and this time
it crossed the barrier and lell in the mud beyond with a violent spattering. At
last I had a rough idea of the height of the wall, lor
the crossing had evidently occurred some twenty or twenty-one leet alolt.
With
a nineteen- or twenty-foot vertical wall of glassy flatness, ascent was clearly
impossible. I must, then, continue to circle the barrier in the hope of finding
a gate, an ending or some sort of interruption. Did the obstacle form a
complete round or other closed figure, or was it merely an arc or semicircle?
Acting on my decision, I resumed my slow leltward circling, moving my hands up
and down over the unseen surlace on the chance of finding some window or other
small aperture. Before starting, I tried to mark my position by kicking a hole in the mud, but found the slime too thin to hold any impression. I did, though, gage the place approximately by noting a tall cycad in the
distant forest which seemed just on a line with the gleaming crystal a hundred
yards away. U no gate or break existed I could
now tell when 1 had completely circumnavigated the wall.
I had not progressed tar before I decided that
the curvature indicated a circular enclosure of about a hundred yards'
diameter—provided the outline was regular. This would mean that the dead man
lay near the wall at a point almost opposite to the region where I had started.
Was he just inside or just outside the enclosure? This I would soon ascertain.
As
I slowly rounded the barrier without finding any gate, window, or other break,
I decided that the body was lying within. On closer view, the features of the
dead man seemed vaguely disturbing. I lound something alarming in his
expression, and in the way the glassy eyes stared. By the time 1 was very near I believed I recognized him as Dwight, a veteran whom I
had never known, but who was pointed out to me at the post last year. The
crystal he clutched was certainly a prize, the largest single specimen I had
ever seen.
I
was so near the body that I could, but for the barrier, have touched it, when
my exploring left hand encountered a corner in the unseen surlace. In a second
I had learned that there was an opening about three feet wide, extending from
the ground to a height greater than I could reach. There was no door, nor any
evidence of hinge-marks bespeaking a former door. Without a moment's hesitation
I stepped through and advanced two paces to the prostrate body, which lay at
right angles to the hallway I had entered, in what seemed to be an intersecting
doorless corridor. It gave me a fresh curiosity to find that the interior of
this vast enclosure was divided by partitions.
Bending
to examine the corpse, I discovered that it bore no wounds. This scarcely
surprised me, since the continued presence of the crystal argued against the
pseudo reptilian natives. Looking about for some possible cause of death, my
eyes lit upon the oxygen mask lying close to the body's feet. Here, indeed, was
something significant. Without this device no human being could breathe the air
of Venus for more than thirty seconds, and Dwight—if it were he—had obviously
lost his. Probably it had been carelessly buckled, so that the weight of the
tubes worked the straps loose —a thing which could not happen with a Dubois
sponge-reservoir mask. The hall minute of grace had been too short to allow the
man to stoop and recover his protection, or else the cyanogen content of the
atmosphere was abnormally high at the time. Probably he had been busy admiring
the crystal, wherever he may have found it. He had, apparently, just taken it
from the pouch of his suit, for the flap was unbuttoned.
I
now proceeded to extricate the huge crystal from the dead prospector's
fingers—a task which the body's stiffness made very difficult. The spheroid was
larger than a man's fist, and glowed as if alive in the reddish rays of the
westerly sun. As I touched the gleaming surface I shuddered involuntarily, as
if by taking this precious object I had transferred to myself the doom which
had overtaken its earlier bearer. However, my qualms soon passed, and I carefully buttoned the crystal into the pouch of my leather suit.
Superstition has never been one of my failings.
Placing
the man's helmet over his dead, staring face, I straightened up and stepped
back through the unseen doorway to the entrance hall of the great enclosure. All my curiosity about the strange edifice now
returned, and I racked my brain with speculations regarding its material,
origin, and purpose. That the hands of men had reared it 1 could not for a moment believe. Our ships first reached Venus only
seventy-two years ago, and the only human beings on the planet have been those
at Terra Nova. Nor does human knowledge include any perfectly transparent,
non-refractive solid such as the substance of this building. Pre historic human
invasions of Venus can lie pretty well ruled out, so that one must turn to the
idea of native construction. Did a forgotten race of highly evolved beings
precede the man-lizards as masters of Venus? Despite their elaborately built
cities, it seemed hard to credit the pseudo-reptiles
with anything of this kind. There must have been another race cons ago. of which this is perhaps the last relic. Or will other ruins
of kindred origin be found by future expeditions? The purposx of such a structure passes all conjeeture, but its strange and seemingly non-practical material
suggests a religious use.
Realizing my inability to solve these problems. 1 decided
Uiat all I could do was to explore the invisible
structure itself. That various rooms and corridors extended over the seemingly
unbroken plain of mud I felt convinced, and I believed that a
knowledge of their plan might lead to something significant. So, lecling my way back through the doorway and
edging past the body, I began to advance along the corridor toward
those interior regions whence the dead man had presumably come. Later on I
would investigate the hallway I had left.
Groping
like a blind man despite the misty sunlight, I moved slowly onward. Soon the
corridor turned sharply and began to spiral in toward the center in
ever-diminishing curves. Now and then my touch would reveal a doorless
intersecting passage, and I several times encountered junctions with two,
three, and four diverging avenues. In these latter cases I always followed the
inmost route, which seemed to form a continuation of the one I had been
traversing. There would be plenty of time to examine the branches after 1 had reached and returned Irom the main regions. I can scarcely describe
the strangeness of the experience—threading the* unseen ways of an invisible
structure reared by forgotten hands on an alien planet I
At
last, still stumbling and groping, I felt the corridor end in a sizable open
space. Fumbling about, I found I was in a circular chamber about ten feet
across; and Irom the position ol the dead man against certain distant forest
landmarks I judged that this chamber lay at or near the center of the edifice.
Out of it opened five corridors besides the one through which I had entered,
but I kept the latter in mind by lighting very carefully past the body to a particular
tree on the horizon as 1 stood just within the entrance.
There
was nothing in this room to distinguish it—merely the floor of thin mud
which was everywhere present. Wondering whether this part of the building had any roof, I repeated my
experiment with an upward-flung handful of mud, and found at once that no
covering existed. If there had ever been one, it must have fallen long ago, for
not a trace of debris or scattered blocks ever halted my feet. As I reflected, it struck me as distinctly odd that this apparently primordial structure should be so
devoid of tumbled masonry, gaps in the walls, and other common attributes of
dilapidation.
What
was it? What had it ever been? Of what was it made? Why was there no evidence of separate blocks in the
glassy, bafflingly homogeneous walls? Why were there no traces of doors, either
interior or exterior? I knew only that I was in a round, roofless, doorless
edifice of some hard, smooth, perfectly transparent, non-refractive and
non-reflective material, a hundred yards in diameter, with many corridors, and
with a small circular room at the center. More than this I could never learn from
a direct investigation.
I
now observed that the sun was sinking very low, a golden-ruddy disk floating in
a pool of scarlet and orange above the mist-coloured trees of the horizon.
Plainly, I would have to hurry if I expected to choose a sleeping-spot on dry
ground before dark. I bad long before decided to camp for the night on the
firm, mossy rim of the plateau near the crest whence I had first spied the
shining crystal, trusting to my usual luck to save me from an attack by the
man-lizards. It has always been my contention that we ought to travel in
parties of two or more, so that someone can be on guard during sleeping-hours,
but the really small number of night attacks makes the Company careless about
such things. Those scaly wretches seem to have dillicully in seeing at night,
even with their curious glow-torches.
Having
picked out again the hallway through which I had come, I started to return to
the structure's entrance. Additional exploration could wait for another day.
Groping a course as best I could through the spiral corridor, with only general
sense, memory, and a vague recognition of some of the ill-defined weed patches
on the plain as guides, I soon found myself once more in close proximity to the
corpse.There were now one or two fa moth-flies swooping over the helmet-covered
face, and I knew that decay was setting in. With a futile but instinctive
loathing I raised my hand to brush away this vanguard ol the scavengers, when a
strange and astonishing thing became manifest. An invisible wall, checking the
sweep of my arm, told me that, notwithstanding my careful retracing of the way,
I had not indeed returned to the corridor in which the body lay. Instead, I was
in a parallel hallway, having no doubt taken some wrong turn or fork among the
intricate passages behind.
Hoping
to find a doorway to the exit hall ahead, I continued my advance, but presently
came to a blank wall. I would, then, have to return to the central chamber and
steer my course anew. Exactly where I had made my mistake I could not tell. I
glanced at the ground to see if by any miracle guiding footprints had remained,
but at once realized that the thin mud held
impressions only lor a few moments. There was little difficulty in
finding my way to the center again, and once there I carefully
reflected on the proper outward course. 1 had
kept too far to the right before. This time I must
take a more leftward lork somewhere—just where, I could decide as I went.
As I groped ahead a second time I felt quite
confident of my correctness, and diverged to the left
at a junction 1 was sure I remembered. The spiraling
continued, and I was careful not to stray into any intersecting passages. Soon,
however, I saw to my disgust that I was passing the body at a considerable
distance; this passage evidently reached the outer wall at a point much beyond
it. In the hope that another exit might exist in the half of the wall 1 hail not yet explored, I pressed forward lor several paces, but
eventually came once more to a solid barrier. Clearly, the plan ol the building
was even more complicated than I had thought.
1 now debated whether to return to the center
again or whether to try some of the lateral corridors extending toward the
body. If I chose this second alternative I would run the risk of breaking my
mental pattern ol where I was; hence I had letter not attempt it unless I could
think of some way of leaving a visible trail behind me. Just how to leave a trail would be quite a problem, and I ransacked my mind for a solution.
There seemed to be nothing about my person which could leave a mark on
anything, nor any material which I could scatter.
My pen had no effect on the invisible wall,
and I could not lay a trail of my precious food tablets. liven
had I been willing to spare the latter, there would not have been even nearly
enough; besides which, the small pellets would have instantly sunk Irom sight
in the thin mud. 1 searched my pockets lor an old-iashioned
note-book—oltcn used unofficially on Venus despite the quick rotting-rate ol
paper in the planet's atmosphere—whose pages I could tear up and scatter, but
could find none. It was obviously impossible to tear
the tough, thin metal ol this revolving decay-proof record scroll, nor did my
clothing offer any possibilities. In Venus's peculiar atmosphere I could not
safely spare my stout leather suit, and underwear had been eliminated because
ol the climate.
1 tried to smear mud on the smooth, invisible
walls alter squeezing it as dry as possible, but lound that it slipped Irom
sight as quickly as did the height-testing handluls 1 had previously thrown, finally 1 drew
out my knife and attempted to scratch a line on the glassy, phantom
surface—something I could recognize with my hand, even though I would not have
the advantage ol seeing it from alar. It was useless, however, for the blade
made not the slightest impression on the baffling, unknown material.
Frustrated
in all attempts to blaze a trail, I again sought the round central chamber
through memory. It seemed easier to get back to this room than to steer a
definite, predetermined course away from it, and I had little difficulty in
finding it anew. This time I listed on my record scroll every turn I made, drawing a crude hypothetical diagram of my route, and marking all
diverging corridors. Tt was, of course, maddeningly slow work when everything
had to he determined by touch, and the possibilities of error were infinite;
but I believed it would pay in the long run.
The
long twilight ol Venus was thick when I reached the central room, but I still
had hopes ol gaining the outside belore dark. Comparing my fresh diagram with
previous recollections, I believed I had located my original mistake, so once
more set out confidently along the invisible hallways. I veered further to the
lelt than during my previous attempts, and tried to keep track ol my turnings
on the record scroll in case I was still mistaken. In the gathering dusk 1 could sec the dim line ol the corpse, now the center of a loathsome
cloud ol larnoth flies. Belore long, no doubt, the mud-dwelling siliclighs
would be oozing in from the plain to complete the ghastly work. Approaching the
body with some reluctance, I was preparing to step past it when a sudden
collision with a wall told me 1 was
again astray.
I
now realized plainly that I was lost. The complications of this building were
too much for offhand solution, and I would probably have to do some careful
checking before I could hope to emerge. Still. I was eager to get to dry ground
belore total darkness set in; hence I returned once more to the center and
began a rather aimless series of trials and errors—making notes by the light ol
my electric lamp. When I used this device I noticed with interest that it
produced no reflection, not even the faintest glistening, in the transparent
walls around me.
I
was still groping about when the dusk became total. A heavy mist obscured most
of the stars and planets, but the earth was plainly visible as a glowing, bluish-green point in the southeast. It was just past opposition,
and would have been a glorious sight in a telescope. I could even make out the
moon beside it whenever the vapors momentarily thinned. It was now impossible
to see the corpse—my only landmark—so 1 blundered
back to the central chamber alter a lew false turns. Alter all, I would have to
give up hope of sleeping on dry ground. Nothing could be done till daylight, and I might as well make the best of it here.
Lying down in the mud would not be pleasant, but in my leather suit it could be
done. On former expeditions I had slept under even worse conditions, and now
sheer exhaustion would help to conquer repugnance.
St) here I am, squatting in the slime of the
central room and taking these notes on my record scroll by the light of the
electric lamp. There is something almost humorous in my strange, unprecedented
plight. Lost in a building without doors—a building which I cannot see! I sh
ill doubtless get out early in the morning, and ought to be back at Terra Nova
with the crystal by late afternoon. It certainly is a beauty, with surprising
luster even in the feeble light of this lamp. I have just had it out examining
it. Despite my fatigue, sleep is slow in coming: so I find myself writing at
great length. I must stop now. Not much danger ol being bothered by those
cursed natives in this place. The thing I like least is the corpse, but
fortunately my oxygen mask saves me from the worst effects. I am using the
chlorate tubes very sparingly. Will take a couple of food tablets now and turn in. More later.
Later—Afternoon, VI-13. There has been more trouble than I expected. I am still in the building, and will have to
work quickly and wisely if I expect
to rest on dry ground tonight. It took me a long time to get to sleep, and I
did not wake till almost noon today. As it was, I would have slept longer but
for the glare of the sun through the haze. The corpse was a rather bad sight,
wriggling with sificlighs, and with a cloud of farnoth-flies around it.
Something had pushed the helmet away from the face, and it was better not to
look at it. I was doubly glad of my oxygen mask when I thought of the situation.
At
length I shook and brushed myself dry, took a couple of food tablets, and put a
new potassium chlorate cube in the electrolyzer of the mask. I am using these
cubes slowly, but wish I had a larger supply. I felt much better after my
sleep, and expected to get out of the building very shortly.
Consulting
the notes and sketches 1 had jotted down. I was impressed with the complexity
ol the hallways, and the possibility that I had made a fundamental error. Of
the six openings leading out of the central space, I had chosen a certain one
as that by which I had entered—using a sighting-arrangement as a guide. When I
stood just within the opening, the corpse fifty yards away was exactly in line
with a particular lepidodendron in the far-off forest. Now it occurred to me
that this sighting might not have been of sufficient accuracy, the distance of
the corpse making its difference of direction in relation to the horizon
comparatively slight when viewed from the openings next to that of my hrst
ingress. Moreover, the tree did not differ as distinctly as it might from other
lepidodcndra on the horizon.
Putting
the matter to a test, I found to my chagrin that I could not be sure which of
three openings was the right one. Had I traversed a
different set of windings at each attempted exit? This time I would be sure. It
struck me that despite the impossibility of trail-blazing there was one marker
I could leave. Though I could not spare my suit, I could—because of my thick
head of hair—spare my helmet; and this was large and light
enough to remain visible above the thin mud. Accordingly I removed the roughly
hemispherical device and laid it at the entrance of one of the corridors— the
right-hand one of the three I must try.
I
would follow this corridor on the assumption that it was correct, repeating
what I seemed to recall as the proper turns, and constantly consulting and
making notes. If I did not get out, I would systematically exhaust all possible
variations; and if these failed, I would proceed to cover the avenues extending
from the next opening the same way, continuing to the third opening if
necessary. Sooner or later I could not avoid hitting the right path to the
exit, but I must use patience. Even at worst, I could
scarcely fail to reach the open plain in time for a dry night's sleep.
Immediate
results were rather discouraging, though they helped me eliminate the
right-hand opening in little more than an hour. Only a succession of blind
alleys, each ending at a great distance from the corpse, seemed to branch from
this hallway; and I saw very soon that it had not figured at all in the
previous afternoon's wanderings. As before, however, I always found it relatively
easy to grope back to the central chamber.
About 1 p.
m. I
shifted my helmet marker to the next opening and tagan to explore the hallways
beyond it. At first I thought I recognized the turnings, but soon found myself
in a wholly unfamiliar set of coiridors. I could not get near the corpse, and this lime seemed cut off Irom the
central chamber as well, even though I thought I had recorded every move I
made. There seemed to be tricky twists and crossings loo subtle for me to
capture in my crude diagrams, and I began lo develop a kind ol mixed anger and
discouragement. While patience would of course win in the end, I saw that my
searching would have to be minute and tireless.
Two
o'clock lound me still wandering vainly through strange corridors, constantly
feeling my way, looking alternately at my helmet and at the corpse, and jotting
data on my scroll with decreasing confidence. I cursed the stupidity and idle
curiosity which had drawn me into this tangle of unseen walls—reflecting that
if 1 had let the thing alone and headed back as
soon as I had taken the crystal from the body, I would
even now be sale at Terra Nova.
Suddenly
u occurred to me that I might be able to tunnel under the invisible walls with
my knife, and thus effect a short-cut to the outside,
or to some outward leading corridor. I had no means of knowing how deep the
building's loundations were, hut ihe omnipresent mud argued the absence of any
floor save the earth. Facing the distant and increasingly horrible corpse, I began
a course of feverish digging with the broad, sharp blade.
There was about six inches of semi-liquid
mud, below which the density of the soil increased sharply. This lower soil
seemed to be of a different color, a grayish clay
rather like the formations near Venus's north pole. As I continued downward
close to the unseen barrier I saw that the ground was getting harder and
harder. Watery mud rushed into the excavation as fast as I removed the clay,
but I reached through it and kept on working. If I could bore any kind of a
passage beneath the wall, the mud would not stop my wriggling out.
About
three teet down, however, the hardness ol ihe soil halted my digging
seriously. Its tenacity was beyond anything I had encountered before, even on
this planet, and was linked with an anomalous heaviness. My knife had to split
and chip the lightly packed clay, and the fragments I brought up were like
solid stones or bits ol metal. Finally even this splitting and chipping became
impossible, and I had to cease my work with no lower edge of the wall in reach.
The
hour long attempt was a wasteful as well as futile one, for it used up great
stores of my energy and forced me both lo take an exlra food tablet, and to put
an additional chlorate cube in the oxygen mask. It has also brought a pause in
the day's gropings, for I am still much too exhausted to walk. Alter cleaning
my hands and arms of the worst ol the mud I sat down to write these
notes—leaning against an invisible wall and facing away from the corpse.
That
body is simply a writhing mass of vermin now—the odor has begun to draw some of
the slimy akmans from the faroff jungle. I notice that many of the efjeh-weeds on the plain are reaching out necrophagous feelers toward the thing; but I
doubt if any arc long enough to reach it. I wish some really carnivorous
organisms like the skorahs would appear, for then they might scent me and
wriggle a course through the building toward me. Things like that have an odd
sense of direction. I could watch them as they came, and jot down their
approximate route ii they failed to form a continuous line. Even that would be
a great help. When I met any, the pistol would make short work of them.
But
I can hardly hope for as much as that. Now that these notes arc made I shall
rest a while longer, and later will do some more groping. As soon as I get back
to the central chamber—which ought to be fairly easy—I shall try the extreme
left-hand opening. Perhaps 1 can
get outside by dusk after all.
Night—VI-13. New trouble. My
escape will be tremendously difficult, for there are elements I had not
suspected. Another night here in the mud, and a fight on my
hands tomorrow. I cut my rest short and was up and groping again by four
o'clock. After about fifteen minutes I reached the central chamber and moved my
helmet to mark the last of the three possible doorways. Starting through this
opening, I seemed to find the going more familiar, but was brought up short in
less than five minutes by a sight that jolted me more than I can describe.
It
was a group of four or five of those detestable
man-lizards emerging from the forest far off across the plain. I could not see
them distinctly at that distance, but thought they paused and
turned toward the trees to gesticulate, after which they were joined by fully
a dozen more. The augmented party now began to advance directly toward the
invisible building, and as they
approached I studied them carefully. I had never before had a close view of the things outside the steamy shadows of the jungle.
The
resemblance to reptiles was perceptible, though 1 knew it was only an apparent
one, since these beings have no point of contact with terrestrial life. When
they drew nearer they seemed less truly reptilian, only the flat head and the
green, slimy, frog like skin carrying out the idea. They walked erect on their
odd, thick stumps, and their suction-disks made curious noises in the mud.
These were average specimens, about seven feet in height, and with four long,
ropy pectoral tentacles. The motions of those tentacles—if the theories of
Fogg, Fkberg, and Janat are right, which I formerly doubted but now am more
ready to believe—indicated that the things were in animated conversation.
I
drew my Hame pistol and was ready for a hard fight. The odds were bad, but the
weapon gave me a certain advantage. If the things knew this building they would
come through it after me, and in this way would form a key to getting out, just as carnivorous skorahs might have done. That
they would attack me seemed certain; for even though they could not sec the
crystal in my pouch, they could divine its presence through that special sense
of theirs.
Yet,
surprisingly enough, they did not attack me. Instead they scattered and formed a vast circle around me, at a distance which indicated that they were
pressing close to the unseen wall. Standing there in a ring, the beings stared
silently and inquisitively at me, waving their tentacles and sometimes nodding
their heads and gesturing with their upper limbs. Alter a while I saw others issue from the forest, and these advanced and joined the
curious crowd. Those near the corpse looked briefly at it but made no move to
disturb it. It was'a horrible sight, yet the man-lizards seemed quite unconcerned.
Now and then one of them would brush away the farnoth-flies with its limbs or
tentacles, or crush a wriggling sificligh or akman, or an out-reaching
efjeh-weed with the suction disks on its stumps.
Staring
back at these grotesque and unexpected intruders, and
wondering uneasily why they did not attack me at once, I lost for the time
being the will power and nervous energy to continue my search for a way out.
Instead I leaned limply against the invisible wall of
the passage where I stood, letting my wonder merge gradually into a chain of
the wildest speculations. A hundred mysteries which had previously baffled me
seenled all at once to take on a new and sinister significance, and I trembled
with an acute fear unlike anything I had experienced before.
1 believed I knew why these repulsive beings
were hovering expectantly around me. I believed, too. that
I had the secret of the transparent structure at last. The alluring crystal
which I had seized, the body of the man who had seized
it before me—all these things began to acquire a dark and threatening meaning.
It was no common series of mischances which
had made me lose my way in this roofless, unseen tangle of corridors. Far from it. Beyond doubt, the place was a genuine maze, a
labyrinth deliberately built by these hellish beings whose craft and mentality
I had so badly underestimated. Might I not
have suspected this before, knowing of their uncanny architectural skill? The
purpose was all too plain. It was a trap—a trap set to catch human beings, and
with the crystal spheroid as bait. These reptilian things, in their war on the
takers of crystals, had turned to strategy and were using our own cupidity
against us.
Dwight—if
this rotting corpse were indeed he—was a victim. Fie must have been trapped
some time ago, and had failed to find his way out. Lack of water had doubtless
maddened him, and perhaps he had run out of chlorate cubes as well. Probably
his mask had not slipped accidentally after all. Suicide was a likelier thing.
Rather than face a lingering death he had solved the issue by removing the mask
deliberately and letting the lethal atmosphere do its work at once. The
horrible irony of his fate lay in his position—only a few feet from the saving
exit he had failed to find. One minute more of
searching, and he would have been sale.
And
now I was trapped as he had been; trapped, and with this circling herd of
curious starers to mock at my predicament. The thought was maddening, and as
it sank in I was seized with a sudden flash of panic which set me running
aimlessly through the unseen hallways. For several moments 1 was essentially a
maniac—stumbling, tripping, bruising myself on the invisible walls, and
finally collapsing in the mud as a panting, lacerated heap of mindless,
bleeding flesh.
Trie
fall sobered me a bit, so that when I slowly
struggled to my feet I could notice things and exercise my reason.
The circling watchers were swaying their tentacles in an ocld, irregular way
suggestive of sly, alien laughter, and I shook
my fist savagely at them as 1 rose.
My gesture seemed to increase their hideous mirth—a few of them clumsily
imitating it with their greenish upper limbs. Shamed into sense, I tried to collect my faculties and take stock of the situation..
Alter
all, I was not as badly oil as Dwight had been. Unlike
him, I knew what the situation was—and forewarned is
forearmed. I had proof that the exit was attainable in the
end, and would not repeat his tragic act of impatient despair. The body—or
skeleton, as it would soon be—was constantly belore me as a guide to the
sought-for aperture, anil dogged patience would certainly take me to it if I worked long and intelligently enough.
I had, however, the disadvantage of being
surrounded by these reptilian devils. Now that 1 realized the nature ol the trap—whose invisible material argued a
science and technology beyond anything on earth—I could no longer discount the mentality and resources of my enemies. Even
with my flame-pistol 1 would have a bad time getting away, though
boldness and quickness would doubtless see me through in the long run.
But
first I must reach the exterior, unless I could lure or provoke some of the creatures to advance toward me. As I prepared my pistol lor action and counted over my generous supply of
ammunition it occurred to me to try the effect of its blasts on the invisible
walls. Had I overlooked a feasible means of escape? There was no clue to the
chemical composition of the transparent barrier, and conceivably it might be
something which a tongue of fire could cut like cheese. Choosing a section
lacing the corpse, I carefully discharged the pistol at close
range and lelt with my knife where the blast had been aimed. Nothing was
changed. I had seen the flame spread when it struck the
surface, and now realized that my hope had been vain. Only a long, tedious
search tor the exit would ever bring me to the outside.
So,
swallowing another food tablet and putting another cube in the elec-trolyzer of
my mask, I recommenced the long quest, retracing my
steps to the central chamber and starting out anew. I constantly consulted my notes and sketches, and made fresh ones, taking
one false turn after another, but staggering on in desperation till the
afternoon light grew verv dim. As I persisted
in my quest I looked horn time to time at the silent circle
of mocking starers, ar.d noticed a gradual repla. ement
in their ranks. Every now and then a few would return to the forest, while
others would arrive to take their places. The more I thought of their tactics the less I liked them, for they gave me a hint
of the creatures' possible motives. At any time these devils could have
advanced and fought me. but they seemed to prefer
watching my struggles to escape. I could
not but inler that they enjoyed the spectacle— and this made
me shrink with double lorcc from the prospect of falling into their
hands.
With
the dark I ceased my searching, and sat down in the mud
to rest. Now I am writing in the light of my lamp, and will
soon try to get some sleep. I hope
tomorrow will see me out; lor my canteen is low, and lacol tablets arc a poor substitute lor water. I would hardly dare try the moisture in this
slime, for none of the water in the mud-regions is potable except when
distilled. That is why we run such long pipe-lines lo the
yellow clay regions, or depend on rain-water when those devils find and
cut our pipes. I have none too many chlorate cubes either, and must try to cut
down my oxygen consumption as much as I can. My tunneling attempt of the early
afternoon, and my later panic flight, burned up a perilous amount of air.
Tomorrow I will reduce physical exertion to the barest minimum until F meet the reptiles and have to deal with them. I must save a good cube supply for the journey back to Terra Nova. My enemies are still
on hand; I can see a circle of their feeble glow-torches around me. There is a horror about those lights which will keep me
awake.
Night—VI-14. Another full day of searching and still no
way out! I am beginning to be worried about the water problem, for my canteen
went dry at noon. In the afternoon there was a burst of rain, and I went back to the central chamber for the helmet
which I had left as a marker—using this as a
bowl, and getting about two cupfuls of water. I drank most of it, but have put
the slight remainder in my canteen.
Lacol
tablets make little headway against real thirst, and I
hope there will be more rain in the night. I am leaving my helmet bottom-up to
catch any that falls. Food tablets are none too plentiful, but not dangerously
low. I shall halve my rations from now on. The chlorate cubes are my real
worry, for even without violent exercise the day's endless tramping burned a
dangerous number. I feel weak from my forced economies in oxygen, and from my
constantly mounting thirst. When I reduce my food I suppose 1 shall feel still weaker.
There
is something damnable—something uncanny—about this labyrinth. I could swear
that I had eliminated certain turns through charting, and yet each new trial
belies some assumption I had thought established. Never before did I realize
how lost we are without visual landmarks. A blind man might do better, but for
most of us sight is the king of the senses. The effect of all these fruitless
wanderings is one of prolound discouragement. I can understand how poor Dwight
must have felt. His corpse is now just a skeleton, and the siliclighs and
akmans and farnoth-flies are gone. The efjeh-wecds are nipping the leather
clothing to pieces, for they were longer and faster-growing than I had
expected. And all the while those relays of tentaclcd slarers stand gloatingly
around the barrier laughing at me and enjoying my misery. Another day and I
shall go mad if I do not drop dead from exhaustion.
However,
there is nothing to do but persevere. Dwight would have got out if he had kept
on a minute longer. It is just possible that somebody from Terra Nova will come
looking for me before long, although this is only my third day out. My muscles
ache horribly, and I can't seem to rest at all lying down in this loathsome
mud. Last night, despite my terrific fatigue, I slept only fitfully, and
tonight I fear will be no better. I live in an endless nightmare—poised
between waking and sleeping, yet neither truly awake nor truly asleep. My hand
sinker and I can write no more for the time being. That circle of feeble glow
torches is hideous.
Late
afternoon—VI-lX Substantial progress! Looks
good. Very weak, and did not sleep much til! daylight.
Then I dozed liil noon, though without being ut all rested. No rain, and thirst
leaves m.- ver> weak. Ate an
extra food tablet to keep me going, but without vvatci it didn't help much. 1 dared
to try a little of the slime water just once, but it made m- violei dy sick and left me even
thirstier than before. Must save chlorate cubes, so am nearly suffocating lor
lack of oxygen. Can't walk much of the time, but manage to crawl in the mud. About 2 p.
in. I thought I recognized some passages, and got substantially nearer to the corpse—or
skeleton—than I had been since the first day's trials. I was sidetracked once
in a blind alley, but recovered the main trail with the aid ol my chart and
notes. The trouble with these jottings is that there are so many ol them. They
must cover three feet of the record-scroll, and I have to stop for long periods
to untangle them. My head is weak from thirst, sulfocalion, and exhaustion, and I cannot understand all I have set down.
Those damnable green things keep staring and laughing widi their tentacles, and
sometimes they gesticulate in a way that makes me think they share some
terrible joke just beyond my perception.
It
was three o'clock when I really struck my stride. There was a d.»orway which, according to my notes, I had not traversed before; and when I tried it I found I could crawl
circuitously toward the weed-twined skeleton. The route was a sort of spiral,
much like thai by which I had lirst reached the central chamber. Whenever I came to a lateral
doorway or junction I would keep to the course which seemed best to repeat that
original journey. As I circled nearer and nearer to my gruesome landmark, the watchers outside
intensified their cryptic gesticulations and sardonic silent laughter.
Lvidcntly they saw something grimly amusing in my progress, perceiving no doubt
how helpless I would be in any encounter with them. I was content to leave them
to their mirth; for although I realized my extreme weakness, I counted on the
flame pistol and its numerous extra magazines to get me through the vile
reptilian phalanx.
Ho|>e
now soared high, but I did not attempt to rise to my feet. Better to crawl now,
and save my strength for the coming encounter with the man-lizards. My advance
was very s|ow, and the danger ol straying into some blind alley very great, but
none the less I seemed to curve steadily toward my osseous goal. The prospect
gave me new strength and for the nonce I ceased to worry about my pain, my
thirst, and my scant supply of cubes. The creatures were now all massing around
the entrance, gesturing, leaping, and laughing with their tentacles. Soon, I reflected, I would have to face the entire horde,
and perhaps such reinforcements as they would receive from the forest.
I
am now only a few yards from the skeleton, and am pausing to make this entry
before emerging and breaking through the noxious band of entities. I feel
confident that with my last ounce of strength I can put them to flight despite their numbers, for the range of this pistol is tremendous. Then a camp on the dry moss
at the plateau's edge, and in the morning a weary trip through the jungle to
Terra Nova. I shall be glad to see living men and the buildings of human
beings again. The teeth of that skull gleam and grin horribly.
Toward night—VI-I5. Horror and despair. Raffled again! After making the previous
entry I approached still closer to the skeleton, but suddenly encountered an
intervening wall. 1 had been deceived once more, and was
apparently back where I had been three days before, on my first futile attempt
to leave the labyrinth. Whether I screamed aloud I do not know— perhaps I was
too weak to utter a sound. I merely lay dazed in the mud for a long period,
while the greenish things outside leaped and laughed and gestured.
Alter a time I became more fully conscious.
My thirst and weakness and suffocation were last gaining on me, and with my
last bit of strength I put a new cube in the electrolyzer, recklessly, and
without regard for the needs of my journey to Terra Nova. The fresh oxygen
revived me slightly, and enabled me to look about more alertly.
It
seemed as if I were slightly more distant from poor Dwight than I had been at
that first disappointment, and I dully wondered if I could be in some other corridor
a trifle more remote. With this faint shadow of hope I laboriously dragged myself forward, but after a few feet encountered a
dead end as I had on the former occasion.
This,
then, was the end. Three days had taken me nowhere, and my strength was gone. I
would soon go mad from thirst, and 1 could
no longer count on cubes enough to git me back. I feebly wondered why the nightmare
things had gathered so thickly around the entrance as they mocked me. Probably
this was part of the mockery—to make me think 1 was approaching an egress which they knew did not exist.
I
shall not last long, though I am resolved not to hasten matters as Dwight did.
His grinning skull has just turned toward me. shifted
by the groping of one ol the cljch-wceds that are devouring his
leather suit. The ghoulish stare ol those empty eye-sockets is
worse than the staring of those lizard horrors. It lends a hideous meaning to
that dead, white-toothed grin.
I
shall lie very still in the mud and save all the strength I can. This record,
which I hope may reach and warn those who come after me, will soon be done.
Alter I stop writing I shall rest a long while. Then, when it is too dark lor
those frightful creatures to see, I shall muster up my last reserves of strength and try to toss the record-scroll over the wall and the
intervening corridor to the plain outside. I shall take care to send it toward
the left, where it will not hit the leaping band of mocking beleaguerers.
Perhaps it will l>e lost forever in the thin mud—but perhaps it will land in
some widespread clump ol weeds and ultimately reach the hands of men.
If
it does survive to lie read, I hope it may do more than merely warn men ol this
trap. I hope it may teach our race to let those shining crystals stay where
they are. They belong to Venus alone. Our planet does not truly need them, and
I believe we have violated some obscure and mysterious
law —some law buried deep in the arcana of the
cosmos—in our attempts to take them. Who can tell what dark, potent and widespread forces spur on these
reptilian things who guard their treasure so
strangely? Dwight and I have paid, as others have paid and will
pay. But it may be that these scattered deaths are only the prelude of greater
horrors to come. Let us leave to Venus
that which belongs only to Venus.
* *
*
I am very near death now, and fear I may not
be able to throw the scroll when dusk comes. If I cannot.
I suppose the man-lizards will seize it, for they will probably realize what it
is. They will not wish anyone to be warned of the labyrinth—and they will not
know that my message holds a plea in their own behalf. As the end approaches I
feel more kindly toward the things. In the scale of cosmic entity who can say
which species stands higher, or more nearly approaches a space-wide organic norm—theirs or mine
?
* - * «
I have just taken the great crystal out of my
pouch to look at it in my last moments. It shines fiercely and
menacingly in the red rays of the dying day. The leaping horde
have noticed it, and their gestures have changed in a way I cannot understand. I wonder why they keep clustered around the
entrance instead of concentrating at a still closer point in the transparent wall.
* * *
I am growing numb and cannot write much more.
Things whirl around me, yet I do not lose consciousness. Can I throw this over
the wall? That crystal glows so, yet the twilight is deepening.
* # #
Dark. Very weak. They are
still laughing and leaping around the doorway, and have started those hellish
glow torches.
* # *
Are they going away? I dreamed I heard a sound . . . light in the
sky. . . .
Report of Wesley P. Miller, Supt. Croup A, Venus Crystal Co. (Terra Nova on Venus—VI 16)
Our Operative A-49, Kenton J. Stanfield of
531 Marshall Street, Richmond, Va., left Terra Nova early on VI-12 for a
short-term trip indicated by detector. Due back 13th or 14th.
Did not appear by evening of 15th, so Scouting Plane FR-58 with five men under
my command set out at 8 p.m. to follow route with detector. Needle showed no
change from earlier readings.
Followed needle to Frycinian Highland, playing strong searchlights all the way.
Triple-range flame-guns and D-radiation cylinders could have dispcrsed any
ordinary hostile forces of natives, or any dangerous
aggregation
of carnivorous skorahs.
When
over the open plain on Eryx we saw a group of moving
lights which we knew were native glow-torches. As we approached, they
scattered into the forest. Probably seventy-five to a hundred
in all. Detector indicated crystal on spot where they had been. Sailing
low over this spot, our lights picked out objects on the ground. Skeleton
tangled in efjeh-weeds, and complete body ten feet from it. Brought plane down
near bodies, and corner of wing crashed on unseen obstruction.
Approaching
bodies on foot, we came up short against a smooth, invisible barrier which
puzzled us enormously. Feeling along it near trie skeleton, we struck an
opening, beyond which was a space with another opening leading to the
skeleton. '1 lie latter, though robbed of clothing by
weeds, had one of the company's numbered metal helmets beside it. It was
Operative B-9, Frederick N. Dwight of Koenig's division, who had been out of
Terra Nova for two months on a long commission.
Between
this skeleton and the complete body there seemed to be another wall, but we
could easily identify the second man as Stanfield. He had a record-scroll in
his lelt hand and a pen in his right, and seemed to have been writing when he
died. No crystal was visible, but the detector indicated a huge specimen near
Stanfield's body.
We
had great difficulty in getting at Stanfield, but finally succeeded. The body
was still warm, and a great crystal lay beside it, covered by the shallow mud.
We at once studied the record-scroll in the lelt hand, and prepared to take
certain steps based on its data. The contents of the scroll forms the long
narrative prefixed to this report; a narrative whose main descriptions we have
verified, and which we append as an explanation of what was found. The latter
parts ol this account show mental decay, but there is no reason to doubt the bulk of it. Stanfield obviously died ol a
combination of thirst, suffocation, cardiac strain and psychological
depression. His mask was in place, and Ireely generating oxygen despite
an alarmingly low cube supply.
Our
plane being damaged, we sent a wireless and called out Anderson with Repair
Plane FG-7, a crew of wreckers, and a set of blasting-materials. By morning
FH-58 was fixed, and went back under Anderson carrying the two bodies and the
crystal. We shall bury Dwight and Stanfield in the company graveyard, and ship
the crystal to Chicago on the next earth-bound liner. Later we shall adopt
Stanfield's suggestion—the sound one in the saner, earlier part ol his
report—and bring across enough troops to wipe out the natives altogether. With
a clear field, there will be scarcely any limit to the amount of crystal we can
secure.
In
the afternoon we studied the invisible building or trap with great care,
exploring it with the aid of long guiding cords, and preparing a complete chart
for our archives. We were much impressed by the design,
anil shall keep specimens of the substance for chemical analysis. All such
knowledge will be useful when wc take over the various
cities of the natives. Our type C diamond drills were able to bite into the
unseen material, and the wreckers are now planting dynamite preparatory to a
thorough blasting. Nothing will
be left when we are done. The edifice forms a
distinct menace to aerial and other possible traffic.
In considering
the plan of the labyrinth one is impressed not only with the irony of Dwight's
fate, but with that of Stanfield's as well. When trying to reach the second
body from the skeleton, we could find no access on the right, but Markheim
found a doorway from the first inner space some fifteen feet past Dwight and
lour or five past Stanfield. Beyond this was a long hall which we did not
explore till later, but on the right-hand side of that hall was another doorway
leading directly to the body. Stanfield could have reached the outside entrance
by walking twenty-two or twenty-three feet if he had found the opening which lay directly behind him—an opening which he overlooked in his exhaustion and despair.
The Black Stone Statue
by Mary Elizabeth Counselman
Must
a statue be lifelike? The ancient Greeks and Romans thought so, and strove to mal(e their carvings resemble the persons who posed for
them. The ideal persisted through the Middle Ages and
after. But lately we have had a It end that a statue may merely represent an
emotion or an impression of the subject, that the lifeline statue is no longer
an objective to be eagerly sought by sculptors. Now here is a story of a sculptor
who agreed with the ancients, and who turned out some statuary that was the
ultimate in life studies. The eerie story of how he did it is a neat little
shocker.
JL (RECTORS,
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Mass. Gentlemen:
Today I have just received aboard the 5. S. Madrigal your most kind cable, praising my work and
asking—humbly, as one might ask it of a true genius!—if I would do a statue of
myself to be placed among the great in your illustrious museum. Ah, gentlemen,
that cablegram was to me the last turn of the screw!
I
despise myself for what I have done in the name of art. Greed for money and
acclaim, weariness with poverty and the contempt of my inferiors, hatred for a
world that refused to see any merit in my work: these things have driven me to
commit a series of strange and terrible crimes.
In
these days I have thought often of suicide as a way out—a coward's way, leaving
me the fame I do not deserve. But since receiving your cablegram, lauding me
for what I am not and never could be, I am determined to write this letter for
the world to read. It will explain everything. And having written it, I shall
then atone for my sin in (to you, perhaps) a horribly ironic manner but (to me)
one that is most fitting.
Let
me go back to that miserable sleet-lashed afternoon as I came into the hall of
Mrs. Bates's rooming-house—a crawling, filthy hovel for the poverty-stricken,
like myself, who were too proud to go on relief. When I stumbled in, drenched
and dizzy with hunger, our landlady's ample figure was blocking the hallway.
She was arguing with a tall, shabbily dressed young man whose face I was
certain I bad seen somewhere before.
"Just a week," his deep, pleasant
voice was beseeching the old harridan.
Til
pay you double at tbe end of that time, just as soon as I can put over
a deal J have in mind."
I
paused, staring at him covertly while I shook die sleet from my hat-brim. Fine
gray eyes met mine across the landlady's head—haggard now, and overbright with
suppressed incitement. There was strength, character, in that face under its
stubble of mahogany brown beard. There was, too, a firm set to the man's
shoulders and beautifully formed head. Here, I told myself, was someone who had
lived all his lile with dangerous adventure, someone whose clean-cut features,
even under that growth ol beard, Seemed vaguely familiar to my sculptor's eye
lor detail.
"Not
one day, no sirree!" Mrs. Bates had loldcd her arms stubbornly. "A
week's rent in advance, or ye don't step foot into one o' my rooms!"
On
impulse 1 moved forward, digging into my pocket. I
smiled at the young man and thrust almost my last two dollars into the
landlaely s hand. Smirking, she bobbed off and leit me alone with the stranger.
"You
shouldn't have done that," he sighed, and gripped my hand hard.
"Thanks, old man. I'll repay you next week, though. Next week," he
whispered, and his eyes took on a glow of anticipation, "I'll write you a check for a thousand dollars. Two thousand!"
He
laughed delightedly at my quizzical expression and plunged out into the storm
again, whistling.
In
that moment his identity struck me like a blow. Paul Kennicott— the young
aviator whose picture had been on the front page of every newspaper in the
country a few months ago! His plane had crashed somewhere in the Brazilian
wilds, and the natron mourned him and his copilot for dead. Why was he
sneaking back into New York like a criminal —penniless, almost hysterical with
excitement, with an air of secrecy about him—to hide himself here in the slum
district?
I climbed the rickety stairs to my shabby room
and was plying the chisel half-heartedly on my Darning Group, when suddenly I became aware of a peculiar
buzzing sound, like an angry bee shut up in a jar. I slapped my ears several times, annoyed, believing the noise to be
in my own head. But it kept on, growing louder by the moment.
It
seemed to come from the hall; and simultaneously I heard the stairsteps creak
just outside my room.
Striding
to the door, I jerked it open—to see Paul Kennicott tiptoeing up the stairs in
stealthy haste. Fie started violently at sight of me and attempted to hide
under his coat an odd black box he was carrying.
But
it was too large: almost two feet square, roughly fashioned ol wood and the
canvas off an airplane wing. But this was not immediately apparent, for the
whole thing seemed to be covered with a coat ol shiny
black enamel. When it bumped against the balustrade, however, it gave a solid
metallic sound, unlike cloth-covered wood. That humming noise, I was sharply
aware, came from inside the box.
I stepped out into the hall and stood
blocking the passage rather grimly.
"Look
here," I snapped. "I know who you are, Kennicott, but I don'* know
why you're hiding out like this. What's it all about? You'll tell me, or I'll turn you over to the police!"
Panic
leaped into his eyes. They pleaded with me silently for an instant, and then we heard the plodding footsteps of Mrs. Bates come
upstairs.
"Who's
got that raddio?" her querulous voice preceded her. "I hear it
hummin'! Get it right out of here if you don't wanta pay me extry for the
'leclricity it's burnin'."
"Oh, ye gods!" Kcnnicott groaned frantically. "Stall her! Don't let that gabby
old fool find out about this—it'll ruin everything! Help me, and I'll tell you
the whole story."
He
darted past me without waiting for my answer and slammed the door after him.
The droning noise subsided and then was swiftly muffled so that it was no
longer audible.
Mrs. Bates puffed up the stairs and eyed me
accusingly. "So it's you
that's got that raddio? 1 told
you the day you come--- "
"All
right," I said, pretending annoyance. "I've turned it off, and anyhow
it goes out tomorrow. I was just keeping it for a Iriend."
"Eh? Well----- " She eyed me sourly, then
sniffed and went on back
downstairs,
muttering under her breath.
I
strode to Kennicott's door and rapped softly. A key grated in the lock and I
was admitted by my wild-eyed neighbor. On the bed, muffled by pillows, lay the
black box humming softly on a shrill note.
"I
n—n n—ng—ngl" it went, exactly like a radio tuned to a station that is temporarily off
the air.
Curiosity
was gnawing at my vitals. Impatiently I watched Kennicott striding up and down
the little attic room, striking one fist against the other palm.
"Well?" I demanded.
And
with obvious reluctance, in a voice jerky with excitement, he began to unfold
the secret of the thing inside that onyx-like box. I sat on the bed beside it,
my eyes riveted on Kennicott's face, spellbound by what he was saying.
"Our plane," he began, "was
demolished. We made a forced landing in the center of a dense jungle. If you
know Brazil at all, you'll know what it was like. Trees, trees, trees! Crawling insects as big as your fist. A hot sickening smell
of rotting vegetation, and now and then the screech of some animal or bird eery
enough to make your hair stand on end. We cracked up right in the middle of
nowhere.
"I
crawled out of the wreckage with only a sprained wrist and a few minor cuts,
but McCrea—my co-pilot, you know—got a broken leg and a couple of bashed ribs.
He was in a bad way, poor devil! Eat little guy, bald, scared of women, and
always cracking wise about something. A swell sport."
The aviator's face convulsed briefly, and he
stared at the box on the bed beside me with a peculiar expression of loathing.
"McCrea's dead, then?" I prompted.
Kcnnicott nodded his head dully, and
shrugged. "God only knows! I guess
you'd call it death. But let me get on with it.
"We
slashed and sweated our way through an almost impenetrable wall of undergrowth
for two days, carrying what food and cigarets we had in that makeshift box
there."
A
thumb-jerk indicated the square black thing beside me, droning softly without a
break on the same high note.
"McCrea was running a fever, though, so
we made camp and I struck
out to find water. When I came back----- "
Kcnnicott
choked. I stared at him, waiting until his hoarse voice went on doggedly:
"When
I came back, McCrea was gone. I called and called. No answer. Then, thinking he
might have wandered away delirious, I picket! out his
trail and followed it into the jungle. It wasn't hard to do, because he had to
break a path through that wall of undergrowth, and now and then I'd find blood
on a bramble or maybe a scrap of torn cloth from his khaki shirt.
"Not
more than a hundred yards south of our camp I suddenly became aware of a queer humming sound in my ears. Positive that this had drawn McCrea, I
followed it. It got louder and louder, like the drone of a powerful dynamo. It
seemed to fill the air and set all the trees to quivering. My teeth were on
edge with the monotony of it, but I kept on, and unexpectedly found myself
walking into a patch of jungle that was all black} Not burnt in a forest fire, as 1 first thought, but dead-black in every detail. Not a spot of color
anywhere; and in that jungle with all its vivid foliage, the effect really
slapped you in the face! It was as though somebody bad turned out the lights
and yet you could stiil distinguish the formation of
every object around you. It was uncanny!
"There
was black sand on the ground as far as I could see. Not soft jungle-soil, damp
and lertile. This stuff was as hard and dry as emery, and it glittered like
soft coal. All the trees were black and shiny like anthracite, and not a leaf stirred anywhere, not an insect crawled. I almost lainted as I
realized why.
"It was a petrified forest!
"Those
trees, leaves and all, had turned into a shiny black
kind of stone that looked like coal but was much harder. It wouldn't chip when
I struck it with a fallen limb oi the same stuff. It wouldn't bend; I simply
had to squeeze through holes in underbrush more rigid than cast iron. And all
black, mind you—a jungle of luliginous rock like something out ol Dante's Inferno,
"Once
I stumbled over an object and stopped to pick it up. It was McCrea's
canteen—the only thing in sight, besides myself, that was not made of that
queer black stone. He had come this way, then. Relieved, I started shouting his
name again, but the sound of my voice frightened me. The silence of that place
lairly pressed against my eardrums, broken only by that steady droning sound.
But, you see, I'd become so used to it, like the constant ticking of a clock, that I hardly heard it.
"Panic swept over me all at once, an unreasonable fear, as the sound of my own voice banged against the trees and came back in a thousand echoes,
borne on that humming sound that never changed its tone. I don't know why; maybe it was the grinding monotony of it and the
unrelieved black of that stone forest. But my nerve snapped and I bolted back along the way I had
come, sobbing like a kid.
"I
must have run in a circle, though, tripping and cutting myself on that
rock-underbrush. In my terror I forgot the direction of our camp. I was
lost—abruptly I realized it—lost in that hell of coal-black stone, without food
or any chance of getting it, with MeCrea's empty canteen in my hand and no idea
where he had wandered in his fever.
"For
hours I plunged on, forgetting to back-track, and cursing aloud because McCrea
wouldn't answer me. That humming noise had got on my nerves now, droning on
that one shrill note until I thought I would go mad. Exhausted, I sank down on
that emery-sand, crouched against the trunk of a black stone tree. McCrea had
deserted me, I thought crazily. Someone had rescued him and he had left me here
to die—which should give you an idea of my state of mind.
"I
huddled there, letting my eyes rove in a sort of helpless stupor. On the sand beside me was a tiny rock that resembled a butterfly delicately
carved out of onyx. I picked it up dazedly, staring at its hard little legs and
feelers like wire that would neither bend nor break off. And then my gaze
started wandering again.
"It
fastened on something a few dozen paces to my right—and I was sure then that I had gone mad. At first it seeemed
to be a stump of that same dark mineral. But it wasn't a stump. I
crawled over to it and sat there, gaping at it with my senses reeling, while
that humming noise rang louder and louder in my ears.
"It was a blaci stone statue of McCrea, perfect in every detail!
"Pic
was depicted stooping over, with one hand holding out his automatic gripped by
the barrel. His stocky figure, aviator's helmet, his makeshift crutch, and
even the splints on his broken leg were shiny black stone. And his face, to the
last hair of his eyelashes, was a perlect mask of black rock set in an
expression of puzzled curiosity.
"I
got to my feet and walked around the figure, then gave it a push. It toppled
over, just like a statue, and the sound of its fall was deafening in that
silent forest. Hefting it, I was amazed to find that it weighed less than
twenty pounds. I hacked at it with a file we had brought from the plane in lieu
of a machete, but only succeeded in snapping the tool in half. Not a chip flew
off the statue. Not a dent appeared in its polished surface.
"The
thing was so unspeakably weird that I did not even try to explain it to myself,
but started calling McCrea again. If it was a gag of some kind, he could
explain it. But there was no answer to my shouts other than the monotonous hum
of that unseen dynamo.
"Instead
of frightening me more, this weird discovery seemed to jerk me up short.
Collecting my scattered wits, I started back-trailing myself to the camp,
thinking McCrea might have returned in my absence. The droning noise was so
loud now, it pained my eardrums unless I kept my hands over my ears. This I did, stumbling along with my eyes
glued to my own footprints in the hard dry sand.
"And
suddenly I brought up short. Directly ahead of me, under a black stone bush,
lay something that made me gape with my mouth ajar.
"I
can't describe it—no one could. It resembled nothing so much as a star-shaped
blob of transparent jelly that shimmered and changed color like an opal. It
appeared to be some lower form of animal, one-celled, not large, only about a
foot in circumference when it stretched those feelers out to full length. It
oozed along over the sand like a snail, groping its way with those star-points—and it hummed!
"The
droning noise ringing in my ears issued from this nightmare creature!
"It
was nauseating to watch, and yet beautiful, too, with all those iridescent
colors gleaming against that setting of dead-black stone. I approached within a
pace of it, started to nudge it with my foot, but couldn't quite bring myself
to touch the squashy thing. And I've thanked my stars ever since for being so
squeamish!
"Instead,
I took off my flying-helmet and tossed the goggles directly in the path of the
creature. It did not pause or turn aside, but merely reached out one of those
sickening feelers and brushed the goggles very lightly.
"And
they turned to stone!
"Just that! God be my witness that those leather and glass goggles grew black
before my starting eyes. In less than a minute they were petrified into hard
fuliginous rock like everything else around me.
"In
one hideous moment I realized the meaning of that weirdly lifelike statue of
McCrea. I knew what he had done. He had prodded this jelly-like Thing with his
automatic, and it had turned him—and everything in contact with him—into dark
shiny stone.
"Nausea
overcame me. I wanted to run, to escape the sight of that oozing horror, but
reason came to my rescue. 1 reminded
myself that I was Paul Kennicott, intrepid explorer.
Through a horrible experience McCrea and I had stumbled upon something in the
Brazilian wilds which would revolutionize the civilized world. McCrea was dead,
or in some ghastly suspended form of life, through his efforts to solve the
mystery. I owed it to him and to myself not to lose my head now.
"For
the practical possibilities of the Thing struck me like a blow. That black
stone the creature's touch created Irom any earth-substance—by rays from its
body, by a secretion of its glands, by God knows what strange metamorphosis—was
indestructible! Bridges, houses, buildings, roads, could be built of ordinary
material and then petrihed by the touch of this jellylike Thing which had
surely tumbled from some planet with life-forces diametrically opposed to our
own.
"Millions
of dollars squandered on construction each year could be diverted to other
phases of life, for no cyclone or flood could damage a city built of this hard
black rock.
"I said a little prayer for my martyred
co-pilot, and then and there resolved to take the creature hack to civilization
with me.
"It
could he trapped, I was sure—though the prospect appealed to me far less than
that ol caging a hungry leopard! I did not venture to try it until I had
studied the problem from every angle, however, and made certain deductions
through experiment.
"I
found that any substance already petrified was insulated against the thing's
power. I tossed my belt on it, saw it freeze into black rock, then put my
wrist-watch in contact with the rock belt. My watch remained as it was. Another
phenomenon I discovered was that petrifaction also occurred in things in direct contact with
something the creature touched, if that something was not already petrified.
"Dropping
my glove fastened to my signet ring, I let the creature touch only the glove.
But both objects were petrified. I tried it again with a chain of three
objects, and discovered that the touched object and the one in contact with it
turned into black rock, while the third on the chain remained unaffected.
"It
look me about three days to trap the thing, although
it gave no more actual resistance, of course, than a large snail. McCrea, poor
devil, had blundered into the business; but I went at it in a scientific
manner, knowing what danger I laced from the creature. I found my way again to
our camp and brought back our provision box—yes, the one there on the bed
beside you. When the thing's touch had turned it into a perfect stone cage for
itself, I scooped it inside with petrified branches. But, Lord I How the sweat stood out on my face at the prospect of a slip
that might make me touch the horrible little organism!
"The trip out of that jungle was a
nightmare. I spent almost all I had,
hiring scared natives to guide me a mile or so before they'd bolt with terror
of my humming box. On board a tramp steamer bound for the States, I nearly lost
my captive. The first mate thought it was an infernal machine and tried to
throw it overboard. My last cent went to shut him up; so I landed in New York
flat broke."
Paul
Kennicott laughed and spread his hands. "But here I am. I don't dare go to
anyone I know just yet. Reporters will run me ragged, and I want plenty of time to make the right contacts. Do you realize what's in
that box?" He grinned with boyish delight. "Fame and fortune, that's what! McCrea's family will never know want again. Science
will remember our names along with Edison and Bell and all the rest. We've discovered
a new force that will rock the world with its possibilities. That's why,"
he explained, "I've sneaked into the country like an alien. If the wrong
people heard of this first, my life wouldn't be worth a dime, understand?
There are millions involved in this thing. Rilhons! Don't you see?"
He
slopped, eyeing me anxiously. I stared at him and rose slowly from the bed.
Thoughts were seething in my mind—dark ugly thoughts, ebbing and flowing to the
sound of that "—n n—n
n g—m n g!" that filled the shabby room.
For, I did sec the possibilities of that
jelly-like thing's power to turn any object into black stone. But I was thinking as a sculptor. What do I care for roads or buildings? Sculpture is my whole life! To my mind's
eye rose the picture of co-pilot McCrea as Kennicott had described him —a
figure, perfect to the last detail, done in black stone.
Kennicott
was still eyeing me anxiously—perhaps reading the ugly thoughts that flitted
like shadows behind my eyes.
"You'll
keep mum?" he begged. "Do that for me, old boy, and I'll set you up
in a studio beyond your wildest dreams. I'll build up your fame as —what are
you?"
His gray eyes fastened on
my dirty smock.
"Some kind of an artist? I'll show you how much I appreciate your
help. Are you with me?"
Some
kind of an artist! Perhaps if he had not said that, flaying my crushed pride
and ambition to the quick, I would never have done the awful thing I did. But black
jealousy rose in my soul—jealousy of this eager young man who could walk out
into the streets now with his achievement and make the world bow at his feet,
while I in my own field was no more to the public than what he had called me:
"some kind of an artist." At that moment I knew precisely what I
wanted to do.
I
did not meet his frank gray eyes. Instead, I pinned my gaze on that droning
black box as my voice rasped harshly:
"No!
Do you really imagine that I believe this idiotic story of yours? You're insane!
I'm going to call the police—they'll find out what really happened to McCrea
out there in the jungle! There's nothing in that box. It's just a trick."
Kennicott's
mouth fell open, then closed in an angry line. The
next moment he shrugged and laughed.
"Of
course you don't believe me," he nodded. "Who could? unless they had seen what I've seen with my own eyes.
Here," he said briskly, "I'll take this book and drop it in the box
for you. You'll see the creature, and you'll see this book turned into black
stone."
I
stepped back, heart pounding, eyes narrowed, Kennicott leaned over the bed,
unfastened the box gingerly with a wary expression on his face, and motioned me
to approach. Briefly I glanced over his shoulder as he dropped the book inside
the open box.
I
saw horror—a jelly-like, opalescent thing like a five-pointed star. It pulsed and quivered for an instant, and the room
fairly rocked to the unmuffled sound of that vibrant humming.
I
also saw the small cloth-bound book Kennicott had dropped inside. It lay half on top of the squirming creature—a book carved out
of black stone.
"There!
You see?" Kennicott pointed. And those were the last words he ever
uttered.
Remembering
what he had said about the power of the creature being unable to penetrate to a
third object, 1 snatched at Kennicott's sleeve-covered arm,
gave him a violent shove, and saw his muscular hand
plunge for an instant deep into the black box. The sleeve hardened beneath my fingers.
I cowered back, sickened at what I had done.
Paul
Kennicott, his arms thrown out and horror stamped on his fine young face, had
frozen into a statue of black shiny stone!
Then
footsteps were clumping up the stairs again. I realized that Mrs. Bates would
surely have heard the violent droning that issued from the open box. I shut it
swiftly, muffled it, and shoved it under the bed.
I was at my own doorway when the landlady came
puffing up the stairs. My face was calm, my voice contained, and no one but me could hear the furious pounding of mv heart.
"Now,
you look a-here!" Mrs. Bates burst out. "I told you to turn that
raddio off. You take it right out of my room this minute! Runnin* up mv bill
for 'lectricity!"
I apologized meekly and with a great show
carried out a tool-case of mine, saying it was the portable radio I had been
testing for a friend. It satisfied her for the moment, but later, as I was
carrying the black stone figure of Paul Kennicott to my own room, she caught me
at it.
"Why,"
the old snoop exclaimed. "If that ain't the spittin'
image of our new roomer! Friend of yours, is he?"
I thought swiftly and lied jauntily. "A model of mine. I've been working on this statue at
night, the reason you haven't seen him going in and out. I thought I would have to rent a room for him here, but as the statue is
finished now, it won't be necessary after all. You may keep the rent money,
though," I added. "And get me a taxi to haul my masterpiece to the
express station. 1 am ready to submit it to the Museum of Fine
Arts."
And that is my story, gentlemen. The black
stone statue which, ironically, I chose to call Ftar of the Unknown, is not a product of my skill. (Small wonder several people have noticed
its resemblance to the "lost explorer," Paul Kennicott!) Nor did I do
the group of soldiers commissioned by the Anti-War Association. None of my
so-called Symphonies in Blacky were wrought by my hand—but I can tell you what
became of the models who were unlortunate enough to pose lor me!
My
real work is perhaps no better than that of a rank novice, although up to that
fatal afternoon I had honestly believed myself capable of great work as a
sculptor some day.
But
I am an impostor. You want a statue of me. you say in
your cablegram, done in the mysterious black stone which has made me so
lamous? Ah, gentlemen, you shall have that statue!
I
am writing this conlession aboard the S. S. Madrigal, and I shall leave it with a steward to be mailed to you at our next port
of call.
Tonight
I shall take out of my stateroom the hideous thing in its black box which has
never left my side. Such a creature, contrary to all nature on this earth of
ours, should be exterminated. As soon as darkness falls I shall stand on deck
and balance the box on the rail so that it will fall into the sea after my hand
has touched what is inside.
I wonder if the process of being turned into
that black rock is painful, or if it is accompanied only by a feeling of
lethargy? And McCrea, Paul Kcnnicott, and those unfortunate models whom I have passed off as "my work"—are they dead, as we know death,
or are their statues sentient and possessed of nerves? How does that jelly
creature feel to the touch? Does it impart a violent electrical shock or a subtle
emanation of some force beyond our ken, changing the atom-structure of the
flesh it turns into stone?
Many such questions have occurred to me often
in the small hours when I lie awake, tortured by remorse for what I have done. But tonight, gentlemen, I shall know all the answers.
The Planet of Dread---------------------------------
by R. F. Starzl
Stanley
G. Weinbaum made his reputation by his descriptions of the bizarre flora and
fauna of other planets. His plots and human characters, when laid on
interplanetary scenes, were not exceptional—it was his weird Venusian, Martian,
and satellite annuals that made his stories j so fascinating. The following is an interesting forerunner of the Wetnbaum
tale. Laid on another world, it follows the Wembaum pattern startlingly closely
and jcatures enough unusual beasts to people a couple of that author's
adventures. The interesting thing, however, is that it was written several
years before, during the first year of Asrounrling Stories. might possibly have served to inspire the
school of interplanetary depiction that was to follow.
T
JL HERE was no use hiding from the truth.
Somebody had blundered—a fatal blunder—and they were going to pay for
it! Mark Forepaugh kicked the pile of hydrogen cylinders. Only a moment ago he had broken the seals—the mendacious seals that certified
to the world that the flasks were fully charged. And the flasks were empty! The
supply of this precious power gas, which in an emergency should have been sufficient
for six years, simply did not exist.
He
walked over to the integrating machine, which as early as the year 2031 had
begun to replace the older atomic processes, due to the shortage of the radium
series metals. It was bulky and heavy compared to the atomic disintegrators,
but it was much more economical and very dependable. Dependable—provided some
thick-headed stock clerk at a terrestrial supply station did not check in empty
hydrogen cylinders instead of full ones. Forepaugh's unwonted curses brought a
smile to the stupid, good-natured face of his servant, Gunga—he who had been
banished for life from his native Mars for his impiety in closing his single
round eye during the sacred Ceremony of the Wells.
The
Earth man was at this steaming hot, unhcalthful trading station under the very
shadow of the South Pole of the minor planet Inra for an entirely different
reason. One of the most popular of his set on the Earth, an athletic hero, he
had fallen in love, and the devoutly wished-for marriage was only prevented by
lack ol kinds. The opportunity to take charge of this richly paid, though
dangerous, outpost of civilization had been no sooner offered than taken. In
another week or two the relief ship was due to take him and his valuable
collection of exotic Inranian orchids back to the Earth, back to a fat bonus,
Constance, and an assured future.
It was a different
young man who now stood tragically before the useless power plant. His slim
body was bowed, and his clean features were drawn. Grimly he raked the cooling
dust that had been forced in the integrating chamber by the electronic
rearrangement of the original hydrogen atoms— finely powdered iron and
silicon—the "ashes" ol the last tank of hydrogen.
Gunga chuckled.
"What's the matter?" Forepaugh
barked. "Going crazy already?"
"Me, haw! Me, haw! Me thinkin'," Gunga rumbled. "Haw! We got, hawl
plenty hydr'gen." He pointed to the low metal roof of the trading station.
Though it was well insulated against sound, the place continually vibrated to
the low murmur of the Inranian rains that tell interminably through the
perpetual polar day. It was a rain such as is never seen on Earth, even in the
tropics. It came in drops as large as a man's list. It came in streams. It came
in large, shattering masses that broke before they fell and filled the air with
spray. There was little wind, but the steady green downpour of water and the
brilliant continuous Hashing of lightning shamed the dull soggy twilight
produced by the large, hot, but hidden sun.
"Your idea of a joke!" Forepaugh growled in disgust. He understood what Gunga's grim
pleasantry referred to. There was indeed an incalculable
quantity oi hydrogen at hand. If some means could be found to separate the
hydrogen atoms from the oxygen in the world of water around them, they would
not lack for fuel. He thought of electrolysis, and relaxed with a sigh. There was no power. The generators were
dead, the air drier and cooler had ceased its rhythmic pulsing nearly an hour
ago. Their lights were gone, and the automatic radio utterly useless.
"This
is what comes ol putting all your eggs in one
basket," he thought, and let bis mind dwell vindictively on the engineers
who had designed the equipment on which his life depended.
An
exclamation from Gunga startled him. The Martian was pointing to the ventilator
opening, the only part of this strange building that was not hermetically
sealed against the hostile life of Inra. A dark rim had appeared at its margin,
a loathsome, black-green rim that was moving, spreading out. It crept over the
metal walls like low-lying smoke of a lire, yet it was
a solid. From it emanated a strong, miasmatic
odor.
"The giant mold!" Forepaugh cried. He rushed to his desk and took out his flash pistol,
quickly set the localizer so as to cover a large area. When he turned he saw,
to his horror, Gunga about to smash into the mold with his ax. He sent the man
spinning with a blow to the ear.
"Want
to scatter it and start it growing in a half-dozen places?" he snapped.
"Here!"
He
pulled the trigger. There was a light, spiteful pi"g and for an instant a cone of white light stood out in the dim room like
a solid thing. Then it was gone, and with it was gone the black mold, leaving a
circular area of blistered paint on the wall and an acrid odor in the air.
Forepaugh leaped to the ventilating louver and closed it tightly.
"It's
going to be like this from now on," he remarked to the shaken Gunga.
"All these things wouldn't bother us as long as the machinery kept the
building dry and cool. They couldn't live in here. But it's getting damp and
hot. Look at the moisture condensing on the ceiling!"
Gunga gave a guttural cry of despair. "It knows, Boss; look!"
Through
one oi the round, heavily framed ports it could be seen, the lower part of its
large, shapeless body half-floating in the ladling water that covered their
rocky shelf to a depth of several feet, the upper p*rt spectral and gray. It
was a giant amoeba, fully six feet in diameter in its present spheroid form,
but capable of assuming any shape that would be useful. It had an envelope of
tough, transparent matter, and was filled with a fluid t:»at
was now cloudy and then clear. Near the center there was a mass of darker
matter, and this was undoubtedly the seat of its intelligence.
The
Earthman recoiled in horror! A single cell with a brain! It was unthinkable. It was a biological nightmare. Never before
had he seen one— had, in fact, dismissed the stories of the Inranian natives as
* bit ol primitive superstition, had laughed at these gentle, stupid amphibians
with whom he traded when they, in their imperfect language, tried to tell him
of it.
They
had called it the Ul-lul. Well, let it be so. It was an amoeba, and it was
watching him. It floated in the downpour and watched him. With
what? It had no eyes. No matter, it was watching him. And then it suddenly
flowed outward until it became a disc
rocking on the waves. Again its fluid form changed, and by a series of elongations and contractions it flowed through the water at an
incredible speed. It came straight for the window, struck the thick,
unbreakable glass with a shock that could be felt by the men inside.
It flowed over the glass and over the building. It was trying to eat them,
building and all! The part of its body over the port became so thin that it was
almost invisible. At last, its absolute limit reached, it dropped away,
baffled, vanishing amid the glare of the lightning and the frothing waters like
the shadows of a nightmare.
The heat was intolerable and the air was bad.
"Haw, we have to open vent'lator,
Boss!" gasped the Martian.
Forcpaugh
nodded grimly. It wouldn't do to smother either. Though to open the ventilator
would be to invite another invasion by the black mold, not to mention the
amoebae and other fabulous monsters that had up to now been kept at a safe distance by the repeller zone, a simple adaptation of a very
old discovery. A zone of mechanical vibrations, of a frequency of 500,000
cycles per second, was
created by a large quartz crystal in the water, which was
electrically operated. Without power, the protective zone had vanished.
"We watch?" asked Gunga.
"You
bet we watch. Every minute of the 'day' and 'night.'"
He examined the two chronometers, assuring himself that they were well wound,
and congratulated himself that they were not dependent
on the defunct power plant for energy. They were his only means of measuring
the passage of time. The sun, which theoretically would seem to travel round
and round the horizon, rarely succeeded in making its exact location known, but
appeared to shift strangely from side to side at the whim of the fog and water.
"The fellas," Gunga remarked,
coming out of a study. "Why not come?" He referred to the Inranians.
"Probably know something's wrong. They
can tell the quartz oscillator is stopped. Afraid of the Ul-lul, I suppose."
" 'Squeer," demurred the Martian. "Ul-lul
not bother fellas."
"You
mean it doesn't follow them into the underbrush. But it would find tough going
there. Not enough water; trees there, four hundred feet high with thorny roots
and rough bark—they wouldn't like that. Oh no, these natives ought to be pretty
snug in their dens. Why, they're as hard to catch as a muskrat! Don't know what
a muskrat is, huh? Well, it's the same as the Inranians, only different, and
not so ugly."
For
the next six days they existed in their straitened quarters, one guarding while
the other slept, but such alarms as they experienced were of a minor nature, easily disposed of by their flash pistol. It had not been
intended for continuous service, and under the frequent drains it showed an
alarming loss of power. Forepaugh repeatedly warned Gunga to be more sparing in
its use, but that worthy persisted in his practice of using it against every
trifling invasion of the poisonous Inranian cave moss that threatened them, or
the warm, soggy water-spiders that hopefully explored the ventilator shaft in
search of living food.
"Bash
'em with a broom, or something! Never mind if it isn't
nice. Save our flash gun for something bigger."
Gunga only looked distressed.
On
the seventh day their position became untenable. Some kind of sea creature,
hidden under the ever-replenished storm waters, had found the concrete
emplacements of their trading post to its liking. Just how it was done was
never learned. It is doubtful that the creatures could gnaw away the solid
stone—more likely the process was chemical, but none the less it was effective.
The foundations crumbled; the metal shell subsided, rolled hall over so that
silty water leaked in through the straining scams, and threatened at any moment
to be buffeted and urged away on the surface of the flood toward that distant
vast sea which covers nine-tenths of the area of Inra.
"Time to mush for the mountains,"
Forepaugh decided.
Gunga
grinned. The Mountains of Perdition were to his point of view, the only part of
Inra even remotely inhabitable. They were sometimes fairly cool, and though
perpetually pelted with rain, blazing with lightning and reverberating with
thunder, they had caves that were fairly dry and too cool for the black mold.
Sometimes, under favorable circumstances on their rugged peaks, one could get
the full benefit ol the enormous hot sun for whose actinic rays the Martian's
starved system yearned.
"Better
pack a few cans of the lood tablets," the white
man ordered. "Take a couple of waterproof sleeping bags for us, and a few
hundred fire pellets. You can have the flash pistol; it may have a few more
charges in it."
Forepaugh
broke the glass case marked "Emergency Only"
and removed two more flash pistols. Well he knew that he would need them after
passing beyond the trading area—perhaps sooner. His eyes fell on his personal
chest, and he opened it for a brief examination. None of the contents seemed of
any value, and he was about to pass when he dragged out a long, heavy, .45 caliber six-shooter in a holster, and a cartridges !>elt
filled with shells. The Martian stared.
"Know what it is?" his master
asked, handing him the weapon.
"Gunga
not know." He took it and examined it curiously. It was a fine museum piece in an excellent state of preservation, the metal
overlaid with the patina ol age. but Iree from rust
and corrosion.
"It's
a weapon of the Ancients," Forepaugh
explained. "It was a sort
of family heirloom and is c .'er 300 years old. One of
my grandfathers used it in the famous Northwest
Mounted Police. Wonder if it'll still shoot."
He
leveled the weapon at a fat, sightless wriggler that came squirming through a
scam, squinting unaccustomed eyes along the barrel. There was a violent
explosion, and the wriggler disappeared in a smear of dirty green. Gunga nearly
tell over backward in fright, and even Forepaugh was
shaken. He was surprised that the ancient cartridge had exploded at all, though
he knew powder making had reached a high lev el ol perlection beiore explosive chemical weapons had vielded to the newer, lighter, and
infinitely more powerful ray weapons. The gun would impede their progress. It
would be of very little use against the giant Carnivora of Inra. Yet something
—perhaps a sentimental attachment, perhaps what his ancestors would have called
a "hunch"—compelled him to strap it around his waist. He carefully
packed a few essentials in his knapsack, together with one chronometer and a
tiny gyroscopic compass. So equipped, they could travel with a fair degree of
precision toward the mountains some hundred miles on the other side of a steaming forest, a-crawl with feral life, and hot with bloodlust.
Man
and Martian descended into the warm waters and, without a backward glance,
left the trading post to its fate. There was not even any use in leaving a
note. Their relief ship, soon due, would never find the station without radio
direction.
The
current was strong, but the water gradually became shallower as they ascended
the sloping rock. Alter half an hour they saw ahead of them the loom of the
forest, and with some trepidation they entered the gloom cast by the towering,
fernlike trees, whose tops disappeared in murky fog.
Tangled vines impeded their progress. Quagmires lay in wait for them, and tough
weeds tripped them, sometimes throwing one or another into the mud among
squirming small reptiles that lashed at them with spiked, poisonous feet and
then fell to pieces, each piece to lie in the bubbling ooze until it grew again
into a whole animal.
Several
times they almost walked under the bodies of great spheroidal creatures with
massive short legs, whose tremendously long, sinuous necks disappeared in the
leafy murk above, swaying gently like long-stalked lilies in a terrestrial pond. 'I"hese were szornacks, mild-tempered
vegetarians whose only defense lay in their
thick, blubbery hides. Filled with parasites, stinking and rancid, their
decaying covering of fat effectively concealed the tender flesh underneath,
protecting them from fangs and rending claws.
Deeper
in the forest, the battering of the rain was mitigated. Giant neopalm leaves
formed a rool that shut out not only most of the weak daylight, but also the
lury of the downpour. The water collected in cataracts, ran down the boles of
the trees, and roared through the semi-circular canals of the snake trees, so
named by early explorers for their waving, rubbery tentacles, multiplied a
millioniold, that performed the duties of leaves. Water gurgled and chuckled
everywhere, spread in vast dim ponds and lakes writhing with tormented roots,
upheaved by unseen, uncatalogued leviathans, rippled by translucent discs of
loathsome, luminescent jelly that quivered from place to place in pursuit of
microscopic prey.
Yet
the impression was one of calm and quiet, and the waifs from other worlds felt
a surcease of nervous tension. Unconsciously they relaxed. Taking their
bearings, they changed their course slightly for the nesting place of the
nearest tribe of Inranians where they hoped to get food and at least partial
shelter; for their lood tablets had mysteriously turned to an unpleasant
viscous liquid, and their sleeping bags were alive with giant bacteria easily
visible to the eye.
They were doomed to disappointment. After
nearly twelve hours of desperate struggling through the morass, through gloomy
aisles, and countless narrow escapes from prowling beasts of prey in which
only the speed and tremendous power of their flash pistols saved them from
instant death, they reached a rocky outcropping which led to the comparatively
dry rise of land on which a tribe of Inranians made its home. Their faces were
covered with welts made by the hanging filaments of bloodsucking trees as fine
as spider webs, and their senses reeled with the oppressive stench of the abysmal
jungle. If the pampered ladies of the Inner Planets only knew where their
thousand-dollar orchids sprang from?
Converging
runways showed the opening of one of the underground dens, almost hidden from
view by a bewildering maze of roots, rendered more formidable by long, sharp
stakes made from the iron-hard thigh-bones of the flying kabo.
Forepaugh cupped his hands over his mouth and
gave the call.
"Ouf! Ouf! Out! Out! Out!"
He
repeated it over and over, the jungle giving back" his voice in a muffled
echo, while Gunga held a spare flash pistol and kept a sharp lookout for a
carnivore intent on getting an unwary Inranian.
There
was no answer. These timid creatures, who are often rated the most intelligent
life native to primitive Inra, had sensed disaster and had fled.
Forepaugh
and Gunga slept in one of the foul, poorly ventilated dens, ate of the hard,
woody tubers that had not been worth taking along, and wished they had a
certain stock clerk at that place at that time. They were awakened out of deep
slumber by the threshing of an evil-looking creature which had become entangled
among the sharpened spikes. Its tremendous maw, splitting it almost in half,
was opened in roars of pain that showed great yellow fangs eight inches in
length. Its heavy flippers battered the stout roots and lacerated themselves in
the beast's insensate rage. It was quickly dispatched with a flash pistol and
Gunga cooked himself some of the meat, using a lire pellet; but despite his
hunger, Forepaugh did not dare eat any of it, knowing that this species,
strange to him, might easily be one of the many on Inra that are poisonous to
Terrestrials.
They
resumed their march toward the distant invisible mountains, and were fortunate
in finding somewhat better footing. They made about 25 miles on that
"day," without untoward incident. Their ray pistols gave them an
insuperable advantage over the largest and most ferocious beasts they could
expect to meet, so that they became more and more confident, despite the
knowledge that they were rapidly using up the energy stored in their weapons.
The first one had long ago been discarded, and the charge indicators of the
other two were approaching zero at a disquieting rate. Forepaugh took them
both, and from that time on he was careful never to waste a discharge except in
case of a direct and unavoidable attack. This forced many detours through
sucking mud, and came near to ending both their lives.
The
Earthman was in the lead when it happened. Seeking an uncertain fooling through
a tangle of low growing, thick, ghastly white vegetation, he placed a foot on
what seemed to be a broad, flat rock projecting slightly above the ooze.
Instantly there was a violent upheaval of mud; the seeming rock flew up like a
trap-door, disclosing a cavernous mouth some seven feet across, and a thick,
triangular tentacle flew up from its concealment in the mud in a vicious arc.
Forepaugh leaped back barely in time to escape being swept in and engulfed. The
end of the tentacle struck him a heavy blow on the chest, throwing him back
with such force as to bowl Gunga over, and whirling the pistols out of his
hands into a slimy, bulbous growth nearby, where they stuck in the
phosphorescent cavities the force of their impact had made.
There
was no time to recover the weapons. With a bellow of rage, the beast was out of
its bed and rushing at them. Nothing stayed its progress. Tough,
heavily scaled trees thicker than a man's body shuddered and fell as its bulk
brushed by them. But it was momentarily confused, and its first rush
carried it past its dodging quarry. This respite saved their lives.
Rearing
its plumed head to awesome heights, its knobby bark running with brown rivulets
of water, a giant tree, even for that world of giants, offered refuge. The men
scrambled up the rough trunk easily, finding plenty of hand and footholds. They
came to rest on one of the shelllike circumvoluting rings, some twenty-five
feet above the ground. Soon the blunt brown tentacles slithered in search of
them, but failed to reach their refuge by inches.
And
now began the most terrible siege that interlopers in that primitive world can
endure. From that cavernous, distended throat came a tremendous, world-shaking
noise.
"HOOM!
HOOM! IIOOM! HOOM! FIOOM! HOOM!"
Forepaugh
put his hand to his head. It made him dizzy. He had not believed that such
noise could be. He knew that no creature could long live amidst it. He tore strips from his shredded clothing and stuffed his ears, but felt
no relief.
"HOOM!
HOOM! HOOM! HOOM! HOOM!"
It throbbed in his brain.
CJunga
lay a-sprawl, staring with fascinated eye into the
pulsating scarlet gullet that was blasting the world with sound. Slowly, slowly
he was slipping. His master hauled him back. The Martian grinned at him
stupidly, slid again to the edge.
Once
more Forepaugh pulled him back. The Martian seemed to acquiesce. His single eye
closed to a mere slit. He moved to a position between Forepaugh and the tree
trunk, braced his leet.
"No,
you don't!" The Earthman laughed uproariously. The din was making him
light-headed. It was so funny! Just in time he had caught that cunning
expression and prepared for the outlashing ol feet designed to plunge him into
the red cavern below and to stop that hellish racket.
"And now—"
He
swung his fist heavily, slamming the Martian against the tree. The red eye
closed wearily. He was unconscious, and lucky.
Hungrily
the Earthman stared at his distant Hash pistols, plainly visible in the
luminescence of their fungus bedding. He began a slow, cautious creep along the
top of a vine some eight inches thick. If he could reach
them. . . .
Crash!
He was almost knocked to
the ground by the thud of a frantic tentacle against the vine. His movement had
been seen. Again the tentacle struck with crushing force. The great vine
swayed. He managed to reach the shell again in the very nick of time.
"HOOM!
HOOM! HOOM! HOOM! HOOM!"
A
bolt of lightning struck a giant fern some distance away. The crash of thunder was hardly noticeable. Forepaugh wondered if his tree would be
struck. Perhaps it might even start a fire, giving him a flaming brand with
which to torment his tormenter. Vain hope! The wood
was saturated with moisture. Even the fire pellets could not make it burn.
"HOOM!
HOOM! FIOOM! HOOM! HOOM! HOOM! HOOM!"
The
six-shooter! Fie had forgotten it. He
jerked it from its holster and pointed it at the red throat, emptied all the
chambers. He saw the flash of yellow
flame, felt the recoil, but the sound ol the discharges was drowned in the
Brobdignagian tumult. He drew back his arm to throw the useless toy from him.
But again that unexplainable, senseless "hunch" restrained him. He
reloaded the gun and returned it to its holster.
"HOOM!
HOOM! HOOM! FIOOM! HOOM! HOOM! HOOM!"
A
thought had been struggling to reach his consciousness against the pressure ol
the unbearable noise. The fire pellets! Couldn't they be used in some way?
These small chemical spheres, no larger than the end of his little finger, had
long ago supplanted actual fire along the frontiers, where electricity was not
available for cooking. In contact with moisture they emitted terrific heat, a
radiant heal which penetrated meat, bone, and even metal. One such pellet would
cook a meal in ten minutes with no sign of scorching or burning. And diey had several hundred in one
of die standard moisture-proof
containers.
As fas? as bis fingers could work the trigger of
the dispenser Forepaugh
dropped the potent little pellets down the bellowing
throat. He managed to release about thirty before the bellowing stopped. A veritable tornado of energy broke loose at the foot
of the tree. The giant maw was closed, and the shocking
silence was broken only by the thrashing
of a giant body in its death agonies. The radiant heat, penetrating through and through the beast's body, withered nearby vegetation and could be easily felt on the perch
up die tree.
Gunga
was slowly recovering His iron constitution helped him to rally from the powerful blow he had
received, and by the time the jungle was still he was sitting up mumbling
apologies.
"Never
mind," said his master. "Shin down there and cut us off a good helping of roast tongue, if It has a tongue, before something else comes along and beats us out of a
feast."
"Him
poison, maybe," Gunga demurred. They had killed a specimen new to zoologists.
"Might as well die of poison as starvation," Forepaugh countered.
Without
more ado the Martian descended, cut out some large, juicy chunks as his fancy
dictated, and brought his loot back up the tree. The meat was delicious and
apparently wholesome. They gorged themselves and threw away what they could not
eat, for food spoils very quickly in the Inranian jungles and uneaten meat
would only serve to attract hordes of the gauzy-winged, gluttonous Inranian
swamp flies. As they sank into slumber they could hear the beginning of a
bedlam of snarling and fighting as the lesser Carnivora led on the body of the
fallen giant.
When
they awoke the chronometer recorded the passing of twelve hours, and they had
to tear a network of strong fibers with which the tree had
invested them preparatory to absorbing their bodies as 1(hkJ. For so keen
is the competition for life on Inra that practically all vegetation is capable
of absorbing animal food directly. Many an Inranian explorer can tell tales of
specialized flesh-eating plants; but they are now so well known that they are
easily avoided.
A
clean-picked framework of crushed and broken giant bones was all that was left
of the late bellowing monster. Six-legged water dogs were polishing them
hopefully, or delving into them with their long, sinuous snouts for the marrow.
The Earthman fired a few shots with his six-shooter, and they scattered,
dragging the bodies of their lallen companions to a safe distance to be eaten.
Only
one of the flash pistols was in working order. The other had been trampled by
heavy hools and was useless. A heavy handicap under which to
traverse fifty miles of abysmal jungle. They started with nothing for
breakfast except water, of which they had plenty.
Fortunately
the outcroppings of rocks and gravel washes were becoming more and more
frequent, and they were able to travel at much better speed. As they left the
low-lying jungle land they entered a zone
which was laintly reminiscent of a Terrestrial
jungle. It was still hot,
soggy and fetid, but gradually the most
primitive aspects of the scene were modified. The overarching
trees were less closely packed, and they came across occasional rock clearings
which were bare of vegetation except for a dense carpet of brown, lichenlike vegetation that secreted an astonishing amount of
juice. They slipped and sloshed through this, rousing swarms of odd, toothed birds, which darted angrily around their heads and slashed at
them with the razor-sharp saw edges on the back of their legs. Annoying as they
were, they could be kept away with branches torn from trees, and their presence
connoted an absence of the deadly jungle flesh-eaters, permitting a temporary relaxation ol vigilance and saving the
resources of the last flash gun.
They
camped that "night" on the edge of one of these rock clearings. For
the first time in weeks it had stopped raining, although the sun was still
obscured. Dimly on the horizon could be seen the first of the foothills. Here
they gathered some of the giant, oblong fungus that early explorers had taken
for blocks of porous stone because of their size and weight, and, by dint of
the plentiful application of fire pellets, managed to set it ablaze. The heat
added nothing to their comfort, but it dried them out and allowed them to sleep
unmolested.
An
unwary winged eel served as their breakfast, and soon they were
on their way to those beckoning hills. It had started to rain
again, but the worst part of their
journey was over. If they could reach the top of one of the mountains there was a good
chance that they would be seen and rescued by their relief ship, provided they did not starve first. The flyer would use the mountains as a base from which to search
for the trading station, and it was conceivable
that the skipper might actually have anticipated their desperate adventure and
would look for them in the Mountains of Perdition.
They
had crossed several ranges of the
foothills and were beginning to congratulate
themselves when the diffused light from above was suddenly blotted out. It was raining
again, and above the echo-augmented thunder they heard a shrill screeching.
"A web serpent!" Gunga cried, throwing himself flat on the
ground.
Forepaugh
eased into a rock cleft at his side. Just in time. A great grotesque head bore down upon him, many-fanged
as a medieval dragon. Between obsidian eyes was a fissure whence emanated a wailing
and a foul odor. Hundreds of short, clawed legs slithered on the rocks under a long sinuous body. Then it seemed
to leap into the air again. Webs grew Unit between the legs, strumming as they
caught a strong uphill wind. Again it turned to the attack, and missed them. This time
Forepaugh was ready for it. Fie shot at it with
his flash pistol.
Nothing
happened. The fog made accurate shooting impossible, and the gun lacked its former power. The web serpent continued to course back and forth over their heads.
"Guess we'd better run for it," Forepaugh murmured.
"Go 'head!"
They
cautiously left their places of concealment.
Instantly the serpent was down again, persistent if
kiaccurate. It struck the place of their first concealment and missed them.
"Run!"
They extended their weary muscles to the
utmost, hut it was soon apparent that they could not escape long. A rock wall
in their path saved them. "Hole!" the Martian gasped.
Forepaugh
followed him into the rocky cleft. There was a strong draft of dry air, and it
would have been next to impossible to hold the Martian back, so Forepaugh
allowed him to lead on toward the source of the draft. As long as it led into
the mountains he didn't care.
The
natural passageway was untenanted. Evidently its coolness and dryness made it
untenable for most of Inra's humidity and heat loving lite. Yet the floor was
so smooth that it must have been artificially leveled. Faint illumination was
provided by the rocks themselves. They appeared to be covered by some
microscopic phosphorescent vegetation.
Alter
hundreds of twists and turns and interminable straight galleries the cleft
turned more sharply upward, and they had a period of stiff climbing. They must
have gone several miles and climbed at least 20,000 feet. The air became
noticeably thin, which only exhilarated Gunga, but slowed the Earthman down.
But at last they came to the end of the cleft. They could go no further, but
above them, at least 500 feet higher, they saw a round patch ol sky,
miraculously bright blue sky!
"A pipe!" Forepaugh cried.
He
had often heard of these mysterious, almost fabulous structures sometimes
reported by passing travelers. Straight and true, smooth as glass and
apparently immune to the elements, they had been occasionally seen standing on
the very tops ol the highest mountains—seen for a lew moments only before they
were hidden again by the clouds. Were they observatories of some ancient race,
placed thus to pierce the mysteries of outer space? They would find out.
The
inside of the pipe had zigzagging rings of metal, conveniently spaced for easy
climbing. With Gunga leading, they soon reached the top. But
not quite.
"Eh?" said Forepaugh.
"Uh?" said Gunga.
There had not been a sound, but a distinct,
definite command had registered on their minds. "Stop!"
They
tried to climb higher, but could not unclasp their hands. They tried to
descend, but could not lower their feet.
The
light was by now relatively bright, and as by command their eyes sought the
opposite wall. What they saw gave their jaded nerves an unpleasant thrill—a
mass of doughy matter of a blue green color about three feet in diameter, with
something that resembled a cyst filled with transparent liquid near its
center.
And
this thing began to flow along the rods, much as tar flows. From the mass
extended a pscudopod; touched Gunga on the arm. Instantly the arm was raw and
bleeding. Terrified, immovable, be writhed in agony. The pscudopod returned to
the main mass, disappearing into its interior with the strip of bloody skin.
Its
attention was centered so much on the luckless Martian that its control slipped
from Forepaugh. Seizing his flash pistol, he set the localizer for a small area
and aimed it at the thing, intent on burning it into nothingness. But again
his hand was stayed. Against the utmost of his will-power his fingers opened,
letting the pistol drop. The liquid in the cyst danced and bubbled. Was it
laughing at him? It had read his mind—thwarted his will again.
Again
a pseudopod stretched out and a strip of raw, red flesh adhered to it and
was consumed. Mad rage convulsed the Earthman. Should he throw himself tooth
and nail on the monster? And be engulfed?
He thought of the six-shooter. It thrilled
him.
But wouldn't it make him drop that too?
A flash of atavistic cunning came to him.
He began to reiterate in his mind a certain
thought.
"This thing is so I can see you
better—this thing is so I can see you better."
He
said it over and over, with all the passion and devotion of a celibate's prayer
over a uranium fountain.
"This thing is harmless—but it will make
me see you better!"
Slowly
he drew the six-shooter. In some occult way he knew it was watching him.
"Oh,
this is harmless! This is an instrument to aid my weak eyes! It will help me
realize your mastery. This will enable me to know your true greatness. This
will enable me to know you as a god!"
Was
it complacence or suspicion that stirred the liquid in the cyst so smoothly?
Was it susceptible to flattery? He sighted along the barrel.
"In
another moment your great intelligence will overwhelm me," proclaimed his
surface mind desperately, while the subconscious tensed the trigger. And at
that the clear liquid burst into a turmoil of alarm. Too late. Forepaugh went limp, but not before he had loosed
a steel-jacketed bullet that shattered the mind cyst of the pipe denizen. A
horrible pain coursed through his every fibre and nerve. He was saie in the
arms of Gunga, being carried to the lop of the pipe to
the clean dry air, and the blessed, blistering sun.
The
pipe denizen was dying. A viscous, inert mass, it dropped lower and lower, lost
contact at last, shattered into slime at the bottom.
Miraculous
sun! For a luxurious hlteen minutes they roasted there on the top of the pipe,
the only solid thing in a sea of clouds as far as the eye could reach. But no!
That was a circular spot against the brilliant white of the clouds, and it was
rapidly coming closer. In a few minutes it resolved itself into the Comet, fast relief ship of the Terrestrial, Inranian, Genidian, and Zydian
Lines, Inc. With a low buzz of her repulsion motors she drew alongside. Hooks
were attached and ports opened. A petty officer and a crew of roustabouts made
her fast.
"What the hell's going on here?"
asked the cocky little Terrestrial who
was skipper, stepping out and surveying tKe
castaways. "We've been looking for you ever since your directional wave
failed. But come on in—come on in!"
He led the way to his stateroom, while the
ship's surgeon took Gunga in charge. Closing the door carefully, he delved into
the bottom of his locker and brought out a flask.
"Can't be too careful," be
remarked, filling a small tumbler for himself and another for his guest. "Always apt to be some snooper to report me. But
say—you're wanted in the radio room."
"Radio room nothing!
When do we eat?"
"Right away, but you'd better see him.
Fellow from the Interplanetary News Agency wants you to broadcast a copyrighted
story. Good for about three years' salary, old boy."
"All right. I'll see him"—with a happy sigh—"just
as soon as I put through a personal
message."
The Alien Vibration
by Hannes Bok
Hannes
Bol{ is one of
the favorite artists of modern
fantasy periodicals. His worlt, which is noted for the delicacy of his shadings, the whimsicality of his monsters, the high artistic Value of his design, is prized
| highly by readers.
Lil(e many talented persons. Bole is gifted in more
ways than one. For instance, he writes stoiics which reflect in their
' on 11 way
the same delicate anl vivid imagery. A devotee of A. Merritt —in fact we would call him an outstanding authority
on that author— his style tends to follow that master's wort very closely. The Alien Vibration it an example. A story that reads lile_e
a Bole illustration lovl(s —gemlif(c.
JL RANK ROGERS heard the tortured wailing on a
night in scarlet autumn, when he was sitting alone in his cottage, cosily
woolgathering before a dying fire. Instinctively he glanced around, then chuckled—for of course he was alone. Sparks snapped in
the fire. Had he been dreaming? He relaxed again. The wind's whispering around
the eaves soothed him. And perhaps what he had heard had been—only the wind.
Perhaps!
All
that day he had roamed the woodland surrounding his home, his eyes dazzled by
the gaudy frost-tinted foliage, his ears charmed by the sighing music of the
wind as it stripped the trees. His nostrils had dilated to the spicy sweetness
of the deep-drifted dry leaves through which he had waded as though through
rustling dry water spattering him with flakes of fragrant foam.
And
he had stood solitary on the hilltop, stretching up his hands to the infinite
blue of the heavens, had flung wide the gates of bis senses to welcome the
beauty of this day. Then, in the dim afterglow, he had returned home content.
The house had been but a shadow in the dusk—entering it, he had lit a fire,
dined, and gone to sit by the hearth. And now—that phantom outcry, dismissed as
mere imagination.
But
the whimpering began again—not petulant, but despairing, rather— as if the
being trom whom it came was no longer able to restrain itself. And it was the
kind of cry which nobody could possibly ignore.
Rogers reached out, touched nothing, stood up and looked around, still
seeing—nobody. He
went over to the wall, and snapped on a light, banishing the flickering shadows
set in motion by the fire. The only living thing in the room was himself.
The sad sounds had ceased when he had arisen,
but now, as he shook his head in puzzlement, they resumed.
Rogers
groped around the area from which the crying seemed to come, and though he
touched nothing tangible, the sounds slurred to a pleased gurgling as when a
baby's tears give way to happy prattle because of some maternal attention. Then
came a pause followed by a rapid flow of light little notes. Words?
If so, they were in a tongue unknown to Rogers— though as he listened they
seemed oddly familiar, as if he had memorized them long before and forgotten
them.
Plainly
they questioned—he stepped back uncertainly. They repeated themselves, this
time more slowly, to give him every chance of understanding them.
But
he shrugged, baffled. If he were not dreaming, this thing must be a ghost . . .
Ghost? Or an alien presence? He rejected the supernatural. Most of
his life had been spent in crowded cities, where the atmosphere was too confused
by conflicting currents of thought for any delicate otherworld apperceptions—but
here in the forest the air was clearer, less tainted. And in opening his senses
to the day's wondrous loveliness, might he not also have opened them
to—something else?
The inquiry was repeated a third time—and
impatiently! Rogers could not quite bring himself to answer it—words were
stirring in his mind, but uttering them was tantamount to talking to himself. Then there came a burst of exclamation from the
unseen intruder, and a coy pleading, a wheedling. Rogers gave tongue.
"Go
away, will you! I don't know who or what you are, and you make me nervous. Try
bothering somebody else, please."
An
upward inflection of surprise answered him. He peered from this side to that,
seeing nobody.
"You may as well run along. I can't
understand what you're saying."
Now
the murmur began at his side and moved across the room toward the door—as if
the speaker had walked, talking, from Roger's side across the room to the
entrance. The last notes were insistent, urgent.
"No use," Rogers said. "I
don't fathom you."
Again
the response arose at his side and carried to the door. He followed it
curiously. At once it passed through the door and called triumphantly from
outside. For a clock's lick, Rogers hesitated, then
stepped out into the rustling night. The voice immediately sped ahead, pleased
and promising. He went alter it.
Stage
by stage the sounds summoned him and he pursued them until he was deep in the
whispering woods. Over the tissue-paper crackle of trampled leaves the voice
gradually subsided from a continuous stream of words to an occasional evocative
hoot—now on one side of Rogers and again on the other, guiding him.
He
knew the woods well, but so did the garrulous presence, for it steered him
carefully from gullies and tangled underbrush. Not even a low hanging branch
barred the way.
They
reached the summit of the hill, and the presence was silent. The cold breeze
plucked at Rogers' garments and riflled his hair like a teasing hand. Overhead curved the blue-black sky, powdered with stars.
Rogers
thought: almost believe that, if I stretched my arms
wide, I could launch off into infinity . . .
The
longer he looked up at the endless stretch of sky and stars, the less he was
conscious of himself—he was far too insignificant a speck against the magnitude of the universe. He seemed weightless, almost
as if indeed he were flying—he lost all sense of direction, was aware only of
peace, the calm of Eternity—a mesmeric sensation of rest fid serenity . . .
Then
he heard the muted babble of many childish voices. The one which had summoned
him was murmuring: "It is all right now. He can hear us and understand what we say—his eyes will sec us."
And
as though the words were a command, he did see. At first there was only a
diffused mellow glow filled with drifting splotches of brighter effulgence.
Then he perceived that the moving lights were blurred mirthful faces like those
of hall-remembered children.
The
gentle glimmers issued in all directions from a landscape of light, from prismatic hills and trees. The nearest objects
were clearest—those farther away merged into the gleaming haze. The variations
of hue and intensity blended into a splendid
ambrous harmony.
Rogers discerned, scattered about, fragile pavilions rising out of
rainbow glamors.
Every glance disclosed something until then unseen.
Abruptly
he was startled. While he was admiring a clump of diversely colored flowers—he
could have sworn that the petals were tiny flames—it dimmed and vanished, like
a fadeout on a cinema screen!
One of the hills dissolved into
nothingness—in its place foamed an amethyst sea whereon magic islands appeared
and disintegrated. The sea rolled away beyond ken. Rogers was looking into a
canyon ot malachite . ..
"Mirage,"
he murmured, and heard laughter. The drifting faces concentrated around him.
Misty wide eyes, blue and amber, dwelt amusedly on him. Slender hands lifted in
graceful gestures of disdain out of trailing half-visible lilac draperies.
"He thinks it's not real!" the
faces gibed. "Let's prove to him that he's wrong!"
Fingers weightless as thistledown prodded him
forward. Little wispy forms raced ahead of him, beckoning. Somnambulantly he
allowed himself to be goaded along. He stumbled over a shrub which sprouted
suddenly in front of him and disappeared when he awoke from his trance to
glance disapproval at it. The little beings tittered.
A
voice cautioned: "Remember, our mother is waiting! We mustn't detain him
too long!"
The
speaker was a little ruby wraith spangled with brassy
glints. It danced tantalizingly close to Rogers, eluding his clumsy attempts to
grasp it.
"You are—?" he asked, and it
replied: "Shi-Voysieh, child of Yarra,
The Woman."
"Yarra?" Rogers asked. "You will see her very soon."
Rogers
indicated the other child-races. "And these?"
"They too are Yarra's children," Shi-Voysieh answered. "Our brothers . . . and sisters."
Now at every phantasmagoria] manifestation,
Rogers noted that the children pointed three fingers in its direction.
"And
why do you do this?" he asked of Shi-Voysieh. "In
worship of their maker." "Who is—"
"B'Kuth, our father—The Man." Again, at mention of the
name, Shi-Voysieh reverently perlormed the ceremonial salute.
Rogers
had no opportunity for further inquiry, for just then the ground was swept from
under his feet. He found himself tumbling on the surface of a tempestuous lake which tossed him about violently. The waves looked like
water but felt like rubber and were perfectly dry. After a hasty ritual of
homage, the children scampered nimbly from the crest of one gigantic comber to
another, shrieking delightedly if a sudden billow tumbled them. They clustered
about Rogers, giggling at his confusion.
Then,
in a breath, the waves whisked away, leaving an endless azure sky in which the
children darted about joyously, uttering glad cries, like birds. There was
nothing but the clear blue of sheer atmosphere. Rogers did not realize at the
moment that all these disconcerting phenomena were being intelligently
produced. And the children preferred frisking about to explaining the cause of
Rogers' plight—perhaps they deemed explication unnecessary.
Only
Rogers' struggles to breathe in an uprush of air, and the dwindling forms of
the children, told him that he was falling. He shouted with panic— and
discovered that he was quite safe in a hammock swinging among tree-tops, while
above him the children were cavorting enthusiastically on puffs of cloud:
"These're
ice-floes, and I'll be a bloodhound and chase you, if you want to be
Eliza!"
Even
while Rogers relaxed, panting, the hammock dissolved. lie
was seated on pavement at the loot of a tremendous white stairway. At its summit
the children were hailing him impatiently. Beyond them loomed a marvelous
edifice of translucent milky stone—its spires laded into mists of sky, and
nebulous forms were discernible moving within it.
Rogers had undergone more than enough of the
whirlwind changes.
"Come up! Come up!" the children
shouted from the top of the stair.
"And
have it turn into a chute-the-chute? No, thanks!" he said, and stayed
comlortably as he was.
"Nothing will happen! We promise!"
He started up, but with misgivings. High he
climbed, and higher. Whiffs of white vapor puffed up from the snowy steps,
enveloping him like languorously
blown veils. They thickened, obliterating everything. He paused in white
blindness. The children's hands patted him reassuringly.
Then
long pale fingers drew the mist aside as though parting a pair of curtains, and
Rogers looked up into the somber eyes of Yarra, The
Woman.
She
was seated on a throne of the white stone, and was as indistinct as though seen
through waxed glass. All of twenty Teet tall, she was robed in clinging cloudy
white which trailed into the mist and merged with it.
Her
oval face was margined with sleek yellow tresses that flowed over her
shoulders. For eyes she had dark stars. Her slender nose was negligible, her
mouth a rosy pucker. Her flesh had the sheen of pearl, and the veins pulsing at
her temples, throat and wrists were like weak blue shadows ol roots . . .
She
reached down and lifted Rogers to her lap as though he were a kitten.
Involuntarily he nestled against her warm bosom, breathing the delicious
femininity which scented her clothing—then drew away in embarrassment. Fie sat
tensely erect. There had been something suggestive about the pervasive
whiteness, the— the mildness—and
the indistinctness ol objects which somehow had sent him back to childhood. And
Yarra seemed the mother of all mothers, the essence ol maternity. . . .
Her eyes were soft on him.
She was smiling understandingly.
'*So
you're the one whom Shi-Voysieh has been following," she murmured, her
voice a soft woodwind melody.
At
the mention of his name, the ruby-swathed presence flitted up to the pair and
perched on The Woman's forearm. Rogers shared his gaze with them both—there was
a certain sameness about them which he dismissed as
family resemblance, not suspecting the truth.
Shi-Voysieh
said earnestly: "For a very long time I have watched you— but you never
saw, never heard me. I told this-our-mother about you, and asked whether I
could not bring you to her. since you seemed so
appreciative of beauty. For a time she would not consent. She said that you
would be confused away from your own scheme of things—and she said that if you
were aware of this world of ours, you could enter it unaided."
The
Woman broke in: "I said that each living thing is a world unto itself and
bound to that world."
Rogers,
who had read metaphysical literature, said: "Solipsism—the belief that
only oneself exists."
"I
look into your mind," the mother said gravely, "and I see many shocking
things. I would that I could look more deeply, but there is
a curtain that hides very much from me . . . and it disturbs me. I see that you
think yourself one of a great throng of people, and that you dare not accept as
reality what others have not already accepted. Yours is the quaint backward
belief that you cannot exist except as others exist—"
There
was meaning, and profound meaning, in what she was saying, but Shi-Voysieh cut
in petulantly:
"In
the red woods I caught you with all your senses receptive—but I could not make
my weak sell known above the day's strong wonder. So I
followed you to your dwelling-place and waited—but it seemed too late— you
could neither feel nor hear me. In my despair, I cried out aloud—and you heard
me! Hut poorly. So I have led you here and asked our-mother-Yarra's help—and it
is by her strength of will that you are kept with us."
"You
led me here—but why?" Rogers asked, forgetting that the ruby wraith had
already told him.
Shi-Voysieh
gave another reason. "Because I knew somehow that you belong here, are one of us—"
The
mother cried warningly: "Shi-Voysieh!" Both she and the ruby wraith
were red faced. They had let something slip.
Rogers
thought: Shi-Voysieh mentioned a Man . . . if this is The Woman, what must The Man be ltrc?
As
if he had spoken, Shi-Voysieh shrank away from him. The Woman's face hardened
as if at a bitter remembrance, then became gentle
again. All around Rogers was a flutter and scurry of agitated children.
He asked: "Was it such a dreadful thing
to think?"
The Woman's gaze was reproachful.
"When
you are aware of Him—do honor to Him." She herself made the ceremonial
salute which the children had used.
"It's
a strange custom—I didn't understand." The children exchanged worried
glances at this.
The Woman's long fingers stroked him in a
caress.
"I
know, and I forgive. You ask of The Man. His name is B'Kuth." She pointed
three fingers upward. "He is a mystery—to know B'Kuth and for what he
stands would be to comprehend the riddle of Life itself."
Sl>e
was eyeing Rogers as if he knew all this, and that she was merely reminding
him. "No mere mind such as yours could understand such an intensity of
knowledge as B'Kuth. To understand The Man is to have become—The Man! In your
world's terms—can fire understand water without being extinguished?"
"But—you," Rogers said.
"I?"
She threw back her head. At her sudden horrible laughter the children
screamed, scattering wildly into the mists, leaving her and Rogers alone.
"I am only one whom He has exalted—!"
For
a moment she looked away, her face a cold mask. Then quickly she set'Rogers
down on his feet and arose, turning from him to go.
He put up his hands to stay her.
"Don't go! Please!"
She
did not look at him, and he was afraid that she had not heard, that she had
forgotten him. But after a pause she said: "I cannot take you with me, for
I go now in search of—Him. I sense him calling, and—I am His mate, you
know."
Again her terrible laughter rolled.
She suppressed her emotion, and bent more
calmly over Rogers. "Do as you wish until I return. Create whatever you
desire. That is the law here, you know—to create, to imitate B'Kuth. You don't
know what I mean?
Why,
look—suppose you desire food. Imagine then its qualities! Describe its
appearance in the air with your hands—visualize it until you are almost certain
you see it before you, and !o—"
Rogers shook his head
helplessly. "I can't make something from nothing."
I
ler eyes plumbed his. "In that part of your mind which is open to me, I
read a definition—that matter is composed of
whirling nothingness, its nature dependent on the velocity of its motion. Well,
Thought is velocity, too."
But he still did not understand. She bit her
underlip impatiently and knelt before him.
"Now
watch," she said. "I will make a fruit. It must Ik- round, transparent, purple and pithy.
Neither sweet nor bitter, but with a haunting undertaste of aromatic
drowsiness—"
As
she spoke, her cupped hands apparently fondled an invisible globe in midair.
Suddenly the fruit which she had described materialized lictwecn her palms. She
dropped it beside her—it fell with a thump—and motioned-imperiously to Rogers.
"Now do something like
that," she said.
He closed his eyes to concentrate the better.
"I'd
like to make a cloth," he said, gesturing. "A very large piece—oh,
about so wide. Weightless. Like strands of woven green
lire, with little silveiy vine-embroideries—"
Something
swept his cheek. He lifted his eyelids anil beheld The Woman holding up vast
folds of fabric. The little damasked designs were vague, wavering. He
complained about them to Yarra.
"It
is because your conception ol them wasn't explicit enough," she said.
"Get more practice." She arose. "Now 1 must go."
"But
this cloth—it's a shawl for you!" he cried, thrusting folds of the stuff
at her.
"Thank
you, my dear." She smiled mischievously. "But let us see how long it
is."
She
dragged on the cloth, hand over hand. There seemed no end to it— Rogers was
practically lost in the accumulating folds. Then Yarra held up the last of it,
which wisped away into emptiness. He had forgotten to imagine the end of the
cloth!
"It's
a very large piece," she commented, smiling. "I'm afraid it's much
too large, however weightless, for me to use ever. But thank you, my child ... I can see that you're wondering what to
do with it all. lust walk away and forget it! As soon
as you've lost interest in it, it will vanish—that's the way with things here.
Now really, I must leave you."
She touched his hand affectionately and
stepped into the mist.
Rogers
stood gazing alter her until she was out ol sight.
Then the purple globe took his eye. He wondered how it tasted—he had never
imagined "aromatic drowsiness"—but it vanished lrom his hands. The
Woman had "lost interest" in it. "The way with
things here." When he looked lor the green cloth, it too had
disappeared.
He thought ruefully: Too bad things aren't lic that in my own
world!
Then he wondered: Well, aren't they? Isn't Rumor a maing of
something
out of nothing—an J doesn't Rumor
wreci lives? Don't we build prejudices into distinctive forces? What is anything material but
on idea expressed in terms of substance?
He began to see now the truth in the myths of
Cadmus, who sowed the dragon's teeth; in Circe, whose wine of gold turned
greedy men to beasts. Bui his thoughts took another direction:
the law here is to create—then who makers all these changing illusions
which harass me so? It's malevolent and damnable!
He thrust up his hands and shouted: "I
want to behold whoever is
in back of all
this!"'
Instantly
manifestations overwhelmed him. There was a rocketing of sound, a crash
of Cosmos shattering. Mad seas lurched in and out of shrieking
blackness—whirling stars collided in bursts of brilliance. Lightnings raced in
chase after each other. Whole landscapes wrenched under Rogers in zigzag marches, lifting and dropping him. painlully
knocking him about.
It
rained ice, rocks, lire and strange yellow luminaries. Rogers was bounced on an
endless sheet of stinking human flesh ...
he was drenched in slime . . . howling winds picked him up, spinning him
through a place where strata of colored air boiled like a cauldron of rainbows.
Falls of scrap metal thundered clangourously, and tangled plants of flexible
glass grew to monstrous size and exploded. Rogers was stifling in an atmosphere composed of struggling wet worms . . .
All this in the space ol ten seconds—so many
things—some so multiple— that he could scarcely identify a thousandth of them.
He was lying on a mirror which went on and
on, in all directions, into illimitable distance.
Overhead was a mournful purple sky with rapidly whirling garlands of yellow
moons and stars. One of the stars slipped away from the others and drilled
downward, expanding as it approached. It halted beside Rogers, and
he recognized Shi-Voysieh.
Rogers
said: "When 1 asked why you made that sanctimonious signal
at every new apparition that confronted you—you told me it was in homage to the
handiwork ol B'Kuth. Well, I don't like being here at the mercy of somebody
who's obviously a sadistic maniac. I want to get back to my own world, where
things are comparatively coherent and tranquil."
He
was not thinking of wars or lynchings, gralt and hypocrisy and any of innumerable things he had known.
He
said: "But how can I get away from this nightmare! Tell me, or take mc back. You brought me here!"
The child eyed him dubiously.
"You will have to recreate your
world," he said finally. Then: "But—ah! Don't you see?" His
eyebrows were lifted, imploring. "What do you mean?"
The
child pointed down to the mirror floor. Rogers looked at his reflected self.
Only—it was not himself as he was accustomed to seeing himself. It was like
Shi-Voysieh, a red-clad, shining faced immature image!
Ill
"Shi-Voysieh!" he
cried, clutching the child, who shrank out of his grasp. "But what does it mean?" He peered
at the reflection. "You really want to know? I'd like to tell—"
The child leaned forward eagerly. Rogers
motioned for him to proceed. "Yarra won't like my telling you,
hut"—he performed the sacred signal— "I believe that B'Kuth prefers
you to know . . .
"You were one of us, long ago. But you
were ambitious! B'Kuth, The Man, took—delight in you
because of the intricate things you shaped. You were proud of His indulgence,
and mocked the puny efforts of us others. You went apart from us and created a
cosmos all your own out of the thought-material which The Man has given
us"—again the reverent rite—"the ether-energy which is manipulated by
the impulses of our wills. And you entered this cosmos of yours, forgetting
us—and when we searched for you, though we found you, we could not make you
remember us, nor in any particular notice us. We were as nothing, because you
did not remember us!"
It was the cry of angels to some soul lost in
hell.
Shi-Voysieh
said: "But Yarra-our-mother assured us that one day you must remember and return, that you could not rival The Man"—again the
gesture—"with your inventions. Yet it seemed that you could, or nearly
could, for you made it a law of your cosmos that all things must reproduce in
more complex forms—you called it evolution—creation, of course. And I . . . I despaired of your return, my brother!"
Shi-Voysieh
sighed. "Thus I asked The Woman to let me bring you here if by some ruse I
could make myself known to you. She did not wish it, but at last agreed, on the
promise that we regard you as a stranger —for were we to tell you, she said, it
was probable that you would take offense in your perversity and refuse to
believe—and since you had found your place more appealing than ours, you might
be frightened back into it, never to return to us again! Refuge in your private
universe—shunning the realities of B'Kuth—insanity! Afraid to
face the fact of your existence here!"
"Shi-Voysieh!" Rogers cried, horrified, but the ruby wraith had more to say.
"Our-mother-Yarra
further warned that though you were enticed back to this region and we could
persuade you to destroy your cosmos by forgetting it, still we could not
prevent you from rebuilding it—or another equally as strong."
Rogers
objected: "There's a flaw in what you say. How can one make something
without a model to work from?"
"You
mean, what does a creator use as a foundation—as inspiration? Why, he works
like any artist. He obtains material from what is around him and enlarges upon
it. And B'Kuth gave us the original material!" In his fervor he forgot to
make the sacred sign.
"But then it's useless—no purpose at
all," Rogers mused, "because to create you must make a thing which
has never existed before in any wise, and you can't do that—you can only
embroider upon or rearrange what you've experienced. It's impossible for anyone
to conceive something which he has not experienced except in terms of what he
has experienced. And that's not creating at all!"
"But—then what of B'Kuth?" Shi-Voysieh trembled as he gestured reverently.
"He
too is limited by His own law—He cannot make what is not potentially within
Him. And therefore this so-called 'creation' of His is only a silly game to
while away the eternities—the fantasies of a lost and frightened child in the
dark, babbling gibberish as it pretends it hears a comrade's voice.
"B'Kuth
is only like you and me, building dreams from nemembered experience,
rearranging old patterns into other, perhaps still older, ones. Who's to say
where the original Pattern of Patterns came from—some super-universe of which
B'Kuth was once an inhabitant—?"
"Stop!" Shi-Voysieh screamed, fluttering several paces away. "Oh, I
shouldn't have told you! But I wanted you back with us so much—I had to know if
you remembered. And I find you insane, insane! To say such things!
Quickly—remake your worlds and depart within them, leaving us as we were belore
at peace! You frighten me . . . !"
He drifted a lew feet above the mirror as
though ready to take flight.
"Wait!
Don't go! I'll try!" Rogers cried, and shut his eyes, striving to recall
the home from which Shi-Voysieh had drawn him. But there was only an indefinite
tangle.
"It
must be Yarra's will, still holding you here," the child murmured, his
voice weighted with guilt. "She will punish me when she learns that I have
told ... I am alraid! ... I could make myselt a universe and hide
in it, but that would be insanity, fear of facts, and anyway, I'd want to
return to this-my-native-place . . ."
He
sighed resignedly, then spoke with reproach: "As for you—you'd better wait
here until Yarra returns, and tell her how things stand. Now goodbye—I'll never
want to sec you again!"
He
nodded curtly, then wriggled his shoulders, flirting
his scarlet draperies. He flashed upward as if on scarlet wings to the dancing
stars. They gathered around him, flickering excitedly as though exchanging
gossip of light, then scattered, leaving an absolutely blank sky. The purple
deepened to a murky brown.
Rogers sat on his reflection, waiting.
Par
off a phosphorescence was gliding his way. As it
neared him, he saw that it was Yarra. I ler
radiance was wan, and the misty glory was ebbing. Her hair was tangled wildly,
and her white robe was soiled and rent.
"Ah,
I've found you. I searched and searched, and my thought drew me here at
last," she sighed. She bent and lilted him to her bosom, then swayed,
evidently ill. Rogers hung on to her in terror lest he fall. Her free hand
brushed back a golden tress which had fallen athwart her face, and she bent her
head over the man.
"I release you, little one. Go back to
that world of yours. But—please take me back with you. I don't care whether it
is madness—I can endure B Kuth's tortures no longer!"
"Hut B'Kuth! Will He allow it?" The Woman had neglected to make the reverent
salute, and Rogers 1< rgot it also.
"B'Kuth!"
she sneered. "We aren t puppets, arc we? Hasn't He given us the power of
our wills?"
"I le can lollow us!"
"Perhaps. But it may be that once we are in your world, he will forget us . .
."
She
was asking lor suicide. Rogers knew. As for himself, he was willing to risk
anything to return to his own place.
She took him impatiently, as one might shake
an offending kitten. "Quickly! Quickly!"
Rogers
thought: But
surely I can't have created—my world! I who have looked through a microscope- with awe! I couldn't enjoy a sunset or the forest's beauty if I new that I had fashioned them—unless, of course, I were insane as Shi-Voysieh claimed.
Then,
from far and very far, beyond that point where mirror-floor met with the sky,
came a rhythmic thud—thud—thud of footsteps, the beat of feet so gigantic that
the world on which they strode echoed to them as a drum. Curiously, they were both terrifyingly real and equally terrifyingly unreal—real
because they were in unity with everything that Rogers had seen, heard and felt
here. They—belonged! And yet unreal, because what sort of monster could be
making them? Why, the crash of a dinosaur's walk in comparison with them was
but the barely audible scurry of a mouse!
Whoever
was making those thunderous footfalls could not live for a moment—the sheer
weight of His hugeness could not withstand the pull of gravity. He must come
crashing down in a tumble of broken bones!
But
the thud of the feet continued, real or unreal . . . too hideovisly portentous
to be real . . .
"B'Kuth!" Yarra sobbed, dropping
Rogers despairingly and falling beside him in a sobbing huddle. "B'Kuth!
Coming for us! If He has not lorgotten us—how can we escape?"
And
now where sky met mirror, a golden glow was forming like that which presages
sunrise—a type of gold beside which the molten metal itself would seem
tarnished dross, a light ineffably bright like the light of realization . . .
Rogers
lurched to his feet. Gently he patted the weeping Woman's smooth shoulders. One
last look he took toward the brightening light.
must forget—and
remember. Forget this irrational torture-chamber of a world
and remember my own sane one!
The forest! The forest! The
forest!
He
closed his eyes, and even above the steady boom of the nearing footfalls he
could hear its murmur. It was a dim, blurred sound. It must become louder if it
were to seem real . . . there, that was better . . . now the drumming footfalls
of vengeful B'Kuth were only faint echoes in his imagination . . . unimportant . . . easily forgotten.
Louder
grew the sough of the wind in the trees. A blast
of cold wind lashed
him. Yarra's hand lettered his wrist. He opened his eyes. Yes, they were out of
B'Kuth's domain and back in the autumn woods. As he thought of The Man, everything wavered as if it might be
dispersed like breeze-blown smoke—well, he wouldn't think of B'Kuth any longer.
B'Kuth was only
a figment of his imagination . . .
For
a moment they rested in the blue-black night, the freezing wind pelting
them with flying leaves. Boughs of bare trees rattled like chattering teeth;
the high far stars were trembling as though they shivered.
There
was a look of peace on The Woman's tired face as she struggled erect and they
plodded through the whispering brush toward Rogers' dwelling-
"We're safe now,"
she exulted, something of her glory returning to her.
Rogers
pondered: There may be other Laws than just those of . . . that non-existent place wherefrom we seemed to come. What is called Substance here in my native place has been conceived as being infinite variations of one primal force. But it doesn't necessarily mean that there is only one such force! There may be millions of them, each with its own set of laws, dwelling harmoniously side by side lif{c the colors in the spectrum—perhaps congruently.
But if these forces are each distinct from the others, how could I, the creature of one, leave my own vibration to enter another—since if the forces were interpermeablc, they'd have blended long ago! Well, it may be that one can enter an alien vibration but not become part of it. merely observe it imperfectly because of senses governed by a set of differing laws. . . my head's whirling . . . a flaw of one force in the enveloping ether of another . . .
They had reached his doorstep. Yarra was
standing still, peering up at the stars, her hands crossed on her breast as it
embracing a phantom infant. "They're like my children—like
Shi-Voysieh!" she whispered.
Was it her nostalgia which dragged her back? Or the work of B'Kuth? Rogers heard a little rush of wind
within the wind. Like a candlcllame in a draught,
Yarra's nimbus flickered and she dissolved into the night.
Rogers
stumbled'!nside, slammed the door and leaned against
it. He stared wide-eyed at nothing, his head bursting with ideas.
Had
Yarra deserted him through loneliness for her children? Had B'Kuth snatched her
back? Perhaps The Woman had been only B'Kuth's
thought, and He had been playing a jest on Rogers. That would make Shi-Voysieh
and the others phantoms likewise—and since B'Kuth was only a phantom to begin
with, mere phantoms of a phantom.
And suddenly Rogers knew.
He
himself was—The Man! Yarra, the children, everything of which he was at all
conscious—they were only illusions in the theater of his brain, a theater where he was actor as well as spectator.
If he had stopped thinking then and there,
the ultimate would not have happened. But he could not stop thinking.
The
wind was still howling ominously outside, and—he recognized it for what it
really was.
"Only my imagination!" he said
scornfully.
And the howling obediendy stopped.
The Ultimate Paradox
by Thorp McClusky
The
old idea of atomic structure was one
that closely resembled a planetary setup. It naturally followed that
science-fiction writers proceeded to so a step further and assert that it was a
planetary system—but on an infinitesimal scale rather than an infinite one.
What then is size? What is space and by what is it bounded? Whether
the infinitely small does resemble a solar structure or not, here is a story
which dares to tacltle the problem of
infinity. Whether the solution is satisfactory we leave our readers to
say.
WHEN
Beecham, gardener, chauffeur, and man of all work to Dr. Severance, the retired
physicist, first saw the crotchety old man standing on the lawn beyond the
rose arbor, adjusting a strangely complex machine about his body, he thought
nothing of it, but went on with his pruning. In the thirty-odd years he had
spent in Dr. Severance's employ he had seen too many strange sights to become
immediately interested in every new gadget with which the old man toyed.
Cursorily, he noticed that the thing was cumbersome, and that there were many
tiny wires and belts connected about it which bothered the master somewhat in
the fastening; he noticed a flat, metallic cabinet suspended down Dr.
Severance's back, and a composition panel set with a chaos of small dials and
switches hung across the aged man's chest. But these details interested Beecham
only momentarily, and, after a brief stand-up-and-stretch, during which he
wiped a spray of July sweat from his forehead, be bent
down again to his work.
Nor
did he look up when, five or six minutes later, the shadow first fell across
him. The day had been, up to that moment, broilingly cloudless, and his first
impression was that the sky was becoming overcast. Thinking that the shadow
might be that of his employer, and without looking up, he said,
jovially,"] take it the day is fair enough for you, Dr. Severance,
sir?"
Silence,
intense and unexpected, answered. Beecham, believing that, after all, it had
been a cloud, and anxious for rain to Ireshen his parched gardens, looked up
toward the sky, and screamed, stranglingly, in mortal terror!
Before
him, in the acre or so of lawn that stretched up to the rear of the house,
stood the embodiment of an insane dream: the figure of a man, a thousand feet
tall! A mighty metal fabric the size of a battleship was on its back, and its
chest was covered with monstrous mechanisms. The nap of its garments was like
thickly woven hawsers. The thing's tremendous
feet almost covered the lawn, and as Beecham
watched he saw the soles of the
shoes spreading out in every direction, as last as a man might walk. Beecham
screamed again, and the sound was like the voice of nothing human. And while he
watched, paralyzed with fear, the thing grew skyward.
Suddenly
the nightmarish petrification left Beecham's legs, and, howling and frothing,
he ran across the gardens toward the road. Other people were running from
neighboring houses; Beecham saw them gesticulating and shouting. Some covered
their faces with their hands, ostrich-like, cowering where they stood. Others
ran, aimlessly, stumbling and falling, getting up to run and stumble and fall again.
The
shadow was no longer tailing on him.
The sun shone again, glaringly hot. Beecham looked back. The figure, grown
immeasurably more huge, had stepped from the lawn
across a wide expanse of pasture land, and was standing at the edge of a wood.
From
far down the road Beecham heard the wail of a siren.
A long black touring car raced down the boulevard and with brakes screaming,
stopped abrupdy beside the hedge a few
feet from Beecham. It disgorged a number
of policemen.
Police Captain Riley looked across the
pasture-land toward the wood.
"My
God, what can we do against a thing like that!"
He was not afraid, but his voice shook. He carried a submachine gun in the
crook of his right arm, but, after a moment's
hesitation, he shrugged, turned and put it down on the front seat of the automobile.
Siren
after siren wailed as the police came in patrol and radio cars, on motorcycles, in commandeered automobiles. The roadway was jammed.
Beecham, feeling less afraid, wormed his way toward Captain Riley.
"My God, are we goin' nuts
entirely?" Riley was saying.
"Please,
officer," Beecham pleaded, plucking at Riley's sleeve, "I know hitn." He gestured toward the figure. "It's Dr.
Severance. I'm his man Beecham, and I'd recognize him anywhere."
"Floly Mother of Mercy!" Riley cried, looking first
at Beecham, and then at the silent colossus standing in the wood. He
said no more, only stared at the thing that grew there, stared with his mouth
hanging slackly open, and a greenish sickliness on his face.
By that time there must have been half a
thousand people lined along that road,vvatching the wood a mile away, and the
being that rose, second by second, into the sky. For the most part there was
silence. There was an occasional scream, and there were curses that were really
prayers, but there was no coherent word spoken in all that first
ghastly half-hour. For it occupied no more than a hall-hour altogether, that
first stage. Watches cannot lie, and cannot be frightened.
A
horrible sound of crashing trees and crunching shrubbery came from the wood.
The figure did not move; it only grew. And the forest crashed as it grew.
Perhaps twenty minutes had passed since
Beecham first noticed the shadow. The figure at the end of that time was
probably five
miles talll This estimate
cannot be considered accurate, as it is partly based on the testimony of
witnesses who were, at the time, half mad with fear. Afterward, however,
measurements were made by municipal surveyors which showed fairly definitely
the extent of damage to the timber, and from these measurements it would
appear that the impressions left in the wood by the feet of the figure were
upwards of three thousand feet in length.
From
the time it had stepped from the garden to the center of the wood the figure
had not moved. It stood as if anxious not to cause any more panic than would
be. unavoidable by reason of the fear occasioned by
its Gargantuan size. In fact. Captain Riley remembered
later having remarked that, "It doesn't seem to want to squash anybody,
does it?"
All
at once, people noticed that the sounds from the forest had ceased. No one was
able to recall exactly when they ceased—rather most people remembered that
their attention was drawn from the rending of live wood to the more homely
sounds about them: the chattering of nerve-wracked voices, the clatter of
rifle-butts, and the sickish sucking of tires on sticky macadam. But the forest
was silent. No more trees fell.
The figure still grew.
The
first fright began to leave the majority of those who watched. They spread out
along the hedge beside the road, and waited, looking toward the wood. They
moved and talked as though they dreamed, as though their dreams were nightmares
which had failed to develop the maximum of horror. This curious mass reaction
was no doubt due to a subconscious lessening of fear of the figure, which had
not threatened them in any way.
The
figure rapidly reached such proportions that any attempt to estimate its actual
size by comparing the statements of eye-witnesses becomes absurd. The feet and
legs towered out of the wood, which they had almost completely hidden, and the
rest of the figure was so foreshortened by the nearness of the people huddling
beneath it that the upper part of the body was beyond view.
It
was possible to watch, almost foot by foot, the steady growth of the colossus.
Rank after rank of treetops disappeared, soundlessly, apparently vanishing
within the solid leather of the bootsoles. It was not until the feet, after
swelling entirely out of the wood, had begun to advance across the pasture that
those watching observed an incredibility.
was as if the wood and pasture-land became a part of the figure, or, conversely, the figure became a part of the landscape, without harm to either! Amazed, the people watched, and saw that a
tree, merging into the colossus, would not tremble even in its tiniest leaf,
but, on the contrary, would stand erect as if the monster engulfing it were no
more than impalpable fog.
Then
a man, more sharp-eyed than most, shouted, "The damned thing's
transparent!"
Presently all of those who watched saw that
this was so. As the great bootsoles, like monstrous ramparts of leather,
advanced over the meadows they saw that they could discern the outlines of
trees and rocks within their
surface, as though encased in brown ice.
The
boot-soles, a thousand feet high, bad advanced halfway
across the meadows. The police began to clear the road. Captain Riley and his
men, spread a mile or so up and down the road, continued to
watch the sheer brown mountain that, grown out of all semblance to anything
describable, towered into infinity a scant hundred yards away. Their
automobiles, drawn up alongside the road, stood with motors idling, ready to speed
them to safety.
Two
state policemen, as though gripped abruptly by a common impulse, vaulted the
hedge and cautiously advanced across the meadow. They approached within a
hundred feet of the billowing brown wall. Then one drew his automatic,
dubiously emptied its magazine into the advancing mass. Turning, he looked at
the policemen scattered along the road, and grinned. Then, waving his hand, he
walked directly into the tawny transparent immensity.
For
possibly twenty or thirty feet he continued. Once or twice he put his hand
before his eyes, as a man, walking in a thick smudge, might do.
Then he came out, and held his hands high over his head to show that he was
unhurt.
Fie
talked to his companion. They stood close together. The city police clambered over
the hedge and came toward them. The brownish wall continued to advance. It
filled half the sky, like a great
cloud.
The
thing was becoming colorless, and more and more
transparent. It reached the policemen, and crossed the road. There was nothing
solid about it. The men walked in it as they might walk in a dirty, fine rain.
It had become a faint brownishness that
tinted faces, houses, trees, the sky and the earth alike, but that had no
reality to it.
Within the hour the vanguard of a swarm of reporters and sensation hunters began to arrive. They were
disappointed, for there was nothing to see. Except for an unusual brownish tint
which hung in the sky, and which made the late afternoon heavens strikingly
beautiful, there was nothing, nothing at all.
"What
was it?" the papers asked, later. "A hoax? Mass hypnotism? What caused the destruction of the forest?
Why the great footprints, etched in splintered trees?"
Captain
Riley, seeing that the danger, if any had ever existed, was over, sent his men
back to the city. He was about to clamber into his car himself when he saw
Beecham. He remembered that Beecham had told him something crazy.
"Hey, you! What's this you said to me about knowing that?" He waved an ineffectual arm in a half-circle that took in half the world.
Beecham licked his lips.
"I said it looked like
Dr. Severance," he mumbled.
Riley considered. He felt
empty, like a child who has seen a bubble blow up and burst. "Get
in," he growled. "We're going over and have a talk with your Dr. Severance."
The
car, Riley driving, with Beecham huddled beside him, hurtled savagely down the
road and pulled up with a jerk before the Severance estate. Riley, mumbling
angrily, gestured to Beecham to precede him up the walk. The screen door was
unlatched.
Beecham
entered, Riley close behind him. They walked through the library. There was no
one in the room. At the far end of the library was a heavy, golden oak door.
"Where's that go?"
Beecham
hesitated. "That's Dr. Severance's study. He never lets me inside."
"You go ahead," Riley snarled.
"By God, you open that door." Bcecham's trembling hands pushed open
the door . . .
When old Charles Severance, standing on the
lawn beside his house, adjusted the straps about his body and threw certain
small switches in the panel on his coat, he knew with a fair degree of
certainty just what would happen. He knew that the mechanism, or rather the
complexity of mechanisms, which he had devised was
capable of doing two things. Tt built up a field, electrical in nature, yet which tapped
sources of pure energy which were even more fundamental than electricity, which
exerted an explosive force upon every proton and electron, on every fleck of
energy, within a certain
radius. In non-technical language, it was a repulsive force, universal yet
limited to its own boundaries, which caused every electron within those
boundaries to recede from its proton, and every proton in turn to repulse every
other proton. Thus any matter placed within its field, and acted upon, grew,
retaining its original mass, diminishing in density; the apparatus itself,
being within the field, also grew, and even the field itself, because its
action was cumulative, grew. This entire process was progressive and
proportionate.
Many
scientists have long known that there is a universal yardstick of energy. Call
it by any name—call it electricity, although we know that electricity is only a
manifestation of it, as is gravitation—call it pure force—call it God; whatever
it is, it is the building material of all the universes. Doctor Severance had
discovered a way to pour this energy into his field. He had also observed that
this pure force obeyed certain simple laws. It spread uniformly throughout a
given space, like water, which seeks a common level, and maintains, within
narrow limits, a certain density. Released within the confines of Doctor
Severance' field, this force would immediately commence adding energy, or mass,
to every proton and electron within the field until, should the process not be
halted, the field itself, and everything it contained, would become a ball of
pure force. The fundamental energy was apparently available, in limitless
quantities, throughout all space.
Doctor Severance was well aware that he could
never reverse the action of his apparatus. Energy once poured into its field
could never be withdrawn. Once he subjected his body to its influence there was
no going back. . . .
Standing
on the lawn and growing, growing—Dr. Severance, with the thoroughness which was
second nature with him, mentally recorded his sensations. He had synchronized
his apparatus so that his density would increase in correct proportion to his
mass.
He
felt no bodily sensations whatever, no nausea, no dizziness, nothing. Yet the
ground sank away from him on all sides, the houses shrank to doll-like
pro|>ortions, and the road before his house became a tiny black ribbon. He
looked down. The traflic had stopped lor a mile or more up and down the road,
and one stumbling figure, seemingly an inch tall, in the greenish patch that
was his garden, he knew to be Beecham. He smiled, but then, noticing that the
lawn on which he stood was growing too small, he stepped into the wood.
Growing,
growing, growing—he watched the landscape fall away from all about him and the
hills became little ridges across the earth. All at once he noticed that the
trees were crumbling beneath his feet, and, afraid that he might unwittingly
destroy property and human lile, he hurriedly switched off the tremendous surge
of pure force which had, until that moment, kept his density constant. He did
not know exactly what would happen; he might conceivably die, but it was better
that he die than that the world be destroyed.
He
looked about. The horizon was sweeping away from him, and hills and mountains
climbed into view. Beneath him clouds billowed, and fragments of the earth were
obscured.
As
the ocean of air above him grew thinner the vault of heaven darkened and became
purplish; the clouds beneath him were like the surface of a tumultuous sea. splashed with gold by the sunset.
He
noticed that he was becoming dizzy. The sky above him was almost black. He
tumbled beneath his shoulder lor the nozzle of the oxygen tube, and lastencd
the mouthpiece across his face. The dizziness left him.
He
looked at the sun, a blinding, bluish-white ball, with great vari-colored
streamers writhing and tossing on its surface and far out in space. The sky had
become completely black, and was spattered with millions of hard, unblinking
stars of every color, each piercingly bright, each inconceivably remote.
The
earth beneath his feet had become a great ball. Along its eastern edge there
lay a bell ol purplish darkness. He noticed that he
could no longer leel it, as something solid, beneath him. He looked down once
more, and saw that, like a great ball a hundred leet in diameter, it was moving
slowly away from him. Hall of it was bright and shining, like aluminum, while
the other hall was a blackness against the stars.
Across the edge of the earlh the moon appeared. He could see it move.
Apparently his time-mode was becoming slower. Watching the moon, it seemed for
only a lew minutes, he saw it come entirely within view. The earth had
diminished to a ball the size of a house. The moon moved faster.
Both
the earth and the moon were moving away. They became a pretty
little mechanism the size of a dinner plate, the
moon, like a white cherry, encircling the earth in the
time it takes to draw a breath.
Presently they were lost in
the glare of the sun.
He experienced no sensation
of either cold or warmth.
Apparently
a non luminous body in free space could not radiate heat. He touched his hands
together, and felt the pulse beating in his wrists. Looking downward at his
body, he saw half of it bathed in bright sunlight, the other half outlined as a blackness across the stars.
Almost
within arm's reach he noticed a ball the size of a small shot. It was vaguely reddish in color,
and spinning so rapidly that the surface markings upon it were blurred. It
rushed toward him. He knew that it was the planet Mars, and, full of a vast
curiosity, he watched it bury itself in his side. He turned his head, and in a
second saw it emerge from the small of his back. He chuckled.
Within minutes the solar system swept by.
Jupiter passed almost as close as did Mars, but seemed the size of a
cherrystone surrounded by whirling motes of light. Saturn, with her rings and
galaxy of moons, he picked out against the blinding blanket of stars by her
rapid progression across their motionless field. Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto he
did not observe. The sun became only another star amid the multitude. For a
moment, before he lost sight of it in the swarm, he believed that he saw it
surrounded by rushing circles of light, which could only be the planets
whirling about it, hundreds of times in each second.
Presently
the very stars themselves were moving, at first slowly, and then with the speed
of meteors. The little cluster in which he found himself became disk-shaped,
and then it was spinning, faster and faster. The individual stars had become
indistinguishable, and he only saw them as clusters that, apparently, stretched
on without end, A universe lay across his thumbnail; a
multitude of universes spangled his body. And still there was no end to them;
they merged into each other until even they were
merely flecks of light surrounding him and extending onward into infinity.
Then
a strange thing happened. He noticed that the universes were no longer giving
out light. Perhaps they had been slowly dimming for several moments; he was not
sure. But, nevertheless, they had become lightless while, paradoxically, it was
becoming lighter all about! A faint, almost intangible glow was growing
steadily, all about him. The individual universes, even as lightless motes,
impalpable as dust, were no longer distinguishable. But in their place he saw
vague clusters that seemed to be inanimate matter!
They
were gigantic, and they filled his vision like gargantuan mountains. But, like
the universes, they became swiftly smaller, and, as their size diminished,
their outlines became more plain. At last, and beyond
the possibility of doubt, he saw that he stood amid a cluster of huge rocks,
apparently of pure quartz, that towered over his head.
He
felt no surprise, but only a tremendous exaltation. He knew in that moment that
he had successfully stepped upward a plane in the gigantic cosmic stairway, and
that he was on another world! Those quartz-like rocks all about were, he knew,
microscopic specks of sand. lie stood in their midst
and watched them diminish and others like them come marching into his horizon.
Gingerly
he turned on his universal force mechanism. He needed mass, the mass of a
billion universes!
And
still he grew, until he approximated what he believed to be the height of a
man. Then he turned off his mechanism.
All
about him stretched a wilderness of sand, a desert of limitless expanse,
rolling away, lifeless, flat, and heat-tortured, to the horizon. The sky overhead
was a deep blackish blue, and no cloud broke the monotony of its vaulted
arching. Halfway down the sky hung a dwarfish, blue sun, crackling out the
heyday of its youth like an electric flame.
The
sun was not old, but the planet was already old and dead, burned to death, most
likely, he thought. Without doubt there was no place for him on this sunbaked
world. He was already becoming faint from the heat. He glanced at the dial on
his oxygen tank, which registered three-fourths capacity, and, with a regretful
glance about him, turned on his mechanism.
He
had learned so pitifully little about this new universe into which he had cast himself! Able to step upward Irom
universe to universe at will, able to encircle within the confines ot his held an entire cosmos, yet, his apparatus at rest, he became, on
the surface of any world to which chance brought him, merely a halting,
stumbling, delenseless old man.
The
sum total of the knowledge he had gathered about this world, this universe, he
was leaving, was negligible. He could not know if the desert
in which he had stood covered the entire surface of the planet, or was limited
in extent. He could not tell if the blue sun blazed fifty million or a billion
miles away.
He
watched the planet dwindle and vanish, the sun merge amid others that blanketed
the black sky with unfamiliar constellations; he watched those constellations
themselves fall together into puffs of light that merged into other puffs of
light. And presently he felt himself developing into another space.
All about him billowed
a sea of intensely crimson light. He could not feel it, because he was
impalpable, and it flowed through him without harming him as molten iron flows in a vacuum. He did not dare admit pure lorce within the
atoms ol his body until he definitely knew the nature of the substance
surrounding him, and that it could not harm him, so, alter a brief pause be
continued on, growing, growing, growing, while the crimson How swirled about him and through him.
Presently
he felt the red lire washing through and about his eyeballs, thinning above
him, giving him the sensation a swimmer might ex|>erieuce while emerging,
with opened eyes, from beneath the surface of water. He looked out upon a sea
of leaping fire, extending in every direction as had the sandy
desert a few moments before. Above his head was a lake of blackness, strewn
with stars.
He knew then that he had been within a sun. And so he went on, and that sun shrank within him until it became
like a red orange lying within his chest, and the stars and universes moved
toward him once more, and became little clouds of energy that passed within his
body, and a new space opened about him once again.
He
saw that he was enveloped in a grayish fog, lying thick and dark about his feet
and legs and up to his waist, but thinning to a dirty darkness about his head and shoulders. He could see no more than a
few feet in any direction, and the sliminess in which he stood was agitated,
now and again, as if by the passage of some form of life through it.
Shuddering, he continued his growth until he stood in the grayness like a man
in a limitless puddle. Mist swirled about his
face, and he could barely sec his shoetops.
He
allowed energy greater than that of the universe he had encompassed to flow
into him, and watched the dirty slime stir momentarily beneath his feet as the
atoms of his body pushed it aside. Then he stepped out briskly and aimlessly,
eager to explore this strange world.
He
realized that he was in some form of bog which, because of its shallowness,
could not be very extensive. He wa§ right, for he had scarcely walked fdty
paces when the ground beneath him shelved upward very slightly, and he found
himself waist deep in a forest of lush, whitish, fernlike vegetation. He
continued struggling onward through the luxuriant growth for another hundred
yards, searching for an open space, but the ground, flat and featureless as a
dinner plate, remained encumbered with the forestlikc growth. He Irequently
heard the crashing of heavy bodies through the forest, and knew that this
young, moisture-drenched planet thronged with life.
At
no previous time had he regretted his infirmities so much as now. Here, all
about him, stretched a young world, rich in
vegetation, rich in atmosphere, rich in animal life. He longed to walk beneath
the pallid, gigantic vegetation, but he could not, for he already towered above
it! To ensure his salety, he had increased his stature to an extent that
prohibited adventure. He was a giant, unable to do more than peer down into a
weird, gloomy world.
His
old muscles ached from the exertion of walking, and, seeing no sign of an open
space where he might sit, he turned on his mechanism again until the great
vegetation beneath him was no more than grass, inches high. Then he sat down,
and held his forehead in his hands. He was deathly tired.
He made atmospheric tests, for sooner or
later he must find a world on which he could live. The atmosphere was rich in
oxygen, saturated with water vapor, capable of supporting human life. He
recharged his oxygen tanks, and standing erect, looked about him.
The
fog was so thick that he could not sec the ground beneath his feet. He went on
growing, growing, until his head topped the clouds. But there was no break in
their ranks. They extended onward, like a mournful sea, in every direction. He started walking, in three mile strides, and went on until he was tired. Occasionally he felt
uneven hummocks beneath his feet, and knew them to be hills and mountains;
again he felt water sopping his boots, and knew that he walked in rivers and
lakes. But there was no end to the blanket of cloud.
So,
again, he looked into the heavens, at the great yellow sun warming this watery
world, at the unfamiliar stars that would soon be atoms within his body, and
slowly, tiredly, sent himself onward into the
infinite.
While
he grew, and while universes and yet other universes became pinpoints oi light
within him, he slept.
When
he awoke it was to the same kaleidoscopic change he knew would be. Star
clusters all alxxit him leaped into view, diminished and vanished in puffs of
light. He craned his head and read the dial of his oxygen tank. He had slept
(although it is absurd to speak of time when everywhere, except within his
field, time flowed like a millrace) possibly twenty hours. Within a short time
he would have to replenish his oxygen, or perish.
Again
the stars dimmed about him; the light from overhead strengthened. Once more he
was surrounded by mountainous grains of sand, shrinking away from him as he
grew, and he knew that he was upon the surface of a world. Here he found air,
water, pleasant fields and gentle beasts, and he stayed on this planet many
days.
But
because there was no life with which he could exchange ideas he became lonely,
and presently he went on once more. Beyond time, beyond space, beyond all
things except himself, he climbed the awful ladder he had built into infinity.
The gray left his hair, and it was white.
He
lost count of the worlds he visited, and ol the
universes shrinking and growing before his eyes. He lost count of the limes he
slept, and of the food he ate, and of the things he saw. His lile was a
constant hailing, and going on. The prime motive in it was the oxygen tank,
which he filled innumerable times.
So years, as his body knew years, passed. . .
.
He
met and conversed with creatures more perfect than humans, and with creatures
of intelligence more abased than devils. He saw holes in space made by suns so great that not even light could go forth from
them. He saw living things, without minds, more huge than Betelgeuse; he stood
upon a great green planet so vast that, with pure force filling his field until
he could barely lift an arm, he remained still so impalpable that he could walk
through metals. He met a mighty philosopher on a tiny, dying planet, who. preferred to journey on with him. Together they constructed
an hermetically sealed cabinet, which, philosopher and
all, he could carry within his pocket.
They
went on, and they might well enough have gone on together until they died, but
for a strange thing.
Once
again they saw the universes fading into lightless specks about them, and the
brighter light flowing down from above. Once again the bits of inanimate matter
became pebbles, and they stood in grass which
towered above them like a great forest. The grass
fell away from them, as they grew, and they looked upon a green
world, into a blue, cloudless sky. They saw, hallway down
the sky, a yellow sun. And they thought, "This world is good."
The
forest of grass fell to Doctor Severance'.' knees, and then to his ankles.
Looking about him, he felt that this world reminded him strangely of one he had
left long ago. Then a few yards away, he saw the house he had lived in on
Earth. . . .
There
was no mistaking it. The warm, brownish brick walls, the leaded windows, the
sloping, slate roof, the trellised walk leading to the garden, everything was
there, as if he had only just stepped out of doors.
Dazedly,
he snapped off his mechanism. Another strange thing happened. Everything became
black, as though he were blinded. He could still feel the earth beneath his
feet, but he could see nothing. He tried to take a step, and found that he could walk. Then, after he had taken a few
steps, the sunlight burst upon his eyes again. Feeling slightly bewildered, he
stumbled toward the house, a few feet ahead.
Mechanically
he tapped upon the glass window in the small cabinet in which the Philosopher
lived, and watched that circular transparency begin to revolve, as the
Philosopher hastened to come out and join him.
Walking
like one confronted by an incredibility, he entered the house, and into his
study. Nothing was changed, papers neatly piled beneath paperweights lay on his
desk, and a warm midsummer's breeze came into the room from the garden. He sat
down at his desk, pillowed his face upon his arms, and tried to think. He lost
track of time, but long minutes, a half
hour, hours passed. The Philosopher waited.
There
was a commotion at the front of the house, voices, footsteps.
Beecham came in, followed by a policeman. . . .
Nothing
of a dramatic nature occurred. Doctor Severance looked up mildly, and asked
Beecham what he wanted, and who the gentleman was, and the utterly bewildered
Beecham mumbled something, and Captain Riley, thinking that Beecham was a fool,
mumbled something also, and both men left the room.
But
before they went out they did not fail to notice the little metallic box on the
table, with its circular window, and the many legged, scaly thing that emerged
from it and sat upon it, and watched them through black, bottomless eyes. And
Beecham looked suspiciously at the curious harness on the floor just behind the
desk, and remembered that it was very like the harness he had seen on the
monstrous thing standing in the lawn, earlier in the alternoon.
In
a very lew days the apparition in the skies was forgotten. Beecham, alone,
wondered why, in an alternoon, Doctor Severance's hair had grown completely
white.
And in the laboratory, the two beings, the
Philosopher and Doctor Severance, studied ami planned and wondered. They
sought, among other things, to know what had become of the years during which
they had
wandered up the infinities. Dimly, they sensed behind
that paradox a simple law, and, in the workings of that law, power.
They
built a curious globe, and on it they ruled innumerable circles, which they
called by many names. And on this globe time was a circle, and a certain energy was another. And they sought to prove that,
as Doctor Severance had gone through all matter and through all energy, so had
he progressed over all time, from the beginning to the ending of things. And
that, continuing along the great circle drawn about the curious globe,
representing energy, it necessarily followed that, reaching the point on its
length from which he had started, the same point on the time circle would be
the juxtaposition. What was time? They knew that our stellar universe had come
and gone and come again a trillion times during each second they had lived on
those other worlds.
They
sought to solve another truth; that in their bodies were all the universes,
while yet they remained tiny motes upon one small planet circling a minor sun; that in the heavens were all things and, too, in every speck
of dust were all things, that were, and are, and ever shall be.
Now
the Philosopher, who, despite his utter ugliness and loathsomeness (as judged
by humans) was a great and noble soul, believed that, with more experience,
might come a solution of the problems which evaded
them. So it was that one evening Beecham, knocking at the study door and
failing to receive an answer, went in, and found no one there. The strange
harness was gone, and, although Beecham did not know, another like it. . . .
Beecham, looking in the corner, observed the
curious box in which he had seen the Philosopher. As yet uncertain whether to
call in the police, he picked it up idly, and caught himself wishing, with
regret, that he had had a better look, that day, at the creature the
master picked up in the garden.
The End
PARTIAL
LIST OF BEST-SELLING TITLES
AVON BOOKS
293
John O'Hara.................... ............... Hellbox
298 Swados
.................. House ol Fury
300 Shulman......................... The
Amboy Dukes
301
Hilton........................ We Are Not Alone
304 Wooli
............... Song Without Sermon
305 Stuart.................... God
Wears a Bow Tie
306 Thomason. ... Gone to Texas 309 Caldwell Midsummer Passion 311 Anthology
Saturday Evening
Post Western
Stories
313 Lion Feuchtwangei The Ugly Duchess
314 Van Vechten................. Nigger Heaven
315
Merrill The Metai Monster
316
Christie Murder in Three Acts 318 Juliet
Lowell . . Dear Sir 320 Dwight Babcock
Gorgeous Ghoul Murder
Case
322
Weidman Slipping Beauty
323 Guy Endore
The Furies in Her Body
325 James Hilton 111 Wind
326 Dortort Burial ot the Fruit
327 Tiffany Thayer . One
Man Show
328
Sayers Strong Poison
329 W. R. Burnett........................ Little Caesar
330
Hor{U) ........... Desperate
Men
331 W. Somerset Maugham Trio
333 R. Maugham Line on Ginger
334
Tillery Red Bone
Woman
337 Biggers The Agony Column
338
Anthology Hollywood Bedside Reader
339
Juba Kennerley
The Terror ot the Leopard
Men
342 Lacy The Woman Aroused
343 MacDonald Six Gun Melody
344 Biggers The Chinese Parrot
346 Nichols Possess Me Not
347
Leslie Charteris
The Saint at a Thieves Picnic
348
I. M.
Cain........................... Jealous Woman
349
Cheyney.................. Mistress Murdex
351 Clarke................................ Millie's Daughter
353 Christie. .
Poirot Loses a Client
355 James H. Chase
................ No Orchids or Miss Blandish
356 Jerome Weidman
........... Can Get It lor You
Wholesale
357 Anthology. All About Girls
358
Louys. Woman and
the Puppet
364 Maugham. . . The Point ol Honour
365
Clarke ................... ........ Impatient Virgin
367 Halleran ..Outlaw Guns
368 John O'Hara All the
Girls He Wanted
369 Frances and Richard Lockridge
. . .
The Dishonest Murderer
371 Christie ............... The Regatta Mystery
372 Shulman.......................................... Cry
Tough!
374 B. M. Bower
Gun Fight at Horsethiel Range
375 Wylie.......................... Babes and
Sucklings
376 McKay
......................... Home
to Harlem
377 Philip B. Kaye............. Tatty 379 Christie Death In the
An
381 Hilton
............ Nothing So Stranqe
382 Robert Mende
, . . Tough
Kid irom Brooklyn
383 Munro
.
The Untamed Wile ol Louis Scon
384 Clarke
............................. Louis Beretti
385 Brand............................ Cat and Mouse
387 Brandel....... , , Maniac
Rendezvous
389 Anthology ........ The
Saturday Evening Post Fantasy
Stories ¿91 Anderson Maidens in the Midden
393 Brandel
.. .
........... The Moron
194 Clarke Murderer's Holiday
395 Terence Ford.......................... The Drunk,
The Damned and The
Bedevilled
396 Weston His First Million
Women
j98 Schiller.............. Element ol Shame
399 Robert Paul Smith
.....................
Plus Blood 7n Their Veins
400 George Wylie Henderson
.... Jule: Alabama Boy In Harlem
401 Carco
................ Perversity
402 Woodlord......................... Dangerous Love
403 Woodford........................... Untamed Darling
404 Klein
............................ The
Blackmailer
405 Stephen Longstreet
Two Beds lor Roxane
406 Monash How Brave We Live
E 101 ... United States
Book ol Baby and Child
Care E 102 Fritz Wittels. M.D.
Sex Habits ol American Women E 103 Everett . . Hygiene ol Marriage •ET 105 W. Stekel. M.D.
How
to Understand Your
Dreams E 106 Frederic Wertham
The Show or Violence
•ET 108 E. Stevens
This Is Russia: Uncensored
MANY
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MADISON AVE., NEW YORK 22. N. Y. ENCLOSE 25c PER TITLE PLUS 5c EACH FOR WRAPPING AND FORWARDING.
|
They
dared to love each other in a world where marriage was owned by the state and
passion was regulated by law! Against
their forbidden feelings raged
the fury and scientific genius of the Eugenic State.
Fast jets and atomic police raced to stop their incredible elopement . . . but
the girl had a plan and her lover had the will. . . .
S.
Fowler Wright's unusual future story "P.N. 40" is but one of the many
science-fiction classics in this number of the AVON SCIENCE-FICTION READER.
Others include:
THE ROBOT EMPIRE by Frank Belknap Long
Two
mighty nations of robot men clashed with each other for the world's control—and
only a primitive woman could determine the outcome of that conflict!
THE
PLANET OF DREAD by R. F. Starzl
No
man had ever dared challenge the man-eating plants and the monsters of that savage
sphere until the day that disaster threw a young fortune-seeker unarmed into
its jungles!
And Outstanding Science-Fiction by
FRANCIS FLAGG H.
P. LOVECRAFT
HANNES BOK M. E. COUNSELMAN
THORP McCLUSKY KENNETH STERLING
Printed in U.
S. A.