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Science Fiction Books - Daily
Short Science Fiction Collection 081 - Various
09:05:34
"Short Science Fiction Collection 081" brings together imaginative works that explore the limitless possibilities of the genre, where the only constraints are those defined by the authors themselves. This collection highlights the speculative nature...
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A Little Journey by Ray Bradbury this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org recording by Veronica Mead she paid good money to see the inevitable and then had to work to make it happen. There were two important things. One, that she was very old. Two, that Mr. Thurkill was taking her to God. For hadn't he patted her hand and said, Mrs. Bellows, we'll take off into space in my rocket and go to find him together. And that was how it was going to be. Oh, this wasn't like any other group Mrs. Bellows had ever joined in her fervor to light a path for her delicate, tottering feet. She had struck matches down dark alleys and found her way to Hindu mystics who floated their flickering starry eyelashes over crystal balls. She had walked on the meadow paths with ascetic Indian philosophers imported by Daughters and spirit of Madame Blavatsky. She had made pilgrimages to California's stucco jungles to hunt the astrological seer in his natural habitat. She had even consented to signing away the rights to one of her homes in order to be taken into the shouting order of a temple of amazing evangelists who have promised her golden smoke, crystal fire, and the great soft hand of God coming to bear her home. None of these people had ever shaken Mrs. Bellow's faith, even when she saw them sirened away in a black wagon in the night, or discovered their pictures bleak and unromantic in the morning tabloids. The world had roughed them up and locked them away because they knew too much. That was all. And then, two weeks ago she had seen Mr. Turkle's advertisement in New York City. Come to Mars. Stay at the Turkle Restorium for one week, and then on into space on the greatest adventure life can offer. Send for free pamphlet Near Am I God to Thee Excursion rates round trip slightly lower. Round trip, Mrs. Bellis had thought. But who would come back after seeing him? And so she had bought a ticket and flown off to Mars and spent seven mile days at Mr. Therkel's Restorium, the the building with the sign on it which flashed Thurkel's Rocket to heaven. She had spent the week bathing in limpid waters and erasing the care from her tiny bones. And now she was fidgeting, ready to be loaded into Mr. Thurkell's own special private rocket like a bullet to be fired on out into space beyond Jupiter and Saturn and Pluto. And thus who could deny it? You would be getting nearer and nearer to the Lord. How wonderful. Couldn't you just feel him drawing near? Couldn't you just sense his breath, his scrutiny, his presence? Here I am, said Mrs. Bellows, an ancient, rickety elevator ready to go up the shaft. God need only press the button now. On the seventh day, as she minced up the steps of the Restorium, a number of small doubts assailed her. For one thing, she said aloud to no one, it isn't quite the land of milk and honey here on Mars that they said it would be. My room is like a cell. This swimming pool is really quite inadequate, and besides, how many widows who look like mushrooms or skeletons want to swim? And finally, the whole restorium smells of boiled cabbage and tennis shoes. She opened the front door and let it slam somewhat irritably. She was amazed at the other women in the auditorium. It was like wandering into a carnival mirror maze, coming again and again upon yourself. The same flowery face, the same chicken hands in jingling bracelets, one after another of the images of herself floated before her. She put out her hand, but it wasn't a mirror. It was another lady shaking her fingers and saying, we're waiting for Mr. Thurkle.
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Shh.
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Ah.
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Whispered everyone. The velvet curtains parted. Mr. Thurkil appeared fantastically serene, his Egyptian eyes upon everyone. But there was something nevertheless in his appearance which made one expect him to call hi. While fuzzy dogs jumped over his legs, through his hooped arms and over his back. Then, dogs and all, he should dance with a dazzling piano keyboard smile off into the wings. Mrs. Bellows, with a secret part of her mind which she constantly had to grip tightly, expected to hear a cheap Chinese gong sound when Mr. Thurkle entered. His large liquid dark eyes were so improbable that one of the old ladies had facetiously claimed she saw a mosquito cloud hovering over them as they did around summer rain barrels, and Mrs. Bellows sometimes caught the scent of the theatrical mothball and the smell of calliope steam on his sharply pressed suit. But with the same savage rationalization that had greeted all other disappointments in her rickety life, she bit at the suspicion and whispered, this time it's real. This time it'll work. Haven't we got a rocket? Mr. Thurkle bowed. He smiled a sudden comedy masked smile. The old ladies looked in at his epiglottis and sensed chaos there. Before he even began to speak, Mrs. Bellows saw him picking up each of his words, oiling it, making sure it ran smooth on its rails. Her heart squeezed in like a tiny fist and she gritted her porcelain teeth. Friends, said Mr. Thurkle, and you could hear the frost nap in the hearts of the entire assemblage. No, said Mrs. Bellows ahead of time. She could hear the bad news rushing at her and herself tied to the track while the immense black wheels threatened and the whistle screamed helpless. There will be a slight delay, said Mr. Thurkle. In the next instant Mr. Thurkle might have cried, or been tempted to cry. Ladies, be seated in minstrel fashion, for the ladies had come up at him from their chairs, protesting and trembling. Not a very long delay. Mr. Thurkle put up his hands to pat the air. How long? Only a week. A week? Yes. You can stay here at the restorium for seven more days, can't you? A little delay won't matter, will it? In the end? You've waited a lifetime. Only a few more days at $20 a day, thought Mrs. Bellows coldly. What's the trouble? A woman cried. A legal difficulty, said Mr. Thurkill. We've a rocket, haven't we? Well, y e s. But I've been here a whole month waiting, said one old lady. Delays, delays. That's right, said everyone. Ladies, ladies, murmured Mr. Thurkill, smiling serenely. We want to see the rocket. It was Mrs. Bellows, foraging ahead alone, brandishing her fists like a toy hammer. Mr. Thurkle looked into the old lady's eyes, a missionary among albino cannibals. Well, now, he said. Yes, now. Cried Mrs. Bellows. I'm afraid, he began. So am I, she said. That's why we want to see the ship. No, no. Now, Mrs. He snapped his fingers for her name. Bellows. She cried. She was a small container, but now all the seething pressure that had been built up over long years came steaming through the delicate vents of her body. Her cheeks became incandescent with a wail that was like a melancholy factory whistle. Mrs. Bellows ran forward and hung to him almost by her teeth, like a summer maddened spitz. She would not and never could let go until he died. And the other women followed, jumping and yapping like a pound let loose on its trainer, the same one who had petted them into whom they had squirmed and whined joyfully an hour before, now milling about him, creasing his sleeves and frightening the Egyptian serenity from his gaze. This way. Cried Mrs. Bellows, feeling like Madame Lafarge through the back. We've waited long enough to see the ship. Every day he's put us off. Every day we've waited. Now let's see. No, no. Ladies. Cried Mr. Thurkill. Leaping about. They burst through the back of the stage and out a door like a flood, bearing the poor man with them into a shed and then out, quite suddenly into an abandoned gymnasium. There it is. Someone said. The rocket. And then a silence fell that was terrible to entertain. There was the rocket. Mrs. Bellows looked at it, and her hands sagged away from Mr. Thurkle's collar. The rocket was something like a battered copper pot. There was a thousand bulges and rents and rusty pipes and dirty vents on and in it. The ports were clouded over with dust, the resembling the eyes of a blind hog. Everyone wailed a little sighing wail. Is that the rocket ship? Glory be to the highest. Cried Mrs. Bellows, appalled. Mr. Thickel nodded and looked at his feet. For which we paid out our $1,000 apiece and came all the way to Mars to get on board with you and go off to find him? Asked Mrs. Bellows. Why, that isn't worth the sack of dry peas. So, said Mrs. Bellows, it's nothing but junk. Junk. Whispered everyone, getting hysterical. Don't let him get away. Mr. Thurkle tried to break and run, but a thousand possum traps closed on him from every side. He withered. Everybody walked around in circles like blind mice. There was a confusion and a weeping that lasted for five minutes as they went over and touched the rocket, the dented kettle, the rusty container for God's children. Well, said Mrs. Bellows. She stepped up into the askew doorway of the rocket and faced everyone. It looks as if a terrible thing has been done to us, she said. I haven't any money to go back home to Earth, and I've too much pride to go to the government and tell them a common man like this has fooled us out of our life savings. I don't know how you feel about it, all of you, but the reason all of us came is because I'm 85 and you're 89 and you're 78 and you're all of us are nudging on towards a hundred and there's nothing on Earth for us. And it doesn't appear there's anything on Mars, either. We all expected not to breathe much more air or crochet many more doilies. We'd never have come here. So what I have to propose is a simple thing to take a chance. She reached out and touched the rusted hulk of the rocket. This is our rocket. We paid for our trip and we're going to take our trip. Everyone rustled and stood on tiptoes and opened an astonished mouth. Mr. Thurkle began to cry. He did it quite easily and very effectively. We're going to get in this ship, said Mrs. Bellows, ignoring him, and we're going to take off to where we were going. Mr. Thurkle stopped crying long enough to say, but it was all fake. I don't know anything about space. He's not out there. Anyway, I lied. I don't know where he is, and I couldn't find him if I wanted to. And you were fools to ever take my word on it. Yes, said Mrs. Bellows, we were fools. I'll go along on that. But you can't blame us, for we're old and it was a lovely, good and fine ideaone of the loveliest ideas in the world. Oh, we didn't really fool ourselves that we could get nearer to him physically. It was the gentle, mad dream of old people, the kind of thing you hold onto for a few minutes a day, even though you know it's not true. So all of you who want to go, you follow me in the ship. But you can't go, said Mr. Thurkill. You haven't got a navigator, and that ship's a ruin. You said, Mrs. Bellows, will be the navigator. She stepped into the ship, and after a moment the other old ladies pressed forward. Mr. Thurkle, windmilling his arms frantically, was nevertheless pressed through the port, and in a minute the door slammed shut. Mr. Thurkle was strapped into the navigator's seat with everyone talking at once and holding him down. The special helmets were issued to be fitted over every gray or white head to supply extra oxygen in case of a leakage in the ship's hull. And at long last the hour had come, and Mrs. Bellows stood behind Mr. Thurkle and said, we're ready, sir. He said nothing. He pleaded with them silently, using his great dark, wet eyes, but Mrs. Bellows shook her head and pointed to the control. Take off, agreed Mr. Thurkill morosely and pulled a switch. Everybody fell. The rocket went up from the planet Mars in a great fiery glide with the noise of an entire kitchen thrown down an elevator shaft with the sound of pots and pans and kettles and fires boiling and stews bubbling with the smell of burned incense and rubber and sulfur with a color of yellow fire and a ribbon of red streaking below them, and all the old women singing and holding to each other and. And Mrs. Bellows crawling upright in the sighing, straining, trembling ship. Head for space, Mr. Thurkill. It can't last, said Mr. Thurkill sadly. The ship can't last. It will. It did. The rocket exploded. Mrs. Bellows felt herself lifted and thrown about dizzily like a doll. She heard the great screamings and saw the flashes of bodies sailing by her in fragments of metal and powdery light.
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Help.
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Help. Cried Mr. Thurkle, far away on a small radio beam. The ship disintegrated into a million parts, and the old ladies, all 100 of them, were flung straight on ahead with the same velocity as the ship. As for Mr. Thurkle, for some reason of trajectory perhaps he had been blown out the other side of the ship. Mrs. Bellows saw him falling separate and away from them, screaming, screaming. There goes Mr. Thurkle, thought Mrs. Bellows, and she knew where he was going. He was going to be burned and roasted and broiled. Good, but very good. Mr. Thurkle was falling down into the sun. And here we are, thought Mrs. Bellows, here we are going on out and out and out. There was hardly a sense of motion at all, but she knew that she was traveling at 50,000 miles an hour and would continue to travel at that speed for an eternity until she saw the other women swinging all about her in their own trajectories. A few minutes of oxygen left to each of them in their helmets, and each was looking up to where they were going. Of course, that Mrs. Bellows out into space, out and out in the darkness like a great church, and the stars like candles. In spite of everything, Mr. Thurkill, the rocket and the dishonesty, we are going toward the Lord. And there, yes, there as she fell, on and on, coming toward her, she could almost discern the outline. Now coming toward her was his mighty golden hand, reaching down to hold her and comfort her like a frightened sparrow. I'm Ms. Amelia Bellows, she said quietly in her best company voice. I'm from the planet Earth. End of A Little Journey By Ray Bradbury.
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Doctor Komatevsky's Day by Fritz Leiber this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org Dr. Komatevsky's Day by Fritz Leiber but it's all predicted here. It even names this century for the next reshuffling of the planets. Celeste Woolver looked up unwillingly at the book her friend Madge Carnap held aloft like a torch. She made out the ill stamped title, the Dance of the Planets. There was no mistaking the time of its origin, only paper from the 20th century aged to that particularly nasty shade of brown. Indeed, the book seemed to Celeste, a brown old witch resurrected from the last age of madness to confound a world, growing sane. And she couldn't help shrinking back a trifle toward her husband, Theodore. He tried to come to her rescue, only predicted in the vaguest way. As I understand it, Kamatevsky claimed, on the basis of a lot of evidence drawn from folklore, that the planets and their moons trade positions every so often, as if they were playing going to Jerusalem or musical chairs, Celeste chimed in, but she couldn't make it sound funny. Jupiter was supposed to have started as the outermost planet and is to end up in the orbit of Mercury, theodore continued. Well, nothing at all like that has happened. But it's begun, madge said with conviction. Phobos and Deimos have disappeared. You can't argue away that stubborn little fact. That was the trouble. You couldn't Mars, two tiny moons had simply vanished during a period when, as was generally the case, the eyes of astronomy weren't on them. Just some hundred odd cubic miles of rock, the merest cosmic fly specks. Yet they had carried away with them the security of a whole world. Looking at the lovely garden landscape around her, Celeste Wolver felt that in a moment the shrubby hills would begin to roll like waves, the charmingly aimless paths twist like snakes and sink in the green sea. The sparsely placed skyscrapers dissolve into the misty clouds they pierced. People must have felt like this, she thought, when Aristarches first hinted and Copernicus told them that the solid Earth under their feet was falling dizzily through space. Only it's worse for us because they couldn't see that anything had changed. We can. You need something to cling to, she heard Madge say. Dr. Komatevsky was the only person who ever had an inkling that anything like this might happen. I was never a Kamateskiite before. Hadn't even heard of the man. She said it almost apologetically. In fact, standing there so frank and anxious eyed, Madge looked anything but a fanatic. Which made it much worse. Of course, there are several more convincing alternate explanations, theodore began hesitantly, knowing very well that there weren't. If Phobos and Deimos had suddenly disintegrated, surely Mars Base would have noticed something. Of course there was the disordered space hypothesis, even if it was little more than the chance phrase of a prominent physicist pounded upon by an eager journalist. And in any case, what sense of security were you left with if you admitted that moons and planets might explode or drop through unseen holes in space? So he ended up by taking a different tack. Besides, if Phobos and Amos simply shot off somewhere, surely they'd have been picked up by now by scope or radar. Two balls of rock just a few miles in diameter? Madge questioned. Aren't they smaller than many of the asteroids? I'm no astronomer, but I think I'm right. And of course she was. She swung the book under her arm. Whew, it's heavy, she observed, adding in slightly scandalized tones. Never been microfilmed. She smiled nervously and looked them up and down. Going to a party? She asked. Theodore's scarlet cloak and Celeste's green culottes and silver jacket justified the question. But? But. They shook their heads. Just the normally flamboyant garb of the family, celeste said, while Theodore explained, as it happens, we're bound on business connected with the disappearance. We Wolvers practically constitute a subcommittee of the Congress for the Discovery of New Purposes. And since a lot of varied material comes to our attention, we're going to see if any of it correlates with this bit of astronomical sleight of hand. Madge nodded. Give you something to do, at any rate. Well, I must be off. The Buddhist temple has lent us their place for a meeting. She gave them a woeful grin. See you when the earth jumps, theodore said to Celeste. Come on, dear, we'll be late. But Celeste didn't want to move too fast. You know, Teddy, she said uncomfortably, all this reminds me of those old myths where too much good fortune is a sure sign of coming disaster. It was just too much luck. Our great grandparents missing World War Three and getting the world government started a thousand years ahead Schedule luck like that couldn't last, evidently. Maybe we've gone too fast with a lot of things like space flight and the deep shaft and. She hesitated a bit. Complex marriages. I'm a woman. I want complete security. Where am I to find it? In me, theodore said promptly. In you? Celeste questioned, walking slowly. But you're just one third of my husband. Perhaps I should look for it in Edmund or Yvonne. You angry with me about something? Of course not. But a woman wants her source of security whole. In a crisis like this, it's disturbing to have it divided. Well, we are a whole and, I believe, indivisible family, theodore told her warmly. You're not suggesting, are you, that we're going to be punished for our polygamous sins by a cosmic catastrophe? Fire from heaven and all that? Don't be silly. I just wanted to give you a picture of my feeling. Celeste smiled. I guess none of us realized how much we've come to depend on the idea of unchanging scientific law. Knocks the props from under you. Theodore nodded emphatically. All the more reason to get a line on what's happening as quickly as possible. You know, it's fantastically far fetched, but I think the experience of persons with extrasensory perception may give us a clue. During the past three or four days there's been a remarkable similarity in the dreams of ESPs all over the planet. And I'm going to present the evidence at the meeting. Celeste looked up at him. So that's why Rosalind's bringing Frieda's daughter. Dottie is your daughter, too. And Rosalind's, Theodore reminded her. No, just Frieda's, celeste said bitterly. Of course, you may be the father one third of a chance. Theodore looked at her sharply but didn't comment. Anyway, Dottie will be there, probably asleep by now. All the ASP's have suddenly seemed to need more sleep. As they talked it had been growing darker, though the luminescence of the path kept it from being bothersome. And now the cloud rack parted to the east, showing a single red planet low on the horizon. Did you know, theodore said suddenly, that in Gulliver's Travels Dean Swift predicted that better telescopes would show Mars to have two moons? He got the sizes and distances and periods damned accurately, too. One of the few really startling coincidences of reality and literature. Stop being eerie, celeste said sharply. But then she went on. Those names, Phobos and Deimos, they're Greek, aren't they? What do they mean? Theodore lost a step. Fear and terror, he said unwillingly. Now don't go taking that for an omen. Most of the mythological names of major and minor ancient gods had been taken. The bodies in the solar system are named that way, of course, and these were about all that were available, it was true, but it didn't comfort him much. I am a God, Dottie was dreaming, and I want to be by myself and think. I and my God friends like to keep some of our thoughts secret, but the other gods have forbidden us to. A little smile flickered across the lips of the sleeping girl, and the woman in gold tights and gold spangled jacket leaned forward thoughtfully in her dignity and simplicity and straight spined grace. She was rather like a circus mother watching her sick child before she went out for the trapeze act. I and my God friends sail off in our great round silver boats. Dottie went on dreaming. The other gods are angry and scared. They are frightened of the thoughts we may think in secret. They follow us to hunt us down. There are many more of them than of us. As Celeste and Theodore entered the committee room, Rosalind Wolver, a glitter of platinum against darkness, came in through the opposite door and softly shut it behind her. Frida, a fair woman in blue robes, got up from the round table. Celeste turned away with outward casualness as Theodore kissed his two other wives. She was pleased to note that Edmund seemed impatient too. A figure in close fitting black, unrelieved except for two red arrows at the collar, and he struck her as embodying very properly the serious fateful temper of the moment. He took two briefcases from his vest pocket and tossed them down on the table beside one of the microfilm projectors. I suggest we get started without Waiting for Ivan, he said. Frida frowned anxiously. It's 10 minutes since he phoned from the Deep Space bar to say he was starting right away, and that's hardly a two minutes walk. Rosalind instantly started toward the outside door. I'll check, she explained. Oh, Frida, I've set the mic so you'll hear if Dottie calls. Edmond threw up his hands. Very well, then, he said, and walked over, switched on the picture, and stared out moodily. Theodore and Frieda got out their briefcases, switched on projectors, and began silently checking through their material. Celeste fiddled with the TV and got a newscast, but she found her eyes didn't want to absorb the blocks of print that rather swiftly succeeded each other. So after a few moments she shrugged impat efficiently and switched to audio. At the noise, the others looked around at her with surprise and some irritation, but in a few moments they were also listening. The two rocket ships sent out from Mars Base to explore the orbital positions of Phobos and Deimos, that is, the volume of space they'd be occupying if their positions had remained normal, report finding masses of dust and larger debris. The two masses of fine debris are moving in the same orbits and at the same velocities as the two vanished moons and occupy roughly the same volumes of space, though the mass of material is hardly a hundredth that of the moons. Physicists have ventured no statements as to whether this constitutes a confirmation of the disintegration hypothesis. However, we're mighty pleased at this news here. There's a marked lessening of tension. The finding of the debris, solid, tangible stuff, seems to lift the whole affair out of the supernatural miasma in which some of us have been tempted to plunge it. One hundredth of the moons has been found. The rest will also be Edmund had turned his back on the window. Frida and Theodore had switched off their projectors. Meanwhile, earthlings are going about their business with a minimum of commotion, meeting with considerable calm the strange threat to the fabric of their solar system. Many, of course, are assembled in churches and humanist temples. Komatowskyites have staged helicopter processions at Washington, Peking, Pretoria, and Christiana, demanding that instant preparations be made for, and I quote, Earth's coming leap through space. They have also formally challenged all astronomers to produce an explanation other than the one contained in that strange book so recently conjured from oblivion the dance of the planets that about winds up the story. For the present, there are no new reports from Interplanetary Radar Astronomy or the other rocket ships searching in the extended Mars volume, nor have any statements been issued by the various groups working on the problem in astrophysics, cosmic ecology, the Congress for the Discovery of New purposes, and so forth. Meanwhile, however, we can take courage from the words of a poem written even before Dr. Kamatevsky's book. This Earth is not the steadfast place we landsmen build upon. From deep to deep she varies pace, and while she comes is gone beneath my feet I feel her smooth bulk heave and dip with velvet plunge and soft up reel she swings and steadies to her keel like a gallant, gallant ship. While the TV voice intoned the poem, growing richer as emotion caught it up, Celeste looked around her at the others. Frida, with her touch of feminine helplessness showing more than ever through her business like poise. Theodore leaning forward from his scarlet cloak thrown back, smiling the half smile with which he seemed to face even the unknown black Edmond, masking a deep uncertainty with a strong show of decisiveness. In short, her family. She knew their every quirk and foible, and yet now they seemed to her a million miles away, figures seen through the wrong end of a telescope. Were they really a family, strong sources of mutual strength and security to each other? Or had they merely been playing family, experimenting with their notions of complex marriage like a bunch of silly adolescents, butterflies taking advantage of good weather to wing together in a glamorous artificial dance until outraged nature decided to wipe them out? As the poem was ending, Celeste saw the door open and Rosalind come slowly in. The golden woman's face was as white as the paths she had been treading just then. The TV voice quickened with shock. Lunar Observatory 1 reports that although Jupiter is just about to pass behind the sun, a good coronagraph of the planet has been obtained, checked, and rechecked. It admits of only one interpretation, which lunar one feels duty bound to release. Jupiter's 14 moons are no longer visible. The chorus of remarks with which the Wolvers would otherwise have received this was checked by one thing, the fact that Rosalind seemed not to hear it. Whatever was on her mind prevented even that incredible statement from penetrating. She walked shakily to the table and put down a briefcase, one end of which was smudged with dirt. Without looking at them, she said, ivan left the deep space bar 20 minutes ago. Said he was coming straight here. On my way back, I searched the path. Midway I found this half buried in the dirt. I had to tug to get it out, almost as if it had been cemented into the ground. Do you feel how the dirt seems to be in the leather? As if it had laid for years in the grave. By now the others were fingering the small case of microfilms they had seen so many times in Ivan's competent hands. What Rosalind said was true. It had a gritty, unwholesome feel to it. Also, it felt strangely heavy. I'd see what's written on it, she added. They turned it over. Scrawled with white pencil in big, hasty, frantic letters were two words going down. The other gods, Dottie dreamt, are combing the whole universe for us. We have escaped them many times, but now our tricks are almost used up. There are no doors going out of the universe, and our boats are silver beacons to the hunters. So we decide to disguise them in the only way they can be disguised. It is our last chance. Edmund wrapped the table to gain the family's attention. I'd say we've done everything we can for the moment to find Ivan. We've made a thorough local search. A wider one, which we can't conduct personally, is in progress. All helpful agencies have been alerted and descriptions are being broadcast. I suggest we get on with the business of the evening we, which may very well be connected with Yvonne's disappearance.
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One by one. The others nodded and took their places at the round table. Celeste made a great effort to throw off the feeling of unreality that had engulfed her and focus her tension on her microfilms. I'll take over Ivan's notes, she heard Edmund say. They're mainly about the deep shaft. How far have they got with that? Frida asked idly. 25 miles. Near a 30, I believe, Edmund answered. And still going down. At those last two words, they all looked up quickly. Then their eyes went toward Ivan's briefcase. Our trick has succeeded, Dottie dreamt. The other gods have passed our hiding place a dozen times without noticing. They search the universe for us many times in vain. They finally decide that we have found a door going out of the universe. Yet they fear us all the more. They think of us as devils who will someday return through the door to destroy them. So they watch everywhere we lie, quietly smiling in our camouflaged boats, yet hardly daring to move or think for fear that the faintest echoes of our doings will give them a clue. Hundreds of millions of years pass by. They seem to us no more than drugged hours in a prison. Theodore rubbed his eyes and pushed his chair back from the table. We need a break, frieda agreed wearily. We've gone through everything. Good idea, eben said briskly. I think we've hit on several crucial points along the way and half disentangled them from the great mass of inconsequential material. I'll finish up that part of the job right now and present my case when we're all a bit fresher. Say half an hour? Theodore nodded heavily, pushing up from his chair and hitching his cloak over his shoulder. I'm going out for a drink, he informed them after several hesitant seconds. Rosalind quietly followed him. Frieda stretched out on a couch and closed her eyes. Edmund scanned microfilms tirelessly, every now and then, setting one aside. Celeste watched him for a minute, then sprang up and started toward the room where Dottie was asleep. But midway she stopped. Not my child, she thought bitterly. Frieda's her mother, Rosalind her nurse. I'm nothing at all. Just one of the husband's girlfriends, a lady of uneasy virtue in a dissolving world. But then she straightened her shoulders and went on. Rosalind didn't catch up with Theodore. Her footsteps were silent, and he never looked back along the path whose feeble white glow rose only knee high, lighting a low strip of shrub and mossy tree trunk to either side. No more. It was a little chilly. She drew on her gloves, but she didn't hurry. In fact, she fell farther and farther behind the dipping tail of his scarlet cloak and his plodding red shoes, which seemed to move disembodied like those in the fairy tale. When she reached the point where she had found Ivan's briefcase, she stopped altogether. A breeze rustled the leaves and, moistly brushing her cheek, brought forest scents of rot and mold. After a bit she began to hear the furtive scurryings and scuttlings of forest creatures. She looked around her half heartedly, suddenly realizing the futility of her quest. What clues could she hope to find in this knee high twilight? And they'd thoroughly combed the place earlier in the night without warning. An eerie tingling went through her, and she was seized by a horror of the cold, grainy earth underfoot, an ancestral terror from the days when men shivered at ghost stories about graves and tombs. A tiny detail persisted in bulking larger and larger in her mind, the unnaturalness of the way the earth had impregnated the corner of Ivan's briefcase, almost as if dirt and leather coexisted in the same space. She remembered the queer way the partly buried briefcase had resisted her first tug like a rooted plant. She felt cowed by the mysterious night about her and literally dwarfed, as if she had grown several inches shorter. She roused herself and started forward. Something held her feet. They were ankle deep in the path. While she looked in fright and horror, they began to sink still lower into the ground. She plunged frantically, trying to jerk loose. She couldn't. She had the panicky feeling that the earth had not only trapped but invaded her, that its molecules were creeping up between the molecules of her flesh, that the two were becoming one and she was sinking faster now, Knee deep, thigh deep, hip deep, waist deep. She beat at the powdery path with her hands and threw her body from side to side in agonized frenzy, like some sinner frozen in the ice of the innermost circle of the ancient hell. And always the sense of the dark, grainy tide rose inside as well as around her. She thought he'd just have had time to scribble that note on his briefcase and toss it away. She jerked off a glove, leaned out as far as she could, and made a frantic effort to drive its fingers into the powdery path. Then the Earth mounted to her chin, her nose and covered her eyes. She expected blackness, but it was as if the light of the path stayed with her, making a little glow all around. She saw roots, pebbles, black rot, worn tunnels, worms, tier on tier of them, her vision penetrating the solid ground and at the same time the knowledge that these same sorts of things were coursing up through her. And still she continued to sink at a speed that increased, as if the law of gravitation applied to her in a diminished way. She dropped from black soil, through gray clay and into pale limestone. Her tortured rock, permeated lungs, sucked at rock and drew in air. She wondered madly if a volume of air were falling with her through the stone. A glitter of quartz, the momentary openness of a foot high cavern with a trickle of water. And then she was sliding down a black basalt column, half inside it, half inside gold flecked ore, then just black basalt and always faster. It grew hot, then hotter, as if she were approaching the mythical eternal fires. At first glance Theodore thought the deep space bar was empty. Then he saw a figure, hunched, monkey like on the last stool, almost lost in the blue shadows, while behind the bar, her crystal dress blending with the tiers of sparkling glasses, stood a grave eyed young girl who could hardly have been 15, the TV was saying. In addition, a number of mysterious disappearances of high rating individuals have been reported. These are thought to be cases of misunderstanding, illusory apprehension and impulse traveling, a result of the unusual stresses of the time. Finally, a few suggestible individuals in various parts of the globe, especially the Indian Peninsula, have declared themselves to be gods and in some way responsible for current events. It is thought. The girl switched off the TV and took Theodore's order, explaining casually. Joe wanted to go to a Kamitowskia meeting, so I took over for him. When she had prepared Theodore's highball, she announced, I'll have a drink with you gentlemen, and squeezed herself a glass of pomegranate juice. The monkey like figure muttered scotch and soda, then turned toward Edmund and asked, and what is your reaction to all this, sir? Theodore recognized the shrunken wrinkle seamed face. It was Colonel Fortescue, a military antique, long retired from the Peace Patrol and reputed to have seen actual fighting in the last age of Madness. Now for some reason the face sported a knowing smile. Theodore shrugged. Just then the TV big news light blinked blue and the girl switched on audio. The Colonel winked at Theodore, confirming the disappearance of Jupiter's moons. But two other utterly fantastic reports have just been received. First, Lunar Observatory 1 says that it is visually tracking 14 small bodies which it believes may be the lost moons of Jupiter. They are moving outward from the solar system at an incredible velocity and are already beyond the orbit of Saturn, the colonel said. Ugh. Second, Palomar reports a large number of dark bodies approaching the solar system at an equally incredible velocity. They are at about twice the distance of Pluto, but closing in fast. We will be on the air with further details as soon as possible, the colonel said. Aha. Theodore stared at him. The old man's self satisfied poise was almost amusing. Are you a Kamatevskyite? Theodore asked him. The colonel laughed. Of course not, my boy. Those poor people are fumbling in the dark. Don't you see what's happened? Frankly, no. The colonel leaned toward Theodore and whispered gruffly, the divine plan. God is a military strategist. Naturally. Then he lifted the scotch and soda in his claw like hand and took a satisfying swallow. I knew it all along. Of course, he went on musingly, but this last news makes it as plain as a rocket blast, at least to anyone who knows military strategy. Look here, my boy. Suppose you were commanding a fleet and got wind of the enemy's approach. What would you do? Why, you'd send your scouts and destroyers fanning out toward them behind that screen. You'd mass your heavy ships. Then you don't mean to imply Theodore interrupted. The girl behind the bar looked at them both cryptically. Of course I do, the colonel cut in sharply. It's a war between the forces of good and evil. The bright suns and planets are on one side, the dark on the other hand. The moons are the destroyers, Jupiter and Saturn are the big battleships while we're on a heavy cruiser. I'm proud to say we'll probably go into action soon. Be a corking fight, what? And all by divine strategy. He chuckled and took another big drink. Theodore looked at him sourly. The girl behind the bar polished a glass and said nothing. Dottie suddenly began to turn and toss and a look of terror came over her sleeping face. Celeste leaned forward apprehensively. The child's lips worked and Celeste made out the sleepy fuzzy words. They've found out where we're hiding. They're coming to get us.
- [44:24]
No.
- [44:24]
Please, no. Celeste's reactions were mixed. She felt worried about Dottie and at the same time almost in terror of her, as if the little girl were an agent of supernatural forces. She told herself that this fear was an expression of her own hostility, yet she didn't really believe it. She touched the child's hand. Dottie's eyes opened without making Celeste feel she had quite come awake. After a bit she looked at Celeste and her little lips parted in a smile. Hello, she said sleepily. I've been having such funny dreams. Then, after a pause, frowning, I really am a God, you know. It feels very queer. Yes, dear, Celeste prompted uneasily. Shall I call Frida? The smile left Dottie's lips. Why do you act so nervous around me? She asked. Don't you love me, Mummy? Celeste started at the word. Her throat closed. Then, very slowly, her face broke into a radiant smile. Of course I do, darling. I love you very much. Dottie nodded happily, her eyes already closed again. There was a sudden flurry of excited voices beyond the door. Celeste heard her name called. She stood up. I'm going to have to go out and talk with the others, she said. If you want me, dear, just call. Yes, Mommy. Edmund rapped for attention. Celeste, Frida, and Theodore glanced around at him. He looked more frightfully strained, they realized, than even they felt. His expression was a study in suppressed excitement, but there were also signs of a knowledge that was almost too overpowering for a human being to bear. His voice was clipped, rapid. I think it's about time we stopped worrying about our own affairs and thought of those of the Solar System. Partly because I think they have a direct bearing on the disappearances of Ivan and Rosalind. As I told you, I've been sorting out the crucial items from the material we've been presenting. There are roughly four of those items. As I see it, it's rather like a mystery story. I wonder if, hearing those four clues, you will come to the same conclusion I have. The others nodded. First, there are the latest reports from Deep Shaft, which, as you know, has been sunk to investigate deep Earth conditions. At approximately 29 miles below the surface, the Delvers have encountered a metallic obstruction which they have tentatively named the Dura Sphere. It resists their hardest drills, their strongest corrosives. Their they have extended a side tunnel at that level for a quarter of a mile. Delicate measurements made possible by the mirror smooth metal surface show that the durosphere has a slight curvature that is almost exactly equal to the curvature of the Earth itself. The suggestion is that deep borings made anywhere in the world would encounter the durasphere at the same depth. Second, the movements of the moons of Mars and Jupiter, and particularly the debris left behind by the moons of Mars. Granting Phobos and Deimos had durospheres proportional in size to that of Earth, then the debris would roughly equal in amount the material in those two duraspheres, rocky envelopes. The suggestion is that the two duraspheres suddenly burst from their envelopes with such titanic velocity as to leave those disrupted envelopes behind. It was deadly quiet in the committee room. Thirdly, the disappearances of Ivan and Rosalind, and especially the baffling hint from Ivan's message in one case and Rosalind's downward and glove in the other, that they were both somehow drawn into the depths of the Earth. Finally, the dreams of the ESP's, which agree overwhelmingly in the following A group of beings separate themselves from a godlike and telepathic race because they insist on maintaining a degree of mental privacy. They flee in great boats or ships of some sort, they are pursued on such a scale that there is no hiding place for them anywhere in the universe in some manner, and they successfully camouflage their ships. Eons pass, and their still fanatical pursuers do not penetrate their secret. Then suddenly they are detected. Edmund waited. Do you see what I'm driving at? He asked hoarsely. He could tell from their looks that the others did, but couldn't bring themselves to put it into words. I suppose it's the time scale and the value scale that are so hard for us to accept, he said softly. Much more even than the size scale. The thought that there are creatures in the universe to whom the whole career of man, in fact the whole career of life, is no more than a few thousand or hundred thousand years, and to whom man is no more than a minor stage property, a trifling part of a clever job of camouflage. This time, he went on, fantasy writers have at times hinted all sorts of odd things about the Earth, that it might even be a kind of single living creature or honeycombed with inhabited caverns and so on. But I don't know that any of them have ever suggested that the Earth, together with all the planets and moons of the solar system, might be
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In a whisper, Frida finished for him. A camouflaged fleet of gigantic spherical spaceships. Your guess happens to be the precise truth. At that familiar yet dreadfully unfamiliar voice, all four of them swung to the inner door. Dottie was standing there, a sleep stupefied little girl with a blanket caught up around her and dragging behind their own daughter. But in her eyes was a look from which they cringed. She said, I am a creature somewhat older than what your geologists call the Archaeozoic era. I am speaking to you through a number of telepathically sensitive individuals among your kind. In each case, my thoughts suit themselves to your level of comprehension. I inhabit the disguised and jetless spaceship which is your Earth. Celeste swayed a step forward. Maybe, she implored. Dottie went on without giving her a glance. It is true that we planted the seeds of life on some of these planets simply as part of our camouflage, just as we gave them a suitable environment for each. And it is true that now we must let most of that life be destroyed. Our hiding place has been discovered, our pursuers are upon us, and we must make one last effort to escape or do battle, since we firmly believe that the principle of mental privacy to which we have devoted our existence is perhaps the greatest good in the whole universe. But it is not true that we look with contempt upon you. Our whole race is deeply devoted to life wherever it may come into being, and it is our rule never to interfere with its development. That was one of the reasons we made life a part of our camouflage. It would make our pursuers reluctant to examine these planets too closely. Yes, we have always cherished you and watched your evolution with interest from our hidden lairs. We may even unconsciously have shaped your development in certain ways, trying constantly to educate you away from war and finally succeeding, which may have given the betraying clue to our pursuers. Your planets must be burst asunder, this particular planet in the area of the Pacific, so that we may have our last chance to escape. Even if we did not move, our pursuers would destroy you with us. We cannot invite you inside our ships, not for lack of space, but because you could never survive the vast accelerations to which you would be subjected. You would, you see, need very special accommodations, of which we have enough only for a few. Those few we will take with us as the seed from which a new human race may, if we ourselves somehow survive, be born. Rosalind and Ivan stared dumbly at each other across the egg shaped silver room without apparent entrance or exit in which they were sprawled. But their thoughts were no longer of 30 odd mile journeys down through solid earth, or of how cool it was after the heat of the passage, or of how grotesque it was to be trapped here, the fragment of a marriage. They were both listening to the voice that spoke inside their minds. In a few minutes your bodies will be separated into layers, one atom thick, capable of being shelved or stored in such a way as to endure almost infinite acceleration. Single cells will cover acres of space, but do not be alarmed. The process will be painless and each particle will be cataloged for future assembly. Your consciousness will endure throughout the process. Rosalind looked at her gold shod toes. She was wondering, will they go first, or my head, or will I be peeled like an apple? She looked at Ivan and knew he was thinking the same thing. Up in the committee room, the other Wolvers slumped around the table. Only little Dottie sat straight and staring, speechless and unanswering, quite beyond their reach, like a telephone off the hook and with the connection open, but no voice from the other end. They had just switched off the TV after listening to a confused medley of denials, prayers, Kamateskyite chatterings, and a few astonishingly realistic comments on the possibility of of survival. These last pointed out that on the side of the Earth opposite the Pacific, the convulsions would come slowly when the entombed spaceship burst forth, provided, as seemed the case, that it moved without jets or reaction. It would be as if the Earth's vast core simply vanished. Gravity would diminish abruptly to a fraction of its former value. The empty envelope of rock and water and air would slowly fall together, though at the same time the air would begin to escape from the debris because there would no longer be the mass required to hold it. However, there might be definite chances of temporary and even prolonged survival for individuals in strong, hermetically sealed structures such as submarines and spaceships. The few spaceships on Earth were reported to have blasted off or be preparing to leave with as many passengers as could be carried. But most persons apparently could not contemplate action of any sort. They could only sit and think like the Wolvers. A faint smile relaxed Celeste's face. She was thinking how beautiful. It means the death of the solar system, which is a horrifying subjective concept. Objectively, though, it would be a more awesome sight than any human being has ever seen or ever could see. It's an absurd and even brutal thing to wish, but I wish I could see the whole cataclysm from beginning to end. It would make death seem very small, a tiny personal event. Dottie's face was losing its blank expression, becoming intent and alarmed. We are in contact with our pursuers, she said in the familiar, unfamiliar voice. Negotiations are now going on. There seems to be there is a change in them. Where they were harsh and vindictive before, they now are gentle and conciliatory. She paused, the alarm on her childish features pinching into anxious uncertainty. Our pursuers have always been shrewd. The change in them may be false, intended merely to lull us into allowing them to come close enough to destroy us. We must not fall into the trap by growing hopeful, they leaned forward, clutching hands, watching the little face as though it were a television screen. Celeste had the wild feeling that she was listening to a communique from a war so unthinkably vast and violent between opponents so astronomically huge and nearly immortal that she felt like no more than a reasoning amoeba, and then realized, with an explosive urge to laugh, that that was exactly the situation. No, said Dottie. Her eyes began to glow. They have changed during the eons in which we lay sealed away and hidden from them, knowing nothing of them, they have rebelled against the tyranny of a communal mind to which no thoughts are private, the tyranny that we ourselves fled to escape. They come not to destroy us, but to welcome us back to a society that we and they can make truly great. Frieda collapsed to a chair, trembling between laughter and hysterical weeping. Theodore looked as blank as Dottie had while waiting for words to speak. Edmund sprang to the picture window, Celeste toward the TV set. Climbing shakily out of the chair, Frieda stumbled to the picture window and peered out beside Edmond. She saw lights bobbing along the paths with a wild excitement. On the TV screen, Celeste watched two brightly lit ships spinning in the sky. Whether human spaceships or Phobos and Deimos come to help Earth rejoice, she couldn't tell. Dottie spoke again, the joy in her strange voice forcing them to turn. And you, dear children, creatures of our camouflage, we welcome you, whatever your future career on these planets or like ones, into the society of enlightened Worlds. You need not feel small and alone and helpless ever again, for we shall always be with you. The outer door opened. Ivan and Rosalind reeled in drunkenly smiling arm in arm like rockets. Rosalind blurted happily, we came through the durasphere and solid rock shot up right to the surface. They didn't have to take us along, yvonne added with a bleary grin. But you know that already, don't you? They're too good to let you live in fear, so they must have told you by now. Yes, we know, said Theodore. They must be almost godlike in their goodness. I feel calm. Edmond nodded soberly, Calmer than I ever felt before. It's knowing, I suppose, that. Well, we're not alone. Dottie blinked and looked round and smiled at them all with a holy little girl smile. Oh, Mummy, she said, and it was impossible to tell whether she spoke to Frida or Rosalind or Celeste. I've just had the funniest dream. No, darling, said Rosalind gently. It's we who had the dream. We've just awakened. End of Dr. Komatevsky's day by Fritz Leiber Recording by Eli Bishop San Francisco.
- [61:10]
Writing Class by Robert Sheckley this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org Read by Dale Grothman Never use cliches in describing alien life forms, Professor Carner admonished his class, but Eddie persisted. With good reason. Writing Class by Robert Sheckley Eddie MacDermott paused at the door, then caught his breath and tiptoed into the classroom and to his seat. Mort Edison, his best friend, looked at him reprovingly. The class had been in session for almost 15 minutes, and one just doesn't come late to Professor Carner's lecture, especially on the first day. Eddy breathed easily as he saw that Professor Carner's back was to the class as he completed a diagram on the blackboard. Now then, carner said, suppose you were writing about the the Venusian thringiner which, as you know, has three legs. How would you describe it? One of the students raised his hand. I'd call it a three legged monstrosity spawned in the deepest hells of no, said Carner quietly. That kind of writing might have been all right in the earliest days of our subject. But remember, you are no longer dealing with a simple, credulous audience. To achieve the proper effects nowadays you must underplay. Understand? Underplay. Now someone else Mort raised his hand, threw a glance at Eddie, and said, how about this tripedal blob of orange protoplasm octopus, like in its gropings? That's better, garner said. Tripedal is very nice, very exact. But must you compare it with an octopus? Why not? Mort asked. An octopus, the professor said, is a well known form of Earth life. It inspires no terror. No wonder you're better comparing the Thringiner to another strange monster, a Calistian Edels player, for example. He smiled winningly at the class. Eddie frowned and scratched his blond crew cut. He had liked it better the first way. But Carner should know, of course. He was one of the best known writers in the entire field, and he had done the college a favor by agreeing to teach the course. Eddie remembered reading some of Carner's stuff. It had scared the living daylights out of him when he was younger. That description of Saturian brains immobilizing Earth confederated ships, for example. That had been the best yarn. The trouble is, Eddie thought, I'm just not interested. He had had serious doubts about this course. Actually, he had signed up only because Mort had insisted. Any questions at this point? Garner asked. One of the students, a serious looking fellow wearing black horn rimmed glasses, raised his hand. Suppose, he asked. Suppose you were writing a story speculating on an interstellar combine formed with the purpose of taking over Earth. Would it be permissible for greater contrast to make Earth's enemies black hearted villains? A political thinker, Eddy thought with a sneer. He glanced hopefully at the clock. It wouldn't be advisable. Carner sat back casually on the corner of his desk. Make them human. Also, show the reader that these aliens, whether they have one head or five, have emotions understandable to them. Let them feel joy and pain. Show them as being misguided. Pure evil in your characters has gone out of fashion. But could I make their leader pure evil? The young man asked, busily jotting down everything Carner had said. I suppose so, carner said thoughtfully. But give him motivations also, by the way, in dealing with that sort of story, the panoramic kind. Remember not to oversimplify the alien's problems. If they amass an army of 20 million, all have to be fed. If the rulers of 50 scattered star systems meet in conclave, remember that different star systems have different languages, and different races have different nervous systems. Bear in mind also that there would be little logical reason for attacking Earth. The galaxy is filled with so many stars and planets. What is the necessity of fighting for one? The horn rimmed fellow nodded dubiously, writing his notes with tremendous speed. Eddy stifled a yawn. He preferred to think of his villains as pure, unadulterated evil. It made characterization so much easier, and he was getting tremendously bored. Carner asked questions for the next half hour. He told them not to describe Venus as a jungle choked green hell. Never, never to call the moon pockmarked small pock pitted or scarred from centuries of meteoric bombardment. All this has been said, he explained, millions of times. Do not use cliches. He went on to explain that the red spot of Jupiter need not be called a malevolent red eye, that Saturn's rings don't necessarily resemble a halo, and that the inhabitants of Venus are not Venetians. All common errors, he said. I want a thousand words from each of you. Next time I suggest that you choose a planet and write a fresh study of it, avoiding with care all the cliches I mentioned. Class dismissed. Well, what'd you think, Mort? Asked Eddie in the hall. Isn't he great? I mean, he really knows I'm dropping out of the class, eddy said, making up his mind. What? Why? Well, eddie said, there's no reason why I shouldn't call the red spot on Jupiter a malevolent red eye. I put that in a story last month and it sounded good. And that Venetian thranginer. I think it's a monstrosity and I'm going to write about it that way. He paused, his face hardened with conviction. But the real reason? Well, I'm just not interested in journalism. I'm dropping Carner's course, in fact, feature article writing because I want to write fiction. The End of Writing Class By Robert Sheckley.
- [68:50]
Has anybody seen Kelly? By Kenneth o' Hara this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org recording by Dan Gerzynski has anybody seen Kelly? By Kenneth O' Hara the crew pulsed with contentment, and its communal singing brought a pleasant kind of glow that throbbed gently in the control room. Has anybody here seen Kelly? K E double L Y Shut up and dig my thought, Kelly's stubborn will insisted. I'm going on out for a while. The delicate loom of the crew's light pattern increased its frequency a little and the song stopped. Better not, the crew said. But why not? No need. We could be running into something bad, Kelly thought. No danger now, Kelly. Checking the ship is just a waste of time. How can you waste what you have so damn much of? Kelly thought. Do not leave us again, Kelly. We love you and you are the most interesting part of the crew when you're with it. The ship ought to be checked. Our bodies ought to be looked at. We know there is no danger anymore. Kelly, do not go. There are so many interesting experiences we have not even begun to share yet. We are only halfway through your life, and we have not even started to experience your impressions of your colorful and complex Earth culture. And we have not even started on the adult lives of Lakret or Lejoub. Come back with your crew, Kelly. But no one's checked the ship for over a year. Please do not worry about the ship, Kelly. In 50 years, nothing has gone wrong. We can trust the ship thoroughly now. It will take care of us. It will take care of us. That's a hell of a way to look at it. There can be no danger now, Kelly. In 50 years we have encountered every conceivable danger, every imaginable kind of world war possible menace, have we? Kelly thought. Every danger from outside, maybe, and I'm not even sure of that. How about danger from inside?
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Inside us how about apathy, for instance? Apathy's a real danger. You took up out the space can like it was a big metal mother. Listen, I'm supposed to see that this stuff holds together, at least until we get back somewhere near enough to the solar system so we'll feel we've been somewhere else. But Kelly, I'm getting out for a while, I tell you. All right, the crew sighed. The light loom faded a bit down to a self indulgent glow. Hurry back to us, Kelly. I'll give some thought to it. So Kelly concentrated on the increasingly painful and difficult task of tearing his consciousness free of the big glob of protoplasm in the tank and getting it back into his body that hibernated in the bunk room. As usual, the switch was too painful. It stretched and stretched and finally snapped in an all too familiar explosion of shocking light. His bones creaked, his skin rustled as he sat up and looked around. There was the old feeling that there was dust over everything. When there was no dust, there was all that emptiness sweeping away into the endless silence. And he thought again, as he always did, how comforting and cozy it was being a part of the crew. But someone had to check the ship. It was only machinery, after all, and machinery could wear out sooner or later, and he wasn't at all sure, as he kept insisting, that they had encountered all the possible dangers. It might seem that in 50 years you could run into everything. But 50 years was no time at all. Out here, where time had no real meaning anymore. His body squeaked as he took a few tentative steps about the bunk room. One did not actually forget how to walk. It was just awkward as the devil. The blood, the entire autonomic system tended to slow down. It seemed reluctant to step up. General metabolism apathy. Sure, it was a danger this time, Kelley decided. I'll do something about it. He was the engineer, and he had signed on the great Odyssey to keep the ship going. But the crew was part of the ship. Was not there an obligation even greater to keep the crew going? The four others lived, but almost imperceptibly, in some very low state of slowed metabolism, there in the bunk room, and Kelly looked at them, the faithful and the wonderful ones, the ones with whom he had shared so many dangers and awful silences that the five of them had been able to evolve the idea of the protoplasm in the tank and merge their consciousness in it. Q the Venusian in her bowl of self renewing nitrate. La Critte from Jovian satellite. A Florine fellow of distinction inside a sphere of gaseous sulfur. A crystalline character with a sense of humor named Lejeube, whose form gave off a paled glint as it nourished itself on silicates. A highly intelligent but humble six foot long sponge labeled Erdoz, stuck in a foundation of chemical sediment at the bottom of a tank of reprocessing salt water, each with their own special kind of appendages and sensitivities, each able to move his special closed system about through the ship by means of clever types of mobility, but basically in outward form. They were too alien to have much in common. Only as intelligences, as life forces, could they share a common bed, and it evolved to that in 50 years a bed of protoplasm and a shock absorbent tank. Kelly looked at them warmly and thought about how it had worked out. The strange thing was that it did have a lot of good things to recommend it, or had had them. It had solved the problem of intimate communication and driven back the tides of loneliness. It had lessened the dangers of mental and physical illnesses in the material bodies and assured a prolongation of the life of each body, which was important in itself, for this trip had proven to be a lot longer than even the most pessimistic had anticipated. The crew pulsing in its tank, Kelly thought oddly, is a new lifeform, one that had evolved to meet the exigencies of deep space, which had proven to be alien to any adaptability common to any world that rotated through it. But maybe they were too damned happy, Kelly thought, too contented. If they ran into a real emergency now, the ship would be finished. The crew in the tank was itself incapable of action of any overt kind. It could not manipulate anything. It could only be happy. And the bodies here in the bunk room could not rally fast enough to meet a sudden crisis. And they had agreed that the first law was survival. But to survive this way might well, mean destruction in another. So Kelly walked and thought about it and weighed the precarious balance. He slipped through the silent ship and to the control room. He peered into the viewscope. Some galaxy or other spun its giant pinwheel outward toward some destiny of its own. The high noon of the endlessness had been unfamiliar for years. He checked the ship's instruments. The crew in the big tank simmered and throbbed in its introspective bliss, utterly oblivious to Kelley Now Kelly saw the red dwarf a few hundred million kilos away. Three planets ground their familiar path around it. The second, in distance, had a breathable oxygen, according to the scopes, but little else to recommend it. Kelley straightened up. He had no idea when the plan had really started forming, but now it was formed. When Kelley made up his mind to do a thing, there was no other course but to conclude it. He knew what he had to do. Somehow, even as part of the crew, some part of Kelly had been able to keep that forming plan a secret. Which was a lucky miracle, for if the crew had known his intentions, it would certainly not have let him out this time. Even if you wanted out, Kelly reasoned, the crew would keep you in. And maybe after long enough, you did not care to get out. But once out, he wondered, could it keep you out if it decided to blackball a man for one reason or another, like wrecking the ship? In the chrome strip above the control panel, Kelly saw his face grinning strangely back at him. A bearded, hollowed, pale face with an unfamiliar glitter in the eyes. Every time he had left the crew to enter and reactivate his own body, that body seemed a little less familiar this time. It seemed to be almost entirely someone else. He stared at the face in the chrome, then whispered, the hell with that, and he flipped the controls over to manual. He sat down. Behind him, the crew whispered in its tank, protoplasm developed in the labs and quivering now with some unified sensation that was purely subjective and blissfully unconcerned with what happened outside itself. It's sick, kelly concluded with an emphatic clamp of his jaws. It's not right. True, sharing the intimate sensations of alien life forms like Q, the female Venusian, had been exciting, especially the sex experiences, which in a flower of Q's type was certainly there were interesting things to being a part of the crew, all right, but the main purpose, survival, had been forgotten. Now being the crew was an end in itself. Kelly could imagine the crew business going on and on until finally even the material bodies in the bunk room would be forgotten entirely. And allowed to rot away to dust, about which the crew would no longer care. And that was very bad. It should not have worked out this way. But it was not too late to do something, shake them out of the lotus dream. He checked the scopes again. Now the second planet revealed plenty of breathable atmosphere, settled in the lower valleys. He headed straight for it. The crew was soon going to get one devil of a jolt. He put the ship into a close orbit around the planet. It seemed nothing but a fearsome forest of oxidized spikes, rising in corrosive silence with here and there a lean slash of valley. There was no indication of life, no vegetation visible or revealed by the scopes. One of the valleys had a thin mouth of water stretching down the length of its face. Kelly set the speed and the controls and ran for the bunk room and the shock absorbent cushions. He strapped himself in and waited. It was done. As long as the thing had gone so far, Kelly decided the truth should never be revealed because that would lessen the therapeutic value of his action. He would wreck the ship. Not too badly. Not so badly that all the bodies, distinct, separate individual bodies again, couldn't put the ship back together as in the old days. And that would keep them in their bodies gladly, for a while, where they belonged, where the good Lord had intended for them to stay. They would not be rocked away to apathy in a phony metal mother womb, thinking the ship was going to take care of them. The more Kelly thought about it, the better he felt. He stretched inside the straps. He felt his slightly atrophied muscles luxuriate over the tissues and bones of his big frame. Anybody, no matter what its shape, should be proud of itself. That was Kelly's belief. And this thing that had happened seemed somewhat blasphemous. Without bodies in their complex sensory recording apparatus, the rich consciousness enjoyed by the crew could not exist, would never have been created at all. The crew was living off the largesse of experience built up by their bodies. The crew was just narcotized enough that it did not realize that the body banks had to be replenished. Metal shrieked. Kelly yelled feebly. He fought. He grappled with a threatening blackout, like a man fighting an invisible opponent on an endless flight of stairs. The grinding, rolling terror of the sound, the ripping, twisting, tearing scream of it cried on and on. Kelly knew one thing then. He had not figured it right. His calculations were off. The ship had hit too damn hard. Later, when he managed to get the straps off and tried to move, he fell painfully onto the tilted deck. One of his eyes felt sticky. He rubbed at it and his hand was smeared with blood. He shuffled around in a stumbling circle. Minor damages could have been repaired, but this the ship was peeled open in glaring strips like a breakfast canister. A cold wind moaned through the ship that was now nothing but a metal sieve. A hazy light filtered down and ran off the metal like cold flour rust. Kelly fell to his knees. Queue, he whispered. Le jube Urdaz. La crite. The Venusian flower lady was sliced down the middle like a cabbage, and the nitrate bowl was shattered and and Q was dead in a pool of fading green blood. Smashed into the bulkhead was La Krit's sulfuric bathtub, and his atmosphere had already filtered away with the wind to wherever it was going. Lejouve's pale glow was out for good, and his crystalline heart was as opaque as a dead eye. Only a few pieces of Urdaz's tank were visible, and Urdaz himself had already turned to a powdery food that the wind ate slowly in long trailing streamers. What? What in the name of God have I done? Kelly whispered. All dead. No. He slammed at the bulkhead until the warped metal gave and he ran to the control room. The crew.
- [85:39]
The crew.
- [85:40]
He stared at the tank through a jagged opening in the ship's walls. The wind whined and plucked at Kelly's red hair. The wind was colder now. He kept on looking at the tank. He reached out and touched the big transparent curve of it and then jerked his hand back with a whimper in his breath. There was nothing in the tank, nothing but a blob of slowly drying slime. He pressed his nose to the tank. Crew, he whispered. There was no life in the slime. When he pounded on the tank, the stuff collapsed in upon itself in withering flatness. Kelly yelled. The cold wind froze at his teeth. It sucked at his breath and dried at the interior of his mouth. He ran and climbed. The jagged periphery of the opening sliced at his flesh, but he did not feel it, and he fell 20ft without feeling that either down the side of the ship. He started crawling over the hard, naked belly of the rock. He got to his feet. He ran stumbling down an incline of shale worn round and shiny by the wind that had blown here just as it blew now and would blow for God alone possibly knew how long. He fell and rolled to the edge of the water. He looked into it. He felt of it. He jerked his hand away. The stuff was icy, but it was worse than icy. It was dead. It was dead.
- [87:13]
Water.
- [87:14]
It was without any bottom and without any life in it anywhere. You could tell by looking into it. The wind moved over the top of it as though the water were glass and the water was the color of a slightly transparent, naked blue steel. There was no life here. Maybe there had been once. Who knew when, who could guess how long ago? But there was none now, and even the water had forgotten it. Kelly cried out as he stood up. What have I done? He raised his arms at the hazy red sun lying over the spires of towering stone and metal like a bloated balloon scraping precariously over rusted spikes. God, what have I done? The cry echoed tinnily on the rocks and fled on the wind. Kelly ran for a long way, falling and stumbling and getting up again. Kelly had always had one primary drive, and that was to keep going, no matter what. So now he tried to keep going. But there was no life on this planet. He had known that before. Some strange kinds of intelligence could tolerate some unpleasant worlds. But nothing would live here. Nothing could live here. That's your fate, Kelly thought. He sat down and stared at the walls of rock and metal all around. Your fate, Kelly. Your punishment. Your well deserved. Hell, that was what it was. Retribution. And knowing that, he tried not to care. He tried to be glad and face what he deserved. If that were not the answer, then why had only Kelley been spared to face emptiness and silence and no life all alone? The irony of it was that he would go on as long as possible, keeping himself alive in his own hell. There was food aplenty in the ship, enough to last as long as hell cared to have him. He turned and started walking back toward the ship that seemed some five miles away. that instant, the ship disappeared in an abrupt explosion that twisted the rocks, and a mushroom cloud flowered gently above the lake as Kelley fell trembling on his belly and hugged the ground and pushed his face into the shale. While the wind tore and screamed around him and particles of flint ripped his clothes and slashed at his flesh, he did not bother walking much farther toward where the ship had been. There is only a crater there now, which would offer him nothing in the way of sustaining his very personal and thoroughly private hell. He walked. The effort became more difficult, and finally he was on his hands and knees, crawling. The wind sucked at his ripped clothes and felt like cold, sharp steel in his raw wounds, but slowly and deliberately he continued to crawl. Kelley had always had the idea that a man should keep going, and so now he kept on going, even if there was no place to go. And you could not remember particularly where you had been. You kept on moving and fighting and slugging along until you could no longer move. He lay there looking up at the hazy rust of the sky with the naked spires pointing up into it for no reason at all, because there was nothing up there.
- [90:47]
There.
- [90:49]
He had been there, and he knew. Nothing up there but space, black and without a beginning or end. He had not even checked the records of the ship, so that now, lying here, he did not even know how far away from Earth he was. At the speed they had traveled, a ship went a long way in 50 years. But the ship, the records, everything was lost, and no one would ever know how far they had come or gone. What was the difference anyway? But Kelley had no difficulty in remembering why they had come. They had come into space because that was how it was with those who fought their way up to being the dominant life form of whatever world they had lived on and grown and died on. If you were the kind who went into space, you went because space was there. Who needed a better reason than that? Q, he whispered. La critte le job Eur Daz. Listen now. I thought I was doing the right thing. Maybe my idea was right. But I just made a mistake in the calculations. I just made a hell of a mistake. The wind sighed over the naked rock and the rusted metal and the rock and the dead blue water. He turned and pushed his head against the rock. His body curled up against the bitter wind. You've got to forgive me, he said. Has anybody here seen Kelly? K E double L Y. He shivered and kept his eyes closed. It was part of the wind. He did not want to go out that way. He hearing crazy voices in the wind. Has anybody here seen Kelly? He raised his head and blinked, and the wind drove tears down his cheeks. Am I just hearing something that's going crazy inside my head? He peered around. There was nothing. Nothing anywhere, of course. Nothing where nothing had ever been and nothing else. But nothing could ever be. You're wrong, Kelly. Your crew's here. Kelly raised himself painfully to an elbow.
- [93:05]
Where? Where?
- [93:08]
Right here, Kelly. We had a difficult time locating you. Sure, we forgive you. You were trying to do what was right. We know that there's nothing. Nothing, Kelly said. You're wrong. The crew's here and we're waiting. He stared at the rock. He put his face against it and pushed his hands to it. There was a kind of dull glow in it, a faint hint of warmth in the rock. How can this be? Kelly said. This is the life here. Kelly. Perhaps there is life everywhere, in the most impossible seeming places. And where life is, Kelly, we can live with it and be welcomed by it here. This rock is life, and it has taken us in. It has been here a long time, and it will be here for a much longer time. Rock, kelly said. But hurry and come back. But no one will ever know how long, how long can we wait? Who can answer that, Kelly? But maybe they will find the crew someday. Kelly looked up once at the completely unfamiliar distances growing darker. Sometime, he thought, they'll come from wherever Earth is and find the crew of the ship. Find a rock here, waiting the ages out. Hurry, Kelly. His head dropped against the rock. His hand slid down it, and a smile moved over his lips and froze there as the wind whispered over it and of has anybody seen Kelly? By Kenneth o' Hara Recording by Dan Gerzinski.
- [95:00]
Earth's Gone to the Dogs By William J. McClellan this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org Read by Dale Grothman Ruskin didn't like archaeologists. They were always digging up problems from the past, like the day Bigelow walked in and announced, Earth's Gone to the Dogs By William J. McClellan Ruskin leaned back and yawned. The porch chair creaked comfortably. It was a comfortable day. Fifty yards away, the barnyard was alive with spring noises. Clean, crisp smells floated to him through the bright morning air. Daisy walked slowly up and watched him with big, affectionate eyes. Ruskin smiled down at her. She was a pretty one. Pretty soft hair, deep blue eyes, lithe rounded lines. Nice doggie. He patted her head gently. Nice doggie, he repeated. Holidays in the country came too seldom. The quiet was wonderful. Tom, the wrinkled little farm hand, opened the porch door. Mr. Ruskin? Yes, Tom? Man here to see you. Who? That digger fellow? Ruskin frowned and swore quietly. Even his holidays were shattered by people who couldn't forget he was Commissioner of Internal Security. And these people were always little and important ones. Like this archaeologist Bigelow, whose little fears suddenly became giant threats to national security. Send him out here, Tom. Tom turned back into the house. Ruskin could hear his gruff voice inside, and a few moments later Bigelow, stooped and bespectacled, emerged from the house. Ruskin smiled weakly. Hello, Bigelow. Good morning, Commissioner. Bigelow stood clutching his briefcase, shaking with excitement. Then suddenly his eyes fell on Daisy and something like fear passed over his face. Sit down, Bigelow. Bigelow balanced himself delicately on the edge of a porch chair, his briefcase resting on his long bony knees, but his eyes remained fixed on the dog. Is this social or business, Bigelow? Sort of both, Commissioner, he answered slowly, then added quickly, but I wouldn't disturb your holiday if it wasn't important. Ruskin nodded dully. Then several moments of silence, during which Bigelow continued to watch Daisy carefully. Finally, since his visitor did not seem inclined to speak, Ruskin asked simply, well, first tell the dog to go away, Daisy. Yes. Why? I won't say a word with it here. Ruskin shrugged. As you wish, he said. Daisy, go. Go on like a good girl. Daisy's big eyes seemed hurt, but reluctantly she walked away. Bigelow watched suspiciously after her until she was well out of hearing. Now, he began, a week ago we started digging around the crater on the east coast where some great pre atomic cities once stood. Bigelow paused excitedly. Ruskin sighed. It was much too nice a day. And there we came upon three pre atomic books. Bigelow paused again. A wonderful find, ruskin said without enthusiasm. More wonderful than you think, Commissioner. Bigelow squared his shoulders dramatically. Two of them were much like the other pre atomic books in the museums, but the third, Bigelow was bursting with excitement. The third had pictures in it. Ruskin straightened up. Amazing. Never before had a pre atomic book been found with pictures. Artists had painted their own versions drawn from the few meager written descriptions. How many pictures, Bigelow? Plenty. But just one would be enough to shake the foundations of our social world. He opened his briefcase and pulled out a small book protected by its own cloth cover. He opened to a marked page. Just take a look at this. Ruskin took the book and stared curiously at a picture showing a dressed up dog sitting in a chair, patting a human on the head. Man's best friend gets reward Ruskin glanced back at Bigelow. I don't understand, he said slowly. Is it some kind of joke book? Bigelow grinned narrowly. A very bitter joke, Commissioner. Joke of Mother Nature's. I'm still not sure I understand. I think you do, Commissioner, bigelow countered quickly. Now so many of the things we couldn't understand become clear to us. The naked animal on the floor in the pictures is our ancestor, and the hairless thing on the chair is our dog. Ruskin shook his head. Impossible. Not at all. In the lower animal and plant orders, more amazing mutations occurred during the atomic wars. We just never noticed because they didn't touch us closely. Ruskin's mind rushed over the implications, all the frightful and carefully ignored aberrations of the atomic blasts. If it was true, and he still wouldn't let himself be convinced, it would be a tremendous blow to the morale of society. And it was his duty to protect the well being of society. He must decide now for society. This is a very delicate problem, Bigelow, he said finally. I know, Commissioner. You've come upon something fantastic. Thank you, Commissioner. We must handle this very carefully. I understand. Good. Leave the book with me for security reasons and I'll figure out how to handle it. Well, of course. I'll see that you get all the credit you deserve. Bigelow rose. Very well, Commissioner. I'll leave it in your hands. He left with the air of a man just conquering the world. Ruskin sat the closed book in both hands for a long, long while. It was very late when he called the Psycho section. Yes, Psycho section answered. We have a file on Bigelow. Have you ever interned him? No, but he's cataloged as extremely unstable. Fine. Thank you. Ruskin placed the receiver carefully back on the cradle. Nothing to fear from Bigelow. He rose and walked slowly toward the fire. He looked down at the book. War, war, war. From the beginning of man almost to his own destruction. Since the atomic wars, Earth had been comparatively peaceful because people thought man had become suffet of war. Ruskin frowned. Attitudes, someone had once said, are more important than facts. He dropped the book into the flames. Very well then. Let Earth be happy. Daisy walked slowly over to him and barked quietly. The pretty golden hair hung gently over her shoulders and her blue eyes were very soft. Ruskin patted her gently. Nice doggie, he said. Earth's Gone to the Dogs by William
- [104:21]
J. McClellan Sound of Terror by Dawn Barry this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org recording by Veronica Mead Sound of Terror by Dawn Barry the day was still no more than a ragged streak of red in the east. The predawn air was sharply cold, making Johnny Young Bears face feel slightly brittle as he dressed quietly in the gray bedroom. He sat down on the bed, pulling on his boots, and felt his wife stir sleepily beneath the covers. Suddenly she stiffened, sat upright in the bed, startled into wakefulness. Johnny put one dark bony hand on her white shoulder, gently reassuring. After a moment finding herself, she turned away and lit a cigarette. Johnny finished pulling on his boots and stood, his hawk like face unreadable in the cold gray light streaming through the huge picture window. Johnny said his wife Hesitantly. He murmured in acknowledgment, watching the bright flare of color as she drew on the cigarette. Her soft dark hair was coiled loosely around her shoulders, very black against the pale skin. Her eyes were invisible in shadow, and Johnny could not read their expression. He turned away, knowing she was watching him. Be careful, she said simply. Try, he said. Then he shrugged. Not my day, anyway. I know, she said. But be careful. He left the house and walked out into the chill desert dawn. He turned his face to the brightness in the east, trying to catch a little warmth, but could not. He warmed up the Jeep, listening to the engine grumble, protest until it settled to a flat banging roar. He swerved out of the driveway with a screaming of tires, reaching the long ribbon of concrete that led out into the desert. He settled down hard on the accelerator, indifferent to the whining complaint of the Jeep's motor. It was eight miles from his sprawling house to the Mesa Dry Lake launching site Deweese into the sun. He pulled to the top of Six Mile Hill and stopped in the middle of the highway. Two miles ahead was launching Base 1 1, throwing long, sharp shadows at him in the rosy dawn light, a cluster of squat gray blockhouses, a long Runway tapering into the distance with an Air Force B52 motionless at the near end. That was all except the ship. The ship towered high, dominating the desert like a pinnacle of bright silver. Even silhouetted against the eastern sky, it sparkled and glistened in passive it seemed, stood graceful, seeming to strain into the sky, anxious to be off and gone. The loading gantry was a dark spidery framework beside the ship, leaning against it, drawing strength from its sleek beauty. Tony watched it in silence for a moment, then turned his eyes up to the sky. Somewhere up there a tiny satellite spun wildly about the Earth, a little silver ball in some celestial roulette wheel. Gradually it would spiral closer and closer, caught by the planet's implacable grasp, until it flared brightly like a cigarette in the heavens before dissolving into drops of molten metal. But it would have served its purpose in its short life. It would have given man knowledge, knowledge of space, knowledge enough that he could go himself, knowing what he would find in the emptiness between the Earth and the moon. Or knowing nearly what's it like out there? The satellite answered partly. The ship would answer more. Johnny slammed the Jeep into gear, hurtled down the other side of Six Mile Hill.
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Through his mind ran the insistent repetition of an old song he knew, and he hummed it tunelessly through closed teeth. I had a true wife but I left her oh oh oh. The jeep skidded to a halt beside Control. Mitch Campbell's green station wagon was already there, creaking and settling as the motor cooled. Control was full of people, Air Force brass, technicians, observers, enlisted men of indiscernible purpose. The room hummed with the muted buzz of low, serious question conversation. Mitch Campbell sat in one corner, apparently forgotten in the confusion. He had nothing to do, not yet. He was already in flight dress, holding the massive helmet in his hands, morosely turning it over and over, staring at it as though he thought he might find his head inside if he looked carefully enough. Morning, Colonel, said Johnny, forcing his voice to be casual and cheerful. You're up early this morning. Morning, Colonel. Yourself, said Mitch, looking up. Big date today? Well, yeah, you might say so, mitch said, smiling faintly, with obvious force. Thought I might go. Once around lightly, he said, hooking his thumbs upwards, upwards through the concrete ceiling into the air, through the air, up where there was no air for a man to breathe. Once around lightly, around the world. Lightly. Tell you what, Mitchell. Okay, tell me what? He said. You like movies? Johnny asked. You like to get a little adventure in your soul? You like a little vicarious thrill now and then? Yeah, I like that. Tell you what, we'll go. No, don't thank me. We'll go tonight. Eight o'. Clock. You come by wives and everybody? Mitch asked. Why not? Johnny said. They're cooped up in the house all day. They both knew the wives would be in control in an hour, listening to the radio chatter, waiting, eyes wide, shoulders stiff and tight. Fine, said Mitch. Fine. A crew chief came up and touched Johnny's shoulders. Colonel Young Bear, he said. Observation is going up. Johnny stood and looked out the tiny window at the red painted B52. See you tonight, Mitch. Eight o'. Clock. Don't forget Westerns. See you, said Mitch. He looked back, back down at the helmet and was turning it over and over again when Johnny left, the observation B52 climbed screaming. Johnny lit a cigarette and watched out the port at the contrails rolling straight and white behind the jet. He sat by the radioman, a sergeant, ignoring the rest of the officers in the converted bomb bay. Hope he makes it, Colonel, said the sergeant. He'll make it, johnny said, flatly irritated, relenting, he added in a gentler tone, the pilot section breaks away. If he gets in serious trouble, he can dump it and ride the nose down like a bird. He'll make it. There was a ruckus buzz and a squawk box said, on my mark it will be 0 minus 4 minutes. Mark. The voice of control, 35,000ft below the B52 swung ponderously onto the base leg of its circle, and there was a creaking of stretching metal inside. Minus two minutes. Not my day anyway, Johnny thought. He lit another cigarette. Control, said a new voice. This is Red Leader. Red Leader. Red Flight is in position, Raj. Red Leader Control acknowledged. The observation flight of jet fighters was waiting too. Minus 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, mark. Silence. I had a true wife, but I left her. There was another rattle of the speaker, and Mitch's voice came through, grunting heavy as the acceleration of the ship laid a heavy Hand on his chest. 8G. Controls respond. Silence. There he is, someone said. A wavering trail of smoke was barely visible below. A thread of white coming up fast, blown erratically by winds into a distorted, tiny snake. Altitude, said Mitchell's voice. Forty thousand. Acceleration dropping. The white snake wriggled up to their level, rose above them. Johnny could not see the silver head. Altitude 65,000. I have a loud, very high buzz in my headphones. I'm going to There. It's gone now. Went out of my range. His voice sounded wrong to Johnny, but he couldn't pin it down. Altitude 105,000. Beginning orbital correction. Beginning, Beginning. I can't. I'm. I'm. The voice became unintelligible. It was pitched very high, like a woman's, and it sounded as if his teeth were chattering. Mitch, johnny pleaded softly. Mitch, baby. Dump it, boy. Come on home now. Dump it. There is no more from the speaker. A confused babble broke out in the bomb bay. The sergeant fiddled with his dials, frantically spinning across wavelengths, trying to find a word. The confusion ceased when the speaker rattled again, seeming hours later. Uh, hello, Control, this is Red 3. Do you read me? One of the fighter flight, Raj. Red 3, go ahead, came Control's voice from below. Uh, Control, I have a flash and smoke cloud on a bearing of 337 degrees. Red 3. What altitude? What altitude? None, said the fighter pilot on the deck. After a moment, Johnny climbed unsteadily to his feet. In the midst of a booming silence, he made his way back along the catwalk to the head, where he retched violently until tears came to his eyes. Three weeks later, Johnny sat in Dr. Lamper's office. He watched the lean, graying psychologist turn off the tape recorder, watched him methodically tamp tobacco in his pipe. That's all she wrote, Johnny, said Lamper. Finally. That recording of Mitch's voice is just about all we have. The ship was under full power when it hit. There wasn't much left. Johnny looked absently out the window at the gleaming needle of Ship two beside the flimsy looking gantry. Full power was a lot of power. The psychologist followed Johnny's eyes. Beautiful, he said, and the word brought to Johnny's mind the wide eyed, pale face of Mitch's wife staring at him. That ship is the best we can make her, lambert said. Engineering is as certain as they can be that there was no structural failure on Ship one. So, johnny said, still staring at the ship. Even at this distance, he could almost believe he could see his own lean face reflected in the Shiny metal. So we looked somewhere else for the cause of failure, said Lambert. Where? Said Johnny. He turned back, saw the psychologist was putting a new reel on the tape recorder, the weak link in the control system. Lambert said there weren't anyone. What? Mitch Campbell. Johnny stood, angry. Mitch was good. Damn good. The psychologist looked up and his eyes were tired. I know it, he said calmly. Listen to this. He started the machine playing the new tape. Johnny listened to it through. The voice that came out was high and wavering. It shook, it chattered. Words were indistinguishable, it was thin with tension, and it rang in Johnny's ears with unwonted familiarity. What's it sound like to you? Lambert asked when it had finished. Like Mitch's voice, Johnny admitted reluctantly. It did to me too. What do you think it is? Don't know, said Johnny shortly. Might be a pilot whose plane is shaking apart. No, I don't know. Lambert sat back down behind his desk and sucked on his pipe stem. He regarded Johnny impassively, seeming to consider some problem remote from the room. Abruptly he stood again and went to the window, watching the ant like activity around the base of ship too. That was a madman's voice, he said. I made the recording while I was interning at a state institution. So mad with fear, lambert said. Pure, simple, unadulterated. That was the sound of terror you heard, Johnny. Terror such a few humans have ever known. That man knew such fear he could not remain sane and live with it. I had a true wife, but I left her. Oh, oh, oh. You think, Mitch? You said yourself the voices were alike, lambert pointed out. I don't believe it. Don't have to, said Lambert, turning from the window. But I'll tell you something, Johnny. That ship he hooked his thumb out the window is a very big toy. Maybe too big. Meaning? Meaning it's possible we've reached beyond man's limitations. Meaning it's possible we've built something too big for a man to handle and stay sane. Maybe we've finally gone too far. Maybe. I don't insist. It's true, said the psychologist. It's an idea. Fear. Fear of the unknown. Maybe too much fear to hold. You think I'll crack? Said Johnny. The psychologist didn't answer directly. It's an idea, as I said. I just want you to think it over. I will, said Johnny. He stood again, his jaw held tight. Is that all? Yes, Colonel, that's all, said Lambert. When Johnny left, the psychologist sat in brooding silence, staring morosely at a trail of blue smoke rising from his pipe bowl. He sat there until the afternoon light faded from the desert base. Then he stood in the darkened office, sighed, lit his pipe, and went home. He was very tired. Six weeks later, Johnny Young Bear walked out of the control blockhouse into the cold desert morning. Carrying his helmet under his arm, he ran his eyes swiftly up the length of Ship two, trying to forget those other eyes staring at his back. From the blockhouse, the ship rippled and gleamed alive, eager and thundering, power in her belly, waiting to be born. Oh, you bitch, you beautiful bitch, Johnny thought, pregnant with power, like a goddess with a God's child. Bitch, bitch, bitch. I love you. I hate you. You kill me. The crew chief walked by his side. Nice morning, Colonel, he said. Very, said Johnny. I had a true wife, but I left her. Oh, oh, oh. For you, you beautiful bitch. Say something, Colonel, Asked the crew chief. No song running through my head, he explained. Yeah. The other man chuckled. I know how it is. They strapped him into the padded control chair, the controls arranged around him in a neat semicircle, easy to reach. This is my day. They left him alone. Once around, lightly, the loneliness was in his belly, aching like a tumor. Read me, Control's voice in his earphones. Loud and clear, he said absently. Minus two minutes, Mark. A different voice, so many different voices. They knew him, they talked to him. But he was alone with this bitch. I had a true wife, but minus one minute, Mark. This is my day. I had a true wife. 3, 2, 1. Mark. There was the sound of a world dying in his mind, the sound of thunder, the sound of a sun splitting, the sound of a goddess giving birth with pain, with agony and loneliness. A giant's fist came from out of nothingness and smashed into his body. His chest was compressed, his face was flattened. He could not get enough air to breathe. The heavy sledge of acceleration crushed him back into the padded chair and extended, implacable, restless, heavy. His vision clouded and red, and he thought he would die. Instead, he spoke into the lit mic, presenting it bitterly. Acceleration 9G. He looked at the gauge that shimmered redly before him, disbelieving. Altitude 20,000. He blacked out, sinking helplessly into the black, plush night of unawareness. I had a true. I had. I had. Awakening to pain, he glanced at the gauges. He had been gone only a split second. Altitude 28,000. Acceleration pressure dropping. His face began to resume its normal shape as the acceleration dropped. 6G, he said, and breathing was easier. The giant reluctantly began to withdraw his massive fist from Johnny's face. He tipped a lever watched the artificial horizon tilt slightly. He air control surfaces respond, he said. But soon there would be no air for the surfaces to move against, and then he would control by flicking the power that rumbled behind him. Altitude 40,000, 85,000. A hundred thousand. The sky was glistening black. He was passing from the earth's envelope of air into the nothingness that was space. Now, now, now it was time to change angle, flatten the ship out, bring it into position to run around the earth. Once around lightly, there was a high pitched scream in his earphones. He remembered it had been there for long and wondered if he had told control. He flicked the switch that ignited the powerful steering rockets and the whine grew louder, unbearably loud. It sang to him. His bitch sang, I had a true wife but I left her. Oh, oh, oh. He began to feel a light tingle over his body, tiny needles delicately jabbing every inch. His face became wooden, feeling prickly. He tried to lick his lips and could feel no sensation there. His vision fogged again and he knew it was not from acceleration this time. It was something else. Something else. What's it like out there? His belly told him. Fear. He reached out his hand to touch the control panel and his arm did not respond. It was shaking uncontrollably. It moved off to the right of where he wanted it to go. When he tried to correct, it swung too far to the left, waving as if it were alive. It hung there before him as in a dream, oscillating back and forth. He could not control his body, and the realization nurtured the tiny seed of panic that lay heavily in his belly. Dump it. What did that mean? Dump it. Go home now, baby. I had a true decisions. There was a decision he had to make, but he was too frightened to know what it was. He had been born in fear and lived in fear, and his body was full of it, quivering to the lover's touch of fear, falling darkness, the fear of dying. The unknown, the unimaginable, always lurking just out of the corner of his eye. He wanted to scream and the fear choked it off. His hands were at his sides, limply useless, dangling at the time. Same seat. He had to hang on to something. His hand found a projection at the side of the seat. He clutched it desperately. He knew he would fall down, spiraling weightless off the cliff as in a dream, off the ladder, the tree. He was a child and his toes were tingling as he stood too near the edge of the cliff. Knowing he might fall. He clutched tightly, putting every ounce of his strength into holding onto the lever, the single solid reality in a world of shifting unreality. He was going to fall. He was falling. I love you. I hate you. I had a true wife. There was softness beneath his back and he moved his hands, feeling the crispness of sheets. There was a low murmur of voices. He raised his hands to his eyes and the voices stopped. There were heavy bandages on his eyes. Colonel. Came a questing voice and Johnny realized it was Dr. Lambert awake. I can't see. Why can't I see?
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You'll be alright. It's alright. What happened? How much do you remember? Asks the voice. The blast off. Yes, yes, I remember that. The orbit. The landing. No, he said. Not that. You did it, said the Voice. You made it. This is my day. Once around lightly, Johnny, said the Voice. I don't know just how to say this. We know what was wrong with Ship One and why it killed Mitch. We know. Hell, we don't even begin to realize what we have at our fingertips. Now it's so big it's impossible to evaluate what I don't sound, Johnny. Sound, or rather, vibration. It's something we're just beginning to learn about. We know a few things. We know you can boil water with sound, if the frequency is high enough, and you can drill metal with it. And it does things to the human body. There are frequencies of sound which can act directly on human nerves, directly on the human brain. It means that if we know the right frequency, we'll be able to produce any state we want in a man. Any emotion. Fear, anguish, anything. When the steering rockets were cut in, the ship began to vibrate. It generated frequencies so high that ordinary human senses couldn't detect them. And when your nerves were exposed to those vibrations, it produced fear. Pure and absolute fear. Motor control went, rational processes went. All the nervous functions of the body went out of control. Your body became a giant tuning fork, and the frequency to which it vibrated was fear. I can't remember. Sanity went too, Johnny, said the man softly. You could not stand that fear and remain sane. So something cut off. That was what happened to Mitch. How did I get back? We don't know. The films show your face suddenly going blank. Then you flew. That's all. We hoped you could tell us. No, no, I don't remember. There was something in you so strong it overrode everything else. Even the fear. We'd like to know what it is. We'll find out, Johnny. And it will mean a lot to the human race when we do. This is my day. Is my wife here? There was a cool hand on his forehead. Yes, Johnny. Well, he said helplessly. Well, how are you? I'm fine, Johnny, she whispered, and there was a sound of tears in her voice. I'm just fine. He felt the warm softness of her lips on his. I had a true wife, but I left her. Oh, oh, oh. And then he came home again. End of Sound of Terror by Don Barry.
- [129:41]
Beyond Lies the Wub by Philip K. Dick this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org recording by Luke Verniger Beyond Lies the Wub by Philip K. Dick the slovenly wub might well have said, many men talk like philosophers and live like fools. They had almost finished with the loading. Outside stood the Optus, his arms folded, his face sunk in gloom. Captain Franco walked leisurely down the gangplank, grinning. What's the matter? He said. You're getting paid for all this. The Optus said nothing. He turned away, collecting his robes. The Captain put his boot on the hem of the robe. Just a minute. Don't go off. I'm not finished.
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Oh.
- [130:35]
The Optus turned with dignity. I am going back to the village. He looked toward the animals and birds being driven up the gangplank into the spaceship. I must organize new hunts. Franco lit a cigarette. Why not? You people can go out into the veldt and track it all down again. But when we run out halfway between Mars and Earth. The Optus went off. Wordless, Franco joined the first mate at the bottom of the gangplank. How's it coming? He said. He looked at his watch. We got a good bargain here. The mate glanced at him sourly. How do you explain that? What's the matter with you? We need it more than they do. I'll see you later, Captain. The mate threaded his way up the plank between the long legged Martian. Go birds into the ship. Franco watched him disappear. He was just starting up after him, up the plank toward the port, when he saw it. My God. He stood staring, his hands on his hips. Peterson was walking along the path, his face red, leading it by a string. I'm sorry, Captain, he said, tugging at the string. Franco walked toward him. What is it? The web stood sagging, its great body settling slowly. It was sitting down, its eyes half shut. A few flies buzzed around its flank, and it switched its tail. It sat. There was silence. It's a wub, peterson said. I got it from a native for 50 cents. He said it was a very unusual animal. Very respected this. Franco poked the great sloping side of the wub. It's a pig. A huge, dirty pig. Yes, sir, it's a pig. The natives call it a wub. A huge pig. It must weigh 400 pounds. Franco grabbed a tuft of the rough hair. The wub gasped. Its eyes opened, small and moist. Then its great mouth twitched. A tear rolled down the wub's cheek and splashed on the floor. Maybe it's good to eat, patterson said nervously. We'll soon find out, franco said. The wub survived the takeoff sound asleep in the hold of the ship. When they were out in space and everything was running smoothly, Captain Franco bade his men fetch the wub upstairs so that he might perceive what manner of beast it was. The wub grunted and wheezed, squeezing up the passageway. Come on, jones grated, pulling at the rope. The wub twisted, rubbing its skin off on the smooth chrome walls. It burst into the anteroom, tumbling down in a heap. The men leapt up. Good Lord, french said. What is It. Peterson says it's a wub, jones said. It belongs to him. He kicked at the wub. The wub stood up unsteadily, panting. What's the matter with it? French came over. Is it going to be sick? They watched. The wub rolled its eyes mournfully. It gazed around at the men. I think it's thirsty, peterson said. He went to get some water. French shook his head. No wonder we had so much trouble taking off. I had to reset all my ballast calculations. Peterson came back with the water. The wub began to lap, gratefully splashing them in. Captain Franco appeared at the door. Let's have a look at it. He advanced, squinting critically. You got this for 50 cents? Yes, sir, peterson said. It eats almost anything. I fed it on grain, and it liked that. And then potatoes and mash and scraps from the table and milk. It seems to enjoy eating. After it eats, it lies down and goes to sleep. I see, Captain, Franco said. Now, as to its taste, that's the real question. I doubt if there's much point in fattening it up anymore. It seems fat enough to me already. Where's the cook? I want him here. I want to find out. The wub stopped lapping and looked up at the captain. Really, Captain, the wub said. I suggest we talk of other matters. The room was silent. What was that? Franco said. Just now? The wub, sir, Peterson said. It spoke. They all looked at the wub. What did it say? What did it say? It suggested we talk about other things. Franco walked toward the web. He went all around it, examining it from every side. Then he came back over and stood with the men. I wonder if there's a native inside it, he said thoughtfully. Maybe we should open it up and have a look. Oh, goodness. The web cried. Is that all you people can think of, killing and cutting? Franco clenched his fists. Come out of there, whoever you are. Come out. Nothing stirred. The men stood together, their faces blank, staring at the wub. The wub swished its tail. It belched suddenly. I beg your pardon, the wub said. I don't think there's anyone in there, jones said in a low voice. They all looked at each other. The cook came in. You wanted me, Captain, he said. What's this thing? This is a wub, Franco said. It's to be eaten. Will you measure it and figure out? I think we should have a talk, the wub said. I'd like to discuss this with you, Captain, if I might. I can see that you and I do not agree on some basic issues. The captain took a long time to answer. The web waited, good naturedly, licking the water from its jowls. Come to my office, the captain said at last. He turned and walked out of the room. The wub rose and padded after him. The men watched it go out. They heard it climbing the stairs. I wonder what the outcome will be, the cook said. Well, I'll be in the kitchen. Let me know as soon as you hear. Sure, jones said. Sure. The wub eased itself down into the corner with a sigh. You must forgive me, it said. I'm afraid I'm addicted to various forms of relaxation. When one is as large as I. The captain nodded impatiently. He sat down at his desk and folded his hands. All right, he said. Let's get started. You're a wub, is that correct? The wub shrugged. I suppose so. That's what they call us. The natives, I mean. We have our own term. And you speak English. You've been in contact with Earthmen before? No. Then how do you do it? Speak English? Am I speaking English? I'm not conscious of speaking anything in particular. I examined your mind. My mind? I studied the contents, especially the semantic warehouse, as I refer to it. I see, the captain said. Telepathy, of course. We are a very old race, the web said. Very old and very ponderous. It is difficult for us to move around. You can appreciate that. Anything so slow and heavy would be at the mercy of more agile forms of life.
- [137:05]
Life.
- [137:06]
There was no use in our relying on physical defenses. How could we win? Too heavy to run. Too soft to fight. Too good natured to hunt for game. How do you live? Plants? Vegetables? We can eat almost anything. We're very Catholic. Tolerant. Eclectic Catholic. We live and let live. That's how we've gotten along. The wub eyed the captain. And that's why I so violently objected to this business about having me boiled. I could see the image in your mind. Most of me in the frozen food locker, some of me in the kettle. A bit for your pet cat. So you read minds, the captain said. How interesting. Anything else? I mean, what else can you do along those lines? A few odds and ends, the wub said absently, staring around the room. A nice apartment you have here, Captain. You keep it quite neat. I respect lifeforms that are tidy. Some Martian birds are quite tidy. They throw things out of their nests and sweep them. Indeed. The captain nodded. But to get back to the problem. Quite so. You spoke of dining on me. The taste, I am told, is good. A little fatty, but tender. But how can any lasting contact be established between your people and mine if you resort to such barbaric attitudes. Eat me. Rather, you should discuss questions with me. Philosophy. The arts. The captain stood up. Philosophy. It might interest you to know that we will be hard put to find something to eat for the next month. An unfortunate spoilage, I know. The wub nodded. But wouldn't it be more in accord with your principles of democracy if we all drew straws or something along that line? After all, democracy is to protect the minority from from just such infringements. Now, if each of us casts one vote. The captain walked to the door. Nuts to you, he said. He opened the door. He opened his mouth. He stood frozen, his mouth wide, his eyes staring, his fingers still on the knob. The wub watched him. Presently it padded out of the room, edging past the captain. It went down the hall, deep in meditation. The room was quiet. So you see, the wub said, we have a common myth. Your mind contains many familiar myth symbols. Ishtar, Odysseus. Peterson sat silently staring at the floor. He shifted in his chair. Go on, he said. Please go on. I find in your Odysseus a figure common to the mythology of most self conscious races. As I interpret it, Odysseus wonders as an individual aware of himself as such. This is the idea of separation, of separation from family and country, the process of individuation. But Odysseus returns to his home. Peterson looked out of the port window at the stars, endless stars burning intently in the empty universe. Finally he goes home. As must all creatures. The moment of separation is a temporary period, a brief journey for the soul. It begins, it ends. The wanderer returns to land and race. The door opened. The wub stopped, turning its great head. Captain Franco came into the room, the men behind him. They hesitated at the door. Are you alright? French said. Do you mean me? Peterson said, surprised. Why me? Franco lowered his gun. Come over here, he said to Peterson. Get up and come here. There was silence. Go ahead, the wub said. It doesn't matter. Peterson stood up. What for? It's an order. Peterson walked to the door. French caught his arm. What's going on? Peterson wrenched loose. What's the matter with you, Captain Franco moved towards the wub. The wub looked up from where it lay in the corner, pressed against the wall. It is interesting, the wub said, that you are obsessed with the idea of eating me. I wonder why. Get up, franco said. If you wish. The wub rose, grunting. Be patient. It is difficult for me. It stood gasping, its tongue lolling foolishly. Shoot it now, french said. For God's sake, Peterson exclaimed. Jones turned to him quickly, his eyes gray with fear. You didn't see him like the statue standing there, his mouth open. If we hadn't come down, he'd still be there.
- [141:40]
Who?
- [141:40]
The captain. Peterson stared around. But he's all right now. They looked at the wub standing in the middle of the room, its great chest rising and falling. Come on, franco said, out of the way. The men pulled aside toward the door. You are quite afraid, aren't you? The wub said. Have I done anything to you? I am against the idea of hurting. All I have done is try to protect myself. Can you expect me to rush eagerly to my death? I am a sensible being like yourselves. I was curious to see your ship, learn about you, I suggested to the native. The gun jerked. See? Franco said. I thought so. The wub settled down, panting. It put its paw out, pulling its tail around. Is very warm, the wub said. I understand that we are close to the jets atomic power. You have done many wonderful things with it. Technically. Apparently your scientific hierarchy is not equipped to solve moral ethical. Franco turned to the men crowding behind him, wide eyed, silent. I'll do it. You can watch. French nodded. Try to hit the brain. It's no good for eating. Don't hit the chest. If the ribcage shatters, we'll have to pick bones out. Listen, peterson said, licking his lips. Has it done anything? What harm has it done? I'm asking you. And anyhow, it's still mine. You have no right to shoot it. It doesn't belong to you. Franco raised his gun. I'm going out, jones said, his face white and sick. I don't want to see it. Me too, french said. The men straggled out, murmuring. Peterson lingered at the door. It was talking to me about myths, he said. It wouldn't hurt anyone. He went outside. Franco walked toward the wub. The wub looked up slowly. It swallowed. A very foolish thing, it said. I am sorry that you want to do it. There was a parable that your saviour related. It stopped staring at the gun. Can you look me in the eye and do it? The wub said. Can you do that? The captain gazed down. I can look you in the eye, he said. Back on the farm we had hogs. Dirty razorback hogs. I can do it. Staring down at the wub, into the gleaming moist eyes. He pressed the trigger. The taste was excellent. They sat glumly around the table, some of them hardly eating at all. The only one who seemed to be enjoying himself was Captain Franco. More, he said, looking around.
- [144:23]
More.
- [144:24]
And some wine, perhaps. Not me, french said. I think I'll go back to the chart room. Me, too. Jones stood up, pushing his chair back. I'll see you later. The captain watched them go. Some of the others excused themselves. What do you suppose the matter is? The captain said. He turned to Peterson. Peterson sat staring down at his plate, at the potatoes, the green peas, and at the thick slab of tender, warm meat. He he opened his mouth. No sound came. The captain put his hand on Peterson's shoulder. It is only organic matter now, he said. The life essence is gone. He ate, spooning up the gravy with some bread. I myself love to eat. It is one of the greatest things that a living creature can enjoy Eating, resting, meditation, discussing things. Peterson nodded. Two more men got up and went out. The captain drank some water and sighed. Well, he said, I must say this was a very enjoyable meal. All the reports I had heard were quite true. The taste of wub very fine. But I was prevented from enjoying this pleasure in times past. He dabbed at his lips with his napkin and leaned back in his chair. Peterson stared dejectedly at the table. The captain watched him intently. He leaned over. Come, come, he said. Cheer up. Let's discuss things. He smiled. As I was saying before I was interrupted, the role of Odysseus in myths. Peterson jerked up, staring to go on. The captain said, odysseus as I understand him. End of beyond lies the web by philip k. Dick recording by luke venetiger durban, south africa.
- [146:25]
The Lure of Atlantis by Joel Martin Nichols, Jr. This is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org the Lure of Atlantis by Joel Martin Nichols, Jr. There have been so many queer yarns in the newspapers about the sinking of the Nautilus that I, being skipper of the fore master schooner brand, which picked up Professor Charles Randolph, her only survivor, had better set down what really did happen down there in the Sargasso Sea. The Nautilus was a steam yacht owned by Professor Amos Tyrrell, a wealthy English naturalist who had built a laboratory on the Cornish coast for the study of fish and seaweed. He and Randolph, who had been his assistant for 20 years, sailed in the Nautilus on the 5th of last February to do some research work in the Sargasso.
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About this time the Brand was rounding the Horn out of Santiago, Chile with a load of Nitrids bound for Charleston, South Carolina. We struck a blow off the River Platte and my old Hooker lost her rudder. When things cleared up a bit, we found ourselves pretty well out in the South Atlantic, but we rigged a jury rudder and headed north west. Figuring on dropping into some Cuban port to refit. We struck the Sargasso about 15 days later and one fine morning we picked up this Professor Randolph who was bobbing about in the open sea without the sign of a stick to keep him up. He was delirious when we brought him aboard, but after he came to his right senses he told me the queerest yarn I ever heard in my life, and I've heard some rather good ones in the 40 years I've been following the sea. At first I put him down as crazy, but we'd no sooner got him aboard than hell began a popping all around us right there on the brand. When she finally got through with two of her sticks missing and some of those hard boiled birds in the forecastle are praying to the Almighty to save him from the devils of the deep. I made up my mind that maybe he wasn't so crazy after all. Then I had Randolph write down his story in his own words. I turned the original over to the authorities and I suppose the British Admiralty has it now, but I copied the whole thing word for word in the Brandt's log. The professor headed his story in big letters. Statement of Dr. Charles Williams Randolph concerning the sinking of the Nautilus. And this is how it Captain Andrew Waters of the schooner Brand has asked me to write down the story of the cruise of the Nautilus and of what befell her unfortunate crew and my colleague Dr. Amos Tyrell. And since it seems certain now that the Brand is not to suffer the fate of the Nautilus, I have agreed to comply with his request. It is perhaps unnecessary for me to delineate the relationship between Dr. Tyrell and myself since we were students of natural science together at the University of Edinburgh 20 years ago. His accomplishments in the field of natural history, his studies and deductions from his exhaustive researches in the seven seas, his magnificent laboratory at Bornwell, all have given him an international fame which needs no emphasizing here from me. Suffice it to say that I may designate myself merely as an unworthy assistant in his great work, a humble satellite reflecting but a dim gleam from the splendor of his genius. The world, when it has read this statement, will realize that these are strange words coming now from me in view of the discord, mild term between Dr. Tyrell and myself which ended in the horrifying fate of the Nautilus. It was a discord which really had its inception five years ago when Dr. Tyrell exhibited the first signs of a divided interest in his life work, an interest which led him away from his studies of undersea life eventually found him devoting a large share of his time to archaeological research. He began his course by taking extended trips to Egypt and Central America, where he indulged in a comparative study of prehistoric architecture found on the two continents, professing to find between them a most amazing and wholly unaccountable similarity. Being engrossed with our original labors, I paid little attention to his assertions until one day he came to me with the astounding announcement that he had evolved a tenable theory for the existence of the lost continent of Atlantis. In support of it he produced a vast number of photographs and other data which purported to show that the pyramids found in the jungles of the Yucatan Peninsula were in reality small copies of the mighty piles found in Egypt, and that in other ways he had established an unanswerable argument for there being in prehistoric times a bridge of land between the African and American continents. It was his further contention that this land connection was the lost Atlantis sunk beneath the waves of the South Atlantic Ocean by some stupendous cataclysm. Egypt in the heyday of its power, he asserted, had been naught but a poor, poor outpost of Atlantis, reflecting only a dim glimmer of the splendors of that lost continent. I must confess that I was bitterly disappointed in my colleagues new activities, for I had always held that the existence of Atlantis was a matter for metaphysical speculation and not one to engage the serious attentions of men engrossed in the more objective sciences. I was gravely considering the necessity of voicing this conviction in the form of a gentle reproof to Dr. Tyrrell when he came to me one day, great excitement, brandishing before my eyes a piece of twisted metal. I have it, Randolph. He fairly shouted at me. This proves my theory. We've found Atlantis. Dr. Tyrell was not given to practical joking, so I accepted the proffered metal, although with a preconceived scepticism. It was, I should say, a bit of framework done in bronze, very like the lintel of a door. There are many similar pieces in the temples of ancient Egypt. Carved on its surface, however, were some peculiar hieroglyphics which on closer observation, I recognized as a type of cuneiform writing. Is this one of your Egyptian finds? I queried, somewhat testily. He waved me down in derision. This, he said excitedly, was pulled out of the South Atlantic Ocean on the flux of an anchor dropped overboard by the Trump St. Steamer Pole Star. Ah, yes, said I, A bit of submerged driftwood. Nonsense. He shouted. Let me tell you about it. This vessel was caught in a storm somewhere down there. I've got the exact bearings, and her anchor was carried overboard by a large sea. It ran out almost the whole length of the cable before they could arrest it. When they finally had opportunity to attend to it, they found that they were anchored. Think of it, Randolph. Anchored out there in the Sargasso Sea, where the admiralty charge set the depth at nearly a mile. And when they got the anchor up, they found this bit of bronze twisted about one of the flukes. A hoax. I exclaimed. They fooled you for a good price. I paid them nothing, he retorted. They believe there was some subterranean upheaval throwing up a submerged island which by chance caught their anchor and. But this bit of bronze never came from any submerged wreck, as they believe it came from one of the hilltop temples of the lost Atlantis. I have been able to translate this inscription. Do you know what it means? I admitted caustically, that I did not. It means, he continued, wynonna, fair princess of Atlantis. There is something more, but it is unintelligible. Winona was the daughter of the last king of Atlantis. Small good it will do you, I put in. You can never prove it. Indeed, he retorted, then you may be interested to know that I've ordered the Nautilus to be ready for sea in eight days. I'm going down there with our diving equipment, and if it isn't too deep, I'm going to explore this watery kingdom. You may come if you wish. To make a long story short, I must say here that I was in reality more interested than I care to to admit, and it took no great urging to get me to go along. As Dr. Tyrrell had pointed out, we were already well equipped for the contemplated Cruise. The Nautilus, Dr. Tyrell's yacht, was virtually a floating laboratory in which we had spent many happy months in our exploration of the seven seas. On board was every apparatus imaginable to aid in deep sea work. Many of the devices had been invented or perfected by my colleague. Chief among these were two of the latest type diving suits, glass, steel and rubber affairs capable of withstanding excessive undersea pressures. Air was furnished to the wearer from tanks at the shoulders, and thus the danger of entangling life lines and air hose was eliminated. Now, as I write, it seems to me almost a catastrophe that those invaluable accessories have been lost forever to the world. We steamed out of our harbour at Bornwell on the 5th of February. Our voyage was uneventful, and three weeks later we were over the spot indicated in the nautical bearings furnished us by the captain of the Pole Star. How well I remember that morning of our first sounding. How well I remember my own excitement, raised to the zenith by the enthusiasm of Dr. Tyrell. And how well I remember the look on his face and the leap in my own heart when our sounding lead showed bottom at 280ft. Even as the captain of the Pole Star had said, we had indeed found a submerged island. Whether it was Atlantis, I was still sceptical. On the following morning, after having made the necessary preparations, we donned our diving suits and dropped over the side of the Nautilus into the sea. The spot, as I have already indicated, was approximately in the middle of the Sargasso Sea. But fortunately, the surface of the ocean about us, for the space of almost a square mile, was free of the encumbering marine growth so peculiar to these waters. Thus, throughout the middle part of the day, we expected to have the full value of the sun, thereby rendering unnecessary our electric searchlights, which were at best rather cumbersome and unsatisfactory for deep sea work. Once in the sea, with our arms locked together, we sank down, down, down. The water proved to be even clearer than we had hoped. Indeed, it was almost abnormally transparent. And the shafts of the sun bade fair to penetrate quite as far as we desired to go. We must have been descending slowly for nearly five minutes, when suddenly Dr. Tyrrell loosed his arm and pointed with his gloved finger into the distance at my back. Turning my head within my helmet, I saw with a tremendous leap of my heart that we were floating slowly down beside a beautiful tapering pinnacle cut in a stone which appeared to be marble. Almost immediately, other and lesser pinnacles arose gradually about us, all of them glowing with vari coloured tints under the penetrating rays of the sun. Peering at some of the nearer ones, I saw that they were not some mere basaltic upheaval. They had been built by human hands. We had found Atlantis. The luminous glow from above had grown only slightly dimmer when we came gently to rest on what appeared to be the roof of some gigantic building. A roof which, on closer observation, I saw was of a thick but lucid crystal. All about us, on a kind of ridge pole of this temple, if such it was, I saw bits of curiously carved statuary, some of them apparently broken off by the undulating action of the deep sea currents. I would have paused over them in wonderment had it not been for Dr. Tyrrell, who without hesitation walked deliberately to the edge of the roof, where we again dropped off into the open water. A moment later we filtered gently to rest on a wide landing in a magnificent set of marble stairs. Glancing up with thumping heart, I realized that we were standing at the very threshold of a splendid marble temple. I would that I had the time or the talent for describing the magnificence, the awe inspiring beauty of that scene. The walls towering up before us were of purest marble, slightly tinted a bluish green by the intervening water above our heads. The shafts of the sun, only slightly dimmed by the lesser depth, played on those lofty spires with all the colours of the rainbow tints shading away in all degrees of green, yellow, red, purple and blue. All about us on the stairs, standing for the most part on pedestals of what appeared to be pure gold, was some of the most exquisite statuary I have ever seen, save for a few pieces carved in the form of some hideous beast, the like of which I have never seen on earth. The majority of the effects were extremely pleasing to the eye and were evidently from the hands of the sublimest masters who had far surpassed the best of Phidias or Praxiteles or the unknown author of the Venus of Melos. And yet the effect, in totality was marred, as I have indicated, by the weird shapes of some of the beasts. Then, too, there was a peculiar type of fungus growing over them, a kind of seaweed, unknown to me, which writhed and moved about the statuary like a thing alive. Some of it seemed actually to be coiling and uncoiling about the throat of a beautiful maiden, exquisitely carved in a pinkish marble. Standing near us on the stairs while I was charmed with the statuary, I must admit from the outset that this strange marine growth made me shudder. It was too uncannily alive. Even as we walked up the steps, it recoiled from our footsteps to make way for us. But on looking back, I noted that it returned again to its original resting place and seemed, in fact to be following us up to the top. At the head of the flight we found a pair of magnificent bronze doors, fortunately wide open. Oddly enough, both were heavily embossed with the figure of a winged animal, not unlike the Egyptian sphinx, part woman, part beast and part bird. Although the doors were open, there was a tangle of that disgusting marine growth across the threshold, and Dr. Tyrell, with a gesture of impatience, drew his knife to hack away into the place. But even as he reached out to seize the stuff, it recoiled and parted of its own accord, thereby giving us ready access. Behind the bronze doors was a magnificent hall or foyer. I do not know how else to describe it. Half way down on our right was an open doorway leading into another and more spacious hall. Light from the ocean surface filtered into the place through the crystal roofs, but its intensity had been so greatly dimmed by the depth that we could not see clearly for more than 20ft. Ahead of us, keeping well to the right so that we should not lose our way, we suddenly came face to face with the wall of the temple, noting with a gasp of admiration that its surface was covered with beautiful murals, apparently done in gold leaf, with backgrounds of silver and a subsets which might be ivory. Following the murals to the very foot of the walls. I noted that the floor on which we were walking had been done in the most delicate and intricate of mosaics. We feasted our eyes on those beauties for several minutes and then began following the wall at our right. I was in the act of commenting mentally on the absence of any furnishings or statuary in the hall proper when suddenly there loomed before us in the greenish gloom a sizable marble cubicle. Coming nearer, we saw that this was only the first of a series mortised to the walls and standing about as high as our waists. A further approach showed us that they were in reality a row of marble bins, to use a prosaic term. But what bins they were. What beauty, what contents. Pounds and pounds of jewels in every hue of the rainbow. In one cubicle I buried my arms up to the elbow in the finest of rubies. From another, I saw Dr. Tyrell hold up a double handful of glittering emeralds and diamonds. A king's ransom in those alone. My natural cupidity had seized hold of me and I was for taking some of the gems with us. But I noted that Dr. Tyrell, always a scholar, had tossed his jewels back into place. And then I shamefacedly followed his example. As we wandered further down the hall, he informed me in the sign language we had developed for undersea work that he had concluded this was a mortuary chapel built on one of the Atlantean hilltops. If such it proved to be, he pointed out, we should soon come upon human remains as the Atlanteans were credited by ancient chroniclers with having developed an amazing method of preserving their dead. He was walking to one side and a little ahead of me as he imparted this information. And he had scarcely finished when I saw him suddenly pause, peer ahead into the gloom and then hurry forward, signing me to follow. In the greenish half light, I saw that we were approaching the end of the hall and that up against the wall was what appeared to be a huge marble altar. And then I saw Wynonna, Princess of Atlantis. She was laid out there in her crystal tomb. Her eyes, with their glorious blue, were open and smiling. The roses were still in her cheeks. The very pink was in her fingernails. I suppose I was a bit wrought up, for I could have sworn that she moved and smiled up at us. Dr. Tyrell had dropped on one knee, his hands clasping the sides of her beard. And now he crouched there, peering through the glass of his helmet at this lovely handiwork of God. I do not know whether he cried out with a marvel of it. But I know that I did, for the sound echoed and re echoed within the confines of my glass and rubber prison. Never before had I seen so beautiful a creature. Her tomb or casket, all of clear crystal, was tipped upward so that she appeared to be reclining there. Gazing out upon the hall below her, I could see every outline of her figure, every lineament of her features. I recognized immediately the Egyptian strain in the firm straight nose, the perfect curve of the somewhat full lips and the exquisitely modelled chin, tender yet imperiously firm, but withal, shall I say it, slightly cruel. Her figure, slightly swathed in a filmy lace of gold, was perfection. Possibly a trifle fuller at the hips than we are wont to approve nowadays, but perfect nevertheless. I have spoken of her contours as purely Egyptian, but here the comparison ceases. For your ancient Egyptian was of a swarthy race, but this woman of Atlantis was of the fairest, with wide opened eyes as blue as the corn flowers in her native England, and high piled hair as yellow as the golden fillets with which it was bound. I can see my reader shudder at the thought of thus gazing upon the dead, but I can tell him the sight of the lovely Winona thus affected neither Tyrell nor myself. I do not know how long we stood there gazing at this exquisite creature, but it must have been a very long while, for my heart began to labor and my head began to throw throb in a way which told me that the oxygen in the tanks at our backs must be getting low. Almost at that identical moment I felt an uncanny tightening and drawing sensation about my legs and ankles. Glancing quickly downward, I saw something that left me cold with horror. That loathsome seaweed, unnoticed by us, had crept into the chapel and was now seemingly growing in all directions over the floor. Some of it had entwined about my ankles, producing upon them a peculiar drawing and tugging sensation similar to that felt by a person walking in the undertow on a wave washed beach. A swift glance over to my colleague produced in me a second and greater wave of horror. I saw him there, lost in contemplation of the Sleeping Beauty and utterly unmindful that this hideous creeping thing had gone further on him than it had on me. Indeed, it bade fair to cover his whole body. During the course of my 20 years exploration of the world under the sea, I have had many occasions to be terrified by the activities of plant and animal life there. But never have I been so submerged in horror as when I beheld that slimy weed squirming and twisting over our bodies. I must have cried out with the shock of it, for my head began to ring within my helmet and and I clutched frantically for the knife at my belt with the intention of hacking away the stuff at my ankles. My panic was short lived, however, for no sooner had I reached for the weed than it uncoiled itself of its own free will, seeming actually to recoil at the dull gleam of my weapon. Then, in two strides, I was at Dr. Tyrell's side intending to shake him back to a realization of our danger. Twice I grasped his shoulder before he paid the slightest attention to me, absorbed as he was in his contemplation of the smiling beauty in her crystal tomb. Finally, on my last somewhat rough importunity, he turned suddenly about and struck at me angrily with his hand. Almost immediately he must have regretted this act, for he signed to me that he was sorry that he had forgotten himself for the moment. I told him our oxygen was getting low and pointed to the seaweed on my body, expecting him to be as horror stricken as I had been. Oddly enough, however, he did not seem to mind it, for he got to his feet and then, to my profound astonishment, the weed slowly unfolded and left him free. With a last glance at our recumbent beauty, we started from the hall, the seaweed drawing apart before our steps until a wide lane extended before us to the door. Outside on the terrace we prepared to lose our weights for our journey to the surface. But here a new and greater horror struck us. Glancing down from our high point of vantage before the temple doors, I saw in the mass of seaweed to the right and left of the staircase the ribs, the broken stumps, the twisted stern plates, the battered superstructures of many sunken ships. There must have been at least a hundred of them piled together helter skelter, and heaven knows how many more lay further down in the valley where the rays of the sun did not penetrate. I do not know how long we would have paused there, gazing upon this scene of desolation, had it not been that the increased difficulty of breathing warned us we could tarry no longer. Accordingly, we slipped our weights and arose slowly to the surface the rose and Nile green of the Atlantean spires dropping slowly behind us. Only once did I look down in our journey and not until then did I realize that the seaweed from the Atlantean temple had followed us, was in fact dogging our very heels. The stuff hovered there on the surface for a minute after we had climbed aboard the Nautilus. And then, as if Pulled by some unseen hand from below, it slowly sunk from sight. I come now to a point in my story where I am loath to continue, for it must reveal in me an atavistic strain, the existence of which, until this last accursed cruise of the Nautilus, I had never suspected. As may be guessed from the preceding narrative, neither Dr. Tyrrell nor myself had ever married. Our labours and researches having provided us with a diversity of experience which rendered unnecessary a venture into other fields of existence. Up until the time of the last cruise of the Nautilus. The I can say with certainty that no woman, nor even any thought of woman, has ever disturbed the quiet tenor of my emotional life. For my colleague, I think I can say the same. Hence, it was somewhat a shock to me when I awoke during that night to find the lovely, sensual face of the exquisite Winona haunting me there in the darkness of my cabin. For a time the sensation was a pleasant one. I felt a warm invigoration of my being, a sensuous flow of hot blood in my body, which, although slightly tempestuous, was not without a certain indefinable charm. I remember that I reached back to the headboard of my bed, seized there the enamel rail and stretched myself. In the warm luxury of the tropic night, I felt remade, a new thing. I felt that in some indefinable way nature had poured into me. Renewed health, renewed youth. I wanted to arise, to pace about my cabin. I wanted to go to the decks of the Nautilus, to race up and down, cloaked only in the star spangled robe of the equatorial night. I felt that I had the power to reach out and embrace the whole world. For a time I lay there enjoying to the full this entirely new reaction and speculating on the psychological aspect of my new inspiration. In a little while, however, I began to grow too warm. The hot blood pounding through my veins became in a very few minutes a source of complete and profound and wholly inexplicable irritation. In vain I attempted to throw off the mood. In vain I attempted all the known tricks of wooing sleep. In vain I tossed and tumbled about with the gentle rolls of the Nautilus. Eventually I arose, drew on my dressing gown, for I had thrown aside my pyjamas when the mood first came upon me, and thus attired, strode out upon the decks. Forward I saw a tiny ruby glow, which I took to be the lighted cigarette of the watch. Above, almost outshone by the brilliance of the Southern Cross, were the riding lights of the Nautilus. All was peace excepting in my own brain. I strode forward, my irritable mood pricking me onward, and reprimanded the watch for smoking on duty, although I knew such mild breaches of discipline had been winked at by both captain and mate on these long voyages. I remember how, in surprise he flipped it overboard, the glowing end describing a perfect half circle as it dropped into the sea. Somehow even that bothered me. Presently I walked back toward the stern and rounding the corner of the after deck house, I came suddenly upon Dr. Tyrell. He was standing there, half draped over the rail and peering intently down into the sea. For some reason unknown to me, I paused there, watching him. He did not move. He might have been a statue of stone. Gazing over the rail again, I felt a wave of unreasonable irritation, a veritable sweep of anger. Why should he be standing there, peering so intently down into the sea? Why was he not in his cabin where he belonged at this hour, gaining rest for the labors of to morrow? Somehow I did not realize then that I was blaming him for the very thing which I myself was doing. As I stood there watching him, he slowly straightened up and lifted his eyes to the stars. His lips were moving and I thought that he saw side. It was then that I noted, seemingly for the first time in all our relationship, what a handsome figure of a man he was with his clear cut aquiline profile, his full moulded chin, his crisp curly hair only slightly tinged with gray at the temples, and that magnificent figure with its tremendous shoulders, flat hips and gently sloping flanks. Somehow it made me feel small and puny and hopeless. All my new found vigour drained from me in that moment and I felt a strange hot resentment against the man. Suddenly I had come to be old and worn and gnarled and terribly weary. Thinking thus and without disturbing my colleague, I went back to my cabin and a sleepless vigil into the dawn. That morning, while we were taking breakfast, Dr. Tyrell told me quietly that there would be no need for my going down that day. Why? I asked somewhat testily, though never before had I questioned his decisions. It is exhausting work, he replied, and we do not know how long we can stay here before there may be a storm, in which case we may have to up anchor and run before it. I think we can work best by going down in turn I to day you to morrow. His reasoning seemed wholly specious, but I assented sullenly. Throughout the four hours of his trip below, I lived in torture. I thought of him down there, walking through those magnificent halls enjoying the wonders of Atlantis, the attraction of the ancient chapel, the charm of that smiling beauty there in her crystal tomb. Vaguely I wondered what he would bring up with him, and you may guess that I was somewhat startled when he came up, as he had gone down with nothing at all. That night, for the first time in our long friendship, we had harsh words in his cabin. I upbraided him for bringing up none of the jewels, pointing out that even if he himself had no need for further wealth, some of the rest of us were poor men and could put them to good use. My remark seemed to anger him greatly, and he lost himself in a mighty gust of wrath. There are not ours. He thundered, towering over me. Not one jot nor tittle of them shall we take. They are hares. They belong to Winona. You shall not have them. You are mad. I raged. You are inhumanly selfish. You at least owe it to these poor men aboard who could be made independent for life. It is not within your right to deny them all. My raging was of no avail. And the next morning I was only partly surprised when he told me curtly that only he would go beneath the waters. And for another four hours I sat there on the decks of the Nautilus, suffering the tortures of the damned. And again he came up empty handed. That night we went at it again. Over the tea cups. I raged, I tore, I stamped about the room, but he answered me with gentle words, or more often, not at all. For the most part he was peculiarly silent, almost uncannily pleasant. When I had finished my tirade, he got up, but paused on the threshold of his cabin. Fear not, he said with a peculiarly quiet smile, they shall have everything. Every foot of Atlantis shall be theirs. They shall climb its hills, wander through its holes, sun themselves on its terraces. They shall know its every beauty, all its wealth. But for you, my friend, I can promise nothing. You are not wanted down below. His cryptic remark startled me, and I began to wonder if he were not a little mad. That night I lay awake through all the long hours until dawn, thinking not of the jewels, of the wealth in Atlantis, but only of Winona. At dawn I slept a little, and she came in all her gorgeous beauty and mocked me. There in my cabin that day I vowed I should be I who would go below.
- [180:38]
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- [180:54]
in my blind spot.
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I turned slowly so accident avoided. But no car should be in the blind spot for a 40,000 pound bus.
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It's our roads.
- [181:03]
It's our safety. Visit www.sharetherodesafely.gov in that I was vastly mistaken.
- [181:10]
However, we quarreled at the rail just before he went over. But he brushed me back and plunged into the sea. I saw his face laughing up in derision through the glass of his helmet as he slowly sunk from sight. For perhaps an hour I sat there by the rail until the strain became no longer endurable. Then it was that the bonds of my respect to Dr. Tyrell's judgment were broken. And I realized of a sudden that there was nothing to keep me from going down, even against his wishes. Thinking thus, I got myself into my diving dress and slipped over the side. I landed by good luck about half way up the stairs to the temple. There again before me I saw that accursed seaweed. But I spurned it with quickly aside and climbed the stairs. At the entrance the wretched staff attempted to bar my way. But I drew my knife and sloshed at it until it drew back. Then I walked into the foyer and from thence into the chapel. Somehow I knew I should find him there. And I was not disappointed as the details at the further end of the hall were revealed to me. Through the dimness I saw him kneeling before that altar with his head down across her crystal tomb. His face behind the glass in his helmet pressed close to hers. And then I knew that I hated him. Hated him because he loved her and because I loved her. And because in some way I knew he was the favored one. For the first time I realized that I too had cared nothing for the jewels that I too would have scorned to rifle her chapel. Always it had been Wynonna, and now he had taken her from me. I hated him with every spark of my soul, every fibre of my being. Dastard. I shrieked. Thus you have beguiled your time. Thus you have hoodwinked us all. I had forgotten that the sound could not penetrate beyond the confines of my helmet. And now it echoed and re echoed in my still in rubber prison, ringing and screeching in my ears until the very blood seemed to well up into my eyes and the sea before me was as scarlet. Without thought of what I was about to do, I pushed forward, knife in hand. I would kill him there. I would cut him down with as little compunction as I had the seaweed before the portals. But I must be crafty. I had no intention of giving him a chance in fair fight. I would walk up behind him and strike with my knife through the rubber joints at his throat, rip the blade to downward to his breast, and leave him there either to drown or bleed to death. How I would laugh as he died there at the feet of his beauty. What an outcome for his secret tryst. And then a very strange thing happened. There was no way under heaven that he could have known of my approach, for he was kneeling with his back toward me. There was nothing to warn him, no sound from me that could have penetrated that watery spirit space to the ears within his helmet. Yet while I was still 20ft away, I saw him get slowly to his feet and turn about, his hand going to the knife at his belt, even before he could have realized my purpose. Thus confronted, I brandished my weapon and bade him in our sign language to be prepared, since I intended to kill him or die in the attempt. Scarcely had I finished when, to my utter astonishment, he slowly replaced the knife in its sheath and and quietly awaited my coming. Taken back though I was, I had no intention of losing my purpose. His very sureness enraged me the more. I strode forward, bending all my weight against the intervening water, holding my blade in readiness. Now I stood before him and saw his white, sneering face behind the glass, shrieking aloud. With a strange exultation, I raised my weapon to strike. But I never made that stroke. Even as my arm descended in its murderous errand, I felt myself suddenly and helplessly snatched away. It was that accursed seaweed the damnable staff had twined about my body as I strode across the hall. And now, as I drew near enough to plunge my weapon home, it had snatched me away in vain. I foamed and fought it, slashing to the right and to the left in vain. I ripped and tore and cut, using my gloved hands where the blade seemed too slow, where I slashed off yards of the stuff, new tendrils seemed to grow, enveloping my body. Frothing and screaming, kicking and squirming, I was dragged across the hall and out on the steps before the temple. There, despite my weights, the weeds seemed to gather under me, forcing me upwards. In but a few minutes, the slowly receding spires of Atlantis told me that I was on my way to the surface. I lay on the bosom of the sea, kicking and screaming. But that diabolical staff was determined that I should not sink again. Finally, as all strength seemed to be Leaving me, I felt myself hauled slowly out of the water. They on board the Nautilus, seeing me struggling there in the water, had slipped a boat hook under the ring at my belt and were pulling me to her decks. But I was crafty. Once on board, I revealed nothing of what had happened, merely pretending that I had been taken with crumbs on coming to the surface. Then, very carefully, I laid my plans to kill Dr. Tyrell as soon as he should return. Secretly, I got out my pistol and a knife and watched for the ascending bubbles that would tell of his coming. But he never came. I waited there until dusk, waited until the captain came to me in alarm and begged me to go below in search of his missing employer. I should have been glad to go for another purpose than he thought, but I knew that devilish seaweed would stop me at the outset. Looking over the side, I could see it lurking there, waiting. Once I was in its clutches, it could hold me there powerless, while my quarry came aboard in safety and my last chance was lost. But I could not tell them this, so I cut a rent in my diving dress, telling them it would be impossible for me to venture below. With the coming of darkness, all thought of my leaving the ship was abandoned and Dr. Tyrell's life was despaired of. For myself, I knew that he was still down there, keeping his tryst with Winona, and the thought of it made me fairly boil with rage. As the night wore on, I became exhausted with the play of conflicting emotions and pretending an illness. I went to my cabin. I must have slept longer than I had intended, for I had many long dreams in which I saw my colleague in the arms of Winona. The two of them stood there on one of the pillars of Atlantis, mocking me as I struggled with the weeds of Sargasso. Each dream brought the stuff nearer my throat while it shook and crushed me as if I were a rodent in the grip of a python. And it had clutched my shoulders and was shaking me again when I awoke and saw that I was not at the bottom of the sea but safe in my cabin with the captain of the Nautilus grasping me frantically by the shoulders. What is the matter? I demanded, bounding out of my bed and wondering if Dr. Tyrell had slipped back during the watches of the night. The ship is sinking, sir, he said, his voice all tremble in the darkness. You'd best come on deck. There's something wrong. I don't understand it. The man's teeth were actually chattering and the tones of his voice struck me into A panic. As I stood there peering at his white face in the gloom, I noticed for the first time that the floor of my cabin had assumed a noticeable angle. The ship appeared to be no longer responding to the roll of the seas, but wobbled and tugged in an uncannily impotent way. Hastily donning an over garment, I hurried out on deck. The night was starlit, the ocean smooth save for the gentle undulating billows from which it is never free. And yet the Nautilus was going down by the head. Already the angle of her decks had assumed a higher pitch while I had tarried there in my cabin. At that moment she assumed a slight list to port, the wobble becoming more accentuated with each billow. In the forward part of the vessel there arose a wail of voices from the throats of of terror stricken, helpless men. I turned angrily to the captain and demanded why he had not set the crew to the pumps. I've tried that, sir, he answered. And I found there isn't a drop of water in her hold. It's her anchor there, I said. It's probably caught on the bottom and the rising tide is pulling her under. I met a nautical man and this seemed an adequate explanation. I had the anchor up an hour ago, sir, he answered. I tried to pull out of here and actually tried to get her under way, but her propellers won't budge her. My God, sir, it seems that we're being pulled down. We actually can't move. At that moment there came a ripping and creaking sound from her hold, followed by another drunken wobble to port. And that, I think, gave me my first inkling of what was really happening to the Nautilus. Running up into the forward part of the ship, I peered over the side. What I saw there pulled a strange cry of exultation from my throat under her bowsprit, and I dare say all along the whole length of her keel were little sucker like tendrils protruding from the water, worming and squirming their way upward over her smooth white sides. The Nautilus was in the grip of the Sargasso seaweed. She was being pulled under, pulled under to Atlantis. Now I understood that gruesome pile of wreckage so, so far below. I realized that when the world reads this, it will call me mad. And I think for the next few hours perhaps I was. I sprang into the air. I jumped and leaped about the deck. I shuddered for very joy. I was going to fool Dr. Tyrell. After all, he had said Atlantis would not take me. But it was taking the Nautilus. And if it took the Nautilus, it must take me. The crew must have gathered from my yells and exclamations of triumph what had happened. For they left off their whales and went to work with hatchets, knives and axes. The weed, by this time had crept up almost to the rails. And now, as if realizing it had been discovered, it actually began swarming over the side on to the decks. And eventually into the masts and rigging. They poor fellows, chopped and hacked and fought it through. Most of the night. It was a losing fight. Inch by inch, her bow tilted downward. Inch by inch, her rounded stern arose toward the heavens. Once they tried to lower her boat, but no sooner had these touched the water. Than the seaweed fastened its clutches upon them. When the angle of her decks became impossible for further footing, I climbed to her stern rail, where I perched and howled and shrieked in glee. Ah, Fool. Fool that I was, I had forgotten that Atlantis did not want me. Had I been more clever, had I had more of the cunning of the day before, I should have hidden myself away somewhere in the bowels of her and gone down with her to the very depths. She went down at dawn with a dull creaking of strained timbers. And a hoarse, despairing gargle and whistle from the air expelled from her holds. And I, fool, perched there on her stern rail, shrieked and shouted for the very joy of it. One by one, I saw their bobbing heads go under. One by one, I saw the last bits of wreckage enveloped by that slimy, creeping thing and engulfed forever. At noon at night, I was still floating on. Again and again I dived, seeking to entangle myself. Again and again I felt myself thrust backwards to the surface. The sun, a blistering ball of copper in the sky, sunk lower and lower. And with the coming of the night, I believe I must have slept there on the bosom of the Sargasso Sea. There were other days and other nights when I screamed and writhed in raging impotence. For I had come to realize that the sea was only playing with me, waiting there idly for me to die when I should be carried far from Atlantis and Winona by some swift current. And on the dawn of the third day, a great ship hovered over me. And even against my will, I was saved. I come now to the end of my story. I know that the world will judge me mad in the writing of it. But for the world and its judgment, I care nothing. For I know whereof I have spoken. I have yet another and longer story. To bring to a close. And as I set this down, I plan to write my finis stewit out there on the decks of the brand. Of this Captain Waters knows nothing, for I have his promise that he will not read this until to morrow. Therefore, on this third day of March, I hereby set my signature to this, my story, Charles Williams Randolph. Well, Randolph's story as he told it to me when we first pulled him aboard. The brand was about the same as his statement, except maybe it wasn't so connected. But as I said before, we'd no sooner got him aboard than the capful of wind we've been relying on dropped off and left us in a dead calm. And then things commenced to happen. It was about midnight that night, I guess, when we first noticed the old hooker had stopped rolling and was beginning to wobble in a queer sort of way. I didn't pay much attention to it, but turned in, leaving the deck to the mate. He woke me up about an hour later. She was down by the head and already in a bad way. I remember Randall's yarn about the seaweed then. And so I ran forward to the chains and looked over the side. Well, sir, I could see it there on her cut water and all around her forefoot. Then there came a creaking and a groaning from her holds, which meant that her bottom must be covered. I had the whole crew piped, and we went to it with axes and knives and everything we could lay our hands on. As heaven is my judge, you could see it a growing over her sides. It was alive in no time at all. It was on her decks and into her rigging. While we were fighting it out of the main shrouds, it would get into the jigger, and when we'd get at the jigger, it would get up into the mizzen and so on. Finally we began to list pretty badly to port, and so I ordered the mate to put away the fore and jigger, they being the ones that seemed the worst. This helped a little, but not much. And that man Randolph, he was a fiend. He came out on deck and danced there like a maniac, yelling and singing. He didn't try to interfere with the crew, so we didn't pay any attention to him. After a while I saw him going below, and I didn't find him until afterwards. We were pretty well loaded up with chili and nitrates, valuable stuff. And so I held on to her cargo as long as I could, hoping we might get her clear. But after a while I saw it was no go with the cargo out of her, I knew she'd be harder to pull under, but. But on the other hand, when she was empty, it would be easier for that stuff to pull her over on her beam ends. But it was nip and tuck for our lives then and to hell with the cargo. So I gave the order for half the crew to open her hatches and get the stuff out. It was in powdered form and packed in sacks, £300 to the sack. We began getting it up as best we could. And no easy job it was with the list on her and the wobble and all that slimy stuff a squirming over her both alow and aloft. We'd dropped about 20 or maybe 30 bugs over the side when one of them broke and spilled into the water. That was what saved us, that bug breaking over the side. I was standing by the rail helping the man when I saw it spill into the water. And then I noticed there was a hissing and a boiling all about her where the stuff had gone in. And that weed, it just melted away all around her water line for the distance of 10ft. Curled up and dropped off. That gave me my idea. There was some chemical reaction in that nitrate, which was dead to that seaweed. I grabbed the next bag and knifed it open. And we dumped it in. Then it was sure the nitrates would do the trick. Well, sir, we just quit fighting that stuff with knives and axes and went at it with those nitrates. We sprinkled it all over the ship, fore and aft. And then we put the whale boat over the side and sprinkled the stuff against her side and as far down as we could get below her water line. Pretty soon the weed in the rigging began to dry up and wither away. And then she began to roll a bit instead of wobbling. Another six hours of it with most of the cargo overboard and we were clear. We still had some canvas on her, and a little breeze came along and pushed her out of there. I thought maybe Randolph had thrown himself overboard and had not been noticed during the excitement. But the next day we found him hiding in the after hold. He said he was waiting for the ship to go down and that nobody would fool him this time. When I told him she was clear, he began to cry like a child. Then I got him up to my cabin and set him about writing his statement. But I'd forgotten he had a mania for making away with himself. I suppose I'm to blame for that. He went out on the deck afterward. I didn't see what happened. But the mate said he climbed up into the mizzen shrouds and then threw himself down, not into the water but upon the deck. When we picked him up, he was conscious but dying. I felt sorry for him, poor devil. He called to me as he lay there dying, and made me promise that I'd bury him as soon as he'd gone. I can walk back by myself, said he. I know the way. I'll find her. Well, what could I do? I promised. He went about half an hour later, smiling a good bye. We sewed him in one of those sacks, put some scrap iron at his feet, and let him go. I suppose he's down there now, and I hope he found her, whoever she may be. The end of the Lure of Atlantis by Joel Martin Nichols, Jr.
- [199:21]
The Victor by Bryce Walton this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org recording by Molehill Mountain the Victor by Bryce Walton Charles Marquis had a fraction of a minute in which to die. He dropped through the tubular beams of alloy dimmed steel and hung there 5,000ft above the tiers and walkways below. At either end of the walkway, crossing between the two power hung buildings, he he saw the plain clothes security officers running in toward him. He grinned and started to release his grip. He would think about them on the way down. His fingers wouldn't work. He kicked and strained and tore at himself with his own weight, but his hands weren't his own anymore. He might have anticipated that, some paralysis beam freezing his hands into the metal. He sagged into limpness. His chin dropped for an instant, then the fire in his heart almost went out, but not quite. It survived that one terrible moment of defeat, then burned higher, and perhaps something in that desperate resistance was the factor that kept it burning. Where it was thought no flame could burn. He felt the rigidity of paralysis leaving his arms as he was lifted, helped along the walkway to a security car. The car looked like any other car. The officers appeared like all the other people in the clockwork culture of the mechanized new system. Marquis sought the protection of personal darkness behind closed eyelids as the monorail car moved faster and faster through the high, clean air. Well, he'd worked with the underground against the system for a long time. He had known that eventually he would be caught. There were rumors of what happened to men then, and even the vaguest, unsubstantiated rumors were enough to indicate that death was preferable. That was the underground's philosophy better to die standing up as a man with some degree of personal integrity and freedom, than to go on living as a conditioned slave of the state? He'd missed, but he wasn't through yet, though. In a hollow tooth was a capsule containing a very high potency poison. A little of that would do the trick, too, but he would have to wait for the right time. The manager was thin, his face angular, and he matched up with the harsh steel angles of the desk and the big room somewhere in the security building. His face had a kind of emotion cold, detached, cynically superior. We don't get many of your kind, he said. Political prisoners are becoming more scarce all the time, as your number indicates. From now on you'll be number 5274. He looked at some papers, then up at Marquis. You evidently found out a great deal. However, none of it will do you or what remains of your underground fools any good. The manager studied Marquis with detached curiosity. You're learning things concerning the managerials that have so far remained secret. It was partially a question. Marquis's lean and darkly inscrutable face smiled slightly. You're good at understatement. Yes. I found out what we've suspected for some time. That the managerial class has found some way to stay young. Either a remarkable longevity or immortality. Of all the social evils, that's the worst of all. To deny the people knowledge of such a secret. The manager nodded. Then you did find that out. The underground knows. Well, it will do no good. It will. Eventually they'll go on, and some day they'll learn the secret. Marquis thought of Marden. Marden was as old as the new system of statism and inhumanity that had started off disguised as social democracy. Three hundred and three years old, to be exact, the manager said. No, 5274. You will be sent to the work colony on the moon. You won't be back. We've tried reconditioning rebels, but it doesn't work. A rebel has certain basic deviant qualities, and we can't overcome them sufficiently to make happy, well adjusted workers out of you. However, on the Moon you will conform. It's a kind of social experiment. There, in associative reflex culture, you might say. You'll conform all right. He was taken to a small, naked gray steel room. He thought about taking the capsule from his tooth now, but decided he might be observed. They would rush in an antidote and make him live, and he might not get a chance to take his life in any Other way. He would try, of course, but this knowledge of his future situation was vague, except that in it he would conform. There would be extreme conditioned reflex therapeutic techniques, and it would be pretty horrible. That was all he knew. He didn't see the pellet fall. He heard the slight sound it made and then saw the almost colorless gas hissing softly clouding the room. He tasted nothing, smelled or felt nothing. He passed out quickly and painlessly. He was marched into another office and he knew he was on the moon. The far wall was spherical and was made up of the outer shell of the pressure dome which kept out the frigid cold nights and furnace hot days. It was opaque and Marquis could see the harsh black and white shadows out there, the metallic edges of the far crater wall. This manager was somewhat fat, with a round pink face and cold blue eyes. He sat behind a chrome shelf of odd shape suspended from the ceiling with silver wires. The manager said, number 5274. Here there is only work. At first, of course, you will rebel. Later you will work and finally there will be nothing else. Things here are rigidly scheduled and you will learn the routines as the conditioning bells acquaint you with them. We are completely self sufficient here. We are developing the perfect scientifically controlled society. It is a kind of experiment, a closed system to test out to what extremes we can carry our mastery of associative reflexes to bring man security and happiness and freedom from responsibility. Marquis didn't say anything. There was nothing to say. He knew he couldn't get away with trying to kill this particular managerial specimen. But one man alone, a rebel, with something left in him that still burned, could beat the system. He had to. A work here is specialized. During the indoctrination period you will do a very simple routine job in coordination with the sub cybernetics machines. There the machines and the nervous system of the workers become slowly cooperative. Machine and man learn to work very intimately together. Later, after the indoctrination, because of your specialized knowledge of food concentrate preparation, we will transfer you to the food mart. The period of indoctrination varies in length with the individuals. You will be screened now and taken to the indoctrination ward. We probably won't be seeing one another again. The bells take care of everything here. The bells and the machines. There is never an error, never any mistakes. Machines do not make mistakes. He was marched out of there and through a series of rooms. He was taken in by generators, huge oscilloscopes spun like a living tube through curtains of vacuum tube voltimeters electronic power panels twisted and squeezed through rolls of skeins and hookup wire, bent through shieldings of every color, size, and shape, rolled over panel plates. Huge racks of glowing tubes, elaborate transceivers tumbled down long surfaces of gleaming Bakelite plunged through color indexed files of resistors and capacitances. Here machine and man learned to work very intimately together. As he drifted through the machine tooled nightmare, Marquis knew what he had been fighting all his life, what he would continue to fight with every grain of ingenuity, mechanization, the horror of losing one's identity and becoming part of an assembly line. He could hear a clicking sound as tubes sharpened and faded in intensity. The clicking rhythm, a hypnotic rhythm like the beating of his own heart, the throbbing and thrumming, the contracting and expanding, the pulsing and pounding. The machines and the nervous system of the workers become slow, slowly, cooperative. Beds were spaced 10ft apart down both sides of a long gray metal hall. There were no cells, no privacy, nothing but beds and the gray metalline suits of numbers printed across the chest. His bed, with his number printed above it, was indicated to him, and the guard disappeared. He was alone. It was absolutely silent. On his right a woman lay on a bed. 329. She had been here a long time. She appeared dead. Her breasts rose and fell with a peculiarly steady rhythm and seemed to be co ordinated with the silent, invisible throbbing of the metal walls. She might have been attractive once here. It didn't make any difference. Her face was gray like metal. Her hair was cropped short. Her uniform was the same as the man's on Marquis's left. The man was number 4901. He hadn't been here so long. His face was thin and gray, his hair was dark, and he was about the same size and build as Marquis. His mouth hung slightly open and his eyes were closed, and there was a slight quivering at the ends of the fingers, which were laced across his stomach. Hullo, marquis said. The man shivered, then opened dull eyes and looked up at Marquis. I just got in. Name's Charles Marquis. The man blinked. I'm. I'm number 4901. He looked down at his chest, repeated the number. His fingers shook a little as he touched his lips. Marquis said, what is this indoctrination? You learn, the bells ring, you forget and learn. There's absolutely no chance of escaping, marquis whispered, more to himself than to 4901 only by dying. 4901 shivered. His eyes rolled crazily. Then he turned over and buried his face in his arms. The situation had twisted all the old accepted values squarely around, preferring death over life, but not because of any anti life attitude or pessimism or defeatism, none of those negative attitudes that would have made the will to die abnormal under under conditions in which there would have been hope and some faint chance of a bearable future. Here to keep on living was a final form of dehumanized indignity, of humiliation, of ignominy, of the worst thing of all, loss of oneself, of one's individuality. To die as a human being was much more preferable over continuing to live as something else, something neither human or machine, but something of both, with none of the dignity of either. The screening process hadn't detected the capsule of poison in Marquis's tooth. The capsule contained 10 grains of poison, only one of which was enough to bring a painless death within 16 hours or so. That was his ace in the hole, and he waited only for the best time to use it. Bells rang. The prisoners jumped from their beds and went through a few minutes of calisthenics. Other bells rang and a tray of small tins of food concentrates appeared out of a slit in the wall by each bed. More bells rang, different kinds of bells, some deep and brazen, others high and shrill, and the prisoners marched off to specialized jobs cooperating with various machines. You slept eight hours, calisthenics five minutes, eating 10 minutes, relaxation to the tune of musical bells, 10 minutes, work period eight hours. Repeat. That was all of life, and after a while Marquis knew a man would not be aware of time, nor of his name, nor that he had once been human. Marquis felt deep lancing pain as he tried to resist the bells. Each time the bells rang and a prisoner didn't respond properly, invisible rays of needle pain punched and kept punching until he reacted properly and finally he did as the bells told him to. Finally he forgot that things had ever been any other way. Marquis sat on his bed, eating while the bells of eating rang across the bowed heads in the gray uniforms. He stared at the girl, then at the man. 4901 There were many opportunities to take one's own life here that had perplexed him from the start. Why hasn't the girl and this man succeeded in dying? And all the others? They were comparatively new here, all these in his indoctrination ward. Why weren't they trying to leave? In the only dignified way of escape left, number 4901 tried to talk. He tried hard to remember things Sometimes memory would break through and bring him pictures of other times, of happenings on earth, of a girl he had known, of times when he was a child. But only the mildest and softest kind of recollections. Marquis said, I don't think there's a prisoner here who doesn't want to escape. And death is the only way out for us. We know that. For an instant, numbered 4901 stopped eating. A spoonful of food concentrate hung suspended between his mouth and the shelf. Then the food moved again to the urging of the bells. Invisible pain needles gouged Marquis's neck, and he ate again, too, automatically talking between tail, tasteless bites. A man's life, at least is his own, marquis said. They can take everything else. But a man certainly has a right and a duty to take that life if by doing so he can retain his dignity as a human being. Suicide number 4901 bent forward. He groaned, mumbled, don't, don't. Several times, then curled forward and lay on the floor, knotted up into a twitching ball. The eating period was over. The lights went off. Bells sounded for relaxation. Then the sleep bells began ringing, filling up the absolute darkness. Marquis lay there in the dark, and he was afraid. He had the poison, he had the will, but he couldn't be unique in that respect. What was the matter with the others? All right, the devil with them. Maybe they'd been broken too soon to act. He could act tomorrow. During the work period, he would take a grain of the poison, put the capsule back in the tooth. The poison would work slowly, painlessly, paralyzing the nervous system, finally, the heart. Sometime during the beginning of the next sleep period, he would be dead. That would leave six or seven hours of darkness in isolation for him to remain dead so they couldn't get to him in time to bring him back. He mentioned suicide to the girl. During the next work period. She moaned a little and curled up like a fetus on the floor. After an hour, she got up and began inserting punch cards into the big machine. Again she avoided Marquis. Marquis looked around, went into a corner with his back to the room, slipped the capsule out, and let one of the tiny, almost invisible grains melt on his tongue. He replaced the capsule and returned to the machine. A quiet but exciting triumph made the remainder of the work period more bearable. Back on his bed, he drifted into sleep, into what he knew was the final sleep. He was more fortunate than the others. Within an hour he would be dead. Somewhere someone was screaming. The sounds rose higher and higher. A human body. Somewhere pain unimaginable, twisting up through clouds of belching steam, muscles quivering, nerves twitching, and somewhere a body floating and bobbing and crying, sheets of agony sweeping and returning in waves, and the horror of unescapable pain expanding like a volcano of madness. Somewhere was someone alive who should be dead. And in the dark, in absolute silence, Marquis moved a little. He realized vaguely that the screaming voice was his own. He stared into the steamy darkness and slowly, carefully wet his lips. He moved. He felt his lips moving and the whisper sounding loud in the dark. I'm alive. He managed to struggle up out of the bed. He could scarcely remain erect. Every muscle in his body seemed to quiver. He longed to slip down into the darkness and escape into endless sleep. But he'd tried that and he was still alive. He didn't know how much time had passed, he was sure of the poison's effects. But he wasn't dead. They had gotten to him in time. Sweat exploded from his body. He tried to remember more pain. He lay down again. He writhed and perspired on the bed as his tortured mind built grotesque fantasies out of fragments of broken memory. The routine of the unceasing bells went on. Bells leap up. Bells calisthenics. Bells eat. Bells march. Bells work. He tried to shut out the bells. He tried to talk to 4901. 4901 covered up his ears and wouldn't listen. The girl wouldn't listen to him. There were other ways and he kept the poison hidden in the capsule in his hollow tooth. He had been counting the steps covering the length of the hall, then the 20 steps to the left, then to the right to where the narrow corridor led again to the left where he had seen the airlock after the bells stopped ringing and the darkness was all around him. He got up. He counted off the steps. No guards, no alarms, nothing to stop him. They depended on the conditioners to take care of everything. This time he would do it. This time they wouldn't bring him back. No one else could even talk with him about it. Even though he knew they all wanted to escape. Some part of them still wanted to. But they couldn't. So it was up to him. He stopped against the smooth, opaque up curving glassite dome. It had a brittle bright shine that reflected from the moon's surface. It was night out there, with an odd metallic reflection of earthlight against the naked crags. He hesitated. He could feel the intense and terrible cold, the airlessness out there, fingering hungrily, reaching and whispering and. And waiting he turned the wheel. The door opened. He entered the airlock and shut the first door. When the air pressure was right, he turned the other wheel and the outer lock door swung outward. The outrushing air spun him outward like a balloon into the awful, airless, cold and naked silence. His body sank down into the thick pumice dust that drifted up around him in a fine, powdery blanket of concealment. He felt no pain. The cold airlessness dissolved around him in deepening, darkening pleasantness. This time he was dead, thoroughly and finally and gloriously dead, even buried, and they couldn't find him. And even if they did finally find him, what good would it do them? Some transcendental part of him seemed to remain, to observe and triumph over his victory. This time he was dead to stay. This time he knew at once that the twisting body in the steaming pain, the distorted face, the screams rising and rising, were all Charles Marquis. Maybe a dream, though, he thought. So much pain, so much screaming pain is not real. In some fraction of a fraction of that interim between life and death, one could dream of so much because dreams are timeless. Yet he found himself anticipating his, even through the shredded, dissociated, nameless kind of pain, a repetition of that other time, the awful bitterness of defeat. He opened his eyes slowly. It was dark, the same darkness. He was on the same bed, and the old familiar dark around, and the familiar soundlessness that was now heavier than the most thunderous sound. Everything around him then seemed to whirl up and go down in a crash. He rolled over to the floor and lay there, his hot face cooled by the cold metal. As before, some undeterminable interim of time had passed, and he knew he was alive. His body was stiff. He ached. There was a drumming in his head and then a ringing in his ears as he tried to get up, managed to drag himself to an unsteady stance against the wall. He now felt an icy surety of horror that carried him out to a pinpoint in space. A terrible fatigue hit him. He fell back onto the bed. He lay there, trying to figure out how he could be alive. He finally slept, pushed into it by sheer and utter exhaustion. The bells called him awake. The bells started him off again. He tried to talk to 4901. They avoided him, all of them, but they weren't really alive anymore. How long could he maintain some part of himself that he knew definitely was Charles Marquis? He began a ritual, a routine divorced from that to which all those being indoctrinated were subjected. It was a little private routine of his own dying and then finding that he was not dead. He tried it in many ways. He took more grains of the poison, but he was always alive again. You, 4901. Damn you, talk to me. You know what's been happening to me. The man nodded quickly over his little canisters of food, concentrated this indoctrination. You, the girl. You went crazy when I talked about dying. What? The man yelled hoarsely. Don't. Don't say it. All this, what you've been going through. Can't you understand? All that is part of indoctrination. You're no different than the rest of us. We've all had it.
- [221:48]
All of us.
- [221:49]
All of us. Some more maybe, than others. It has to end. You'll have to give in. Oh God, I wish you didn't. I wish you could win. But you're no smarter than the rest of us. You'll have to give in. It was 4901's longest and most coherent speech. Maybe I can get somewhere with him, Marquis thought. I can find out something. But 4911 wouldn't say any more. Marcus kept on trying. No one, he knew would ever realize what that meant, to keep on trying. To die when no one would let you, when you kept dying and then kept waking up again and you weren't dead. No one could ever understand the pain that went between the dying and the living, and even Marquis couldn't remember it afterward. He only knew how painful it had been, and knowing that made each attempt a little harder for Marquis. He tried the poison again. There was the big stamping machine that had crushed him beyond any semblance of a human being. But he had awakened alive again, whole again. There wasn't even a scar. He suffered the pain of resisting the eating bells until he was so weak he couldn't respond, and he knew that he had died that time too, from pure starvation. But I can't stay dead. You'll have to give in. He didn't know when it was. He had no idea how long he had been here. But a guard appeared, a cold faced man who guided Marquis back to the office where the fat, pink faced little manager waited for him behind the shelf suspended by silver wires from the ceiling. The manager said, you were the most remarkable prisoner we've ever had here. There probably will not be another like you here again. Marquis's features hung slack, his mouth slightly open, his lower lip drooping. He knew how he looked. He knew how near he was to cracking completely, becoming a senseless puppet of the bells. Why is that? He whispered. You've tried repeatedly to you know what I mean. Of course. You have kept on attempting this impossible thing. Attempted it more times than anyone else here ever has. Frankly, we didn't think any human psyche had the stuff to try it that many times, to resist that long. The manager made a curious lengthened survey of Marquis's face. Soon you'll be thoroughly indoctrinated. You are for all practical purposes now. You'll work automatically then to the bells, and think very little about it at all, except in a few stereotyped ways to keep your brain and nervous system active enough to carry out simple, specialized work duties, or while the new system lasts. And I imagine that will be forever.
- [224:29]
Forever.
- [224:30]
Yes. Yes, you're immortal now. The manager smiled. Surely after all this harrowing indoctrination experience, you realize that. Immortal. I might have guessed. I might laugh now. But I can't. We who pretend to live in a hell that is worse than death, and you, the managerials who live in paradise, we too are immortal. That is, you're immortal as long as we desire you to be. You'll never grow any older than we want you to. Never so senile as to threaten efficiency. That was what you were so interested in finding out on earth, wasn't it? The mystery behind the managerials, why they never seem to grow old. Why we have all the advantage. No senility, no weakening. The advantage of accumulative experience without the necessity of relearning. Yes, marcus whispered. The manager leaned back. He lit a para' et and let the soothing nerve tonic seep into his lungs. He explained, every one of you political prisoners we bring here want above everything else to die. It was a challenge to our experimental social order. Here we have no objection to you killing yourself. We have learned that even the will to die can be conditioned out of the most determined rebel, as it has been conditioned out of you. You try to die enough times and you do die. But the pain of resurrection is so great that finally it is impossible not only to kill yourself but even to think of attempting it. Marquis couldn't say anything. The memory called up by the mention of self destruction rasped along his spine like chalk on a blackboard. He could feel the total recall of sensation, the threatening bursts of pain. No, he whispered over and over. No, please, no, the manager said. We won't mention it anymore. You'll never be able to try any overt act of self destruction again. A bright light from the ceiling lanced like splinters into the tender flesh of Marquis's eyeballs danced about the base of his brain in reddened choleric circles. His face had drawn back so that his cheekbones stood out and his nose was beak like. His irises became a bright painful blue in the reddened ovals of his eyes. The manager yawned as he finished explaining. Each prisoner entering here has an identification punch plate made of his unique electronic electromagnetic vibratory field. That's the secret of our immortality and yours. Like all matter, human difference is in the electromagnetic vibratory rates. We have put these punch plates on file for every prisoner we have one of you. Any dead human body we merely put in a tank which dissolves it into separate cells, a massive stasis with potentiality to be reformed into any type of human being being of which we have an identification punch plate. You see, this tank of dissociated cells is surrounded by an electromagnetic field induced from a machine by one of the identification punch plates. That particular human being lives again the body, its mind, its life pattern, identical to that from which the original punch plate was made. Each time you have died, we reduced your body, regardless of its condition, to dissociated cells in the tank. The identification punch plate was put in the machine. Your unique electromagnetic field reformed the cells into you. It could only be you, as you are now. From those cells we can resurrect anyone of whom we have an identification plate. That is all. Number 5274. Now that you're indoctrinated, you will work from now on in the food mart because of your experience. For an undeterminable length of time. He followed the routines of the belt. In the big food mart, among the hydroponic beds and the canning machines, among the food grinders and the little bells that dropped cans of food concentrate into racks and sent them off into the walls, he managed to talk more and more coherently with number 4901. He stopped referring to suicide. But if anyone had the idea that Marquis had given up the idea of dying, they were wrong. Marquis was stubborn. Somewhere in him the flames still burned. He wouldn't let it go out. The bells couldn't put it out. The throbbing machines couldn't put it out. And now he had at last figured out a way to beat the game. During an eating period, Marquis said to 4901, you want to die? Wait a minute. I'm talking about something we can both talk about and think about. A murder agreement. You understand? We haven't been conditioned against killing each other. It's only an overt act of self Dis alright. We don't think about that. But we can plan a way to kill each other. 4901 looked up. He stopped eating momentarily. He was interested. What's the use, though? Pain shadowed his face. We only go through it. Come back again. I have a plan. The way I have it worked out. They'll never bring either one of us back. That wasn't exactly true. One of them would have to come back. Marquis hoped that 4901 wouldn't catch on to the fact that he would have to be resurrected, but that Marquis never would. He hoped that 4901's mind was too foggy and dull to see through the complex plan. And that was the way it worked, Marquis explained. 4901 listened and smiled. It was the first time Marquis had ever seen a prisoner smile. He left what remained of the capsule of poison where 4901 could get it. During one of the next four eating periods, 4901 was to slip the poison into Marquis's food can. Marquis wouldn't know what meal or what can he had to eat. The bells had conditioned him that much, and not to eat would be an overt act of self destruction. He wasn't conditioned not to accept death administered by another. And then, after an eating period, 4901 whispered to him, you're poisoned. It was in one of the cans you just ate. Great. Almost. Shouted Marquis. All right. Now I'll die by the end of the next work period. That gives us this sleep period and all the next work period. During that time I'll dispose of you. As I've said. 4901 went to his bed and the bells rang and the dark came and both of them slept. Number 4901 resisted the conditioners enough to follow Marquis past his regular workroom into the food mart. As planned, 4901 marched on and stood in the steaming shadows behind the hydroponic beds. Marquis worked for a while at the canning machines at the big grinding vats. Then he went over to 4901 and said, Turn around now. 4901 smiled. He turned around. Good luck, he said. Good luck to you. Marquis hit 4901 across the back of the neck with an alloy bar and killed him instantly. He changed clothes with the dead man. He put his own clothes in a refuse incinerator. Quickly he dragged the body over and tossed it into one of the food grinding vats. His head bobbed up above the gray Swirling liquid once. Then the body disappeared entirely, was ground finely and mixed with the other foodstuff. Within eight hours, the cells of 4901 would be distributed minutely throughout the contents of thousands of cans of food concentrate. Within that time, much of it would have been consumed by the inmates and managers. At the end of that work period, Marquis returned to his cell. He went past his own bed and stopped in front of 4901's bed. The sleep bells sounded and the dark came again. This would be the final dark, Marquis knew. This time he had beat the game. The delayed action poison would kill him. He had on 4901's clothes with his identification number. He was on 4901's bed. He would die as 4901. The guards would finally check on the missing man in the food mart. But they would never find him. They would find 4,901 dead, a suicide. And they would put the body labeled 4901 in the tank, dissolve it into dissociated cells, and they would subject those cells to the electromagnetic field of 4901. And they would resurrect 4901. Not only have I managed to die, Marquis thought, but I've managed the ultimate suicide. There won't even be a body, no sign anywhere that I have ever been at all. Even my cells will have been resurrected as someone else, as number 4901. And that's the way it was, 4901 would tell new prisoners coming in. Sometimes they listened to him and seemed interested, but the interest always died during indoctrination. But 4901's interest in the story never died. He knew that now. He could never let himself die as a human being either, and that he could never let himself become completely controlled by the bells. He'd been nearly dead as an individual, but number 5274 had saved him from that dead, alive anonymity. He could keep alive and maintain hope now by remembering what 5274 had done. He clung to that memory. As long as he retained that memory of hope, of triumph, at least some part of him would keep burning, as something had kept on burning within the heart of 5274. So every night before the sleep bells sounded, he would go over the whole thing in minute detail, remembering 5274's every word and gesture, the details of his appearance. He told the plan over to himself every night and told everyone about it who Came in to the indoctrination ward, swimming up through the pain of resurrection. He had been a little mad at 5274 at first. And then he had realized that at least the plan had enabled one man to beat the game. He will always be alive to me. Maybe in a way he's part of me. Nobody knows. But his memory will live. He succeeded in that kind of ultimate dying. No trace of him anywhere. But the memory of him and what he did will be alive when the new system and the manager are dead. That spirit will assure the underground of victory someday. And Meanwhile, I'll keep 5274 alive. He even knew the psychology of these managers and their system, that they can't afford to make an error. He knew they'd still have that identification punch plate of him. That they would have one more plate than they had prisoners. But he anticipated what they would do there too. To admit there was one more identification plate than there were prisoners would be to admit a gross error. Of course, they could dissolve one of the other prisoners and use 5274's plate and resurrect 5274. But they'd gain nothing. There would still be an extra plate, d' you see? So they destroyed the plate. He knew they would. And they also had to go back through the records, to Earth, through the security files there, through the birth records, everything. And they destroyed every trace, every shred of evidence that number 5274 ever existed. So he kept the memory alive. And that kept 4901 alive. While the other prisoners became automatons. Hearing, feeling, sensing nothing except the bells, remembering nothing, anticipating nothing. But 4901 could remember something magnificent. And so he could anticipate. And that was hope and faith. He found that no one really believed him. But he kept on telling it anyway. The story of the plan. Maybe this number didn't exist. Someone would say, if there's no record anywhere, 4901 would smile. In my head, there's where the record is. I know, I remember. And so it was that 4901 was the only one who still remembered. And who could see, still smile, when sometime after that, no one in the prison colony knew how long the underground was victorious and the managerial system crumbled. End of the Victor by Bryce Walton.
- [236:58]
Test Problem by Alan J. Ramm this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, Please visit Librivox.org Read by Dale Grothman Jeremy knew he was in danger of flunking his final course, and that meant a washout, but he sat down before the panel and concentrated. The problem was one of mind over matter. Three Parsecs of Space Away Test Problem by Alan J. Ram when he came to the head of the examination corridor, Jeremy glanced briefly at the slip of paper in his hand. Room 16B. He strode unhesitatingly down the long hall, his long legs carrying him along swiftly. After six years at the university, he knew the exact location of the tiny testing cubicle which had been assigned to him for his final exam in Advanced Deliberation and Memory. He hesitated a moment before the door of 16B, shook his head as if in defiance, then entered the room. He was in for a tough time, and he knew it. The classes he had cut were sure to affect his chances of passing the test, and he needed the course credits for graduation. Taking the course record card from his pocket, he slipped it into the machine that would automatically record his mark at the close of the test. Then he settled his long frame into the seat placed conveniently in front of the panels of dials and the computing machines which filled one entire side of the room. Checking to make sure everything he might need was in place, he reached out and snapped the switch marked instructions. You are ready, Student Hova. The voice came gently from a hidden yes, Instructor. Then listen to your orders. You have been allotted sector 2645 of space in Parsec 3. In the next 10 minutes we shall transmit a detailed study of the star system to you using only the raw materials of space and the mental techniques taught you in your studies. You will reproduce a reasonable facsimile of the system in the space sector you have been assigned. Have you any questions? How complete a facsimile must it be, Instructor? It must be reasonably correct as to physical makeup. All life forms must be reproduced. I'm ready for the next 10 minutes. He sat tensed in his chair as the impulses from the psychoscope washed through his mind and body. He gradually absorbed a three dimensional mental picture of the system he was to reproduce. When the image faded, he relaxed a moment, then laid his fingers on the keyboard and went to work. Gradually, his confidence grew. Under the direction of his flashing fingers, the energy machines created a warp in the space of his sector. At exactly the correct moment, he adjusted the wavelength of his thought augmenter until it matched the thought matrix of his own mind. The full impact of his tremendous mental abilities jolted into the space warp and as the sweat of concentration gathered on his forehead, he hopefully watched the viewing screen on one of the panels before him. At first, there was only a mere flicker in the center of the warp. Then, swiftly, so swiftly that he barely had time to lower his eyes protectively, the entire screen flared into the light of raw, uncontained energy. Once more, Jeremy's fingers worked feverishly, and the constructing force beams slowly brought the chaos under control. At last, there gleamed on his screen the steady glare of a hot new sun. Now that he had the sun material to draw upon, he easily reconstructed the entire system he had been assigned. By setting up stresses and strains within the star, he caused huge chunks to spin off and take up orbits about it. The problem so engrossed him that he scarcely noticed the passage of time. Periodically, he would get hungry or thirsty. It was a simple matter to press the proper buttons and hurriedly gulped the foods that appeared whenever he tired. Mentally, he tilted his chair to a comfortable position and slept. And as the days passed, the facsimile took shape. Under his genius, each separate world became a duplicate of its original. Mountains were born. The seas dashed at first against shores that were bare and bleak. Then the magic of plant life on all the varied worlds assumed a rainbow of colors. The ooze of the ocean began to crawl. On land and in the air, animals appeared. At last. Through fatigue rimmed eyes, he looked at what he had created. And it was good. With a smile on his lips, he relaxed. Although he reached out to cut off the power to his thought augmenter, he didn't quite reach the switch before he fell into a restless sleep. He tossed and turned, twitched and dreamed. When he woke, he noticed that the power was still on. He quickly turned it off. A hurried, searching glance at the screen assured him the facsimile was still good. Then he pressed the switch marked instructions. You are finished, Student Hova. Yes, Instructor. It took you a long time. Six whole days. Indeed. It was a complicated problem. That is true. Wait while we examine your work. The next few moments seemed as long as the whole exam time had. Suddenly, a gasp burst from the loudspeaker. What is this? There is no creature such as this on any of the original worlds assigned to you. Explain, please. Jeremy turned in on the thought and sight wave of the instructor. Before him was a creature that he could not remember creating. You remember this creature, Student Hova? No, Instructor. But it must be yours. The entire facsimile is tuned to your wavelength. We have checked. Only you could have brought it into being. Only you can destroy it. You know it is against the rules to increase the number of species in creation. Destroy it. Jeremy looked at the creature, so comfortably asleep against the tree, and he felt pity and compassion and love for it. I cannot, instructor. I do not know how it got there unless it was a product of my dreams. Once I forgot to shut off the power while I slept. Sheer negligence. Destroy it, I say. No. It belongs there now. It looks lonely. Without warning he snapped on his augmenter and before the instructor could interfere, there appeared on the grass beside the creature, another of the same species. Now you've done it. The instructor screamed. It can reproduce its kind. His voice grew coldly stern. You have created an unreasonable facsimile. You know what that means? Mutely, Jeremy got up from his chair. Automatically he reached for his course record card in advance. Deliberation and memory to save space on it. All the courses were listed by first letter of the course name. A glance verified the instructor's verdict. J. Hova failed in Adam the End of Test Problem by Alan J. Ramm.
- [246:43]
Rats in the Belfry by John York Cabot this is a Librivox record recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org rats in the Belfry by John Yorke Cabot this little guy Stoddard, was one of the toughest customers I'd ever done business with. To look at him, you'd think he was typical of the mild, pleasant little sort of suburban homeowner who caught the the 8:02 six days a week and watered the lawn on the seventh. Physically, his appearance was completely that of the inconspicuous average citizen, baldish, 40 ish, bespectacled with the usual behind the desk bay window that most office workers get. At his age, he looked like nothing more than the amiable citizen you see in comic cartoons and suburban life. Yet what I'm getting at is, is that this Stoddart's appearance was distinctly deceptive. He was the sort of customer that we in the contracting business would label as a combination grouser and eccentric. When he and his wife came to me with plans for the home they wanted built in Mayfair's second subdivision, they were already full of ideas on exactly what they wanted. This Stoddard, his name was George B. Stoddart in full had painstakingly outlined about two dozen sheets of drafting paper with some of the craziest ideas you have ever seen. These specifications aren't quite down to the exact inch, Mr. Kermit Stoddart had admitted. For I don't pretend to be a first class architectural draughtsman, but my wife and I have had ideas on what sort of a house we want for years, and these plans are the result of of our years of decision. I'd looked at the plants a little sickly. The house they decided on was a combination of every architectural nightmare known to man. It was the sort of thing a respectable contractor would envision if he ever happened to be dying of malaria fever. I could feel them watching me as I went over their dream charts, watching me for the first faint sign of disapproval or amusement or disgrace gust on my face, watching to snatch the plants away from me and walk out of my office if I showed any of those symptoms. Mhm, I muttered noncommittally. What do you think of them? Kermit Stoddard demanded. I had a hunch that they'd been to contractors other than me. Contractors who'd been tactless enough to offend them into taking their business elsewhere. You have something distinctly different in mind here, Mr. Stoddart, I answered evasively. George B. Stuttered, beamed at his wife, then backed me. Exactly, sir, he said. It is our dream castle. I shuddered at the expression. If you'd mix ice cream with pickles and beer and herring and lie down for a nap, it might result in a dream castle. It will be a difficult job, Mr. Stoddart, I said. This is no ordinary job you've outlined here. I know that, said Stoddard proudly. And I am prepared to pay for the extra special work it will probably require. That was different. I perked up a little. I'll have to turn over these plans to my own draughtsman, I told him. Before I can give you an estimate on the construction. George B. Stoddart turned to his wife. I told you, Laura, he said, that sooner or later we'd find a contractor with brains and imagination. It took fully two months haggling over the plans with Stoddard and my own draughtsmen before we were able to start work on the nightmare my clients called their dream castle. Two months haggling in an effort to make Stoddard relinquish some of his more outlandish ideas on his proposed dwelling. But he didn't budge an inch, and by the time we'd laid the foundation for the Dream Shack, every last building quick he'd had originally on those plans still held. I took a lot of ribbing from contractors in that vicinity Once the word got round that I was building Stoddard's house for him, it seems that he'd been to them all before he got around to me. But I didn't mind the ribbing much at first, even though Stoddard was a barrel full of trouble, hanging around the building lot with an eagle eye to see see that nothing was omitted. I had already cashed his first few payment checks on the construction. He'd meant what he said about his willingness to pay more for the extra trouble entailed in the mad construction pattern we had to follow, and I couldn't call him stingy with his extra compensation by a long shot. Financially, I was doing nicely, thank you. Mentally, I was having the devil's own time with Stoddard. He didn't know a damn thing about architecture or construction, of course, but he did know what he wanted. Good Lord, how he knew what he wanted. The basement boiler layout isn't what I had on my plans, he'd called me up to squawk indignantly. But it isn't greatly different the way we have it, I'd plead. Besides, it's far safer than what you originally planned. Is it humanly possible to put it where I planned it? My troublesome client would demand. Yes, I'd admit. But say, then put it where I plant it, he would snap, hanging up. And of course I'd have to put it where he'd planned it. The workmen on the job also presented a problem. They were getting fed up with Stoddard snooping and going crazy laying out patterns which were in absolute contradiction to sanity and good taste. But in spite of all this, the monstrosity progressed. If you can picture a gigantic igloo fronted by Southern mansion pillars and dotted with 18th century gables and having each wing done in a combination early Mexican and Eastern mosque style, you'll have just the roughest idea of what it was beginning to look like. For miles around, people were driving out to see that house in the evenings after construction men had left. But the Stoddards were pleased. They were as happy about the whole mess as a pair of kids erecting a Tarzan dwelling in a tree. And the extra compensations I was getting for the additional trouble wasn't hurting me any. I'll never forget the day when we completed the tiny belfry which topped off the monstrosity. Yes, a belfry. Just the kind you still see on little country churches and schoolhouses, only, of course, a trifle different. The Stoddards had come out to the lot to witness this momentous event, the completion, practically, of their dream child. I was almost as happy as they were, for it stood as the symbol of the ending of almost all the grief for me. My foreman came over to where I was standing with the Stoddards. You gonna put a bell in that belfry? He asked. George. Stoddard looked at him as if he'd gone mad. What for? He demanded. So you can use the belfry, the foreman said. Don't be so ridiculous, my good man. Stoddard snorted. It will be of pleasurable use enough to us just looking at it. When the foreman had marched off scratching his head, I turned to the Stoddards. Well, it's almost done, I said, pleased with it. Stoddard beamed. You have no idea, Mr. Kermit, he said solemnly, what a tremendous moment this is for my wife and me. I looked at the plain, drab, smiling Gloria Stoddart. From the shine in her eyes, I guessed Stoddart meant what he said. Then I looked up at the belfry and shuddered. As I remarked before, even the belfry wasn't quite like any belfry human eyes had ever seen before. It angled in all the way around, in as confusing a maze of geometrical madness you have ever seen. It was a patterned craziness, of course, having some rhyme to it. It but no arisen. Looking at it serenely topping that crazy quilt house, I had the impression of its being an outrageously squashed cherry topping the whipped cream of as madly concocted sundae that a sodder jerk ever made a pleasant impression. Stoddard's voice broke in on my somewhat sickish contemplation. When will we be able to start moving in? He asked eagerly. The latter part of next week, I told him. We should have it set by then. Good, said Stoddart. Splendid. He put his arm around his wife, and the two of them stared starry eyed at their home. It made a lump come to your throat seeing the bliss in their eyes as they stood there together. It made a lump come into your throat until you realized what they were staring at. Incidentally, I said casually, figuring now was as good a time as any to get them used to the the idea. The startlingly different construction pattern you've had us follow will result in erminor repairs in the house being necessary from time to time. Remember my telling you that at the start? Stoddard nodded, brushing the information away casually. Yes, certainly I remember your saying Something about that. But don't worry, I won't hold you responsible for any minor repairs which the unique construction caused. Houses. Thanks, I told him dryly. I just wanted to make certain we had that point clear. The Stoddards moved in just as soon as the last inch of work on the Dream Monster was finished. I paid off my men, banked a nice profit on the job, and went back to building actual houses again. I thought my troubles with the Stoddards at an end, but of course I was wrong. It was fully a month after the Stoddards had been in their madhouse that I got my first indignant 12 phone call from George B. Stoddart himself. Mr. Kermit, said the angry voice on the phone. This is George B. Stoddart. I winced at the name and the all too familiar voice, but managed to sound cheerfully friendly. Yes, indeed, Mr. Stoddart, I oozed. How are you and the missus getting along in your dream castle? That, said George B. Stoddart, is what I called about. We have been having considerable difficulty for which I consider your construction men to be responsible. Now just a minute, I began. I thought we agreed. We agreed that I was to expect certain occasional minor repairs to be necessary due to the construction of the house, stoddard broke in. I know that. Then what's the trouble? I demanded. This house is plagued with ruts, said Stoddard angrily. Rats, I echoed. Exactly. My client snapped. But how could that be possible? I demanded. It's a brand new house, and rats don't. Stoddard broke in again. The devil they don't. We have them, and it can't be due to any fault. But those construction men of yours, how could it be their fault? I was getting a little sore because it isn't my fault, nor my wife's. And the building, as you observed a minute ago, is practically new. Now listen, I began. I wish you'd come out here and see for yourself, Stoddart demanded. Have you caught any? No, he answered. Have you seen any? I demanded. No, stoddard admitted. But this time I did the cutting in. Then how do you know you have rats? I demanded triumphantly, because Stoddard almost shouted as I was going to tell you. I can hear them. And my wife can hear them. I hadn't thought of that. Oh, I said. Then. Are you sure? Yes, I am very sure. Now will you please come out here and see what this is all about? He demanded. Okay, I said. Okay. And then I hung up and looked around for my hat. My visit wasn't going to be any fun, I knew, but what the hell. I had to admit that if Stoddard and his wife were hearing noises that sounded like rats, they had a legitimate squawk for I bought the house, and no amount of crazy ideas in its design by Stoddard could explain the presence of vermin. Both the Stoddards met me at the door when I arrived, out in the Mayfair subdivision where I'd built their monstrosity. As they led me into the living room, I caught a pretty good idea of their new home furnished furnishings. They hadn't changed ideas even to the mixing of a wild mess of various nations and periods in the junk they'd placed all around the house. They led me past an early American library table to a deep Moroccan style couch and both pulled up chairs of French and Dutch design before me. Feeling thus surrounded by a small little circle of indignation, I began turning my hat around in my hands, staring and comfortably at my surroundings. Nice place you've got here, I said. We know that, stoddard declared, dismissing banalities. But we'd best get immediately to the point. About the rats. I asked. About the rats, said Stoddard. His wife nodded emphatically. There was a silence. Maybe a minute passed. I cleared my throat. I thought you I began.
- [260:02]
Sh.
- [260:03]
Stoddard hissed. I want you to sit here and hear the noises just as we have. Then you can draw your own conclusions. Silence, please. So I didn't say a word, and neither did mine. Hosts. We sat there like delegates to a convention of mutes who were too tired to use their hands. This time the silence seemed even more ominous. Several minutes must've passed before I began to hear the sounds. That was because I'd been listening for rat scrapings and not prepared for the noises I actually began to hear. Mr. And Mrs. Stoddart had their heads cocked to one side and were staring hard at me, waiting for a sign that I was catching the sounds. At first the noises seemed faint, blurred, perhaps like an almost inaudible sputtering of radio static. Then, as I adjusted my ear to them, I began to get faint squeaks and small, sharp noises that were like far distant poppings of small firecrackers. I looked up at the Stoddards. Okay, I admitted. I hear the noises. They seem to be coming from behind the walls, if anywhere. Stoddart looked smugly triumphant. I told you so. He smirked. But they aren't rat scrapings I said. I know the sounds rats make, and those aren't rat sounds. Stoddard sat bolt upright. What? He demanded indignantly. Do you mean to sit there and tell me? I do, I cut in. Ever heard rat noises? Stoddard looked at his wife. Both of them frowned. He looked back at me. No, he admitted slowly. That is, not until we got these rats. Never had rats before. So you jumped to conclusions and thought they were rat noises, I said. Even though you wouldn't recognize a rat noise if you heard one. Stoddart suddenly stood up. But danknabbit man. He exploded. If those aren't rat noises, what are they? I shrugged. I don't know, I admitted. They sound as if they might be coming through the pipes. Perhaps we ought to take a look around the house, beginning with the basement, eh? Stoddart considered this a minute, then he nodded. That seems reasonable enough, he admitted. I followed the amateur designer owner of this madhouse down into the basement. There we began our prowl for the source of the noise. He snapped on the light switch and I had a look around. The boiler and everything else in the basement was exactly as I remembered it, in the wrong place. There was an array of sealed tin cans, each holding about 5 gallons, banked around the boiler. I tapped on the sides of these and asked Stoddart what they were. Naphtha, he explained, for my wife's cleaning. Hell of a place to put them, I commanded. A familiar light came into Stoddard's stubborn eyes. That's where I want to put them, he said. I shrugged. Ok, I told him. But don't let the insurance people find out about it. We poked around the basement some more, and finally, on finding nothing that seemed to indicate a source of the sound, we went back up to the first floor. Our investigation of pipes and other possible sound carriers on the first floor was also fruitless, although the sounds grew slightly stronger than they'd been in the basement. I looked at Stoddard's shrugging. We'd better try the second floor, I said. I followed him upstairs to the second floor. Aside from the crazy belfry just above the attic, it was the top floor of the wildly constructed domicile. The sounds were distinctly more audible up there, especially in the centre bedroom. We covered the second floor to twice and ended back up in the center bedroom again before I realized that we were directly beneath the attic. I mentioned this to Stoddart. We might as well look through the attic, then, stoddart said. I led the way this time as we clambered up into the attic. Ever looked for your so called rats up here? I called over my shoulder. Stoddart joined me, snapping on a flashlight, spraying the beam around the attic rafter. No, he said. Of course not. I was opening my mouth to answer when I suddenly became aware that the noises were now definitely louder noises, faint but not blurred any longernoises which weren't really noises but were actually voices. I grabbed Stott by the arm. Listen, I ordered. We stood there silently for perhaps half a minute. Yes, there wasn't any question about it. Now I knew that the faint sounds were those of human voices. Good heavens. Stoddart exclaimed. Rats, eh? I said sarcastically. But. But. Stoddard began. He was obviously bewildered. There's a sort of central pipe and wiring maze up here, I told him. Due to the plans we were forced to follow in building this house of yours, those faint voices are carried through the pipes and wires for some reason of sound vibration and hurled up here. Just tell me where you keep your radio and we'll solve your problem. Stoddard looked at me a minute. But we don't own a radio, he said quietly. I was suddenly very much deflated. Are you sure? I demanded. Don't be silly, Stoddart told me. I stood there scratching my head and feeling foolish. Then I got another idea. Have you been up in that, er, ornamental belfry since you moved in? I asked. Of course not, stoddard said. It's to look at, not to peek out of. I have a hunch the sounds might be even more audible up there, I said.
- [265:44]
Why?
- [265:45]
I scratched my head. Just a hunch. Well, it's a damned fool one, Stoddard said. He turned around and started out of the attic. I followed behind him. You have to admit you haven't. Rats, I said. Stoddard muttered something I couldn't catch. When we got down to the first floor again, Mrs. Stoddart was waiting expectantly for our arrival. Did you discover where the rats are? She demanded. Stoddard shot me a glance. They aren't rats, he said with some reluctance. The noises which swear are faint voices and sounds of human. Human beings moving around. Were you talking to yourself while we were upstairs, Laura? Mrs. Stoddard gave her husband a surprised look. Who was there to talk with George? She asked. I had had about enough of this. I was damned tired of trotting around the weirdly laid out floors of the Stoddard home, trying to track down rats which weren't rats, but voices. If there are inexplicable echoes in this building, I said, it is due to the construction. And don't forget you wanted it this way. Now that I have proved to your satisfaction that you don't have ruts, I might as well go. Good day. I got my hat, and neither Stoddart nor his wife had much to say as they saw me to the door. Their accusing attitudes had vanished, however, and they both seemed even a trifle sheepish. It was 2 o' clock when I left them. I'd killed better than an hour and a half prowling around the place and another half hour driving out. I was damned disgusted by the time I got back to my office. You can imagine my state of mind. Consequently, some 25 minutes after I'd been back in my office, when I answered the telephone to hear Stood's voice coming over it. Mr. Kermit. He babbled excitedly. This is George b. Stoddard again, Mr. Kermit. What you've got now? I demanded. And don't tell me termites, Mr. Kermit. Stoddard gasped. You have to come back right away, Mr. Kermit. I will. Like hell, I told him flatly, hanging up. The telephone rang again. In another half minute it was tottered again. Mr. Kermit, please listen to me. I beg of you, come out here at once. It's terribly important. I didn't say a word this time. I just hung right up. In another half minute the telephone was jangling again. I was purple when I picked it up this time. Listen. I bellowed. I don't care what noises you're hearing now, stoddard cut in desperately, shouting at the top of his lungs to do so. I'm not only hearing the noises, Kermit, he yelled. I'm seeing the people who caused them. This caught me off balance. Huh? I gulped. The belfry. He yelled. I went up in the belfry, and you can see the people whose voices we heard. There was a pause while he found breath. Then he shouted, you have to come over. You're the only one I can think of to show this to. Stoddard was an eccentric, but only so far as his tastes in architecture were concerned. I realized this as I sat there gaping foolishly at the still vibrating telephone in my hand. Ok, I said, for no earthly reason that I could think of. OK, hang on. I'll be there in 20 minutes. Mrs. Stoddart met me at the door. This time she was worried almost frightened and very bewildered. George is upstairs, Mr. Kermit. He won't let me come up there. He told me to send you up the minute you arrived. He's up in the attic. What on earth? I began. I don't know, his wife said. I was down in the basement drying some clothes when I heard this terrible yelling from George. Then he was calling you on the telephone. I don't know what it's all about. I raced up to the attic and nothing flat, almost knocking my teeth out on the bottom step of the attic stairs. Then I stumbled into the darkness of the attic and saw Stoddard's flashlight bobbing around in a corner. Kermit. It was Toddard's voice. Yes, I answered. What in the hell is up? It had better be good. Hurry, sotot said. Over here. Quickly. I stumbled across the board spacings until I was standing beside Stoddard and peering up at what the beam was of. His flashlight revealed on the ceiling a rugged open hole which he'd made by tearing several coatings of insulation from the spot. For a minute I couldn't make out anything in that flashbeam glare. Stoddard had hold of my arm and was saying one word over and over.
- [270:14]
Look.
- [270:15]
Look, Look. Then my eyes got adjusted to the light change, and I was aware that I was gazing up into the interior of the crazy belfry and atop the monstrous house, gazing up into the interior while voices quite loud and clearly distinguishable were talking in a language which I didn't recognize immediately. As far as my vision was concerned, I might as well have been looking at a sort of grayish vaporish screen of some sort. That was all I saw.
- [270:42]
Shh.
- [270:43]
Stood. Hissed. Now don't say a word. Just listen to them. I held my breath, although it wasn't necessary. As I said, the voices coming down from that belfry were audible enough to have been askant 10 or 12ft away. But I held my breath anyway, meanwhile straining my eyes to pierce that grey screen of vapor on which the light was focused. And then I got it. The voices were talking in German, two of them, both harsh, masculine. What in the hell? I began. Is there a short wave set up there? Or Stoddard cut me off? Can't you see it yet? He hished. The voices went on talking while I strained my eyes even more in an effort to pierce that grey fog covering the rent in the ceiling. And then I saw. Saw it first, as if through a thin grey screen of gauze, I was looking up into a Room of some sort. A big room. An incredibly big room. A room so big that two dozen belfry rooms could have fit into it. And then it got even clearer. There was a desk at the end of the room. A tremendously ornate desk. A desk behind which was sitting a small, gray, uniformed, moustached man. There was another uniformed person of porcine girth standing beside that desk and pointing to a map on the wall in front of him. He was jabbering excitedly to the little man at the desk, and he wore a uniform that was so plushily gaudy it was almost ridiculous. The two kept chattering back and forth to each other in German, obviously talking about the map at which the fat, plush Cladwan was pointing. I turned incredulously to Stoddard. Wh. What in the hell goes? I demanded. Stoddard seemed suddenly vastly relieved. So you see it and hear it, too. He exclaimed. Thank God for that. I thought I'd lost my mind. I grabbed hard on his arm. But listen. I began. Listen nothing, he hissed. We both can't be crazy. Those are the voices we kept hearing before, and those two people are the talkers. Those two German five words answered Lauses. Hitler and Goering. There. He'd said it. I hadn't dared to. It sounded too mad, too wildly, bubblingly insane to utter. But now I looked back through, through that thin grey cheese cloth of fog back into the room. The two occupants couldn't be anyone other than Hitler and Goering, and I was suddenly aware that the map Goering pointed to so frequently was a map of Austria. But what? I started again. Stoddart looked me in the eye. I can understand a little German, he said. They're talking about an invasion of Austria. And if you will look hard at the corner of that map, you'll see a date marked 1938. I did look hard, and of course I saw that date. I turned back to Stoddard. We're both crazy, I said, a little wildly. We're both stark raving nuts. Let's get out of here. We are looking back almost five years into the past, Stoddard hissed. We are looking back five years into Germany, into a room in which Hitler and Goering are talking over an approaching invasion of a country called Austria. I might have believed I was crazy when I first found this alone. But not now. Maybe we were both crazy. Maybe he was wrong. But then and there, I believed him. And I knew that somehow, in some wild, impossible fashion, that belfry on Stoddard's Asinine house had become a door leading through space and time back five years into Germany, into the same room where Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering planned the conquest of Austria. Stoddard was taking something out of his pocket. Now that you're here, I can try it, he said. I didn't dare do so before, since I felt I couldn't trust my own mind alone in the thing. I looked at what he held in his hands. A stone tied to a long piece of string. What's that for? I demanded. I want to see if that veil, that gray fog door can be penetrated, he hissed. Stoddard was swinging the stone on a string in a sharp arc now, and suddenly he released it, sending it sailing through the greyish aperture in the ceiling straight into the belfry, or rather the big room. I saw and heard the stone on the string hit the marble floor of that room. Then, just as sharply, Stoddard jerked it back, yanking it into the attic again. The result, in the room beyond the fork sheet, was instantly spontaneous. Goering wheeled from the map on the wall, glaring wildly around the room. A pistol was in his hand. Hitler had half risen behind that ornate desk and was searching the vast, otherwise unoccupied room wildly with his eyes. Of course, neither saw anything. Stoddart, breathing excitedly at my sight, had pulled the stone back into our section of time and space, but his eyes were gleaming. It can be done, he whispered fiercely. It can be crossed. But Watton. I started. He cut me off with a wave of his hand, pointing back to the gray screen covering the hole in the ceiling. Goering had put the pistol back in the holster at his side and was grinning sheepishly at Der Fhrer, who was resuming his seat behind the desk in confused and angry embarrassment. The voices picked up again, their saying, how silly to be startled by a sound. Stoddart hissed in my ear. Then he grabbed my arm. But come, we can't wait any longer. Something has to be done. Immediately he was pulling me away from the rent in the ceiling, away from the door that had joined our time and space to the time and space of a world unseen five years ago. As we emerged from the attic and started blinkingly down the steps, Stoddard almost ran ahead of me. We must hurry, he said again and again. To where? I demanded bewilderedly. Hadn't we better do something about. Exactly, stoddard panted. We're really going to do something about that phenomenon in the belfry. We're going to the first place in two where we can buy two rifles, quick. Rifles? I gasped, still not getting it for that little moustached swine up there, stoddart said, pointing toward the attic. If a stone can cross that gray barrier strike, so can bullets. We are both going to draw a bead on Adolf Hitler in the year of 1938 and thus avert this hell he's spread since then. With two of us firing, we can't miss. And then, of course, I got it. It was incredible. Impossible. But that gray screen covering the rent in the attic ceiling upstairs wasn't impossible. I'd seen it. Neither was the room behind it, the room where the belfry was supposed to be but where Adolf Hitler's inner sanctum was instead. I'd seen that, too. So was it impossible that we'd be able to eliminate the chief cause of the world's trouble by shooting accurately back across time and space? At that moment, I didn't think so. Our mad, clattering dash down the attic steps and then down to the first floor brought Mrs. Soddard up from the basement. She looked frightenedly from her husband to me, then back to him again. What's wrong? She quavered. Nothing, stoddard said, pushing her gently but quickly aside as we dashed for the door. But George. Mrs. Stoddard shrilled behind us. We heard her footsteps hurrying toward the door even as we were out of it. My car. I yelled. It's right in front. I know the closest place where we can get the guns. Stoddard and I piled into the car like a pair of high school kids when the last bell rings. Then I was gunning the motor while out of a corner of my eye I could see Stoddard's wife running down the front steps, shouting shrilly after us. We jump from the curb like a plane from a catapult, doing 50 by my quick shift to second gear. Then we were tearing the quiet streets of Mayfair's second subdivision apart with the noise of a blasting horn and the snarling motor. It was 10 minutes later when I screeched to a stop in front of the sports and gun store I'd remembered existed in Mayfair's first subdivision. The clerk was amazed at the wild speed with which we raced in, grabbed the guns, threw the money on the counter, and dashed out. We must have looked like something out of a gangster's movie as we raced back to Stoddard's place. I was doing the driving and Stoddart had clambered in beside me. Both rifles and Several cartridge packages in his hands. He was rocking back and forth in mad impatience, as if by rocking he could increase our speed. The expression on his face was positively bloodthirsty. And then we heard the sirens behind us, shrill, coming up like comet whales in spite of our own speed. Oh, God, Stoddard groaned. Police. I squinted up into my rear vision mirror. We were less than two blocks from the Stoddard house now, and the thought of being overhauled by police at the juncture was still sickening, unbearable even to contemplate. And then I saw the reason for the sirens, saw them in the rear vision mirror. Two fire engines, one a hook and ladder outfit, the other a hose track. It's all right, I yelped. It's only two firetracks. Thank God, Stoddard gasped. We were a block from his place now, with only one corner left to turn, before we'd see the mad architectural monstrosity he called his home, before we'd see the crazy belfry which held the salvation of the world in its screwballish, queer, angled lines. And then the fire trucks. And the sirens were nearer and louder, less than a block behind us. At that instant we turned the corner and came into full view of the Stoddard place. It was a mass of flames, utterly, roaringly ablaze. I almost drove us off the street and into a tree, and by the time I'd gotten a grip on myself, we were just a few houses away from the blazing inferno of sorts of crazy quilt dwelling. I stopped by the curb and clambered out of the car on to knees which would scarcely support me. My stomach was turning over and over in an apparently endless series of nauseating somersaults. Stoddard, white faced, frozen, stood there beside me, clutching the guns and the cartridge boxes foolishly in his hands. Then someone was running up to us, running and crying sobbingly, breathlessly. It was Toddard's wife. The firetruck screeched to a stop before the blazing building at that instant, and her first words were drowned in the noise they made. Just drying out some clothes, George, she sobbed. Just drying them out, and turned on the furnace to help dry them. You left like that and I got frightened. I ran to a neighbor's. The explosion and fire started not five minutes later. Secretly, I thought of the naphtha Stoddard had piled near his boiler. I didn't say anything, though, for I knew he was thinking of it also. He dropped the guns and cartridge boxes, and in a tight, strained voice, while putting his arms comfortingly around his wife. That's all right, Laura. It wasn't your fault. We'll have another house like this, so help me God, Just like this. It has been six months now since Stoddard's architectural eyesight burned to the ground. He started rebuilding immediately after that. I turned over all the drafts my company made from his first crude plants and he handed them to the supervisor of the construction company he bought out. You see, he took every dime he owned, sold out his insurance business, and has gone into the building game in dead earnest. He explained it to me this I couldn't go on having house after house built and torn down on the same spot, Kermit. It would break me in no time this way, with my own company to construct the house every time. I'll save about half each time. Then you're going to build precisely the same house? I demanded. His jaw went hard and he peered from behind his spectacles with the intense glare of a fanatic. For once he didn't look like Mr. Suburbanite. You know damn well I am, he said, and until it is precisely the same as the first first I'll keep tearing em down and putting em up again. I don't care if I have to build a thousand to do it right on this spot. Of course I knew what he meant by precisely the same, and I wondered what on earth the odds were. He was bucking through chance and a mad combination of angles that time and space door had appeared the first time, but it might have been hanging on the tiniest atom of a fractional difference. Stoddard has already finished his second house, and although it looks exactly like the monstrosity I first built for him, it can't be precisely like it. For he didn't get the gray shredded door when he poked a hole in the attic ceiling and looked up into the second crazy belfry, all he saw was the belfry. Tomorrow he starts staring down to build another, and pretty soon people are going to be certain he's crazy. As a matter of fact, they'll soon be pretty sure I'm loony. Also, for of course I can't help going over there now and then to sort of lend a hand. End of Rats in the Belfry by John Yorke Cabot.
- [283:51]
Preferred Position by David Dreyfuss this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org Read by Dale Grothman does your job Bore you? Are you just plain tired of working for a living? Well, meet a man from the future who'd gladly trade places. Preferred Position By David Dreyfuss the bed woke them. Time to get up, dears, it cooed. Time to get up and greet the sun. Time to get up. Then the supporting magnetism faded and let their mattress drift gently to the soft, warm floor. Janet turned and opened her eyes, pouting at lest he scowled back, grumbled something, and rolled away. She shook his film coated shoulder. Come on, Les, come on. You'll feel better after coffee. Don't want any, he snarled. But the damage had been done. At the word coffee, a grotesque marionette opened the bedroom door and minced in with two steaming cups on a tray, swinging them artfully so that they appeared likely to spill, but didn't. For some years now that dance had left Janet unamused. She was about to say so when Les growled, these damned dolls are a nuisance. I wish you'd ordered a plain automatic dispenser. They're even more boring, janet argued, sitting up. Her gauzy film dress and sleepy face made her look appealingly childlike. She was 55. Les was 60, with a full head of blond hair atop six and a half feet of slim, solid flesh. He sat up with the expression of an exasperated 6 year old. Go away, he told the doll. It did, but I wanted some, janet wailed. She was careful, though, not to use the words that would cause the doll to return. Neither did Les. He said, why don't we take a couple of pills and go back to sleep till tomorrow? There isn't a darned thing to do. There never is, janet said. Then, noting she'd inadvertently agreed with her husband, she quickly added, but we can't sleep. We did that yesterday. If we don't move around, we'll practically stop eating. And anyway, the neighbors will miss us. First thing you know we'll be accused of either a hunger strike or immobility. Then they'll enslave us for attempting suicide. She sniffed in self pity at the thought. Off honk em, les said. Slavery. At least be a change. The slaves have something to do. Don't talk nonsense, janet said tartly. You know perfectly well they always torture slaves. Yeah, but I can't face this any longer. I've got 65 more years of longevity, according to the doctors. And they're never wrong, curse them. 65 more years without the possibility of illness. Want risk. Even an accident is unlikely. Nothing's going to happen in all that time, Jan. I just can't face it. Isn't that just like a man? She scoffed. You know very well I've got 70 years to go, five still to wait before I can even have my first child. You're just being selfish. They glowered at each other. Then Les rubbed her cheek with the back of his hand and smiled. Thanks, kid, he said. You really had me going for a minute. Now I feel better. Pleased with the compliment, Janet concocted an extra fancy combination of films to spray on herself for the morning's wear. When it was in place, she ordered a large breakfast and arranged to have the waiter doll do a special dance routine while serving. But Les's smile had vanished with the whiskers he'd rubbed off. He picked at his food, turned his back on the dancing, and afterward yawned away the few minutes they spent on their apartment's terrace, stared at by 50,000 neighbors who lacked anything better to do. When Les wandered idly off, Janet followed. Les went to the living room, projected a book onto the ceiling, switched it off without reading, played with the glowing phosphors that lighted the room in colors he varied jarringly, fiddled with the console of the perfume aerosol and created a stink, and then in sheer despair turned on the puppet set. Its lighted screen listed the necessary dolls and props, so he laid them out. Soon the three foot stage reflected a broadcast picture of the State executive office. A stringless, formally dressed puppet sat at a desk, its blank face a transmitted facsimile of the Governor's. And the last time I can make this announcement, the Governor was saying into a hidden microphone. The tests are to begin at noon. Jobs are now open. I repeat, jobs are now open. Man only, of course. But if any of you fellows out there suffer from boredom, and who doesn't, in this wonderful state of ours that by virtue of the new energy sources guarantees leisured security to each citizen. If I repeat, you suffer from ennui, then why not apply for a job? Do it now. No further vacancies will occur for years, and we have some really desirable positions open this morning. Appointments will be made strictly on merit, as usual, with a job for every applicant and the best job for the top man. Though it's true that losers in this competition are required to assume for life the less desirable duties that our civilization imposes, I assure you that it isn't as bad as it sounds. I was pretty far down the list in my day, yet I only have to be governor, so won't you please apply? I want a lot of competition. The stage darkened and the puppet got up and walked to its box. Before the lights could go up on the next program, Les switched the set off. What do you think? He asked Janet. I don't know, she said. Nobody in my family ever worked. Mine either, but once I knew a fellow who tried for a job. He seemed okay to me, but he sure didn't get a good one. Had a clerical position with business machines, and their output was geared down to spread the work so he didn't have enough to do. Just stack punch cards or something. Every day for 80 years. Oh, you do better than that, dear. Maybe. Point is, there are jobs worse than no job at all. I'm not so sure, janet said, suddenly determined. Only a few minutes ago you weren't very happy about the idle days ahead. Why not take a chance? Take a chance? What kind of language is that? Chance went out along with disease and poverty and crime and accidents. You're way off base, Jan, but you have a chance. Oh, all right. An opportunity then, if you like that better to get a good job now. If I were a man. But you're not still. Maybe I'll try it. For the first time in a month or two. Janet kissed him warmly, and after she'd helped him into his wings and seen him off from the terrace, she felt a strange, warm glow of anticipation. Not since she'd been married had there been need for a decision that could bring change into her life. This was the day. It was a day for a lot of others, too. She learned that from the noon broadcast of the test ceremony. In my time, the governor said, speaking from the Capitol's rotunda. In my time, a hundred aspirants was considered a good turnout. Today's applicants total a thousand. We haven't actually got a thousand jobs lined up, but we'll get em. And I'm privileged to announce, now that the list of competitors has closed, that we do have the astoundingly Large number of 10, repeat, 10 genuinely desirable appointments to make 10 good jobs for a thousand applicants didn't sound to Janet like an astoundingly large number. She'd been sprawling on the magnetically positioned pad halfway between floor and ceiling, but she sat up when the governor stopped talking and with a twinge of genuine and unwonted anxiety watched the long file of applicants as they approached in turn the brain wave analyzer, the voice operated sorter that would add their life files to current test results and the officials who judged each man's configuration. She wished they'd announce the test results publicly, but knew they wouldn't so when Les had gone through about 20 minutes after the start, Janet shut off the broadcast, dissolved her dress films, and had herself rubbed by the massage machine. The morning's suspense was proving too much for her, and she didn't want to have a headache when Les came home. But even the mechanical masseuse couldn't rub away her strange feelings. Not since marriage had Janet felt curiosity as to the future. What if he got so dull they never even argued about anything? She shivered at the thought, but then she smiled, and for the next hour Janet lay under the soothing massage and gave herself up to the delightful new pleasure of worrying. When Les returned, shadowing the terrace in his descent like some portentous bird, Janet began to shake. Without even waiting to kiss him, she said, how was it? How did you do? Les grinned tensely. Help me mope first, he said. I'm tired. Unable to get anything else out of him until it was done, she tore his wings off, damagingly kissed him. And now, won't you say something? I'm hungry. No. She danced her impatient dance like a little girl. Tell me. But even as she pouted, her eyes sparkled in anticipation. I start tomorrow, he said. Did you get the best job? Nope. No, I really didn't. What then? Second best. Oh, wonderful. What is it? Rigor and high climber. Topping trees, setting structural iron, fixing flagpoles, that sort of thing. Powderman was first. Oh, Rigor's wonderful. Visions of his future work flashed across her mind, implanted there by childhood hours watching other members of this elite profession at their thrilling work. She knew there could be broken cables falling, pulleys snapped booms dropped loads. Every day would have its interesting possibilities, my darling. She threw her arms around him and was momentarily silenced by his kiss. Then she stepped back, looked admiringly up at him, and said, oh, I'm so happy for you and so proud. I'm going right in and order up a nice big meal. I know you'll enjoy this one. It really might be your last preferred position. By David Dreyfuss.
- [297:48]
The stolen bacillus by H.G. wells this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org the Stolen Bacalus by H.G. wells this again, said the bacteriologist, slipping a glass slide under the microscope, is, well, a preparation of the bacillus of cholera. The cholera germ. The pale faced man peered down the microscope. He was evidently not accustomed to that kind of thing and held A limp white hand over his disengaged eye. I see very little, he said. Touch this screw, said the bacteriologist. Perhaps the microscope is out of focus for you. All these vary so much. Just the fraction of a turn this way or that. Ah, now I see, said the visitor. Not so very much to see, after all. Little streaks and shreds of pink. And yet those particles, those mere atomies, might multiply and devastate a city. Wonderful. He stood up and, releasing the glass slip from the microscope, held it in his hand towards the window. Scarcely visible, he said, scrutinizing the preparation. He hesitated. Are these alive? Are they dangerous now? These have been stained and killed, said the bacteriologist. I wish for my own part we could kill and stain every one of them in the universe. I suppose, the pale man said with a slight smile, that you scarcely care to have such things about you and the living in the active state. On the contrary, we are obliged to, said the bacteriologist. Here, for instance. He walked across the room.
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Room.
- [299:22]
And took up one of several sealed tubes. Here is the living thing. This is a cultivation of the actual living disease. Bacteria. He hesitated. Bottled cholera, so to speak. A slight gleam of satisfaction appeared momentarily in the face of the pale man. It's a deadly thing to have in your possession, he said, Devouring the little tube with his eyes. The bacteriologist watched the morbid pleasure in his visitor's expression. This man, who had visited that afternoon with a note of introduction from an old friend, interested him from the very contrast of their dispositions. The lank black hair and deep grey eyes, the haggard expression and nervous manner, the fitful yet keen interest of his visitor, were a novel change from the phlegmatic deliberations of the ordinary scientific worker, with whom the bacteriologist chiefly associated. It was perhaps natural with a hero evidently so impressionable to the lethal nature of his topic to take them most effective aspect of the matter. He held the tube in his hand thoughtfully. Yes, here is the pestilence imprisoned. Only break such a little tube as this into a supply of drinking water, say to these minute particles of life that one must needs stain and examine with the highest powers of the microscope even to see, and that one can neither smell nor taste, say to them, go forth, increase and multiply and replenish the cisterns. And death, mysterious, untraceable death, death, swift and terrible death, full of pain and indignity, would be released upon the city and go hither and thither seeking his victims. Here he would take the husband from the wife here, the child from its mother here, the statesman from his duty, and here the toiler from his trouble. He would follow the water mains, creeping along streets, picking out and punishing a house here and a house there where they did not boil their drinking water, creeping into the wells of the mineral water makers, getting washed into salad and lying dormant in ices. He would wait, ready to be drunk in the horse troughs and by unwary children in the public fountains. He would soak into the soil to reappear in springs and wells at a thousand unexpected places. Once stars went the water supply, and before we could ring him in and catch him again, he would have decimated the metropolis. He stopped abruptly. He had been told rhetoric was his weakness. But he is quite safe here, you know. Quite safe. The pale faced man nodded. His eyes shone. He cleared his throat. These anarchist rascals, said he, are fools, blind fools, to use bombs when this kind of thing is attainable, I think. A gentle rap, a mere light touch of the fingernails was heard at the door. The bacteriologist opened it. Just a minute, dear, whispered his wife. When he re entered the laboratory, his visitor was looking at his watch. I had no idea I'd wasted it. An hour of your time, he said. Twelve minutes to four. I ought to have left here by half past three. But your things really were too interesting. No, positively. I cannot stop a moment longer. I have an engagement at 4. He passed out of the room, reiterating his thanks, and the bacteriologist accompanied him to the door and then returned thoughtfully along the passage to his laboratory. He was musing on the ethnology of his visitor. Certainly the man was not a Teutonic type, nor a common Latin one. A morbid product, anyhow. I am afraid, said the bacteriologist to himself, how he gloated on those cultivations of disease germs. A disturbing thought struck him. He turned to the bench by the vapour bath and then very quickly to his writing table. Then he hastily felt in his pockets and rushed to the door. I may have put it down on the hall table, he said. Minnie. He shouted hoarsely in the hall. Yes, dear, came a remote voice. Had I anything in my hand when I spoke to you, my dear, just now? Pause. Nothing, dear, because I remember. Blue ruin. Cried the bacteriologist, and incontinently ran to the front door and down the steps of his house to the street. Minnie, hearing the door slam violently, ran in alarm to the window. Down the street, a slender man was getting into a cab. The bacteriologist, hatless and in his carpet slippers, was running and gesticulating wildly towards this group. One slipper came off, but he did not wait for it. He has gone mad, said Minnie. It's that horrid science of his. And opening the window would have called after him. The slender man, suddenly glancing round, seemed struck with the same idea of mental disorder. He pointed to the bacteriologist, said something to the cabman. The apron of the cab slammed, the whip swished, the horse's feet clattered and in a moment the cab bacteriologist hotly in pursuit, had receded up the vista of the roadway and disappeared round the corner. Minnie remained straining out of the window for a minute, then she drew her head back into the room again. She was dumbfounded. Of course he is eccentric, she meditated. But running about London in the height of the season, two in his socks. A happy thought struck her. She hastily put her bonnet on, seized his shoes, went into the hall, took down his hat and light overcoat from the pegs, emerged upon the doorstep and hailed a cab that opportunely crawled by. Drive me up the road and round Havelock Crescent and see if we can find a gentleman running about in a velveteen coat and no hat. Velveteen coat, ma', am, and no hat. Very good, ma'.
- [304:09]
Am.
- [304:09]
And the cabman whipped up at once in the most matter of fact way as if he drove to the distress every day of his life. Some few minutes later the little group of cabmen and loafers that collect round the cabin's shelter at Haverstock Hill were startled by the passing of a cab with a ginger coloured screw of a horse driven furiously. They were silent as it went by and then as it receded. That's our icks. What's he got? Said the stout gentleman known as Old Tootles. He's a usin his whip ears to write, said the ostler boy. Hullo, said poor old Tommy Byles. Here's another bloomin lunatic blowed if there ain't. It's old George, said Tootles. And he's driving a loon tick as you say. Ain't he a clawing out the keb? Wonder if he's after Harry Icks. The group around the cabman's shelter became animated chorus. Go it, George. It's a race. You catch him. Whip up. She's a goer, she is, said the ostler boy. Strike me giddy. Cried old Tootles. Here I'm a going to begin in a minute. Here's another coming. If all the kebs in Hempstead ain't gone mad this morning. It's a fieldmate this time, said the ostler boy. She's a follin him, said old Tootles, usually the other way about. What's she got on her hand? Looks like a Iat. What a blooming lark it is. Three to one and Old George, said the ostler boy. Next, Minnie went by in a perfect roar of applause. She did not like it, but she felt she was doing her duty and whirled on down Haverstock Hill and Camden Town High street with her eyes ever intent on the animated back of old George, who was driving her vagrant husband so incomprehensibly away from her. The man in the foremost cab sat crouched in the corner, his arms tightly folded, folded, and the little tube that contained such vast possibilities of destruction gripped in his hand. His mood was a singular mix of fear and exaltation. Chiefly he was afraid of being caught before he'd accomplish his purpose, but behind this was a vaguer but larger fear of the awfulness of his crime. But his exaltation far exceeded his fear. No anarchist before him had ever approached this conception of his Ravacho Velon. All these distinguished persons whose fame he had entered envied, dwindled into insignificance beside him. He'd only to make sure of the water supply and break the little tube into a reservoir. How brilliantly he had planned it, forged a letter of introduction and got into the laboratory, and how brilliantly he had seized his opportunity. The world should hear of him at last. All those people who had sneered at him, neglected him, preferred other people to him, found his company undesirable, should consider him at last death. Death. They had always treated him as a man of no importance. All the world had been in a conspiracy to keep him under. He would teach them yet what it is to isolate a man. What was this familiar street? Great St. Andrew street, of course. How fared the chase? He craned out of the cab. The bacteriologist was scarcely 50 yards behind. That was bad. He had been caught and stopped. Yet he felt in his pocket for money and found half a sovereign. This he thrust up through the trap in the top of the cab into the man's face. Place more, he shouted. If only we get away. The money was snatched out of his hand. Right you are, said the cabman, and the trap slammed and the lash lay along the glistening side of the horse. The cab swayed and the Anarchist, half standing under the trap, put the hand containing the little glass tube upon the apron to preserve his balance. He felt the brittle thing crack and the broken half of it rang upon the floor of the cab. He fell back into the seat with a curse and stared dismally at the two or three drops of moisture. The apron. He shuddered. Well, I suppose I shall be the first few anyhow. I shall be a martyr. That's something. But it is a filthy death nevertheless. I wonder if it hurts as much as they say. Presently a thought occurred to him. He groped between his feet. A little drop was still in the broken end of the tube, and he drank that to make sure. It was better to make sure. At any rate, he would not fail. Then it dawned upon him that there was no further need to escape the bacteriologist in Wellington Street. He told the cabman to stop and got out. He slipped on the step. His head felt queer. It was rapid stuff, this cholera poison. He waved his cabman out of existence, so to speak, and stood on the pavement with his arms folded upon his breast, awaiting the arrival of the bacteriologist. There was something tragic in his pose. The sense of imminent death gave him a certain dignity. He greeted his pursuer with a defiant laugh. Vive la naqui. You are too late, my friend. I have dreamed.
- [308:21]
Drunk it.
- [308:22]
The choleras abroad. The bacteriologist from his cab beamed curiously at him through his spectacles. You have drunk it. An anarchist. I see now. He was about to say something more and then checked himself. A smile hung in the corner of his mouth. He opened the apron of his cab as if to descend, at which the anarchist waved him a dramatic farewell and strode off towards Waterloo Bridge, carefully jostling his infected body against as many people as possible. The bacteriology was so preoccupied with the vision of him that he scarcely manifested the slightest surprise at the appearance of Minnie upon the pavement with his hat and shoes and overcoat. Very good of you to bring my things, he said, and remained lost in contemplation of the receding figure of the anarchist. You had better get in, he said, still staring. Minnie felt absolutely convinced now that he was mad and directed the cabman home on her own responsibility. Put on my shoes. Certainly, dear, he said as the cab began to turn and hit the street. Strutting black figure, now small in the distance from his eyes. Then suddenly something grotesque struck him and he laughed. Then he remarked, it is really very serious, though. You see, that man came to my house to see me, and he is an anarchist. No, don't faint or I cannot possibly tell you the rest. And I wanted to astonish him, not knowing he was an anarchist and took up a cultivation of that new species of bacterium I was telling you of that in fact and I think cause the blue patches upon various monkeys. And like a fool I said it was Asiatic cholera and he ran away with it to poison the water of London. And he certainly might have made things look blue for the civilized city. And now he has swallowed it. Of course I cannot say what will happen. But you know it turned that kitten blue, and the three puppies and Patches and the sparrow bright blue. But the bother is I shall have all the trouble and expense of preparing some more. Put on my coat on this hot day. Why? Because we might meet Mrs. Jabber. My dear, Mrs. Jabber is not a draft. But why should I wear a coat on a hot day? Because of Mrs. Oh, very well. End of the Stolen Bacillus by H.G. wells.
- [310:27]
Homecoming Hoard by Robert Silverberg this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org Read by Dale Grothman Haverford knew from his radio contacts he was the last man alive on Earth. His death was certain for the enemy numbered trillions. A Homecoming Horde by Robert Silverberg the room was sealed as tightly as possible. Haverford had checked it for cracks, made sure the windows were caulked, and now kept constant guard. He was alone. He could never tell when the alien invaders would break through. I must be nearly the last, he thought. It was strange, this feeling of being alone on Earth. But it was probably true. The aliens had come six days before Haverford remembered picking up their ultimatum on his ham set. Earthman, the Lanthai are coming. Beware. That was all it had been an ominous warning rather than a threat or an order. The way the message had been worded left little doubt that they were conquerors. Conquerors from space. Haverford had been amused at first. A solitary recluse, he had little dealings with his fellow men, at least not in person. The costly ham set that occupied nearly a third of his one room flat was his sole contact. Through the radio. He kept in regular touch with friends in Yokohama and Buenos Aires, Texas and Oregon. While leaving the confines of his own room in increasingly rare intervals, he had naturally picked up the Lanthahy message on his set. There wasn't an amateur operator in the world that hadn't detected them. That was when he began to feel it Was a joke. Reports came in Dazo Osaka. The Japanese contact reported hearing the strange message. Lionel Bentham in Sussex picked it up also, as did Miguel Bartarone and Buenos Aires Earthman. The Lanthai are coming. Beware. Someone, there was no doubt of it, was beaming the message at the entire earth from outside. And then the Lanthe had come. Haverford paced his room nervously, remembered the day of their landing. He had been talking to Bentham the Englishman, a slow, speaking, phlegmatic sort. So I mean to write to my man in parliament, you. You know, and ask him to plump for legislation. It'll be a great boon for ham operators if. Lord, what's that? What's that? Haverford had stared at the transmitter in shocked surprise as Bentham's voice was replaced with the screeching of static. Then some other sound he did not understand, followed by a quick, sharp, repulsive click and silence. Bantham. Bantham. Silence. That had been the beginning. The Lanthahi had landed all right. The alien invaders were sweeping the world. Haverford got the details from the news broadcast. They had come in silvery ships, hundreds of them. Thousands. You should have seen it, Bartarone told him, speaking in his accented English all over Buenos Aires in midday. Suddenly, the sky was blotted out. Ships, silvery ships. They were small. They started to land. Have you seen the invaders yourself? No, not yet. They haven't come this far west in the city yet. But the Argentinian's voice stopped. Haverford listened numbly, knowing despite himself, exactly what had happened. The invaders had come. He rose, looked around his room. He had enough food in the freezer and on the shelves to last for months. Haverford was a frugal man. By buying in quantity, he saved precious cash that was used for augmenting the radio set. He decided to hide in his home, to seal it from the outside world. To wait. Perhaps the invaders would be driven back. Perhaps Earth would fall. But he would be safe. He would not be killed in the war of conquest. He made sure there was no way his room could could be entered. Just as he was about to nail fast the bolt that held the door shut, he heard knocking. Three sharp knocks. Haverford leaped to the bolt, drove it home, hung tensely against the door. Who is it? He asked. Mrs. Kelly, came the reply. He almost fainted from relief. He had expected the aliens, and it was only the landlady. Cautiously, he threw open the door. Yes? Have you heard, Mr. Haverford? About the invasion, I mean. Yes, I've heard. What of it? I just thought I'd tell You, she said, shrugging. I know you don't come out much or read the papers, and I thought maybe. I've heard over the radio, he told her stiffly. Is there anything else I can do for you? No, not at all. Very well, then. If anyone comes to see me, you can tell them I'm not looking for visitors. Yes, Mr. Haverford. She disappeared into the darkness of the corridor. Haverford slammed the door, shot the bolt home. Nailed it fast. So far as the outside world was concerned, he was as good as dead. He set to work, sealing himself in. Two days passed. Two days in which gradually, one by one, his contacts here and there over the globe were silenced. Bentham had gone first, then Bertarone. His two Japanese friends were gone. Now, too. The Orient was overrun by the invaders. South America as well. Word was coming from the states of alien advances. New York was in Llanthahy hands, and no broadcasts were being made from there. The United nations delegates had fled to an unnamed city and were continuing to talk. To discuss the situation, no doubt, Haverford thought bitterly. But talk would do no good. Soon the entire world would be in alien hands, and there would be no stopping them. None at all. Texas went Oregon. The aliens were obviously working their way toward the center of North America. So far, Chicago had reported no alien attacks, but the United States forces in the Seacoast States had been driven back. Haverford ate his frozen food sparingly and spent long hours at the radio. One by one, his contacts were snuffed out. He ran down the list in his codebook, calling people he hadn't buzzed for years, just trying to hear human voices again. Come in, W3X FA. Come in, W3XFA. No answer. None at all. The aliens held all of Asia, most of Europe. He got a brief response from Belgium on the third day, but was unable to pick up the signal. An hour later, an underground worker in an Iron Curtain country called him that afternoon. And then he went. The marauders from space covered the globe. Haverford looked at his map. They were working in an ever tightening ring. Soon they would be in Chicago. Then the strength of his improvised fortress would be sorely tested. By the fourth day, he was down to just one contact. A man in upper Illinois, a ham operator out of a Chicago suburb. You there, Haverford? I'm here. What do you hear? Nothing. The aliens are everywhere. I can see them from my window, swarming in the streets. They've won, all right. Mankind is defeated. You can see them, eh? Must be a ghastly sight. Haverford's own Window faced the back. It is. There must be a million of the ugly beasts and not a human being in sight. Haverford. Who ever expected it would come like this? No one did. No one ever dreamed of it. They must breed fantastically rapidly if they can send an invasion force of this size. Imagine it, Haverford, A living tide of Lanthahi, spilling out from their home world, covering all of the universe. And yes, I hear you. Haverford said something outside my door. It's them, Haverford. It's them. The set went dead. Haverford stared dully at it for a moment, then turned it off. There was no one else to talk to. He was alone. He was the last survivor. Unless there was someone else cowering in a skyscraper basement somewhere, hiding in a thick field of corn. But the Lanthaihi were methodical killers. They had set out to exterminate the human race, and Haverford stiffened. What was that scrabbling, scratching noise in the hall? It sounded like he knew what it was. The Lanthai were coming. They were wiping out the stragglers now, the few like Haverford who had remained alive. They were wiping the earth clean of life, leaving it bare and ready for them. The scraping at the door grew louder, the bolt strained, the hinges started to give. Haverford watched coldly, knowing that he hadn't done the job well enough. They were going to be able to get through. A dark line appeared down the center of his door. It began to crack. It yielded. Haverford turned frantically to his radio set, desperately sending out a call for help. But of course no one heard him. Nobody answered. He was alone and he knew it. Except for them. He wheeled to face them, to go down fighting. He looked in horror at them. Insects. Huge, ugly and alien. They came on. He backed to the wall, and in the last moment, as time seemed to stand still, he became aware of an insignificant detail, laughable, yet tragically ironic. A fly buzzed around his head. An Earth fly. A pitiful creature, a nothing. An insect. The fly landed on the floor a few feet ahead of him, crawling slowly toward the alien horde pouring through the door. And the aliens broke their ranks, passed around the fly almost respectfully, he thought. Or was it paternally? Then they reached him. The End of Homecoming Hoard by Robert Silverburn.
- [323:48]
The Sound of Silence by Barbara Constant this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org recording by Veronica Mead the Sound of Silence by Barbara Constant Most of the people, when asked to define the ultimate in loneliness. See, it's being alone in a crowd. And it takes only one slight difference to make one forever alone in the crowd. Nobody at Hoskins, Haskell and Chapman Incorporated knew just why Lucilla Brown, Gigi Hoskins secretary, came to work half an hour early every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Even GG Himself, had he been asked, would have had trouble explaining how his occasional exasperated wish that just once somebody would reach the office ahead of him could have caused his attractive young secretary to start doing so three times a week. Or kept her at it all the months since the first gloomy March day. Nobody asked Gigi, however, not even Paul Chapman, the very junior partner in the advertising firm who had displayed more than a little interest in Lucilla all fall and winter, but very little interest in anything all spring and summer. Nobody asked Lucilla why she left early on the days she arrived early. After all, eight hours is long enough. And certainly nobody knew where Lucilla went at 4:30 on those three days. Nor would anybody in the office have believed it. Had he known Lucky Brown seeing a psychiatrist, the typist would have giggled, the office boy would have snorted, and every salesman on the Fort Horse would have golfed. Even Paul Chapman might have managed a wry smile. A real laugh had been beyond him for several months, ever since he asked Lucilla confidently, will you marry me? And she answered, I'm sorry, Paul. Thanks, but no thanks. Not that seeing a psychiatrist was anything to laugh at in itself. After all, the year was 1962 and there were almost as many serious articles about mental health as there were cartoons. Cartoons about psychoanalysts, even in the magazines that specialized in poking fun. In certain cities, including Los Angeles, in certain industries, especially advertising. I have an appointment with my psychiatrist. Was a perfectly acceptable excuse for leaving work early. The idea of a secretary employed by almost the largest advertising firm in one of the best known suburbs in the sprawling City of the Angels. Doing so should not, therefore, have seemed particularly odd. Not would it have, if the person involved had been anyone at all except Lucille Brown. The idea that she might need aid of any kind, particularly psychiatric, was ridiculous. She had been born 22 years earlier in undisputed possession of a sizable silver spoon. And she was, in addition, bright, beautiful and charming, with 2020 vision, perfect teeth, a father and mother who adored her, friends who did likewise, and the kind of luck you'd have to see to believe. Other people entered contests. Lucila won them. Other people drove five miles over the legal speed limit and got caught doing it. Lucilla outdistanced them, but fortuitously slowed down just before the highway patrol appeared from nowhere. Other people waited in the wrong line at the bank while the woman ahead of the of them learned how to roll pennies. Lucilla was always in the line that moved right up to the teller's window. Lucky was not, in other words, just a happenstance abbreviation of Lucilla. It was an exceedingly apt nickname, and Lucky Brown's co workers would have been quite justified in laughing at the very idea of her being unhappy enough about anything to spend three precious hours a week stretched out on a brown leather couch, staring miserably at at a pale blue ceiling and fumbling for words that refused to come. There were a good many days when Lucilla felt like laughing at the idea herself, and there were other days when she didn't even feel like smiling. Wednesday, 25 July, was one of the days when she didn't feel like smiling or talking or moving. It had started out badly when she opened her eyes and found herself staring at a familiar blue ceiling. I don't know, she said irritably. I tell you, I simply don't know what happens. I'll start to answer someone and the words will be right on the tip of my tongue, ready to be spoken. Then I'll say something altogether different, or I'll start to cross the street and for no reason at all, be unable to even step off the curb. For no reason at all. Dr. Andrews asked, Are you sure you aren't withholding something you ought to tell me? She shifted a a little, suddenly uncomfortable. And then, when she was fully awake and the ceiling was ivory, not blue, she stared at it for a long moment, completely disoriented, before she realized that she was in her own bed, not on Dr. Andrews brown leather couch, and the conversation had been another of the interminable imaginary dialogues she found herself carrying on with the psychiatrist day and night, awake and asleep. Get out of my dream, she ordered retorted crossly, summoning up a quick mental picture of Dr. Andrews expressive face, level gray eyes and silvering temples, the better to banish him from her thoughts. She was immediately sorry she had done so, for the image remained fixed in her mind. She could almost feel his eyes as she heard his voice ask again for no reason at all. Lucilla the weatherman had promised to scorch her, and the heat that already lay like a blanket over the the room made it seem probable the promise would be fulfilled. She moved listlessly, showering, patting herself dry, lingering over the choice of a dress until her mother called urgently from the kitchen. She was long minutes behind schedule when she left the house. Usually she rather enjoyed easing her small car into the stream of automobiles pouring down Sepulveda toward the San Diego Freeway, jockeying for position, shifting expertly from one lane to another to take advantage of every break in the traffic. This morning she felt only angry impatience. She choked back on the irritable impulse to drive directly into the side of a car that cut across in front of her, held her horn button down furiously when a slow starting truck hesitated fractionally after the light turned green. When she finally edged her Renault up on the on ramp and freeway spring stretched straight and unobscured ahead, she stepped down on the accelerator and watched the needle climb up and pass the legal 65 mile limit. The sound of her tires on the smooth concrete was soothing, and the rush of wind outside gave the morning an illusion of coolness. She edged away from the tangle of cars that had pulled onto the freeway with her and momentarily was alone on the road with her rearview mirror blank, the oncoming lanes bare and a small rise shutting off the world ahead. That's when it happened. Get out of the way. A voice shrieked. Out of the way. Out of the way. Out of the way. Her heart lurched, her stomach twisted convulsively, and there was a brassy taste in her mouth. Instinctively, she stamped down on the brake pedal, swerved sharply into the outer lane. By the time she had topped the rise, she was going a cautious 50 miles an hour and hugged the far edge of the the freeway. Then, and only then, she heard the squeal of agonized tires and saw the cumbersome semi trailer coming from the opposite direction, rock dangerously, jackknife into the dividing post that separated north and southbound traffic, crunch ponderously through them, and crash to a stop several hundred feet ahead of her and squarely athwart the lane down which she had been speeding only seconds earlier. The highway passed. Patrol materialized within minutes. Even so, it was after eight by the time Lucilla gave them her statement, agreed for the umpteenth time with the shaken but uninjured truck driver that it was indeed fortunate she hadn't been in the center lane and drove slowly the remaining miles to the office. I knew it was going to happen, the truck driver said. I couldn't see over the top of the hill. All I could do was fight the wheel and pray that if anyone was coming he'd get out of the way. Way. She could almost hear him repeating the words. Get out of the way, out of the way. And right on the heel of his cry came Dr. Andrews soft query. For no reason at all. Lucilla. She pulled into the company parking lot, jerked the wheel savagely to the left, jammed on the brakes. Shut up, she said. Shut up, both of you. She started into the building, then hesitated. She was already late. But there was something. Get out of the way. The way. For no reason at all at all, she yielded to impulse and walked hurriedly downstairs to the basement library. That stuff I asked you to get together for me by tomorrow, Ruthie, she said to the gray haired librarian. You wouldn't by any chance have already done it, would you? Funny you should ask. The elderly woman bobbed down behind the counter and popped back up with an armload of magazines and newspapers. Just happened to have some free time last thing yesterday. It's already charged out to you, so you just go right ahead and take it, Dearie. It was 8:30 when Lucilla reached the office. When I need you. Where are you? Gigi asked sourly. Learned last night that the top dog at Cary Carton Corporation is in town today, so they've pushed that conference up from Friday to 10 this morning. If you'd been here early or even on time, we might at least have gotten some of the information together. Lucilla laid the stack of material on his desk. I haven't had time to flag the pages yet, she said, but they're listed on the library request on top. We did 19 ads for KK last year and three of premium offers. I stopped by sales on my way in. Susie's digging out figures for you now.
- [333:22]
Hmm.
- [333:23]
Mm mm, said Gigi. Well, so that's where you've been. You could at least have let me know. There was a grudging approval beneath his gruffness. Say, how'd you know I needed this today anyhow? Didn't, said Lucilla, putting her purse away and whisking the COVID off her typewriter. Happenstance, that's all. Just happened to go down to the library for no reason at all, withholding something. Get out of the way. The telephone's demand for attention overrode her thoughts. She reached for it almost gratefully. Mr. Hoskins office, she said. Yes, yes, he knows about the 10 o' clock meeting this morning. Thank you for calling anyway. She hung up and glanced at at Gigi, but he was so immersed in one of the magazines that the ringing telephone hadn't even disturbed him. Ringing. The last thing she did before she left the office each night was set the lever in the instrument's base to off so that the bell would not disturb Gigi if he worked late. So far today nobody had set it back to on. It's getting worse, she said miserably to the pale blue ceiling. The phone didn't ring this morning. It couldn't have, but I answered it. Dr. Andrews said nothing at all. She let her eyes flicker sideways, but he was outside her range of vision. I don't like having you sit where I can't see you, she said crossly. Freud may have thought it was a good idea, but I think it's a lousy one. She clenched her hands and stared at nothing. The silence stretched thinner and thinner, like a balloon blown big, until the temptation to rupture it was too great to resist. I didn't see the truck this morning, nor hear it. There was no reason at all for me to slow down and pull over. You might be dead if you hadn't. Would you like that better? The matter of fact question was like a hand laid across Lucilla's mouth. I don't want to be dead, she admitted finally. Neither do I want to go on like this, hearing words that aren't spoken and bells that don't ring when it gets to the point that I pick up a phone just because somebody's thinking. She stopped abruptly. I didn't quite catch the end of that sentence, Dr. Andrews said. I didn't quite finish it. I can't. Can't or won't? Don't hold back anything, Lucilla. You were saying that you picked up the phone just because somebody was thinking. He paused expectantly. Lucilla re read the ordinate letters on the framed diploma on the wall, looked critically at the picture of Mrs. Andrews, whom she'd met and her impish daughter, whom she hadn't counted the number of pleats and the billowing drapes, ran a tentative finger over the face of her wristwatch, straightened a fold of her skirt, and could stand the silence no longer. Alright, she said wearily. The girl at Carrie Carton thought about talking to me, and I heard my phone ring even though the bell was disconnected. Gigi thought about needing backup material for the conference, and I went to the library. The truck driver thought about warning people, and I got out of his way. So I can read people's minds. Some people's minds. Some of the time, anyway. Only there's no such thing as telepathy, and if I'm not telepathic. Then she caught herself in the brink of time and bit back the final word, fighting for self control. Then what? The peremptory question toppled Lucilla's defenses I'm crazy, she said, speaking the word released, all the others dammed up behind it. Ever since I can remember, the things like this have happened all at once. In the middle of doing something or saying something, I'd find myself thinking about what somebody else was doing or saying, not thinking, knowing I'd be playing hide and seek and I could see the places where the other kids were hiding just as plainly as I could see my own surroundings. Or I'd be worrying over the answers to an exam question and I'd know what somebody in the back of the room had decided to write down, or what the teacher was expecting, expecting us to write. Not always, but it happened often enough so that it bothered me just the way it does now when I answered a question before it's been asked. Or know what the driver ahead of me is going to do a split second before he does it. Or win a bridge game, because I can see everybody else's hand through my own eyes almost. Has it always bothered you, Lucilla? No. She drew the word out. Can I? Considering trying to think of when it was that she hadn't felt uneasy about the unexpected moments of perceptiveness when she was very little, perhaps. She thought of the tiny laughing girl and the faded snaps of the old album, and suddenly, inexplicably, she was that self, moving through remembered rooms, pausing to collect a word from a boyish father, a thought from a pretty young mother. Reluctantly, she closed her eyes against that distant time. Way back, she said, when I didn't know any better, I just took it for granted that sometimes people talk to each other, and that sometimes they pass thoughts along without putting them into words. I was about six, I guess, when I found out it wasn't so. She slipped into her six year old self as easily as she had donned the younger Lucilla. This time she wasn't in a house but high on a hillside, walking on springy pines. Instead of prosaic heart carpet talk, Dr. Andrews reminded her, his voice so soft that it could almost have come from inside of her own mind. We were picnicking, she said, A whole lot of us. Somehow I wandered away from the others. One minute the hill was bright with sun and the next it was deep in shadows and the wind that had been merely cool was downright cold. She shivered and glanced around, expecting her mother to be somewhere near, holding out a sweater or jacket. It there was no one at all in sight. Even then she never thought of being frightened. She turned to retrace her steps. There was a big tree that looked familiar, and a funny rock behind it, half buried in the hillside. She was trudging toward it, humming under her breath, when the worried thoughts began to reach her. Only a little creek, so I don't think she could have fallen in. Not really any bears around here, but she never gets hurt. Creak, bear. Twisted ankle, Dark, cold. She had veered from her course and started in the direction of the first thought, but now they were coming from all sides and she had no idea at all which way to go. She ran wildly then, first one way, then the other, sobbing and calling, Lucilla. The voice sliced into the night and the dark mountainside and the frightened child were gone. She shuddered a little reminiscently and put her hands over her eyes. Somebody found me, of course. And then Mother was holding me and crying, and I was crying too, and telling her how all the different thought at once frightened me and mixed me up. She. She scolded me for. For telling fibs and said that nobody except crazy people thought they could read each other's minds. I see, said Dr. Andrews. So you tried not to, of course. And anytime you did it again, or thought you did, you blamed it on coincidence or luck and had that nightmare again. Yes, that too. Tell me about it. I already have, over and over. Tell me again then. I feel like a fool repeating myself, she complained. Dr. Andrews made no comment. Oh, alright. It always starts with me walking down a crowded street surrounded by honking cars and yelling newsboys and talking people. The noise bothers me and I'm tempted to cover my ears to shut a it out, but I try to ignore it instead and walk faster and faster, bit by bit. The buildings I pass are smaller, the people fewer, the noise less. All at once I discover there's nothing around at all but a spreading carpet of gray green moss, years deep and a silence that feels as old as time itself. There's nothing to frighten me, but I am frightened and lonesome. Not so much for people, but but for a sound, any sound. I turned around, back toward town, but there's nothing behind me now but the same gray moss and gray sky and dead silence. By the time she reached the last word her throat had tightened until speaking was difficult. She reached out blindly for something to cling to. Her groping hand met Dr. Andrews and his warm fingers closed reassuringly around hers. Gradually the panic drained away, but she could think of nothing to say at all, although she longed to have the silence broken, as if he sensed her longing. Dr. Andrews said, you started having the dream more often just after you told Paul you wouldn't marry him, Is that right? No, it was the other way around. I hadn't had it for months, not since I fell in love with him. Then he got assigned to that Witch Tomorrow show and he started calling me lucky the way everybody does. And the dream came back. She stopped short and turned on the couch to stare at the psychiatrist with startled eyes. But that can't be how it was, she said. The lonesomeness must have started after I decided not to marry him. Not before. I wonder why the dream stopped when you fell in love with him. That's easy, lucilla said, promptly, grasping at the chance to evade her own more disturbing question. I felt close to him, whether he was with me or not. The way I used to feel close to people back when I was a little girl. Girl before. Well, before that day in the mountains when Mother said. That was when you started having the dream, wasn't it? How'd you know? I didn't. Not until just now. But yes, that's when it started. I'd never minded the dark or being alone, but I was frightened when Mother shut the door that night because the walls seemed so. So solid now that I knew all the thoughts I used to think were with me. There were just pretend. When I finally went to sleep, I dreamed. And I went on having the same dream night after night after night, until finally they called a doctor and he gave me something to make me sleep. I wish they'd called me, Dr. Andrews said. What could you have done? The sleeping pills worked anyway, and after a while I didn't need them anymore because I'd heard other kids talking about having hunches and lucky streaks, and I stopped feeling different from the rest of them, except once in a while when I was so lucky it bothered me. And after you met Paul, you stopped being too lucky and the dream stopped? No. Lucilla was startled at her own vehemence. No, it wasn't like that at all. You'd know it if you'd been listening. With Paul, I felt close to him all the time, no matter how many miles or walls or anything else there was between us. We hardly had to talk at all because we seemed to know just what the other one was thinking all the time, listening to music or watching the waves pound in, or just working together at the office. Instead of feeling odd when I knew what he was thinking or what he was going to say, I felt good about it because I was so sure it was the same way with him and what I was thinking. We didn't talk about it There just wasn't any need to. She lapsed into silence again. Dr. Andrews straightened her clenched hand out and stretched, stroked her fingers gently. After a moment she went on. He hadn't asked me to marry him, but I knew he would, and there wasn't any hurry because everything was so perfect anyway. Then one of the company's clients decided to sponsor a series of fantasy shows on TV and wanted us to tie in the ads for the next year with the fantasy theme. Paul was assigned to the account and Gigi let him borrow me to work on it because it was such a rush project. I had always liked fairy stories when I was little, and when I discovered there were grown up ones too, like those in Unknown Worlds and the old Weird Tales, I read them too, but I hadn't any idea how much there was until we started buying copies of everything there was on the newsstands and then ransacking musty little stores for back issues and ones that had gone out of publication until Paul's office was just full of teetery piles of gaudy magazines, and everywhere you looked there were pictures of strange stars and eight legged monsters and men in spacesuits. So what did the magazines have to do with you and Paul? The way he felt about them changed everything. He just laughed at the ones about spaceships and other planets and robots and things, but he didn't laugh when came across stories about, well, mutants and people with talents. Talents like reading minds, you mean? She nodded, not looking at him. He didn't laugh at those. He acted as if they were, well, indecent. The sort of thing you wouldn't be caught dead reading in public. And he thought that way too, especially about the stories that even mention telepathy. At first, when he brought them to my attention in that disapproving way, I thought he was just pretending to sneer, to tease me, because he we knew they could be true. Only his thoughts matched his remarks. He hated the stories, Dr. Andrews, and was just determined to have me hate them too. All at once I began to feel as if I didn't know him at all, and I began to wonder if I just imagined everything. All those months I felt so close to him, and then I began to dream again, and to think about that lonesome silent world even when I was wide awake. Go on, Lucilla, Dr. Andrews said as she hesitated. That's all. Just about we finish the job and get rid of the maggots magazines and for a little while it was almost as if those two weeks had never been except I couldn't forget that he didn't know what I was thinking at all. Even when everything he did almost made it seem as if he did, it began to seem wrong for me to know what he was thinking. Crazy, like Mother had said. And worse somehow, not well, not even nice, if you know what I mean. Then he asked you to marry him, and I said no, even when I wanted oh so terribly to say yes and yes and yes. She squeezed her eyes tight shut to hold back a rush of tears. Time folded back on itself once again. The hands of her WristWatch pointed to 4:30, and the White clad receptionist said briskly, doctor will see you now. Once again, from some remote vantage point, Lucilla watched herself brush past Dr. Andrews and crossed to the familiar couch, heard herself say, it's getting worse, watched herself move through a flickering montage of scenes from childhood to womanhood, from past to present. She opened her eyes to meet those of the man who sat patiently beside her. You see, he said, telling me wasn't so difficult after all. And then, before she had decided on a response, what do you know about Darwin's theory of evolution, Lucilla? His habit of ending a tense moment by making an irrelevant query no longer even startled her. Obediently, she fumbled for an answer. Not much. Just that he thought all the different kinds of life on Earth today evolved from a few blobs of protoplasm that sprouted wings or grew fur or developed teeth, depending on when they lived and where. She paused hopefully, but met with only silence, sometimes what seemed like a step forward. Ford wasn't, she said, ransacking her brain for scattered bits of information. Then the species died out, like the saber toothed tiger with those tusks that kept right on growing until they locked his jaws shut so he starved to death. As she spoke, she remembered the huge beast as he had been pictured in one of her college textbooks. The recollection grew more and more vivid until she could see both the picture and the facing page of text. The there was an irregularly shaped inkblot in the upper corner and several heavily underlined sentences that stood out so distinctly she could actually read the words. According to Darwin, variations in general are not infinitesimal, but in the nature of specific mutations, thousands of these occur, but only the fittest survive the climate, the times, natural enemies and their own kind who strive to perpetuate themselves unchanged. Taken one by one, the words were all familiar. Taken as a whole, they made no sense at all. She let the book slip, unheeded from her mind and stared at Dr. Andrews in bewilderment. Try saying it in a different way. You sound like a schoolteacher humoring a stupid child. And then, because the habit of obedience was strong. I guess he meant that the tales didn't grow an inch at a time, the way the dogs got cut off, but all at once, like a fish being born with legs as well as fins, or a baby saber tooth showing up among tigers with regular teeth, or one ape in a tribe discovering he could swing down out of the treetops and stand erect and walk alone. He echoed her last words. And walk alone. A premonitory chill traced its icy way down Lucilla's backbone. For a second she stood on gray moss under a gray sky, in the midst of a gray silence. He not only could walk alone, he had to. Do you remember what your book said? Only the fittest survive, lucilla said numbly, because they have to fight the climate and their natural enemies and their own kind. She swung her feet to the floor and pushed herself into a sitting position. I'm not a. A mutation. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. And you can't say I am because I won't listen. I didn't say you were. There was the barest hint of emphasis on the first word. Lucilla was almost certain she heard a whisper of laughter, but he met her gaze blandly, his expression completely serious. Don't you dare laugh, she said. Nonetheless, there's nothing funny about. About. About being able to read people's minds, Dr. Andrews said helpfully. You'd much rather have me offer some other explanation for the occurrences than. Than bother you. So is that it? I guess so. Yes. It is. A brain tumor or schizophrenia or anything at all that could maybe be cured. So I could marry Paul and have children and be like everybody else. Like you. She looked past him to the picture on his desk. It's easy for you to talk. He ignored the last statement. Why can't you get married anyway? You've already said why. Because Paul would hate me. Everybody would hate me if they knew I was different. How would they know? It doesn't show now if you had three legs or long bushy tail or outsized teeth. Lucilla smiled involuntarily and then was furious at herself for doing so, and at Dr. Andrews for provoking her into it. This whole thing is utterly asinine anyhow. Here we are talking as if I might really be a mutant, and you know perfectly well that I'm not. Do I? You made the diagnosis, Lucilla, and you've given me some mighty potent reasons for believing it. Can you give me equally good reasons for doubting that you're a telepath? The premonitory demand left Lucilla speechless for a moment. She groped blindly for an answer, then almost laughed aloud as she found it. But of course I almost missed it. Even after you practically drew me a diagram. If I could read minds just as soon as anybody found it out, he'd be afraid of me or hate me, like the book said. And you said, too, if you believed it, you'd do something like having me locked up in a hospital, maybe, instead of. Instead of what, Lucilla? Instead of being patient and nice and helping me see how silly I've been? She reached out impulsively to touch his hand, then withdrew her own, feeling somewhat foolish when he made no effort to respond. Her relief was too great, however, to be contained in silence. Way back the first time I came in, almost, you said that before we finished therapy you'd know me better than I knew myself. I didn't believe you. Maybe I didn't want to. But I begin to think you were right. Lots of times lately you've answered a question before I even asked it. Sometimes you haven't even bothered to answer. You've just sat there in your big brown chair and I've lain here on the couch and we've gone through something together with. Without using words at all. She had started out almost gaily, the words spilling over each other in their rush to be said, but bit by bit she slowed down, then faltered to a stop. After she had stopped talking altogether, she could still hear her last few phrases, repeated over and over like an echo that refused to die. Answered before I even asked, without using words at all. Without using words. She could almost taste the terror that clogged her throat and dried her lips. You do believe it. And you could have me locked up. Only. Only fragments of thought, splinters of words and droplets of silence spun into a kaleidoscopic jumble, shifted infinitesimally and fell into an incredible new pattern. Understanding displaced terror and was in turn displaced by indignation. She stared accusingly at her interrogator. But you look just like. Just like anybody you expected perhaps three legs or a long bushy tail or teeth like that textbook tiger? And you're a psychiatrist. What else? Would you have talked to me like this across a grocery counter, Lucilla? Or listened to me if I'd been driving a bus or filling a prescription? Would I have found the others in a bowling alley or a business office Then there are others. She let out her breath on a long sigh, involuntarily glancing again at the framed picture. Only I love Paul and he isn't. He can't. Nor can Caril. His eyes were steady on hers, yet she felt as if he were looking through and beyond her. For no reason at all, she strained her ears for the sound of footsteps or the summons of a voice. Where do you suppose the second little blob of protoplasm with legs came from? Dr. Andrews asked. And the third? If that ape who found he could stand erect and walk lonesomely off into the sunset like a second rate actor on a late, late show, where do you suppose you'd be today? He broke off abruptly and watched with Lucilla as the office door edged open. Small girl who inched her way around it wore blue jeans and a ponytail rather than an organdy frock and curls, but her pixie smile matched that of the girl in the photograph Lucilla had glanced at again and again. You wanted me, Daddy? She asked, but she looked towards Lucilla. I thought you'd like to meet someone with the same nickname as yours, Dr. Andrews said, rising to greet her. Lucky me Lucky? Hello, the child said. Then her smile widened. Hello. But I don't have to say it, do I? I can talk to you just the way I talk to Daddy and Uncle Whitney and Big Bill. Hello yourself, said Lucilla. This time when the corners of her mouth began to tick upward, she made no attempt to stop them. Of course you can, darling. And I can answer you the same way. And you'll hear me. Dr. Andrews reached for the open pack of cigarettes on his deck. Is this strictly a private conversation, girls, or can I get in on it too? It's unpolite to interrupt, Daddy. He's not exactly interrupting. It was his conversation to begin with. Dr. Andrews, receptionist, paused briefly beside the still open office door. None of them heard either her gentle rap or her soft click of the latch slipping into place when she pushed the door shut. Nor did she hear them. End of the Sound of Silence By Barbara Constant.
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The Day Time Stopped Moving By Bradner Buckner this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org the day time Stopped Moving By Brad Buckner Translated by Shannon Marshall Lush Dave Miller would never have done it had he been in his right mind. The Millers were not a melancholy stock, hardly the sort of people you expect to read about in the morning paper. Who have taken their lives the night before. But Dave Miller was drunk abominably, roaringly so, and the barrel of the big revolver Culver, as he stood against the sink, made a ring of coldness against his right temple. Don was beginning to stain the frosty kitchen windows. In the faint light, the letter lay a gray square against the drained board tiles. With the melodramatic gesture of the very drunk, Miller had scrawled across the envelope, this is why I did it. He had found found Helen's letter in the envelope when he staggered into their bedroom 15 minutes ago at a quarter after five. As had frequently happened during the past year, he'd come home from the store a little late, about 12 hours late, in fact, and this time Helen had done what she had long threatened to do. She had left him. The letter was brief, containing a world of heartbreak and broken hopes. I don't mind having to scrimp, Dave. No woman minds that if she feels she is really helping her husband over a rough spot. When business went bad a year ago, I told you I was ready to help in any way I could. But you haven't let me. You quit fighting when things got difficult and put in all your money and energy on liquor and horses and cards. I could stand being married to a drunk drunkard, Dave, but not to a coward. So she was trying to show him. But Miller told himself he'd show her instead. Coward, eh? Maybe this would teach her a lesson. Hell of a lot of help she'd been. Nag at him every time he took a drink. Holler bloody murder when he put 25 bucks on a horse with a chance to make 500. What man wouldn't do those things? His drugstore was on the skids. Could he be blamed for drinking a little too much if alcohol dissolved the morbid vapors of his mind? Miller stiffened angrily and tightened his finger on the trigger. But he had one moment of frank insight just before the hammer dropped and brought the world tumbling about his ears. It brought with it a realization that the whole thing was his fault. Helen was right. He was a coward. There was a poignant ache in his heart. She had been as loyal as they came, he knew that. He could have spent his nights thinking up new business tricks instead of swilling whiskey. Could have gone out of his way to be pleasant to customers, not snap at the them when he had a terrific hangover. But even Miller knew nobody ever made any money on the horses, at least not when he needed it. But horses and whiskey and business had become tragically confused in his mind. So here he was, full of liquor and madness, with a gun to his head. Then again, anger swept his mind clean of reason, and he threw his chin up and gripped the gun tight. Run out on me, will she? He muttered thickly. Well, this'll show her. In the next moment the hammer fell and Dave Miller had shown her. Miller opened his eyes with a start as plain as black on white. He'd heard a bell ring, the most familiar, familiar sound of the world, too. It was the unmistakable tinkle of his cash register. Now how in hell. The thought began in his mind, and then he saw where he was. The cash register was right in front of him. It was open. And on the marble slab lay a customer's five spot. Miller's glance strayed up and around him. He he was behind the drug counter, all right. There were a man and a girl sipping Cokes at the fountain to his right, the magazine racks by the open door, the tobacco counter across from the fountain. And right before him was a customer. Good lord, he thought. Was all this a dream? Sweat oozed out on his clammy forehead. That stuff of her Herman's that he had drunk during the game. It had had a rank taste, but he wouldn't have thought anything short of marijuana could produce such hallucinations as he had just had. Wild conjectures came boiling up from the bottom of Miller's being. How did he get behind the counter? Who was the woman he was waiting on? What the woman's curious stare was what jarred him completely into the present moment? Get rid of her, was his one thought. Then sit down behind the scenes and try to figure it all out. His hand poised over the cash register. Then he remembered he didn't know how much he was to take out of the five. Avoiding the woman's glance, he muttered, let's see now. That was how much did I say? The woman made no answer. Miller cleared his throat, said uncertainly, I beg your pardon, ma', am, did I say 75 cents? It was just a feeler. But the woman didn't even answer to that. And it was right then that Dave Miller noticed the deep silence that brooded in the store. Slowly his eyes came up and he looked straight into the woman's eyes. She returned him a cool, half smiling glance, but her eyes neither blinked nor moved. Her features were frozen, lips parted, teeth showing a little. The tip of her tongue was between her even white teeth, as though she had started to say this and stopped with a syllable unspoken. Muscles began to rise behind Midler's ears. He could feel his hair, slow, stiffened, like filings drawn to a magnet. His glance struggled to the soda fountain. What he saw there shook him to the core of his being. The girl who was drinking a Coke had the glass to her lips, but apparently she wasn't sipping the liquid. Her boyfriend's glass was on the counter. He had drawn a cigarette and exhaled the gray smoke. That smoke hung in the air like a large elongated balloon with a small end disappearing between his lips. While Miller stared, the smoke did not stir in the slightest. There was something unholy, something supernatural about this scene. With apprehension rippling down his spine, Dave Miller reached across the cash register and touched the woman of the cheek. The flesh was warm, but as hard as flint. Tentatively, the young druggist pushed harder, finally shoved with all his might. For all the result, the woman might have been a 2 ton bronze statue. She neither budged nor changed expression. Panic seized Miller. His voice hit a high, hysterical tenor as he called to his soda jerker. Pete.
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Pete.
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He shouted. What in God's name is wrong here? The blond youngster with a towel weighted in a glass did not stir. Miller rushed from the back of the store, seized the boy by the shoulders, tried to shake him, but Pete was rooted to the spot. Miller knew now that what was wrong was something greater than a hallucination or a hangover. He was in some kind of trap. His first thought was to rush home and see if Helen was there. There was a great sense of relief when he thought of her. Helen, with her grave blue eyes and understanding manner, would listen to him and know what was the matter. He left the haunted drugstore at a run, darted around the corner and up the street to his car. But though he had not locked the car, the door resisted his twisting grasp. Shaking, pounding, swearing, Miller wrestled with each of the doors. Abruptly he stiffened as a horrible thought leaped into his being. His gaze left the car and wandered up the street, past the intersection, past the one beyond that, on up the thoroughfare until the gray haze of the city dimmed everything, and as far as Dave Miller could see, there was no trace of motion. Cars were poised in the street, some passing other machines, some turning corners. A streetcar stood at a safety zone. A man who would leap from the bottom step hung in space a foot above the pavement. Pedestrians paused with one foot up, a bird hovered above a telephone pole, its wings glued to the blue vault of the sky. With a choked sound, Miller began to run. He did not slacken his pace for 15 minutes, until around him were the familiar, reassuring trees and shrub bordered houses of his own street. But yet how strange to him. The season was autumn and the air filled with brown and golden leaves that tossed on a frozen wind. Miller ran by two boys lying on a lawn, petrified into a modern counterpart of the sculptors, the wrestlers. The sweetish tang of burning leaves brought a thrill of terror to him, for looking down an alley from whence the smoke drifted, he saw a man tending a fire whose leaping flames were red tongues that did not move. Sobbing with relief, the young Druggas darted up his own walk. He tried the front door, found it locked, and jammed a thumb against the doorbell. But of course the little metal button was as immovable as a mountain. So in the end, after convincing himself that the key could not be inserted into the lock, he sprang toward the back. The screen door was not latched, but it might as well have been the steel door of a bank vault. Miller began to pound on it, shouting, Helen. Helen, are you in there? My God, dear, there's something wrong. You've got to. The silence that flowed in again when his voice choked off was the dead stillness of the tomb. He could hear his voice rustling through the empty rooms, and at last it came back to him like a taunt. Helen. Helen. Chapter 2 Time stands still For Dave Miller, the world was now a planet of death on which he alone lived and moved and spoke, staggered, utterly beaten. He made no attempt to break into his home, but he did stumble around to the kitchen window and try to peer in, anxious to see if there was a body on the floor. The room was in semi darkness, however, and his straining eyes made out nothing. He returned to the front of the house, shambling like a somnambulist. Seated on the porch steps, head in hands, he slipped into a hell of regret, regrets. He knew now his suicide had been no hallucination. He was dead, all right, and this must be hell. Or purgatory. Bitterly, he cursed his drinking that had led him to such a mad thing as suicide. Suicide. He, Dave Miller, a coward who had taken his own life. Miller's whole being crawled with respect, revulsion. If he had just had the last year to live over again, he thought fervently. And yet through it all, some inner strain kept trying to tell him he was not dead. This was his own world, all right and essentially unchanged. What had happened to it was beyond the pale of mere guesswork. But this one thing began to be clearer. This was a world in which change or motion of any kind was a foreigner. Fire would not burn, and smoke did not rise. Doors would not Open liquids were solid. Miller's stubbing toe could not move a pebble, and a blade of grass easily supported his weight without bending. In other words, Miller began to understand. Change had been stopped as surely as if her master hand had put a finger on the world's balance wheel. Miller's ramblings were terminated by the consciousness that he had an acute headache. His mouth tasted, as Herman used to say after a big night, as if an army had camped in it. Coffee and a bromo were what he needed, but it was a great awakening to him when he found a restaurant and learned he could not see, drink the coffee, nor get the lid off the broma bottle. Fragrant coffee steam hung over the glass percolator, but even this steam was as a brick wall to his probing touch. Miller started gloomily to thread his way through the waiters and back of the counter again. Moments later he stood on the street and there were tears swimming in his eyes. Alan. His voice was a pleading helen, honey, where are you? There was no answer but the pitiful palpitation of utter silence. And then there was movement at Dave Miller's right. Something shot from between the parked cars and crashed against him, something brown and hairy and soft. It knocked him down before he could get his breath. A red wet tongue was licking his face and hands, and he was looking up into the face of a police dog, frantic with joy at seeing another in the city of death. The dog would scarcely let Miller rise. It stood up to plant big paws on his shoulders and try to lick his face. Miller laughed out loud aloud with a throaty catch in it. Where'd you come from, boy? He asked. Won't they talk to you either? What's your name, boy? There was a heavy brass studded collar about the animal's neck, and Dave Miller read on his little nameplate. Major. Well, Major, least we've got company now was Miller's sigh of relief. For a long time he was too busy with the dog to bother about the sobbing noises. Apparently the dog failed to hear them, for he gave no sign. Miller scratched him behind the ear. What shall we do now, Major? Walk. Maybe your nose can smell out another friend for us. They had hardly gone two blocks when it came to him that there was a more useful way of spending their time the library. Half convinced that the whole trouble stemmed from his suicide shot in the head, which was conspicuously absent now, he decided that a perusal of the surgery books in the public library library might yield something he could use that way. They bent their steps and were soon mounting the broad cement stairs of the building. As they went beneath the brass turnstile, the librarian caught Miller's attention with a smiling glance. He smiled back. I'm trying to find something on brain surgery, he explained with a shock. Then he realized he had been talking to himself. In the next instant, Dave Miller whirled. A voice from the bookcases chuckled. If you find anything, I wish you'd let me know. I'm stumped myself. From a corner of the room came an elderly, half bald man with tangled gray brows and a rueful smile. A pencil was balanced over his ear and a notebook was clutched in his hand. You too? He said. I had hoped I was the only one. Miller went forward hurriedly to grip his hand. I'm afraid I'm not so selfish, he admitted. I've been hoping for two hours that I'd run into some other poor soul. Quite understandable, the stranger murmured sympathetically. But in my case it is different. You see, I am responsible for this whole tragic business. You. Dave Miller gulped the word I thought. The man wagged his head, staring at his notepad, which was littered with jumbled calculations. Miller had a chance to study him. He was tall, heavily built, with wide, sturdy shoulders despite his 60 years. Oddly, he wore a gray green smock. His eyes, narrowed in intent, looked gimlet sharp beneath those toothbrush brows of his as he stared at the pad. See, that's the trouble right there, he muttered. I provided only three stages of amplification, whereas 4 would have been barely enough. No wonder the phase didn't carry through. Guess I don't follow you, Miller faltered. You mean something you did? I should think it was something I did. The baldest stranger scratched his head with the tip of his pencil. I'm John Erickson. You know the Wanamaker Institute? Miller said. Oh, in an understanding voice. Erickson was head of Wanamaker Institute, first laboratory of them all when it came to exploding atoms and blazing trails into the wildernesses of science. Ericsson's piercing eyes was suddenly burrowing into the younger man. You've been sick, haven't you? He demanded. Well, no, not really sick. The drug is colored. I'll have to admit to being drunk a few hours ago, though. Drunk? Erickson stuck his tongue in his cheek, shook his head, scowled. No, that would hardly do it. There must have been something else. The impulser isn't that powerful. I can understand about the dog. Poor fellow, he must have been run over, and I caught him just at the instant of passing from life to death. Oh. Dave Miller lifted his head Knowing now what Erickson was driving at. Well, I may as well be frank. I committed suicide. That's how drunk I was. There hasn't been a suicide in the Miller family in centuries. It took a skinful of liquor to set the precedent. Erickson nodded wisely. Perhaps we will find the precedent hasn't really been set. But no matter. His lifted hand stopped Miller's eager, wondering exclamation. The point is, young man, we three are in a tough spot and it's up to us to get out of it. It and not only we, but heaven knows how many others the world over. Would you Maybe you can explain to my lay mind what's happened? Miller suggested. Of course. Forgive me. You see, Mr. Miller. Dave Miller. Dave it is. I have a feeling we're going to be pretty well acquainted before this is over. You see, Dave, I'm a nut. And so called time theories. I've seen time compared to everything from an entity to a long pink worm. But I disagree with them all because they postulate the idea that time is constantly being manufactured. Such reasoning is fantastic. Time exists not as an ever growing chain of links, because such a chain would have to have a tail end if it has a front end. And who can imagine the period when time did not exist? So I think time is like a circular train track, unending. We who live and die merely travel around on it. The future exists simultaneously with the past for one instant when they meet. Miller's brain was humming. Erickson shot the words at him staccato fashion, as if they were things known from great primer days. The young druggist scratched his head. You've got me licked, he admitted. I'm a stranger here myself. Naturally, you can't be expected to understand things I've been all my life puzzling about. Simplest way I can explain it is that we are on a train following this immense circular railway. When the train reaches the point where it started, it is about to plunge into the past. But this is impossible because the point where it started is simply the caboose of the train. And that point is always ahead and behind the time train. Now my idea was that with the proper stimulus a man could be thrust across the diameter of this circular railway to a point in his past. Because of the nature of time, he could neither go ahead of the train to meet the future, nor could he stand still and let the caboose catch up with him. But he could detour across the circle and land further back on the train. And that, my dear Dave, is what you and I and Major have done almost. Almost, miller said hoarsely. Erickson pursed his lips. We are somewhere part way across the space between present and past. We are living in an instant that can move neither forward nor back. You and I, Dave and Major and the Lord knows how many others the world over, have been thrust by my time impulser onto a timeless beach of eternity. We have been caught in Tom's backwash. Cast away, you might say. An objection clamoured for attention in Miller's mind. But if this is so, where are the rest of them? Where is my wife? They are right here, erikson explained. No doubt you could see your wife if you could find her. But we see them as statues because for us, time no longer exists. But there was something I did not count on. I did not know it would be possible to live in one small instant of time as we are doing. And I did not know that only those who are hovering between life and death can deviate from the normal processes of time. You mean we're dead? Miller's voice was a bitter monotone. Obviously not. We're talking and moving, aren't we? But we are on the fence. When I gave my impulser the jolt of high power, it went wrong, and I think something must have happened to me at that same instant. You had shot yourself, perhaps, Dave, you are dying. The only way for us to find out is to try to get the machine working and topple ourselves one way or the other. If we fall back, we will all live. If we fall into the present, we may die. Either way, it's better than this, miller said fervently. I came to the library here, hoping to find out things I must know. My own books are locked in my study. And these. They might be cemented in their places for all they're used to. Me, I suppose we might as well go back to the lab. Miller nodded, murmuring. Maybe you'll get an idea when you look at the machine again. Let's hope so, said Erickson grimly. God knows I fail so far. Chapter 3 Splendid sacrifice it was a solid hour's walk out to West Wiltshire, where the laboratory was. The immense bronze and glass doors of Wanamaker Institute were closed, and so barred to the two men, but Erickson led the way down the side. We can get in a service door, then we climb through transoms and ventilators until we get to my lab. Major frisked along beside them. He was enjoying the action and the companionship. It was less of an adventure to Miller, who knew death might be ahead for the three of them, two workmen, were moving a heavy cabinet in the side service door to get in. They climbed up the back of the rear workman, locked across the cabinet, and scaled down the front of the leading man. They went up the stairs to the 15th floor. Here they crawled through a transom into the wing marked Experimental Enter ONLY BY Appointment. Major was helped through it. Then they were crawling along the dark metal tunnel of an air conditioning ventilator. It was small and took some wriggling. In the next room they were confronted by a stern receptionist on whose desk was a little brass sign reading have YOU AN appointment. Miller had had his share of experience with receptionist ways in his days as a pharmaceutical salesman. He took the greatest pleasure now in lighting his cigarette from a match struck on the girl's nose. Then he blew the smoke in her face and hastened to crawl through the final transom. John Erickson's laboratory was well lighted by a glass brick wall and a huge skylight. The sun's rays glinted on the time impulser. The scientists explained the impulsor in concise terms when he had finished, Dave Miller knew just as little as before, and the outfit still resembled three transformers in a line of the type seen on power poles connected to a great bronze globe hanging from the ceiling. There's the monster that put us in this blight. Erickson grunted. Too strong to be legal, too weak to do the job right, too take a good look. With his hands jammed in his pockets, he frowned at the complex machinery. Miller stared a few moments, then transferred his interest to other things in the room. He was immediately struck by the resemblance of a transformer in a far corner to the ones lined up with the impulser. What's that? He asked quickly. Looks the same as the one you've used over there. It is. But didn't you say all you needed was another stage of power? That's right. Maybe I'm crazy. Miller stared from impulser to transformer and back again. Why don't you use it, then? Using what? For the connection. Erickson's eyes gently mocked him. Wire, of course. The scientist jerked a thumb at a small bale of heavy copper. Water. Bring it over. We'll try it. Miller was halfway to it when he brought up short. Then a sheepish grin spread over his features. I get it, he chuckled. That bale of wire might be the Empire State Building as far as we're concerned. Forgive my stupidity. Erickson suddenly became serious. I'd like to be optimistic, Dave, he muttered. But in all fairness to you, I must say, I see no way out of this. The machine is, of course, still working, and with that extra stage of power the uncertainty would be over. But where in this world of immovable things will be found a piece of wire 25ft long? There was a warm, moist sensation against Miller's hand, and when he looked down, Major stared up at him commiseratingly. Miller scratched him behind the ear. The dog closed his eyes, reassured and happy. The young druggist sighed, wishing there was some giant hand to scratch him behind the ear and smooth his troubles over. And if we don't get out, he said soberly, we'll starve, I suppose. No, I don't think it'll be that cool. Quick. I haven't felt any hunger. I don't expect to. After all, our bodies are still living in one instant of time, and a man can't work up a healthy appetite in one second. Of course, this elastic second business precludes the possibility of disease. Our bodies must go on unchanged. The only hope I see is when we were on the verge of madness. Suicide. That means jumping off a bridge, I suppose. Poison, guns, knives, all the usual wherewithal are denied to us. Black despair closed down on Dave Miller. He thrust it back, forcing a crooked grin. Let's make a bargain, he offered. When we finish fooling around with this apparatus, we split up. We'll only be at each other's throats. If we stick together, I'll be blaming you for my plight, and I don't want to. It's my fault as much as yours. How about it, Jon? Erickson gripped his hand. You're all right, Dave. Let me give you some advice. If ever you do get back to the present, keep away from liquor. Liquor and the Irish never did mix. You'll have that stir on its feet again in no time. Thanks, miller said fervently. And I think I can promise that nothing less than a whiskey antidote for snakebite will ever make me bend an elbow again. For the next couple of hours, despondency reigned in the laboratory, but it was soon to be deposed again by hope. Despite all of Erickson's scientific training, it was Dave Miller himself who grasped the down to earth idea that started them hoping again. He was walking about the lab, jingling keys in his pocket, when suddenly he stopped short. He jerked the ring of keys into his hand. Erickson. He gasped. We've been blind. Look at this. The scientist looked, but he remained puzzled. Well? He asked skeptically. There's our wire. Dave Miller exclaimed. You've got Keys. I've got keys, keys. We've got coins, knives, wrist watches. Why can't we lay them all end to end? Erickson's features looked as if he had been electrically shocked. You've hit it. He cried. If we've got enough. With one accord, they began emptying their pockets, tearing off wrist watches, searching for pencils. The fynes made a little heap in the middle of the floor. Erickson let his long fingers claw through thinning hair. God, give us enough. We'll only need the one wire. The thing is plugged in already. And only the positive pole has to be connected to the globe. Come on. Scooping up the assortment of metal articles, they rushed across the room. With his pocket knife, Dave Miller began breaking up the metal wristwatch straps, opening the links out so that they could could be laid end to end for the greatest possible length. They patiently broke the watches to pieces, and of the junk they garnered, made a ragged foot and a half of wire. Their coins stretched the line still further. They had 10ft covered before the stuff was half used up. Their metal pencils taken apart, gave them a good 2ft. Keychains helped generously. With 18ft covered, their progress began to slow down. Perspiration poured down Miller's face. Desperately, he tore off his lodgering and cut it in two to pound it flat from garters and suspenders. They won a few inches more, and then they stopped feet from their goal. Miller groaned. He tossed his pocket knife in his hand. We can get a foot out of this, he estimated, but that still leaves us way short. Abruptly, Erickson snapped his fingers. Shoes. He gasped. They're full of nails. Get to work with that knife, Dave. We'll cut out every one of them in 10 minutes. The shoes were reduced to ragged piles of tattered leather. Erikson's deft fingers painstakingly placed the nails one by one in the line. The distance left the COVID was less than 6 inches. He lined up the last few nails. Then both men were sinking back on their heels as they saw there was a gap of 3 inches to cover. Beaten, Erickson ground out by 3 inches. Three inches from the present, and yet it might as well be a million miles. Miller's body felt as though we were in a vise. His muscles ached with strain. So taut were his nerves that he leaped as though stung when Major nuzzled a cool nose into his hand again. Automatically, he began to stroke the dog's neck. Well, that licks us, he muttered. There isn't another piece of movable metal in the World. Major. Major kept whimpering and pushing against him, annoyed, the druggist shoved him away. Go way, he muttered. I don't feel like Suddenly, then his eyes widened as his touch encountered more metal. He whirled. There it is. He yelled. The last link. The nameplate on Major's collar. In a flash he had torn the little rectangular brass plate from the dog collar. Erickson took a from his grasp. Sweat stood shiny on his skin. He held the bit of metal over the gap between wire and pole. This is it. He smiled brittly. We're on our way, Dave. Where? I don't know. To death or back to life. But we're going. The metal clinked into place. Live, writhing power leaped through the wire, snarling across partial breaks. The transformers began to hum. The humming grew louder, singing softly. The bronze globe over their heads glowed green. Dave Miller felt a curious lightness. There was a snap in his brain, and Erickson Major in the laboratory, faded from his senses. Then came an interval Orville, where the only sound was the soft sobbing he had been hearing, as if in a dream. That and blackness that enfolded him like soft velvet. Then Miller was opening his eyes to see the familiar walls of his own kitchen. Around him someone cried out, Dave. Oh, Dave, dear. It was Helen's voice, and it was Helen, who cradled his head in in her lap and bent her face close to his. Oh, thank God you're alive, Helen Miller murmured. What are you doing here? I couldn't go through with it. I just couldn't leave you. I came back and I heard the shot and ran in. The doctor should be here. I called him five minutes ago. Five minutes? How long has it been since I shot myself? Oh, just six or seven minutes. I called the doctor right away. Miller took a deep breath. Then it must have been a dream, all that to happen in a few minutes. It wasn't possible. How. How could I have botched the job? He muttered. I wasn't drunk enough to miss myself completely. Helen looked at the huger revolver lying in the sink. Oh, that old.45 of Grandfather's. It hasn't been loaded since the Civil War. I guess the powder got damp or something. It just sort of sputtered instead of exploding properly. Dave promised me something. You won't ever do anything like this again if I promise not to nag you. Dave Miller closed his eyes. There won't be any need to nag, Helen. Some people take a lot of teaching. But I've had my lesson. I've got ideas about the store, which I've been too lazy to try out. You know, I feel more like fighting right now than I have for years. We'll lick them, won't we, honey? Helen buried her face in the hollow of his shoulder and cried softly. Her words were too muffled to be intelligible, but Dave Miller understood what she meant. He had thought the whole thing a dream. John Ericson, the time impulser and major. But that night he read an item in the Evening Courier that was to keep him thinking for many days. Police Investigate Death of scientist here in Laboratory John M. Erickson, director of the Wanamaker Institute, died at his work last night. Erikson was a beloved and valuable figure in the world of science, famous for his recently publicized time lapse theory. Two strange circumstances surrounded his death. One was the presence of a German shepherd dog in the laboratory, its head crushed as if with a sledgehammer. The other was a chain of small metal objects stretching from one corner of the room to the other, as if intended to take the place of wire in a circuit. Police, however, discount this idea, as there was a roll of wire only a few feet from the body. The End the daytime stopped moving. By Bradner Buckner Recording by Shannon Marshall Lush St. John's Newfoundland, Canada www.thehistor.
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Chapter 1 of against the Stone Beasts by James Blish Read by Edmund Bloxam. This Librivox recording is in the public domain. The letters on the fly specked glass were simple, almost dogmatic. Andresen eyed them with some amusement. Art agents seldom have any tastes, he thought. Can't afford to. The sign repeated Special Showing of Surrealist paintings and declined to offer further information. Anderson started to walk on, then hovered indecisively. Modern arts of all kinds were his province in preparation for a doctorate thesis. It wouldn't do to let the smallest example go without inspection. He went in. The improvised gallery was musty, with the odor of departed vegetables, and very cold. Like the sign, the show had been set up with a braggart simplicity. No programmes, no furniture, no eager guides. There were not even any guards. Andreson wondered what was to stop a thief from stooping under the heavy rayon rope which kept the frames out of reach of curious or greedy fingers, and making off with the whole collection. With his first look at the paintings themselves, he, Andresen, was blessing his good demon fervently for having guided his footsteps. He could not place the works in any specific category. They certainly were not surrealistic, unless the word had been used in its original meaning of super realistic. The artist had used fantasy for his sources, true enough, but the results were not the usual shapelessness. He angled his long body over the rope and inspected the nearest one. It was a huge canvas reaching almost to the floor, and it depicted a building or similar structure, like a glistening glass rod rising from a forest of lesser rods toward a red sun of almost tangible hotness. A single figure, man like but borne aloft in taut, delicate wings which suggested a bat rather than a human, floated over the nearest of the towers. A quick glance revealed that all the paintings but one contained several of these shapes. The one exception was a field of stars with a torpedo streaking across it. His quick glance confirmed another suspicion. The scenes were in deliberate order, as if attempting a pictorial history of the flying people. He felt vaguely disappointed. This stuff was garden variety fantasy, verging on the conceptions of science fiction. Still, there was a magnificent technique behind it all. A blending and effacing of brushstrokes which made the Dutch look like billboard splashes, and a mastery of glaze which made each scene glow like an illuminated transparency. This last painting by the door, for instance, it showed the translucent city again with approximately the same details, but with a barely perceptible dimming of the red sunlight. A single tower jaggedly shattered. A few other tiny touches, the artist had given it an atmosphere of almost unbearable desolation. It was the same fabulous metropolis, but it was tragic, deserted, lost. Peering hopelessly from the summit of the broken tower was a tiny face looking directly upward at Andreson. He allowed himself an appreciative shudder and methodically went around the gallery, following the history the pictures built up. It seemed commonplace enough. A race of space travellers who had colonized the earth, perhaps some time in the dim past, had built a civilization, and had finally succumbed to some undepicted doom. What was amazing was the utterly convincing way the well worn story was told. It was real, super real indeed, for it commanded more belief and sympathy than the everyday human tragedies. Anderson took out his fountain pen and an unopened letter and walked toward the door. He must get the address of this place and attempt to locate the artist. John Kimball's inscription on the envelope reminded him that Johnny, though a scientist, dabbled in the arts and would be interested. He ripped open the flap, then stopped in mid stride, ducking under the rayon cord to look at the spaceship scene. In many ways, this was the most wonderful of the lot. Even a night sky or a telescope field has no depth. It is merely a black surface containing spots of light. But the picture surpassed nature. It had a stereoscopic quality, all the more startling because it was impossible to ascertain how it was done. Andresen noted with a chuckle that the agent had placed the paintings in such order that there was a strong draught by blowing toward the picture as if being drained away into that awesome vacuum. A strictly phony technique, but clever nonetheless. Curious in spite of his better instincts, he put out a tentative finger to the surface of the scene. The fountain pen clattered to the floor. He gaped idiotically and stared with his finger at the nothingness where the picture still seemed to be. In his shock, numbed mind, two words burned fiercely. It's real. Ridiculous. Tensely, he forced himself to move his hand in deeper against the yelling of his nerves. It struck a slight tingling resistance, like a curtain of static electricity, and then the blood was pounding in each finger as if trying to burst through the skin. He snatched the hand back. There was a vacuum there, cut off from the room by some unseen force through which the air was leaking rapidly. Teetering on the edge of panic, he struggled to make better sense of the facts. The prickly pounding he had felt in his fingers might well have been electrical and only that. And Johnny Kimball had once demonstrated for him the static jet which might explain the draft of air. Three dimensional television, perhaps? He shook his head. No inventor would set up a demonstration like this in an abandoned grocery without any announcement or literature. Nor would there be likely to be 18 screens, each one showing a motionless and quite impossible scene. No, it was insane. But these garish things were windows into what? Clutching at his frayed emotions, he took a step toward the next frame. His foot crunched on the forgotten fountain pen. For a second he flailed in terror at nothing and then pitched head foremost over the low ledge. After a moment the sweet piping spoke again. You are not hurt. The mental shock will pass shortly. Andreson said nothing and stared fixedly at the crimson glow underneath his eyelids. Physically he was unhurt, but his sanity was precarious in his mind. Behind the closed lids, he it happened over and over again, the long twisting fall with the great city spinning and growing beneath him in a riot of color and damp, hot air gushing past him, the sudden swooping of the dark figure and the thrum of wings. He tried to pass out again and awaken on the floor of the gallery, but the cold, chiming voice jabbed him awake again. This is quite real. You are intelligent enough to accept it. Stop thinking like an infant. The motherly reprimand under such circumstances planted a small germ of amusement somewhere in his mind, and he grasped it frantically and began to laugh, still keeping his eyes clenched shut. Even without seeing its face, he could feel the creature's alarm and his hysteria, but he allowed the shaking to exhaust him into a sort of calmness. Only when his breathing had become controlled and even did he allow himself a second look. Red sunlight played harshly in upon him through the translucent walls of the small room and burned sullenly within the crystal bar which crossed above his head. One wall was recessed with what seemed to be bookshelves, and odd articles of furniture stood here and there, but evidently none of them had been designed for humans, for he was lying on the smooth floor, his jacket bunched under his head. The cowled shape still arched over him with satanic solicitude, black against the glare and somehow smaller than he had expected it to be. He hoped that that cape would not expand into wings, not yet, for his new calm still stood at the shimmering verge of madness. Thank you, he said carefully. I owe you my life. The silhouetted head moved as if to dismiss the matter. Your sudden appearance in midair was startling. We were fortunate that I happened to be in flight at the time. With a whispering sound like the rustling of heavy cloth, the figure moved out of the direct rays of the sun and settled gracefully against one of the furniture like things. The light struck it full and Andreson gasped and sat bolt upright. She was winged, no doubt about that, but the bat like impression those wings had given him seemed to have been only a product of distance. Seen in close up, the wings were tawny and delicate and traced with intricate veins. Their ribs were close set, the webbing like the sheerest silk. They rose from the girl's back where her shoulder blades should have been and at rest curved around her sides and made a backdrop for her legs and feet. Except for those gorgeous pinions which set her off like two great Japanese fans, she might have been human, or close to it. She no more suggested the rodent than the goddess Diana would have suggested a female gorilla. The wings something about the bony structure underlying her face, a vague otherness about her proportions. Except for these minute differences, she could have passed anywhere for a strikingly lovely human girl. Her clothing was brief and simple and not weighted with ornaments, for she needed free limbs and no useless baggage for flight. Andreson realized that he was gargling and rearranged his face as best he could. She did not seem to take his amazed inspection as anything but normal, however. Are you a time traveller? She asked, tilting her head curiously. We would think of no other explanation. Are you from our track? I Don't know, andreson confessed. My trip was accidental and the mechanism is a mystery to me. He considered asking about the gallery, but the girl's questions had already told him it would be fruitless. He masked his emotions in the mechanism of locating and lighting his cigarette while the girl waited with polite patience. It was hard to forget that there was an obscure doom prophesied. Or had it been merely narrated as historical fact for this exquisite creature and her whole civilization? And he was determined to say nothing about it until he knew what he was talking about. I discovered in my time a sort of gateway to your time and to 17 other nearly synchronous moments set up by scientists unknown to me. Each of the gates seems to open upon one single specific instance. For instance, before I fell into the one which brought me here, I saw a figure I'm sure was yours, and it was motionless above the city all the time that I was watching it. He broke off suddenly. Wait a minute. If this is another time. Well, suppose you tell me. Am I speaking your language or do you know mine, or are you a telepath? She laughed, each sound a clear musical tone, as if she'd been struck by a desire to sing the Bell song. Don't you know your own language when you hear it? No, the Varrez are not telepathic. Few races are. But a truly telepathic race allied with us has provided our culture with a good stock of equipment for tapping various parts of the mind. We use it for education. We simply tapped your language centers while you were unconscious. A shadow passed across the glowing wall and he heard the already familiar hum of wings. A moment later a newcomer was outlined in the sunlight in a low doorway which seemed to open on empty space. It was a man this time, a figure almost exactly Anderson's height and perhaps a little older, though it was hard to judge. He smiled unpleasantly at the human, revealing two upper incisors which were slightly larger than the rest of his teeth, and demanded, well, what time is he? What time are you? Andreson countered. We've no record of you in our history. You could have flourished, died, or moved on a dozen times without our knowing it. Our records go back only 3,000 years. Well taken, De Varan said, making himself comfortable in one of the odd chairs. We're not native here, of course, but so far we've found no mammals on this planet except a few egg laying ones that aren't even entirely warm blooded yet. So you must be a considerable distance in our future. Furthermore, you're a time traveller, which means that you know more than we do. For time is a problem we have never broken. The girl shook her head slowly. All traces of her former laughter vanished. It's no use, Sattell. He's here by accident and isn't a scientist. What's the matter? Andreson said. Both faces looked so sombre that he nearly forgot his own problem. Are you in trouble? We're at war, the girl said softly. And we shall probably be exterminated, all of us, before the year is over. Anderson remembered again the picture of the deserted city, and despite the hot sun he felt the same chill. This planet you call Earth, attell said, has no life on its surface now with enough intelligence to count up to three. But after we had been here 53 of its years, we discovered that Earth has a civilization of its own. All the same. Inside, a dozen legends chased through Anderson's mind at once. Cave dwellers of some sort. It hardly seems credible. No, not cave dwellers. These aren't even solid, and they couldn't live in caves. They live in the Earth, in the rock itself, and all the way down to the core. They are space beasts. They move through solid matter just as you and I move through space and are stopped by space as we are stopped by a solid wall in the air, for instance. We are safe from them, for what is to us a thin gas is for them a viscous, almost rigid medium. In the oceans we meet on equal terms, but true solids are their natural medium. How did you discover them? They discovered us, the girl said. They have besieged the city ever since the 53rd year after our landing. They're invisible, of course, but we can see them as openings in the Earth. The openings change shape as they move, and of course no natural pit does that in their own universe. The hollow Earth, bounded by its solid atmosphere. They are flying creatures, and their sense of gravity is the reverse of ours. Her clear, fluting voice became slightly duller, losing its inflection as the tale went on. Before we came here, she said, we had encountered what our scientists call counter matter, matter of opposite electrical nature to ours. But this complete inversion of space matter relationships was unknown to us. The space beasts knew about it. They were bent on driving us from the earth. Andreson felt his mind reeling into hysteria again. It was difficult enough to accept the spotless shining glass chamber and the two winged Verez, but this story of an inside out universe and its air treading masters. If only John Kimball had been the one to hear it. Sometimes Attell said reflectively, I think the Varrez have earned their defeat. There was a time when we were carrying a fight into the enemy's own cosmos, but it was their cosmos, not ours, and they knew it very well. Our change of state, while it enabled us to see our foes, could not change our mental orientation. We were lost in that hollow darkness. We could not forget that each great gulf was actually a mountain. The sudden chasms were buildings we ourselves had built, and the things like tiny burrows which kept opening and closing. All about our feet were the footfalls of our brothers, and the space beasts swooped upon us, each of them with six tiers of wings, muttering against the solid magma of the earth. And our weapons were crude and worthless. Andreson's mind tasted the concept and rejected it with a shudder. But surely, he said, as steady as he could, you must have better weapons now. Oh yes, we have weapons. But we are decadent and have lost the initiative to be the aggressors. The machines that accomplished the reversal of state for our ancestors have lain idle for a century in the bowels of our city. We no longer understand them. We are dying, first of all of old age. The space beasts are the accident that speeds us along the way. Shall I tell you what we use against them now? The girl stirred protestingly. Andreson looked at her, but she would not return the glass. Attell went on relentlessly. Look. From under his tunic he produced a heavy long metal rod, a club. But I don't see how. It's hollow, attell said succinctly. The metal, of course, is useless, but the vacuum inside is stale, hard to them, space crushing into space, and gouts of hard radiation bursting like blood from the contact. That's all we have now. That and a feeble energizing process which sometimes seals off the foundations of the city walls and clubs. Our last miserable recourses. And then. Then the space beasts will own the earth again. Chapter 2 By the time John Kimball had finished disconnecting the leads to the multiple screens and rewiring the master converter, he was nearly blind with fatigue, and his fingertips jerked and danced uncontrollably on the verniers. The sleepless nights of the previous week, and the emotional strain under which he had been working throughout was taking its toll now. After the wave splitting effect had first suggested it to him, he had spent most of the week erecting. The demonstration, and quite probably the triumphant letter he had mailed to Andreson afterwards had been a little crazy. As soon as he had posted the letter, he'd managed to get in about 20 hours of deathlike slumber. It was hardly enough, but there was no help for that now, except for the first sickening shock for the discarded empty envelope on the floor, the splintered fountain pen, and the wan screen, featureless and flickeringly gray, that told him what had happened in instant detail. He had wasted no time cursing himself for his grandiose gallery stunt. The colossus in the cellar would need many hours of weary, desperate work before the cauterized scars of Anderson's cannoning fall through the tissues of time would open enough to permit Kimball to follow. A tumbler clicked in the predawn silence, and a flood of magnetons sped through the primary coils. The ensuing process was quiet and invisible, but Kimball could feel it, the familiar, nauseating strain which at first led him to the basic principle. It meant that tiny lacunae were being born in the fabric of time, spreading and merging as the spinning magnetic field tore at the them. He slumped on his stool and waited. He wasn't sure that the last hour's work had been approximately right, but his gibbering nerves would no longer permit calculation or delicate mechanical correction. The die was cast, and wherever the nascent achronic gateway led, he would have to follow. After a moment he discovered that the climbing dial needles were hypnotizing him. Getting up from the stool, he proceeded to collect his equipment, moving like a zombie. It was futile to wish he had studied the period more closely, but at least it was clear that the age of the winged colonists had been warfare. Best to be armed, though There was a good chance that his pistol would be far outclassed. A flashlight clipped to his belt and an alcohol compass tuned to the machine's field rather than the earth's, and he was ready. He stepped into the heavy Taurus coil which terminated the series. There had been no time to set up a new frame and turned out the cellar light. The machine made no sound, and in the blackness no one could have seen that after a few moments it was alone. The light of the red sun ran back and forth along the catwalk in quivering lines, and all around it the city glistened in fairy like beauty. Andreson regarded the bridge dubiously. It was little more than a thread of crystal. It will bear your weight, the girl said, mistaking his trepidation. Masking his thoughts, he set out across it. They have come through several times just recently, attell continued evenly in a sort of borer. I suppose they thought of it as that whose walls were invisible, its machinery a contorted group of vacancies in a solid interior. But we destroyed the solid part, and they were crushed. It is hard to imagine how empty space could crush. But we have the law that two objects may not exist in the same space at the same time, and this seems to be its converse. Anderson tried it out. Two spaces cannot exist in the same. In the same what? Abruptly his head was whirling, and in the vast distance the earth reeled and shuddered. The glassy thread under his feet seemed to swivel back and forth like a tightrope. He was going over. Behind him, powerful veins cracked open, and lean hands grappled his shoulders firmly. Thanks, he gasped, flailing with his feet. At the landing of the next building, Attell grinned contemptuously and leaned him against the wall like a mannequin. Nevertheless, the winged man proceeded as imperturbably as ever. They learn rapidly. If they ever find out the secret of reversing their condition, we can close the book on Varan history. He jerked open the door to which the platform led, and Andreson and the girl followed him through. From the level upon which they were standing all the way up to the summit of this new tower there was a vast chamber, domed with a clear roof. Around the base of the dome proper a ledge of platform ran, upon which was more of the furniture, like stuff, evidently a sort of solarium, extending outside the walls as well as inside. It gave the building the look of a giant in a plastic helmet. At the apex of the dome a gem like a giant's diamond was fixed, rotating slowly, catching the sunlight and sending a parade of rainbow hues over the seats banked far below. Starstone Chamber, the girl said. Our council hall. It's beautiful. Not a place for stuffy minded men, I'd say. They walked down through the tiers of seats toward the bottom of the arena, where what appeared to be the head of a spiral staircase was visible. Where are we bound to Gosek? One of our senior psychologists, Attell said. We want to see what we can dredge up about the sciences of your period. Doubtless your observation, being untrained, missed most of the essentials, but there ought to be some kind of residuum in your subconscious. Why don't you fly me back to where I fell out of? Andreson suggested stiffly. I realize that you can't expect to remember the exact spot, but those windows must look both ways and should be findable. I could send you a more suitable specimen, a friend of mine who is a scientist. We do know the exact spot, attell interrupted. We have detectors in operation at all times Naturally. But a thorough search of that area revealed nothing. Andreson sighed. I was afraid of that. The apparatus evidently wasn't intended to be used for an airplane. I suppose I blew it out. The girl who had been preceding them stopped at the top of the stairwell and levelled a dainty finger at Attell. Why don't you stop tormenting him? Because he's not a scientist? She demanded angrily. It isn't his fault. He is doing his best for us. Attell's eyebrows would have shut up had he hadn't he? Certainly, he purred with an ironical gesture. I'm sure you understand my attitude, Mr. Anderson. As a non scientist, you are more of a curiosity than a gift, and that is a disappointment to us. We shall try to make your stay here as comfortable and as short as possible. Andreson, taken aback at the girl's sudden outburst, hardly knew what to say. He was spared the task of replying, however. The son went out. The girl gave a smothered little cry, and the human clumsily tried to make his way through the blackness toward where he had last seen her. A powerful four fingered hand grasped his elbow roughly. Stand still, Attell growled. Jinnah. It may be another attack. Wait for the tower lights. Anderson was uncertain as to whether Jinnah was an expletive of the girl's name, which he had never heard before, but he stood still, resisting an impulse to shake Attell off. After a moment an eerie sound drifted to his ears, a distant musical keening. Ah, it is a raid. There's the alarm. As he spoke, a dim radiance filtered down over them, bringing the ranked seats of the council chamber into ghostly relief. It was coming down from the dome, but the great duel no longer scattered rainbows. The light did not seem to have any single source Aloft with him, Natal ordered. Reluctantly. The girl gripped the earthman's other arm and two pairs of wings thrummed together in the echoing chamber. He felt himself arrowing dizzily skyward and tried to hold his body stiff. A second later they were standing on the high ledge among the deserted couches. Below them. The city, seen here from its highest tower, was presenting a heart stopping new facet of its beauty. Every one of the crystalline shafts were gleaming with blue white flame along its entire length, though no single one was too bright to be looked at directly, their total effect was of a sea of light almost as brilliant as high noon. Tiny motes drifted back and forth across the Pillars of Radiance, varans in flight, evidently going to their posts to answer to the alarm. But when Andreson looked up to see what had happened to the sun, what he saw wiped the miracle of the city from his mind. The sky had turned to rock. The whole metropolis was trapped in a tremendous hemisphere of some strange substance, a stony bowl, smooth and polished and veined with dark red lines like bad marble. Here and there the glow of the city struck sullen fire against the lava like surface. When Attell finally spoke, his voice had none of its previous arrogance. They have us now, he husked. Our sky is granite to them, and they've destroyed cubic miles of it instantaneously. Our power, our air cut off. They've worked a miracle, the girl said with unwilling respect. The beasts are scientists. We knew that in the beginning. Don't you see, Attell? They'll use that dome to get above the city. And their borers too. Indecisively, Attell spread his wings halfway. We can't carry this Earthman about the city now, he said. Jinner, go to your post. I'll take him back to my rooms. But Andreson and the girl protested simultaneously. Need I remind you that I command this sector during emergencies? By council order, the Varan snapped, it'll be no safer with us than alone in the apartments. Take him down again. Mutely, Jenner took the human's arm and the two picked him up again. He was becoming a little tired of being catapulted through the air once every hour and plunged back to the catwalk door. All right, the Varan told the girl, his voice edged with impatience. You're needed outwear, Jenner. She disappeared silently into the cavern of Starstone Chamber. Attell slid the door back and cocked his head, a grotesque silhouette against the faintly hazed oval opening. After a moment Andreson heard the sound too, a weird, intermittent buzzing noise. It set his teeth on edge and sent little waves of sheer hatred coursing through his body. The stocky Varan drew him out onto the platform and pointed upward. Boris, he grunted. You can see one from here. It was quite high, about halfway between the summit of the tower and the surface of the rock sky, and moving very slowly. It reminded Andreson of a legless centipede, a long joined cylinder with the same stony red veined texture that the great bowl presented in the feeble light. He thought he saw small openings appearing and vanishing, the space beasts moving about inside their mechanism. The brief glimpse was somehow the most horrible thing he had ever seen. He could distinguish at least two other tones in the gruesome buzzing, and he knew that the borer was not alone above the city. They've learned that hollow things are deadly. Learn from us, Mattel spat out bitterly. See the column of light inching out from the borer's nose? They are disintegrating a tunnel for their vacuum torpedoes. It's a slow motion kind of warfare, but when one side wins constantly, it can't last forever. Feel the radiation. Andreson discovered that he was scratching his skin, felt as if he had a mild sunburn. The boring mechanism, he suggested. Right, attell admitted, his tone grudging. Matter against matter generates radiant heat. Space against space generates X rays and worse, deadly stuff. If our gunners can only Andreson never heard the end of the sentence. Without the slightest warning he was again sprawling through the hot, dark air. Alone. Chapter 3 Kimball's right shoe caught in a burrow and he fell again. This time the expected shock came late. Evidently he had been on the brink of a pit of some sort, for his shoulders slammed against the hard ground with an unexpected impact, and he slewed down on a long decline. He lay at the bottom for an indefinite period. Neither time nor distance had any meaning in this blackness, and then got up again. Through the steady, muted roaring which had been in his ears ever since he had dropped from the Taurus coil, a roaring like the sound in a seashell multiplied to the point of madness. A leathery muttering sound began to grow. He yanked his flashlight from the belt clip and shot a cone of light upward. He was rewarded with a ululating, deafening scream, and something winged and huge sheered off from the beam. The muttering of the wings faded again, and with it went a sticky blubbering like the crying of an idiot child sick at his stomach. He pumped a shot after it and was surprised to hear it scream again. That wouldn't hold them for a while. They weren't very cautious about the automatic, for they seemed to expect that he would score a hit with it only by rare chance. But they hated the flashlight. They'd not try that dive bombing stunt on him soon. Again he could hear them settling around the rim of the pit. Deliberately he lit a cigarette. For a second he could see the bulky, pasty bodies and the blinded heads arching above him. Then they all whispered with agony and drew away, out of sight. Even the dim coal of the burning fag was too much for them, but before long the batteries of the flashlight would be drained, the cigarettes gone, the matches exhausted. When that time came, Kimball knew he would be torn to tatters, but it didn't bother him much now. He had been almost unconscious with fatigue when the badly adjusted master machine had dumped him into this nightmare. But the beasts, savage though they were, had been curious for a while. They had questioned him with very little hostility and had aroused his interest enough to give him second. Or had it been 22nd wind? Their upsetting version of telepathy, which projected subtly different emotional states instead of ideas, had awakened him thoroughly. He had just realized that he had arrived inside the Earth, probably in a space negative state to boot, when he had felt the urge for a cigarette, he sighed and stood up. There was no way to tell how long he had been in this midnight universe, but if he could only stick it out Until a further 24 hours were up, the master machine would act on him again. The faulty windings of its coils would prevent it from returning him to the abandoned grocery, as it was supposed to do, but at least it would throw him out of this black demon haunted universe. At this movement, the beasts rustled eagerly back to the rim of the pit, scarcely audible in the mass echo which was as natural to the hollow world as air. He turned on the flashlight, pointing it at the ground. He did not care to hear them all scream at once. There was a thundering flurry of wings above him. Then silence. Doggedly, he began to climb. Keep moving, he thought. You could sleep in your next universe, wherever that'll be. The beasts wheeled patiently. Anderson lay tasting the sensation of being dead for several minutes before he realized that he was hardly even jarred. His eyes were open, but nothing he could see made sense to him. There was no sign of a tell lying flat on his back. He looked stupidly upward at a column of soft light that seemed to reach miles into the air, ending in glowing haze. The rock dome had vanished, and in its place was a pattern of gigantic, garish stalactites. Wait a minute. There was something familiar here. He rolled over cautiously and found an edge to the mysterious surface he had fallen to. He thrust his head over it and peered downward. The rock dome was below him, not above. The space beasts who reacted to gravity in reverse had imposed their environment on the city. Only the solarium platform, which had been directly above where he had been standing on the catwalk, had saved him from mashing against the dome. He wondered if the Varan Gunners had been able to hit any of the borers under these conditions. He couldn't hear the buzzing sound. No, wait. There was a single buzzing tone, seemingly far away. Well, two down, anyhow. A winged figure sailed by below him, its pinions tensely outspread, gulling the air he shouted at it, but there was no response. He wondered what had happened to Attell. He must have fallen from the catwalk, too, but certainly he couldn't have been hurt. He didn't look like the type to pass out in midair. Anderson called again. After a pause, an infinitely remote response came back to him.
- [430:35]
Attell.
- [430:36]
Atellatel.
- [430:37]
Atel. Atella.
- [430:38]
The echo of his first shout. The Varan must have forgotten about him in the shock of the reversal and flown off to his post, leaving the Earthman stranded. Andreson knew it was quite possible that he had been deliberately abandoned, but he forced himself not to think about it. Right now. He had to get off this ledge and back inside a building. A preferable spot would be Et Al's rooms. They were close, and there would only be a short, harmless distance to fall either way, no matter what the warring factions did with the city's gravity. Yet Atul's doorway, so mockingly close, was in reality, as good as miles away. Unless he could figure out something nearly as good as flying. Suppose he should wait where he was and fall back to the catwalk when the Varans succeeded in neutralizing the effect. He shuddered. The catwalk was narrow, and he might easily miss it. In any case, it might take a long time. The space beasts seemed to have the edge on the Varans so far, and if they won, he'd starve here. He eyed the wall of the building above him. It was about 20ft up to the catwalk, and no handholds were visible. The top side, now the underside of the solarium platform, was no better. All the furniture had long since fallen away, and even had it been still there, bolted to the surface, it had thought twice before trying to crawl from couch to couch toward Starstone Chamber's roof. It was a long way to the rock sky. He risked standing up, hoping that the Verez would not choose this instant to change things around again. If they did, they'd be dumped on his head. The illusion of downness was quite perfect, but it was hard to forget that it was an illusion. His knees wobbled as if he were standing on a pile of telephones, books. After steadying himself against the wall, he made a slow circuit of the tower, stepping over the structural members of the platform cautiously. No doorways here. Even a flying people usually enter floors from the top side. Returning, he eyed the upper edge of the catwalk doorway. It was an eight foot opening, and he was exactly six feet tall. That left a margin of about six feet, or she might be able to jump. He wasn't in very good shape, and the platform didn't offer much of a starting run, but it hev to chance it, he backed gingerly to the edge of the platform, hunched, ran, leaped. He struck the glassy wall at full length and clawed frantically at it, missed the drop back to the deck knocked the wind out of him again, and he got up stubbornly. Crouch, run, leap. His hands latched over the edge of the lintel and closed on it. Drawing his knees up to his waist, he planted his toes and heaved. The first push got his elbows over the edge, and after a long struggle he managed to bend his body over it at the belt. Suspended. He looked dizzily down at the inside of the chamber, his feet dangling in thin air. It was only an equivalent distance to the bottom side of the inner solarium platform, but he didn't want to go that way. There'd be no sense in rattling aimlessly about the roof of the hall, waiting for his back to be broken across the seats. Somehow he had to work himself down to the catwalk. There was no other way but to shinny along the side of the lintel. He swapped ends so that his legs were now in the chamber, and took off his shoes and socks with a good deal of difficulty. His feet were sweating indeed, he was wet all over, so he wiped them with the tops of the socks. Then he began precariously to inch himself upward. By the time he made the bottom side of the catwalk he was weak with fear and his clothes were soaked. But he couldn't allow himself any time to recover, for there was now nothing above him but the chasm of the city street. He worked his way across on his hands and knees. No matter which way down was, this was a thin bridge for an earthbound man, a bridge much more decorative than it was useful, and lowered himself over the edge until he could curl his body around Attal's doorway. A moment later he was sprawled on Attal's ceiling amid a litter of the surly varan's personal effects. He had hardly come to rest when he fainted with a small sigh. The second flip over of the city's gravity barely jounced him, but it seemed to cause a lot of damage elsewhere. He had just gotten to his feet when a terrific crash rang from the street below and was followed at once by others and other parts of the metropolis. He went to the catwalk and looked over it very tentatively, for he was warier than ever of open spaces, but the distance was too great. He guessed that something which hadn't been fastened down when the original reversal took place, had just made the return trip. As he peered, four or five of the winged people stepped from a platform far below his eyrie and began to move. Since they were between him and the glowing side of the next building, he did not recognize Attell and Jinno among them until they were almost upon him. As they settled gracefully on the catwalk, he noted with some surprise that they were all armed with a glass muzzled pistol like weapon instead of the usual metal bar, and judging from their expressions, they anticipated trouble. I see you weren't killed, attal said grimly. He seemed a bit disappointed. No, but I did a lot of dropping back and forth. Anderson returned acidly. Why the artillery? These men are members of the Council Guard. They think you're a spy of some sort. They suspect me too, for forgetting about you during the fighting. That's ridiculous. Jinna burst in, her breast pulsing hotly. They never thought of it until you suggested it. We can't afford to run any risks. Who am I spying for? Andreson demanded. The beasts. Jinnah's right. It's ridiculous. Yes, one of the guardsmen said flatly. You're a native of Earth, no matter what your time, and so are they. You could easily be the vanguard of a raid. Andreson's temper was already shot from the buffeting he had taken. There's not a shred of evidence for such a theory, he snapped. Unfortunately there is, eto'll purred. We noticed a beast travelling through the foundations of the city just below the energy barrier, and managed to trap it. We let it get up into a pillar and then energized both ends. We were just about to kill it with hollow slugs when it materialized. The first time the beasts have ever succeeded in doing it, and it's an evil augury. Well, I still don't see it was an Earthman. Andreson's mind nibbled around the edges of the fact. It was startling enough in itself, but he could make little sense of it. How would an Earthman have gotten into the reverse universe? And how at this time in the dim past? Perhaps it's another victim of the gallery, he suggested, frowning. It never occurred to me before, but that infernal place might have been set up deliberately as a time trap, perhaps by the beasts. Perhaps, the guardsman said. But we can see no purpose beyond such time trapping. And the towel's interpretation makes better sense. Come along with us. Andreson shrugged. Where to? Starstone Chamber. The Council has been called to vote on what dispensation to make of both of you. Attell hold his other arm. If the beasts wear down our shield, we will all be thrown on our heads again. The Earthman allowed the Varans to take his elbows without any protest. He had a very vivid picture of himself buttered crimsonly over the inner surface of the rock, arching above. Save the heroics, for later, he thought he had imagined a council meeting as a huge affair, with all the banked chairs filled, but actually there were only about 20 of the verreres present, plus the lone, mysterious Earthman. Anderson scanned the stranger's features eagerly as they approached. Well, I'll be damned. He shouted. What are you doing here? Hello, Ken, kemble said calmly. I hardly know myself. Read my letter yet? No. Say, are you responsible for the surrealist trickery back in our time? I should have guessed it. I ought to push your face in. I wouldn't blame you, the scientist agreed, but I never dreamed you'd hit upon it by accident before you'd read my note explaining what it was in the letter. I made a date to meet you there, and I arrived a little early. I went out to pick up some supplies, and while I was gone, well, I'll have to let you off this time. You already look a bit damaged, Johnny. Damaged was hardly the word. Kimball looked as if he'd been caught in a cement mixer. His clothes were filthy and cut to ribbons. Bloody knees showed through holes in his trousers. He had a long, raw cut across his forehead, and his voice was husky with weariness. The Varens had listened to the conversation with polite impatience mixed with suspicion. The councilman who wore the gem on his forehead, a replica of the giant diamond above them, broke in with an authoritative gesture, waving the group to sit. Mr. Campbell has offered us certain explanations, he said. They seem inadequate. It appears that he is the agency of Mr. Edleton's misfortune. But we are losing one battle and can't afford to take on another. Our major question must be how can we believe you? One problem at a time, Kimball said about your present battle. I've watched your whole history and I know you're doomed to lose it. The city will be deserted in another century, but it will be an orderly retreat and will result in the complete extermination of the space beasts. Attell's mouth drew down at the corners. Obviously a fabrication. If we wiped out the beasts, why should we leave? Because you'll wipe them out with matter bombs set to fall into the universe in their state and then explode into yours. The process will cause violent earthquakes on Earth's surface. It'll change the whole climate of the planet, wipe out the giant reptiles, start the tiny mammals on their long upward climb toward the species. Ken, I represent, your civilization wouldn't survive such an upheaval. By the time things have quieted down, they'll be more comfortable on Venus. There was a small stir of surprise among the Varans. We already have a small colony on Venus, the council head admitted in a somewhat friendly voice. But as things stand now, I cannot see how we can hold them off for the rest of the century. I can help you there. You work on sun power, right?
- [440:49]
Yes.
- [440:49]
Mining of atomic fuels in this savage planet would not be fruitful. But that rock dome over our heads has cut us off, and our stored power will give out shortly. We've already had to cut down on these city's lighting, and we're trying to drill the dome. You'll never drill a dome in a thousand years. It's maintained by atomics. It might just well be pure neutronium for all the dent you'll make in it. I can show you how to build a time coil, or just open a window into tomorrow noon and let the sunlight stream in on your main converter. It's really quite simple once you know the principle. By the Teule. Have you repealed the law of the conservation of energy? Not at all. Just doesn't apply. Energy taken from one time doesn't alter the total available in the continuum. Here, I'll show you. He pulled out a pencil. Got any paper? No. Ken, do you still have that letter on you? Here you are, said Anderson, handing it over. I'm glad. It's going to be good for something anyhow. The besieged city was dark except for a few furtive gleams far below on the solarium platform. They could see little but the dim shapes of the nearby pinnacles and the tiny rivers of light quivering on the glassy flanks above. The stone cap pressed down heavily. Despite Kimble's time window into tomorrow noon, the confined air was hot, motionless, enervating. It's a bad age, Jenna, andreson said. Full of warfare and misery. I don't think you'd like it. Jenna stirred protestingly beside him. You paint it in very dark colors, Ken. We have our own wars here. And the jungle, the storms, the great reptiles. She broke off as a dark figure swooped silently from the depths past them and began to rise more slowly toward the dome. A tiny glow at its head made a red trail in the dimness, and it did not seem to have any wings. That must be Your friend, the girl murmured, pointing. See, he has one of those things called cigarettes that he smokes all the time. Yes, said Andreson, not much interested. Since Kimball had arrived, he had been the center of interest among most of the Varans, and Anderson had been allowed to shift for himself. It had taken some persuasion on Gianni's part to get Anderson a cap of the anti gravity wings with which they had equipped the Earth physicist. For a while the neglect had nettled Anderson, and at the moment he definitely did not want to talk to Kimball. Jenner interested him a good deal more, but Jenna was still dreaming of her picture of Earth as it would be millions of years hence. Before Andreson could protest, she leapt into the air and soared over the trailing cigarette glow. He watched, grousing, for the little red spark, halted in midair, and did a short minuet. Finally he stood up, picked up the heavy torpedo of his own levitator, clipped the control box to his belt, climbed into the parachute harness. A touch of his finger sent him skyward. Hello, Ken, kimball said cheerfully. Hello. I was just on my way to taste the apex of the dome. Seems like we might make a breakthrough there soon. I hope. Kimball dropped his cigarette and watched it fall regretfully toward the distant, almost invisible city. Not many of those left. I'd be glad to get out of here myself. He lit another. In the brief match flare, Jenner's graceful, wheeling figure became visible like some angelic dream. Why don't you go back now, Ken? I've already built a gate back to our own time. The Vares don't use much radioactive material, so I had to go back for supplies. You could go through just as simply. Yes, said Jinnah's voice from the blackness. Why not? Ken, this guy Atel seems to be after your pelt, and you're no match for him in his own environment. Johnny, Kimble added, it isn't as if the Verez needed you. I know the technical aspects of the situation, and I can hold my end up. But you could leave any time. Why are you staying? Two reasons. First, I'm not inhuman, and I got handled roughly by the beasts. I'd like to see them smashed. Second, I can't market my time coil. You can imagine what chaos it'd cause in our world. But the Vereza promised me this anti gravity pack, and that's worth a lot. He waited for an answer, but Andreson didn't see any sense in making one. After a moment his friend sighed. Well, got to get a loft. The glowing cigarette arced upwards dimming gradually. Wings pulsed softly past Anderson's cheek. Why are you staying? Jenner whispered. He tried to answer, but the moment's hesitation was fatal. The girl arrowed downward, a slim, lovely shadow in the artificial dusk. Her sweet, chiming voice drifted back tauntingly. Explain to the beasts. For a moment Anderson hung motionless in his harness, keenly aware that he was perhaps the loneliest man since Adam. The city looked like a tinsel toy below him, and all around him was darkness and silence. The nearest human being was the only one within millennia of him, and among the Varrez he had just one friend. Maybe out of the murk. A voice called, what are you dreaming, Earth man? Or should we say plotting? Anderson recognized the voice Vuratell's, but could not place its direction. I'm on my way to join my friend at the apex of the dome, he said shortly. I'm not plotting anything except getting home as soon as possible. Oh, that's odd. The varan's voice roughened, then regained its first silkiness with obvious effect. I passed Jinno on the way up. I thought you two might have been having a talk. Suppose we were? Anderson demanded. What's that to you? The voice was close in now, and its tone was cold and hard. Anderson rested his fingers lightly on the levitator controls, still looking about him in the blackness. A great deal to me. When a council voted to let your scientist accomplice have a free hand, I had to go along. But I still think you're both spies and up to something dangerous. He paused, and at the same moment Andreson spouted him, circling with silent, outspread wings about 25ft up from where the Earthman hung. He went right on, looking as if he had seen nothing, turned his head from side to side in apparent bewilderment. Follow us around, then, if you have the time to waste, he said. Two men against a city. You can fought to be brave. The odds are all on your side, you ground Grubber, the Varan gritted. Follow you around while you corrupt a Varan girl with your lies about the future and plot to let the beasts in? Do you think I'm such a fool? The council is blind with sitting so long under the Star Stone, but there are still a few of us who can see. What with, Anderson taunted. You seem to be our mouth. With a low snarl of rage, Attell plunged. His powerful wings furled tightly around his body. He dropped straight for the Earthman. In the dim light, Anderson saw his massive right arm reach back to his belt. He was Drawing his vacuum club, Anderson jammed the button home and shot skyward. Experience told against him almost at once, for he had drawn the line too fine. His shoulder slammed hard against Attell's, and the bat winged creature tumbled away from him. The harness continued to haul Anderson blindly upwards. His collarbone sent out sharp pains with every movement. It seemed to be broken, or cracked at least, was a tell. No. There he was, wings thrashing the air as he arrested his fall. The earthman poked the belt control again, hovered over his fluttering opponent. Two could play at this power dive game. Feet first, he arrowed downward, the hot air roaring in his ears. Somehow Attell saw him coming, furled his wings again. For what seemed an eternity, the two fell, the city swelling beneath them from a hazy splotch to a bright quilt, and from that to a glowing cloudy mass. A jabbing finger reversed Andreson's belt, and slowly he began to gain. In the growing light, he could see Attell's face turned up toward him, smiling sardonically. Then the bat wings boomed out and Attell was gone, sailing easily around the nearest tower. Andreson saw the thin transparent thread of a bridge almost upon him and tried to break, but it was too late. If he stopped at this speed, he'd black out. The bridge burst under his plummeting feet with the sound of a waterfall of plate glass, and something snapped in his left foot, sending fresh waves of pain through his body. The harness cut into him, yanking against his momentum, and he tried to pull out. At the bottom of his immense plunge, he could clearly see figures in the once distant streets. Then he began to rise again. Instantly, sharp ribbed wings batted at him. An open hand struck him, a terrific blow behind the ear, and a second later something long and steel hard thudded into his ribs. He was flung forcibly against the side of the nearby building. Only the mechanical obedience of the levitator saved him. It had been set for up. It dragged him on up, willy nilly. A hot liquid oozed down his side from the blow of the vacuum rod. In a fog of pain he saw Attell banking purposely for another assault, and clutched the up control again. The levitator could climb faster than the Varan could, and Andreson had a moment's respite. Grimly, he kept on going until a growing sense of pressure and heat warned him that the rock dome was near. Should he try to lose himself among the city towers or yell to Johnny Kimball for help? His whole heart turned from the thought. His earthly life had not kept him in very good physical shape, but he had always fought his own battles. It made no difference that his life was the stake of this one. I'll get him yet, he thought intensely. Get him without help if it kills me. Well, Earthman Attell's voice rang out below. The rock dome sent back a huge echo. Running already. If Jenna could see her hero now. For a moment, Andreson was about to dive furiously after the varan again, but he thought better of it. He remembered Johnny's words. They're no match for him in his own environment. He but et al. Was not fighting another winged man. He was fighting an Earthman with a levitator, that scrap between the buildings. Had Attell given such a buffeting to a Varan, he would have knocked him and that would have been the end of it. But the levitator couldn't be knocked out. No matter what happened to the man operating it. It wouldn't fall unless it was set to fall. There was something else, too. Birds fly because they're built for it. Among other things, they have a huge keel like breastbone to which their flying muscles are anchored. But bats don't, and Andreson bet that the Varans didn't either. Rodents are ancestrally ground animals, just like Earthmen, and have to adapt for flying in some other way. Andreson smiled crookedly. There was only one way to test the idea. He touched the belt again, and the city began to swell beneath him. Mattell glided cautiously out of the way of his fall, then closed in. The Earthman shot off laterally, turned, began a tail chase. For a few seconds, the absurd circling continued, each combatant trying to gain on the other. Then Attell realized that the levitator could drive Anderson faster than he could fly, and spun to face him with a single sweep of his wings. Andreson made no attempt to stop. He shot directly into the varan's arms. The vacuum rod crashed into his injured side again. Gritting his teeth, he grasped Attell around the chest, trying for a half nelson. The wings fluttered, the bar thudded home once more. Then Attell broke free. Monster. He gasped. What's the matter, Attell? Anderson shouted raggedly. Match your match for an answer. The varan shot at him head first, like a gull winged rocket. Andreson flung himself lengthwise and grappled once more. Attell's body, as he had suspected, was remarkably light, probably hollow boned, and his arms were not nearly as strong as his wings. They simply couldn't be. This was the death struggle. Fiercely, the two strove against each other. Andreson locked one of the flailing legs steadily forced the great body back. He had one hand free for a split second, and he grasped the belt control. The garish glow of the city began to brighten at an alarming rate. Attell's hands fastened upon the earthman's throat. Anderson pried weakly at them, but he had already lost too much blood to be able to free himself. With one hand, he clung doggedly to the belt control. With the other. The city grew and grew. The blood pounded in his head, and his lungs burned like twin sacks of acid. The pillars of cold fire that were the city's towers flowed past him, blurring rapidly. At the last instant, Attell realized what was happening. A scream of terror was whipped from his mouth into the slipstream, and he released Andreson's throat to claw frantically at the hand on the belt control. But it had been too late. Seconds ago. Andreson let go of him entirely, kicked himself free, began to break the varan spread his wings and lost his life. The right pinion snapped back and broke at once. The vanes on the left somehow withstood the blast, but the membrane between them could not. In a split second, the living fabric was bloody tatters. Attell's body slammed itself to jelly against the bright earth. Dizzy and sick, Anderson concentrated on cutting down the terrific velocity the levitator had built up. He succeeded fairly well, though he broke the other foot when he struck, the levitator held him upright, swaying. A cloud of winged creatures gathered around him, one of them he thought he recognized. Jenner. Yes, Ken. We saw most of the fighting. How I outflew him, he said proudly, and then passed out for the third time. Jimmy Kimball peered out the door of the chamber that Varanz had assigned us, his laboratory, and grinned. Quite a formal farewell committee coming across the bridge, he said. Looks like the whole council's in it. He looked Andreson over critically. For a while I was afraid there'd turn out to be Indian givers on the levitator deal, he added. But I must say, you threw yourself into the job of protecting our interests. Look at you. Both feet bandaged, chest bound, right shoulder strapped up. If ever a man needed a levitator, you do. Ah, dry up, anderson growled. How near through are you? Almost. I'm not trying to hit the gallery, though it might be easier that way. Suddenly he became serious. I'll tell you what, Kin. It's a new life. We're going back to a life where you and I can look back into the past whenever we want, and visit it, too, if we keep quiet about it and it's a new world. We're going back to a world which is going to be given the levitator. That means free flight. Not just flight in machines, but real flight where one man can fly whenever, wherever he wants without having to board a plane or pay a fare and space travel and no heavy lifting for the housewife. And get to the point. Kimball looked a bit crestfallen. I thought you'd understand how I felt. Well, I couldn't see going back to the old world at the same spot we left it. I had a new apartment rented when I left that I'd never been in. Hasn't even got any furniture in it. I want to put the time window through into there. A fresh start. Andreson nodded. A good idea, Johnny. But make it quick. Along the sunlit bridge the delegation of Varans walked ceremoniously and the vanguard was a lovely shape, like an exquisite butterfly. Kimble looked out the door again and saw her. With a slight smile he left the room. Andreson didn't notice. Farewell, Ken. Farewell, Jenna. I'm sorry to go. There was a brief stiff silence and then she was in his arms, sobbing bitterly. Ken, why? Why? He swallowed. Do you remember up there on the solarium ledge before the rock dome was destroyed? Remember I said I had a question I had to answer? Yes. What was it? Just this, Ken. Earth and air mix. There's a legend in my time that few people understand, but I think I understand it. It's the story of a Lilith, Queen of air and darkness. She fought with Satan and God alike for the Earth, but she lost because she was not part of their universe. It's the same with me. What part could I play in a time not my own among people who live in the air? The girl did not move or answer. Steadily he went. Besides, there's a gap between us greater than parsecs or centuries. Look. He took a hand in his, held it up. The delicate four fingered limb made his own five stubby fingers look lumpy and misshapen. We have no future together, Jinnah. We seem alike, but we're not. The apes are my cousins. The bats are yours. You should stay with your own race and have the children I could never give you. We have no real happiness to give each other. She drew back and squared her shoulders proudly, though her eyes still brimmed with tears. You are right, she said. Go back then. But I extract one promise before you go. He inclined his head. Whatever I can do. You have the time coil and can visit any age you wish. Promise me that you'll never come to this one again, he said softly. I promise. Dinner. Her first soft kiss was her last. The next instant it was as if she had never been ready. Ken. The time coil throbbed once, and then the glass walled chamber was empty in the red sunlight. End of against the Stone Beasts by James Blish Read by Edmund Bloxham.
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Meteor Men of Mars by Harry Kord and Otis Adelbert Klein from planet stories, winter 1942 this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org Read by Dale Grothman like tiny meteors, the spaceships plunged into Earth's atmosphere, carrying death for all who opposed their flight. The fate of the world rested in Hammond's hands, and his wrists were fettered at his sides. Meteor Men from Mars by Harry Cord and Otis Adelbert Klein it came out of the dawn sky, slanting like a fiery meteor out of the east. The two men in the skiff saw the glowing streak in the sky and heard the sound of its passage like the loosing of a nest of angry snakes. Overhead, a scant second before it plummeted into the calm waters of the Sound, a geyser of water and steam shot up not a hundred yards from the maroon and gold skiff. The boat rocked and pitched to the disturbance. Frank Hammond, seated at the bow, clamped a taped hand over the side to hold himself, surprise quickening the intentness of his dark, handsome face. He was a lithe, bronzed figure, clad only in blue trunks and rope sandals, stroking for his college crew. In years that were warm memories had padded naturally. Wide shoulders. What the devil. He ejaculated. Did you see that, Pete? Pete? Storm grinned. Two inches under his companion's six foot length. He weighed 10 pounds more, a heavily muscled figure who could move with deceptive speed, as many in the opposing 11 had found out in his college football days. Blond, phlegmatic of nature, he took things easier than his more restless friend Meteor, you dummocks. He jibed good naturedly. Ever heard of one before? Hammond stared at the spot where the agitation was quieting. I've heard of them, he said shortly. But this is the first time one ever fell this close to me. Storm shrugged. Forget it. This is our last day before going back to the grind. Let's make the most of it. Remember the bet we Boy. He broke off, standing up to haul in. His catch proved to be a blue fish, a three pounder. He unhooked it, disgustedly while Frank, measuring it with a quick glance, gave him a Bronx cheer. If you can't do better than that, the new hat's in the bag, he jeered. They went back to their heaving and hauling, bantering good naturedly over every catch, completely forgetting the strange visitor from the skies. Both were research chemists for the New York Analytical Laboratories. Both were unmarried. They had been inseparable comrades since their college days, when both wore identical crew cuts, dressed alike and always either double dated or stagnant. In memory of those days, their skiff, the crawfish, had been painted maroon inside and the golden yellow outside, maroon and gold having been their school colors. Their vacation camp was on Ramson's island, just off Ramson's Point on the Connecticut shore. The rocky island was uninhabited. They had left camp early, intent on making the most of their last day. Reaching the fishing hole they had anchored, both men taped their hands and each prepared his jig, a long bar of lead to which a hook had been attached, and began the process of heaving and hauling, used in the vicinity of luring blue fish. They had been at it for about an hour when the meteor landed 15 minutes later they had forgotten it. The sun was a huge red ball balanced on the rim of the sea when Frank suddenly felt a jerk on his line that nearly wrenched his arm from its socket. He said nothing. His lips merely tightened eagerly as he wished to surprise his companion by hauling in the big one unexpectedly. But this proved harder than he thought. His potential catch darted off with such a burst of speed and strength that it dragged, boat, anchor and all. Hey. Yelled Storm, clutching at the boat's sides to hold himself. What's on that jig? A shark. Better cut that line before it swamps us. Like heck I will, hammond grunted, hanging onto the line with both taped hands. This must be the grandfather of all big blues. That new hat's in the bag. With both feet braced against the thwarts, he leaned back and pulled with all his strength. Bit by bit he hauled the big one in close till finally he was able to lift it out of the water and into the boat. Both men exclaimed in amazement at the thing, which had come over the side and clanked to the bottom of the boat. It was neither a giant blue fish nor a shark. It was a shiny, iridescent object, slightly shaped like a shark, but quiescent now and seemingly lifeless. What kind of a fish do you call that? Asked Storm disgustedly, leaping forward for a better view of the catch. It looks like a cross between a shark and a toy submarine. Damn if it don't, Hammond replied, staring bewilderedly at his catch. The thing was about 30 inches in length with both vertical and dorsal fins, but instead of one dorsal fin, it was equipped with four fins placed equidistant around the body. These fins contained tubular quills, or spines with round openings at the ends, and Hammond's hook had caught between two of these spines. It was as heavy as if made of steel, but despite its weight and metallic sound when it struck, it appeared to be constructed entirely of bluish, iridescent mother of pearl. Hammond removed his hook from between the spines and lifted his catch into the empty boat seat between them. Better heave it overboard, advised Storm seriously. It might be a newfangled type of mine. Or bomb. I don't like the looks. He stood open mouthed as the thing suddenly shot off the boat seat with a hissing roar like that of a small rocket. It scorched the paint as it took off with a small orange green flame emanating from the tubular quills. It shot upward with incredible speed and was almost immediately lost to view. Storm's mouth closed slowly. Hell, he said, a little dazed. I'm afraid to start fishing again. Frank might catch a cross between a battleship and a whale. I'm hauling up the anchor, hammond countered grimly. I don't like the looks of this at all. The coastguard ought to hear of this. He had one hand on the anchor rope and was starting to hoist it when the strange catch suddenly reappeared. It came down in a long slant, circled over the skiff a few times, and finally settled on the scorched seat from which it had taken off. Hammond stared at the thing and swore. Peter. Storm took a firm hold on his oar. Holes suddenly appeared in the strange craft. Hammond noticed that there were no doors in evidence. The holes seemed to dilate open like camera shutters in the gleaming body. From these openings, a host of small creatures crawled. They swarmed out toward both ends of the boat seat. Storm straightened, oar in hand. Ants. He snapped disgustedly. He began to swing the ash blade down on the scurrying creatures. The things continued to move about, apparently unharmed. Dense appeared in the oar and in the seat. Hammond bent over the scurrying creatures and studied them. No use, Pete, he muttered. They're not ants. There's no division of head, thorax, and abdomen. They're eight legged and cephalothyretic. More like arachnids. His startled surprise was fading under the prod of scientific curiosity. Funny thing, Pete. The legs and shells seem to be composed of the same substance as the thing they came from. Look. Storm dropped his oar and came forward. The boat rocked a little to his shift of weight. A faint humming came from the thing on the seat, catching his attention. But Hammond, intent on one of the small creatures he was about to pick up, did not notice. Not until Pete's hoarse shout jerked him away. Look out, Frank. That tube. Hammond straightened up to face his friend. But Pete Storm had vanished as if he had never been. Between Hammond and where Storm had been was the thing on the seat. The humming emanating from it now was distinctly audible and ominous. A shining tube mounted in a turret had appeared in one of the openings. The tube was swinging around, lining itself on Hammond. The dazed chemist did not think. He reacted instinctively, knowing somehow that that tube was related to Storm's disappearance. He twisted violently and tried to dive over the boat's side. Something halted him in the actual. He felt a strange numbness wrap itself about him, and a cold like nothing he had ever experienced penetrated to his very vitals. Then he felt himself falling, as if through an endless blackness. The darkness faded slowly. He felt his feet jar on solid ground, and the terrible cold left him. But for long moments, Frank Hammond stood rigid, his dazed mind trying to accept the strange world he had fallen into. The landscape about him was maroon in color. Irregular ridges and gullies of apparently molten stone hemmed him in. Off to his left, he could see a huge bubbly pit that reminded him of fumaroles he had seen in the National Yellowstone Park. Far in the distance to his right and left, maroon cliffs towered into blue mists. Hammond stared at the weird scene under him. He could feel the slow rise and sway of the entire land, as if it were unstable, rocking in space. For the first few moments, Hammond thought he was dreaming. He must have been rendered unconscious by the strange thing on the boat. Soon he would awaken, but the slightly swaying maroon landscape persisted. Hammond looked down at his nearly naked, bronzed body. He hadn't changed. He took a few tentative steps toward the bubbly pit, and the sudden realization that all this was real sickened him. Where was he? What had happened to him and Storm? A harsh metallic rasp answered him. Hammond whirled. Topping one of the far ridges appeared an eight legged monster of gigantic size. It was without head or tail. Its unsegmented body was an iridescent blue and shaped like a giant pumpkin seed. The thing flashed menacingly in the bright light of a sun that was but a huge blur in the misty sky. It headed for Hammond with incredible speed, a huge foreleg stretching out in readiness. Hammond wasted no time in speculation. His dazed mind reached but one impulse flight. Turning, he ran for the nearest gully. He went down in a half scramble and ran along it, the walls looming over his head. But his huge pursuer gained on him. He could hear the metallic rattle of those flashing legs close behind him. Despair gripped the young chemist as he scrambled out of the gully and ran up the nearest ridge. The landscape ahead of him was dipping down. As he ran, seemingly being tilted by his weight, the thought came back to Hammond that this must be a nightmare. The eight legged colossal thing that pursued him was exactly like the tiny ant like creatures that had swarmed out of the strange catch. He had pulled onto the crawfish but a few hours ago. Or was it a few hours? He didn't know. He no longer knew anything. Grim faced, his breath beginning to come in gasps, he slid down a steep maroon bank and raced along the shadowed cut that gradually deepened. It was a hopeless flight. Behind him, the clattering monster came running along the top of the ravine, which was too narrow to allow it to enter. The steep walled cut suddenly ended. The sides were steep and smooth, a perfect cul de sac. Hammond turned, his brown fists clenched. The walls hemming him in were perhaps 15ft above his head. The metal monster halted on the rim. A strange light blinked on in the nose of that creature, or perhaps mechanism. It probed down at him, spotlighting him. A giant foreleg, ending in a formidable pair of forceps, reached down along the light beam for him. The focusing light, swinging along the opposite wall. Before steadying on, Hammond, had revealed to the desperate research chemist a transverse fissure, barely wide enough to admit him. Hammond took the chance. The giant claw was but a foot above his head when he twisted, sprang away from the wall. The forcep jerked, swinging after him. Hammond beat it to the fissure by a foot. He didn't stop. He kept running, looking back over his shoulder to see if the monster was following. He didn't notice that the fissure ended abruptly in space, not until he suddenly felt himself treading empty air. Then he began to fall, turning slowly, like a slow motion diver in the newsreels. He fell a long way in terms of feet. As he judged it, the drop was incredible. Below him, a huge mass loomed out of a brown, heaving sea above him. He saw it once as he faced upward. In his turning fall, he glimpsed what was a gigantic span of maroon earth, hundreds of feet thick, that was supported by the huge maroon cliffs at either side. It was from that span he had fallen. A strange, numbing thought came to him then, so incredible in its implications, he discarded it. But it persisted, kept tapping at the back of his mind. He was still in the crawfish. The thought was fantastic, yet it was less incredible than if it were not true. The turreted tube evidently had sprayed an invisible ray that had so changed him in size that the ant like things he had been about to examine now loomed like colossi over him. The ridges and gullies and fumaroles were brush marks and paint bubbles in the maroon paint of the seat. And the towering cliffs were the boat's sides. The high span from which he was falling must be nothing less than the boat seat and the huge elliptical landmass twice toward which he was falling must be. He landed then. The substance beneath his feet was soft, spongy. It broke his fall. Around him was a momentary red glow as of the sun shining through a filter that blocked out all waves above the red band. He passed through slimy pools within the huge mass, and momentary revulsion gripped him. Then he emerged out into brief daylight, riding a huge disk to the brown heaving sea. He hit with a splash fathoms deep to him. He went directly to the bottom, as if he were composed of a substance many times heavier than lead. And he remained on the bottom. Not even his instinctive attempt to swim upward could lift him to the surface. The ironic thought hit him then, as death stared at him with grinning face. The huge mass through which he had plunged must have been the body of one of the blue fish they had caught. Evidently, though incredibly reduced in size, his weight in relation to the earth's pull was still 180 pounds. And the brown heaving sea at the bottom of which he now rested was merely the bilge water of the crawfish. And in the next minute or two, Frank Hammond was going to drown in it. He turned instinctively and ran for the boat's side. Again he felt the boat tip to his unbalanced weight. Overhead, the bilge water rushed to lap high against his side. There was danger that his weight would so tip the skiff that it would ship water from the sound. But he had to chance it or drown. Where he stood, his lungs were nearly bursting when he came upon the dark, gigantic loom of the boat side. And strangely, at this moment, the steep sleep slant of the floor began to level. The bilge water washed back from the side. The thought came to Hammond then that Pete Storm must be running for the opposite side of the boat. Instinctively Realizing the need to keep this strange world on an even keel, lungs bursting, Hammond started the climb up the dark wall. Like some tiny mite almost invisible to the naked eye, Hammond finally emerged from the bilge water. Aching lungs drew in great draughts of clean air. Spent, still somewhat dazed by the incredible truth, he did not notice the eight legged colossus that came down along the cliff toward him. Not until it loomed over him and a giant claw reached down for him did he become aware of it. And then it was too late. He gasped, tried to dodge a giant metal forcep grasped him about the middle and with quick deft motions, another claw like appendage clipped a small parachute like metal harness over his shoulders. Then the first forcep lifted him easily and drew him up to the metal monster where a round port dilated open and he was thrust inside. The huge claw withdrew and the port closed. Hammond blinked his eyes. He was in a big room, the ceiling of which was transparent, letting in a subdued light. Ringing him in a circle too deep were warriors of an ancient era. Amazons, complete to breastplates and oval shields, cinchers and sandals. Lithe, beautiful, yet erect and disciplined. They watched him as a trainer watches a jungle cat on its first day in the arena. Hammond waited. The thought came to him now that these were very modern Amazons. For besides the shield they carried a weapon that closely resembled a modern rifle. And on their shoulders each carried an identical parachute like contrivance similar to the one fastened on Hammond. The young chemist took a deep breath. He said, what's the idea, girls? This some kind of new game? The sound of his voice seemed to startle them. A golden haired warrior, perhaps a minor officer, for she wore a green armlet, made a short quick gesture. The ringing warriors closed in on Hammond. Instinct moved in the young chemist's arms. The instinct to fight, to win free of this strange experience he could not understand. But crippling that instinct were the habits of civilization. He couldn't bring himself to hit these girls, warriors or no. Yet he tried to win free. He pushed the first two off their feet, whirled and bucked the rest of the line with his shoulders. They parted under his assault, but with disciplined movement the others closed in and fairly smothered him. Under them he felt metal clasps about his arms and legs and suddenly he was unable to struggle to heave free of the pinning mass. Panting, his face grinned. He subsided. The amazons reformed ranks. He was left with arms and legs chained in a manner when on his feet to take short steps forward. The officer with the green armband gestured again and gave with a verbal order. Her voice was musical in a tongue entirely alien to Hammond. Two warriors marched forward, bent, helped Hammond to his feet. The officer took hold of the free length of blue chain and started to walk Hammond toward the far end of the big room. Hammond followed behind him. The two warriors kept pace, rifle like weapons held ready. A door dilated open in the wall and Hammond found himself in a long softly lighted Runway. He was marched along this to another door and motioned within. The door closed behind him. It was a small room, bare and blank on three sides, save for a number of iron hand grips on the walls. The fourth wall was transparent. Hammond shuffled to it. At the same moment, the floor under him pitched and rolled and the clank of machinery rumbled through the iron monster. He grasped the nearest hand grip and clung. Looking out through the transparent wall, he could see that the monster tank, for now he guessed the eight legged ant like thing to be, was climbing up the boat side to the seat. The tank leveled off. Above him towered the outlines of big ones. Scores of monster tanks were climbing back up the parent side to disappear in as many openings. The tank which held Hammond moved steadily, nosed into its compartment. The door closed after them. The tank rumbled on across the large dimly lighted room, more like some enormous storage garage, for Hammond could glimpse the bulks of dozens of huge tanks along the far walls. And in one corner he saw several of what resembled fast, ultra streamlined, all metal planes. The tank came to a halt. The door of Hammond's cell opened and the officer with the two guards came in. Hammond was motioned to follow her out. He was led out of the tank, which was immediately maneuvered into its niche among the vague bulks along the wall. A door dilated open at the officer's approach and they passed through it into another long green lighted Runway. They went along this for some distance, then turned into another room as huge as the colossal garage into which the tank had entered. Thousands of the wiry Amazons were swarming in through a hundred doorways to this room. Evidently they were members of the expedition which had been sent to locate and capture him, and which must have consisted of nearly a hundred of the strange ambulatory war tanks. The Amazon officer led him across this huge room, which reminded Hammond of a railway or bus terminal, and into another corridor. It was then that the hugeness of the big one became evident to Hammond. They marched through a number of huge rooms, climbed three spiral ramps and popped into a half dozen traverse corridors, and only on these upper levels, in rooms that held banks of whirring machinery. Did Hammond see the males? They carried no weapons. They all wore white collarless crew neck garments that resembled smocks, which came down to their knees. They sported bearded chins and jowls, but smooth shaven upper lips. The beards were all trimmed to sharp points and they looked alike as stenciled copies. But here and there among them were some with remarkable physical characteristics. Each of these occasional individuals had a tremendously large left arm, fully as big as one of his legs. It was carried crooked at the elbow, with the forearm laid horizontally in front of him. The right arm, on the contrary, was spindly and underdeveloped. These males had thin, scraggy beards and strange dull eyes that followed Hammond as he was marched past. If the other males noticed him, they gave no sign. They seemed completely subordinate to this huge craft. The spiral ramps kept leading upward. Finally they reached a corridor with a transparent ceiling, and Hammond realized that he was now at the top of the strange craft. A moment later, he was led before a door, at either side of which stood a stiff Amazon guard. The guard saluted the officer by raising the right hand to the heart. Then they stepped aside. The officer stared at the closed door. Her forehead furrowed slightly. Then she nodded. Turning, she removed the shackles from Hammond, stepped back. The door dilated open. The officer made a sharp, unmistakable gesture with her right hand, and the armed guard took a solid step forward. Hammond shrugged, ducking a little to clear the top of the doorway. He stepped inside. Across the well lighted room, close to the transparent prow of the ship, was a huge metal desk. Papers and small charts lay scattered upon it, but Hammond's eyes scarcely noticed. He stopped just within the room, the door closing silently behind him. Then he took a deep breath and grinned. Now I know I must be dreaming. The girl behind the desk did not smile. She looked at him solidly. Then a strange, quick fire leapt across her startled, beautiful face. She lowered her gaze abruptly and her hands stiffened on the desk. She rose, and when she looked again at Hammond, there was a hardness, a piercing penetration in her sea green eyes that seemed to probe like a surgeon's skin scalpel into Hammond's very brain. A fire seemed to spread quickly through his mind, as though long dormant cells were stirring, growing to awareness, and with it impacting strangely on his ears. The girl spoke, her voice low and musical. Earthman, your thoughts are unpleasant to me. I, Gina, commander of this spacecraft VAR DAR 3, with a million warriors at my disposal, am not for you. Hammond's grin changed to a Startled gape. Confusion moiled in his brain. How had she known what he was thinking? And where did she learn English? She spoke it like an American. The girl smiled as if hearing his confusion. She was a tall, lithesome girl, a corn yellow blonde of remarkable beauty. But there was an imperiousness in her manner, a quiet dignity to her regard, a grace to her movements that set her above the Amazons that had captured Hammond. That she was a warrior also, albeit a commanding officer of this strange craft was evident by her attire, which was the same as that of the other female fighters. On a small table to her left was a shield, differing from the plain blue of the others by a single glowing white star in its center. With it reposed one of the rifle like weapons. On her left arm she wore a metal band like that of the minor officer that had escorted Hammond here. But this band was of gold and it held the same symbol of high status, the single white star of glowing stone that writhed with the strange white fire. Hammond took control of his confused thoughts. He said, I'm sorry if I've offended you, Gina, but I can't control my thoughts. And they were sincere. His handsome face lighted with his quick, infectious grin. You are very beautiful and very desirable. The quick fire leapt across the girl's face again, and in Hammond's mind there suddenly beat a tumultuous surge of emotions other than his own. Then the girl's face went somber and the strange surge in Hammond abruptly ceased. You are a very impetuous young barbarian, she said coldly, but perhaps your uncouthness can be excused. You will indeed prove an interesting specimen to present to Alii the Queen Mother. Hammond frowned. He had almost forgotten the utter strangeness of the entire experience, but it came back to him now, and with it the clamor for explanation. The girl read his thoughts. I, Gina, am not of Earth. Nor did I before you entered this room, know your language, or know that your people called this planet Earth and the planet from which I come, Mars. All this, and as much of Earth and your civilization as you know, I have probed from your mind. While you stood there. She came around the desk, smiling. Now your thoughts are confused. You do not really believe Mars. Impossible. No ship has yet been constructed that can negotiate the airless void of space. No Earthian craft, she emphasized. But we of Mars have. Hammond looked about him, out through the transparent hull wall to the far low maroon cliffs that he knew were the boat sides. He shrugged. Fantastic or no, this was the reality, and with a true scientist's adaptable mind. He accepted it. How is it then, he questioned calmly, that the warriors that captured me did not learn my language nor read my thoughts? Gina's imperial features held dignity. I am a commander, she answered. Which means that I am a thought Master. Which means that I am a thorough master of that which your scientists call ESP as well as its opposite, which they have not yet recognized, but which they might call est extra sensory transmission. It takes a certain type of personality, even on Mars, and years of training to attune to the power to perceive what is in others minds, plus the power to transmit to them selectively and at will, that which I wish them to know, understand, or obey. Hammond relaxed, his keen mind enjoying itself. Then you are not speaking to me in American. Yet to me it seems you are talking my language. Gina's eyes quickened. Precisely. I am speaking the language of the mind. Your mind interprets what I say in the phonetic symbols you call American due to speech habits, just as it interprets such phonetic symbols as thoughts and ideas. If you spoke another language, the written symbols and sounds conjured up by your mind would be different, but the thoughts and ideas conveyed would be the same. Hammond frowned. Then if you and your people use only the language of the mind, how does it happen that I heard spoken words which I did not understand? I did not say we use only the language of the mind. We have our own phonetic symbols. In fact, I am talking audibly to you now. When you first entered, I probed your mind and put you en rapport, as you might call it, not only with our mind language, but with our thought symbols. So you now reinterpret both as your own language. Hammond shook his head. But I still speak in American. No. You are only thinking in American. You are now vocalizing in our language as naturally as if you were speaking your tongue. Here, look at this chart. Hammond glanced at the chart she held before him. It seemed written in English, though the ideas conveyed were somewhat startling and foreign, having to do with the intricate calculations of space travel. Yet Hammond recalled that only a few moments before they had been in strange and unintelligible symbols. He nodded slowly, a little awed. You have advanced far on Mars. And here on Earth we smugly pride ourselves on our knowledge, on a civilization that even now is tearing itself to shreds. Surely you on Mars, with your advanced science, have succeeded in founding a better and more peaceful world. The girl's eyes clouded and for a moment her thought control slipped. Hammond had a wandering sensation of fear and anxiety. We have come far Earth man. She nodded. Evolution seems to have started from the same base on Mars and taken the same general course as that of Earth. With variations, of course. We, the Metaphyrons, the mammals of Mars, have achieved to high civilization. Our cities are united and at peace among ourselves. Our science has wrought wondrous changes. We have crossed space, and we have harnessed as well as condensed the atom. On Mars we are of normal size, which is to say we average about the size and weight of you Americans. This spaceship, those tanks, our weapons, all weigh and bulk accordingly. But for space travel, and for certain doubtful ventures, we have condensed the atoms in our body and that of this craft and all our weapons without changing their mass or qualitative characteristics. The electrical particles are all there and in precisely the same proportion. But in each atom the particles are moved closer together, moving in smaller orbits. Hammond nodded. Then I still weigh one hundred and eighty pounds. You did, until your weight was reduced by the degravitation strap on your back. Remove it and your body, without changing size, will once more attract and be attracted by your planet, sufficient to weigh one hundred and eighty pounds. This ship, small as it no doubt appeared to you and your companion, weighs countless tons. Were it not for the giant degravitator in the central room, it would have plummeted down to the ocean's depths. Hammond nodded slowly. With such science and at peace among yourselves, you must be supreme on your planet. And yet. His gaze shifted to the shield and weapon on the small table. You seem a warrior people. Gina's face clouded. Life is a struggle, Earthman, forever and beyond. Perhaps we, the Metaphorans, have achieved to unity and peace. But on Mars evolution took two parallel paths, that which culminated in in the Metaphorons, arising, as on Earth, from the lowly protozoa and with it keeping pace that of the crustaceans, culminating in the opposite life form on Mars, the Setephaons. For centuries now they have fought us for mastery of the planet, somewhat related to your Arachnidia. Their later evolution has been continuously anthropomorphic, as they strove to imitate us in everything, even in body shape. Their motives? The girl smiled bleakly. The ancient motives of life to enslave us, to be dominant on the planet, to infuse our blood with their own in order to speed up their anthropomorphic evolution, and finally to use as food those of us not suitable for slaves, or to bear their hybrid progeny. You can see why the very thought of them is repugnant to us, why every female bears arms from infancy, and why we hope to find aid from the females here on Earth in our fight to crush the Setepharans. Hammond nodded. Then the metaphor on males don't bear arms. Bear arms? Gina smiled. The males attend to our machinery, take care of the incubators, and watch our young until they are able to take care of themselves. But fight. She shook her head as if the idea were strange and almost laughable. Hammond grins. Things are somewhat changed around on Earth, Gina. Women do plenty of scrapping here, of course, and there's some who would insist they have it over the males most of the time in domestic life. But the really big blow offs like the ones going on in Europe and in Asia, they're strictly for males. The girl commander shrugged dubiously. Men are too phlegmatic to make good fighters. She broke off, caught by a warning red signal that suddenly flashed to life on the complicated instrument panel to the left of the desk. For the space of several seconds she concentrated, her pretty brow slightly furrowed. When she turned to Hammond, there was a worried frown in her eyes. My auto detector indicates the proximity of a strange spaceship. Its commander does not answer my telepathic inquiries. Something is definitely wrong. I must place my sub officers on alert. Also Ardine, my division commander, who is conducting the search for your friend Peter Storm. Once more she concentrated on the issuance of telepathic orders. The floor suddenly lurched violently beneath them. Hammond, thrown off balance, went down to his hands. He twisted erect, supple as a cat, and reached out a supporting arm for Gina, who had been thrown against the desk. A strange thrill tingled through him at the softness of her. The girl was half turned, facing the transparent prow wall. She said, gogarth the Setiphon King. There was fear in her momentarily. Then she stiffened, her brow furrowing in telepathic concentration, evidently issuing orders to the defensive posts of the Vandar 3. Hammond glanced over her shoulder, saw that a second craft, exactly like the one he was in, had alighted on the boat seat beside them. Holes were already dilating, open in the gleaming side. Ugly muzzles, huge and ominous to Hammond's changed perspective, thrust through these holes. A moment later the flash and roar of heavy artillery shattered the quiet. At the same time, hundreds of the eight legged war tanks swarmed out of the holes in the lower part of the space cruiser. Some of these charged toward the Vander 3 and were immediately met in combat by the divisions Gina had ordered out to assist Sub Commander Ardena in her search for Peter Storm. Others scuttled off to engage the separate scouters. Gina seemed to have forgotten Hammond. She watched the heavy electronic artillery from the hostile war cruiser, her mind sending telepathic command after command to the various sections of the ship. The Vandar's own artillery was firing, but spasmodically, as if trouble was aboard. Gina's brow furrowed. Hammond watched the strange battle. The ambulant tanks he saw were not only fighting with similar guns of light caliber, but were engaging each other with their claw like feet, like crustaceans. The guns did not fire projectiles, but flashes of electronic force which resembled lightning. The armor of the space ship held under the primary blasts, but was eroded by them, and repeated bolts striking the same spot would eventually break through. The quick flame of combat surged through Hammond as he watched. Why don't you maneuver the ship? He shouted, forgetting the girl commander could read his thoughts. Circle over them, come down on them from some blind spot. You can't win in this position. They've got more guns. The girl faced him as if suddenly aware he was by her side. Her features were white and there was strain in her in her flashing eyes. I can't, she replied. There were traitors among the men in my crew. Cdephrons disguised as hybrids. They have seized the control room and wrecked many of our big guns. We've lost. No. Cried Hammond roughly. The control room. Maybe we can still take over. If there's not too many of them. If they haven't wrecked the driving mechanism, we might still get away. Where is it, Gina? The girl looked at him strangely. The males of Earth are indeed a different breed, she commented. Then come. Perhaps we have a chance. She gathered up her shield and electronic rifle and headed for what seemed a blank wall. Hammond followed. A door suddenly dilated open before Gina and they passed through, hurried down a short, deserted ramp that spiraled downward for about a hundred feet. It ended in an open doorway. Beyond, in the midst of electronic crackle and strange battle sounds, a dozen hybrids were holding the control room against a company of Amazons trying to force their way in from another doorway. Across the room. Two of Gina's operators were on the floor, evidently dead. Three others struggled in the grip of the scraggy beards. Huge, armed Fifth Column hybrids. Other hybrids were smashing the delicate controls. These saw Gina and Hammond first. They swung around, reached for electronic rifles. Gina succeeded in killing two of them. Hammond, closing in quickly behind her, noticed that the rifles were fired not from the shoulder, but held with the stock beneath the arm and maneuvered with one hand while the shield was held with the other. Before she could fire again, Gina became The target of two of the traitors. She caught a flash from one rifle on her shield, but could not raise it in time to ward off the other. The electronic bolt was caught her squarely on the helmet. With a muffled growl, Hammond charged. The scraggy, bearded trader fired hurriedly, evidently disconcerted by the sight of a bronzed, muscled male diving at him. The blast seared lightly across Hammond's back muscles. Then his hurtling body smashed into his opponent, hurtling him down eastward. Monotonously, viciously, clubbed with savage fists at the bearded, screaming face, his victim screamed for aid. At the next instant, a wave of fighting amazons, evidently spurred to frenzy by the sight of their fallen leader, surged forward, blasting into the room. Hammond clung to the struggling saboteur. He had floored the cydephron, had lost rifle and shield, and was gouging at Hammond's eyes with the fingers of his dwarfed right hand. The other, huge and leg like, was locked behind the chemist's neck in a bone crushing grip. Hammond's shoulder muscles writhed. He thrust his right hand up to the scraggly bearded chin. To his surprise, not only the chin, but the whole face came away, revealing another beneath it. A hideous crab like face with popping eyes that stood out on stalks. It was covered with green chitnis armor. Startled, the cdepharan fist columnist relaxed its grip on his neck. Hammond wrenched free. His hand clamped down on the huge arm. The cinephron surged back, leaving the artificial limb. In the chemist's hand. A huge toothed claw was revealed. The cdephron surged in, reaching for Hammond. The earthman twisted, a faint sneer writhing his lips. The cdepharon was unbelievably clumsy. Hammond caught the descending claw and gave a sharp, quick twist. The entire limb came off in his hands, broken cleanly at the shoulder joint. Swinging the heavy limb in a swift moulinette, the earthman brought it down with crushing force. Beneath the popping eyes of his adversary. It crashed through the chitnah's skull as if it were an egg shell. Hammond whirled back to the fallen girl commander, bent by her limp body. Her fallen rifle caught his eye and he reached for it, sensing the swift swirl of battle swing toward him. His fingers fell short. A numbing pain lashed through his head, bringing a quick blackness. Consciousness returned slowly to Hammond. He felt himself being carried, but it was the sharp, barked order that lingered in his mind that seemed to rift the blackness that shrouded his aching brain. His eyes opened. He found himself looking up into the hideous crab like face of the Cnifferon, who carried him by the shoulders. The sharp, imperious voice came again, halting Hammond's carriers. The young chemist was put on his feet, flanked immediately by a half dozen cdepharans with menacing electronic rifles. Hammond stiffened. He was back at Gina's big observation and chart room. A horde of armed cdephrons filled the room, drawn up in stiff military array. Behind the metal desk sat a huge manlike crustacean, deep green in color. An enormous toothed claw rested before him on the scattered flight charts. The crablike mouth moved constantly. Words drummed against Hammond's ear in a language he strangely understood. Bring in the other Earth specimen, Vard and the Metrophon Sub commander Ardina. Hammond turned. Only then did he see Gina, flanked by a Sudephron guard, facing the hideous crustacean behind the desk. Their eyes met and a warm surge of thankfulness enveloped Hammond. Thank God, Gina, he thought forcefully. You're unharmed. Meteor Men of Mars by Harry Kord and Otis Aldebert Klein End of Part One. Meteor Men of Mars by Harry Cord and Otis Aldebert Kline Earthquake Continues. The girl commander smiled wanly. This is the end. Earthman Xugoth is won. The crablike thing behind the desk teetered a little in the chair, his thoughts interrupted harshly. Not the end, Gina. For you. You and your sub commander will round out my harem back on Cyrevi. This daring, primitive Earthian male and his companion will be minutely examined. Back of Hammond A door dilated open. Grim faced with a gash over his left eye, stocky Peter Storm was pushed into the room by a squad of setiferons. A flashing eyed brunette, reaching barely to Storm's shoulder, walked by his side, head erect. Storm's grim face relaxed as he saw Hammond. His voice cracked into a wry grin. Say they got you too, Frank, he said in English. Hammond nodded gravely. How'd they get you, Pete? Storm shrugged, looked down at the brunette by his side. Ardine finally cornered me with one of those eight legged tanks under a nail in the boat seat. Storm shook his head as if the thing was crazy. We were headed back for the big one when the other space cruiser landed on the seat and started blasting. Three of the Santa Feron tanks cornered us and wrecked our vehicle. Ardine. He glanced down at her again in a manner that flickered understanding into Hammond's eyes. Put up a good fight, but they finally got us and marched us here. Looks like this Zaggoth has taken the ship. A division of his Blitzkrieg panzers are mopping up Zagoth's harsh order suddenly obtruded silence. Storm shrugged. The set of Pharaon warriors in the room stiffened expectantly. The hideous crab like mouth worked. Imperial orders of ZGoff, first in command over Kulav, land of the Seteparons. All the males of the Vander 3 shall be immediately put to death and stored in cargo rooms, along with the female warriors who have been killed in battle. These we shall use for food on our journey back to Servi. The unharmed female shall be divided among you according to rank and placed in your harem. All but these two. His huge claw lifted to indicate Jeanna and Ardenne. They are reserved for the first one. A low, satisfied beat of sound came from the attentive warriors. The machinery of the Vander 3 shall be immediately repaired for our triumphant return to Qu'. Larva. These two strange males, natives of Earth, I personally wish to dissect in the laboratory. Important information concerning future forays in greater force to this green planet may be obtained in this manner. The huge claw waved imperiously. I, Zagoff, first in command, have spoken. For a moment there was silence in the stillness. Hammond's desperate gaze sought Storms death, so casually pronounced. Death on the dissecting table. It was monstrous. It was Storm who moved first. He took a quick sidestep and swung without preamble. His still taped solid fist crushed through the green chitinous armor of the nearest guard's face. Then he was whirling, striking again, and Hammond was joining him, lashing at the nearest guard, trying to slash a path to Zaggoth, first in command. It was a bitter battle while it lasted. Hammond nearly made it. He saw Zaggoth rear back in alarm, half lift his electronic rifle. Then a clubbed weapon sank the fighting chemist to his knees, and a moment later he was smothered under a pile of bodies. Chains were shackled about his wrists and ankles. He was jerked erect to face Zagoth, who had relaxed again in his chair. The ball like eyes of the Setiferon king glared at him. Take them to the dissecting room at once, he ordered. There shall I cut the wild life from them. Slowly, with much pain, Hammond shook the hair from his eyes and met Storm's battered grin with one of his own. Then his gaze sought Gina's. The girl's face was white. Her lips trembled. Her thoughts reached him heavily with regret. Goodbye, Earthman. The chemist's lips went grim. Good bye, Gina, he answered. Then a Sethon guard shoved him roughly through the door. After Storm, the dissecting room was high walled, white, full of strange apparatus that only vaguely resembled similar machines of Earth. There was a Martian fluoroscope in which Storm and Hammond were minutely examined and notes taken by a Martian talkie, evidently a highly advanced type camera with sound track arrangement which recorded what was revealed by the fluoroscope and the comments of the observer. The fluoroscope was a vast improvement over the Earth type Hammond, watching Storm being examined with it. It saw that any part of his companion's internal anatomy could be brought into sharp focus on the screen. Heart, lungs, bone structure, arteries. Each was minutely examined, probed into the while the Martian talkie hummed softly. A number of strange drugs were needled into them as they stood behind the fluoroscope. Drugs that burned like fire, contorted their bodies with convulsions and which were immediately eased by the introduction of a neutralizing drug. Others that paralyzed motor nerves and that deadened the sensory cells. All was recorded by the laboratory scientists. Finally, Hammond and Storm were strapped on the dissecting table. A blinding white light beat down on their almost naked bodies. Zagoth came into the laboratory. Then for a few moments he and the laboratory scientists held a consultation. Hammond craned his neck and could see the Ctephon king's crablike mouth work, see the ball like eyes on the end of their stalks. The Martian talkie was running for for him. The picture sequences thrown against a special screen that held the screen clear without the dimming of the bright laboratory lights. Zagoff watched attentively, only his revolting eyes swaying. Then he waved his huge claw. The talkie was shut off. Huge, hideous. He walked to the dissecting tables. A smaller table holding a gleaming array of scalpels and cutting instruments of all kinds was wheeled to his side. Zagoff turned to Hammond. His dwarfed right hand, human like with tiny fingers, picked up a knife. At the moment a hidden bell began to clang incessantly. Zagoff paused, half turned. The laboratory assistants fidgeted. One of them said, it is an alarm signal. First one. Something has happened in the ship. Zagoff hesitated. Then he flung the knife down on the small table. Keep guard over the Earthians, Kuzzvi, he snapped to the head scientist. I will see what's causing the trouble. Hammond's tightened muscles relaxed. The sweat on his forehead felt cool. Unexpectedly, he had been given a breathing spell. But for how long? Instinctively, he tested the flexible silken straps that held him to the table. They did not give, though his muscles bunched and strained. There was a silken thong around his neck. Holding his head down, he turned his head slowly till he faced Storm. Looks like our friend Zugoth never heard of anaesthetic, he muttered with an attempt of casualness he did not feel. Funny thing, Pete. It still doesn't seem real. All this, I mean. Just a few hours ago we were in a skiff fishing for blues. Now Pete managed to grin. Now we're still in the boat. Only it isn't. Looking toward Hammond, he was facing the laboratory door and he saw them first. Hybrids armed with shield and electronic rifles. Two of them. One of them carried red and green insignia on its dwarfed right arm. Hammond turned his head, warned by the look on Storm's face. The laboratory head Koozvi saw the intruders. A moment later he drew up stiffly, evidently noting the rank of the foremost hybrid. Then all at once he whirled, gave a short cry of warning to his assistants, and reached for an electronic rifle in a wall rack. The rifles in the hands of the strange hybrids lanced their electronic bolts. Kouzvi staggered against the fluoroscope, his green face fused into a black mess. The other two assistants made a dash for the door at the far end of the room. Neither reached it. A moment later the hybrid officer was bending over Hammond, releasing him. The other hybrid was doing the same for Storm. Hammond's mind whirled. He said, thanks, boys. We sure? He gasped, his fingers tightening on the hybrid's huge arm. The scraggy, bearded face had been pushed back, revealing beneath the disguised Jeena's beautiful features. Come, she said sharply, drawing forth a similar hybrid disguise from within the garment. Get into this, Earthman. We have no time to lose. We must get away from here before Zagoth returns. Hammond and Storm obeyed with alacrity. They got into the hybrid costumes Zagoff's sedrons had used to plant themselves in Gina's ship. They padded out the huge left arm with a soft cotton like material they found in the laboratory. Ardine helped them in the task. In the meantime, Gina disappeared in a closet like room at the far end of the line laboratory. When she returned, she held two strange looking metal objects. Very long dull tubes with a dial face and a knob. She tucked these away in her costume without explaining. Ardine also had been foraging. She came back to them with what seemed like two small flashlights. Her voice was hurried, the size reducing and expanding. Ray guns. Perhaps we'll have use for them. Jayna nodded. Her voice was quick, determined. Earthman, Ardine and I are going to make an attempt to capture Zagoth's ship and escape back to Mars. The Vander 3 is being repaired, but it will take hours. Our only hope is the unharmed Setefon craft. Hammond caught up one of the electronic rifles. We're with you, Gina, he said grimly. Lead the way. The door dilated open as they approached. A moment later they were marching stiffly down a long corridor. Hammond gripped the electronic rifle he had taken from Koozvi, his eyes hard under the strange optical openings in the hybrid mask. The ship was surging with Setphrons, searching for the girls who had escaped from Zagros Harem. At any moment, as if in answer to his worst fears, a Setphron squad appeared from a side corridor. They halted abruptly. The leader eyed the insignia on Gina's arm. Then he raised his huge left arm in a diagonal across his chest, evidently in salute. Gina's thoughts rasped, the engine rooms. The first one orders. The escaped Mettphrons have been sighted. The Ctphron guard wheeled and went down the corridor at a shuffling gait. Hammond relaxed, feeling sweat in the palms of his hands on his brow. This way, gina ordered. They cut down the side corridor from which the guard had emerged, ranged, and took a long ramp downward. Several times they met squads of ugly crustaceans, but their disguise and Gina's harsh commands got them by. They were well down in the ship, cutting across a big machine room deserted by the Metafron workers who tended the whirring machines. When Gina halted, Ardine and the earthmen waited while she darted down a long aisle and vanished into a smaller room beyond, where a huge turban like thing of glinting metal spun with a high pitched hum. The girl commander had withdrawn one of the dull metal tubes before leaving them. She turned the knob, which moved the dial hand, evidently setting it to a desired position. Several minutes later she was back without the tube. Ardine's voice was shaken. Gina, how long? Four hours, gina replied. Four hours until the degravitation of the van der 3 blows up. There was regret in her voice. Hammond kept his silence, but the need for haste now dogged them as they followed ramp after ramp down into the ship. Hurry, gina said again and again. Some of the route was familiar to Hammond, who remembered being led along it on his way to Gina's navigation room. He was sure of it when they stepped into the huge garage where row upon row of war tanks stood dark and unmoving along the walls. There was no guard about. Across the room a tank was just rumbling in its eight legs, clanking metallically. Evidently it was one of the cdephron scouts that had been combing the boat for any of Gina's tanks that might have escaped the surprise attack. Gina led the way. Swiftly they clambered onto one of the squat parked vehicles. A moment later it clanked out, passing the larger one which was sidling into parking position nearer the door. They weren't stopped. A moment later they were climbing down the side of the big one to the boat seat and scurrying across the ridges and gullies that were strewn with the wrecks of Cdephron and Metafron war vehicles. Through the observation prow, Hammond could see the vague maroon cliff that was the near boat side. For a moment, longing assailed him. Longing to be in his own world world again. To be out of this fantastic world of ultra smallness. His thoughts turned to the ray guns Ardina carried. Then he dismissed the thought that came to him. He owed Gina and Ardina his life, and for what it would be worth, he was still with them in this suicidal attempt to wrest from Zgroth and his crustacean horde the huge battlecraft that had followed Bandar 3 across space. Zagoff's ship finally loomed up like a colossus over the small tank. Unhesitatingly, Gina sent the ambulatory vehicle up the spiny side. The Setphron craft was an exact copy of Gina's ship, and the girl commander guided the small tank unerringly to one of the dilating doors that opened to a telepathic command. The huge room they entered was an exact duplicate of that which they had left in the Vandar 3. A Setphron guard watched them slide the small tank into parking space. Then his telepathic order crackled into their thoughts. Who enters the flagship of the First One? Answer. Hammond kept his mind blank. He saw Gina's brow furrow slightly. The words seemed to sound in his ears. Volksva, second in command of Hybrid Intelligence. Searching flagship on orders of zogoff the first one. Gina, commander of the Vander 3, and her sub commander Ardyna, have escaped with two Earthmen. All squads dispatched to the search. Zagoth orders. There was a moment of hesitation. The hideous Seraphron squad leader's eyes swayed gently. Then his reply proceed, Voltsev. We stay to guard the tank room. Hammond kept a grip on his thoughts, stiff legged, marching with the shuffling gait of the hybrids. He followed Jena and Ardine and Storm out of the war tank and across the vast chamber to the corridor. Zaggoth's ship was practically deserted, evidently only a skeleton guard had been left behind. All others had been ordered out to battle and were now concentrated in the captured Metapharon space cruiser. Hammond breathed a sigh of relief. It looks as if Jeta's desperate plan might succeed. The sudden clanging of a huge bell somewhere in the ship's bowels stiffened them. Storm's quick voice sounded the alarm signal. The tank room guard must have suspected. Come, Gina. Snapped the control room. If we can take over and seal ourselves in. They hurried along the corridor, ducking into side rooms to avoid being sighted by squads of the green crustaceans that suddenly sprouted into being, thus playing a grim game of hide and seek. They finally made their way up to the control room, but here they ran into a huge, massed group of Setphrons, who had evidently been ordered to await any such move on the part of the desperate fugitives. The lurid crackle of electronic bolts fused against the corridor walls. Storm and Hammond worked their rifles with grim methodicalness, blasting a half dozen of the green crustaceans into oblivion. But there were too many of them. They had to fall back along the corridor. Then Ardine received a partial shock from a glancing bolt that dropped her. Storm sprang to her, heedless of the bursting bolts, and caught her up in his strong arms. Gina and Hammond covered him under the steady flare of bolts. With Storm ahead of them, they turned and ran. It was up to Gina. The Earthmen followed blindly, lost in the bewildering maze of ramps, rooms, and corridors. As if in a grim nightmare, they fought their way back through the ship, escaping annihilation many times by Gina's unerring knowledge of dilating rooms that gave temporary safety. Once Hammond saw Gina glance down at her chronometer, and he felt the rise of alarm in her thoughts before she blanked them out, and the chemist remembered then the time bomb she had planted in the degravitator room of the Vandar 3. They crossed a momentarily deserted corridor. Storm still carried the unconscious Ardine, and went into a long room that held a maze of long metal pipe overhead and squat machinery with small feeders leading up to the huge conductors. Gina's thoughts came to Hammond as they were paused here. If we must die, let us take Zagoff and his hideous horde with us. I can't let them get back to Mars now. Hammond, said, gina, wait. But the lithe young Amazon was already running along a row of banked machinery, withdrawing the second time bomb from under her hybrid disguise. In the far wall, a green light glowed as she approached a door dilated open and a Setphron appeared in the opening. For a moment he hesitated, stalk eyes swaying toward Gina. Then suspicion fused to purpose and he swung his electron to target her. Hammond's rifle lashed out first. Gina scarcely slowed in her run. She stepped over the crustacean's green body and vanished into the degravator room. Sweat gathered on Hammond's brow as he waited, rifle held tight in his right hand. Storm was stroking Aldina's forehead, his face grim. A high pitched hum of the giant degravitator filled the room. Then Gina returned swiftly, tearing off her hybrid disguise. One hour, Earthman, she said unevenly, her eyes dark with a terrible strain. One hour and then we go down with Zagroff and the hideous horde. No. Hammond's voice was rough. He ripped the disguise from him, flung it aside, bronzed and rangy, his square jaw set, he faced the girl. Commander. You've handled this so far, Gina. But we're not giving up. We're getting out of here if we have to blast our way through every foot. His ringing cry seemed to whip hope into Gina. The strain in her white face seemed to ease, and a strange smile touched her full lips. Earthman, I think I shall like your breed. It does not easily give up. They turned away, crossed the huge room just as a squad of Setphron burst in from the other end. Hammond dropped behind, his rifle, covering the burden of Storm and Gina, the girl he loved. In a swift rear guard engagement, they fought their way out of the room. Gina's aimed electronic bolt fused the hidden mechanism of the dilating door through which they escaped, momentarily holding up the rush of hideous crustaceans. The tank rooms. Hammond barked, taking command. You know how to reach one of them, Gina? The girl nodded, tensed, grim faced. Hammond followed the girl, keeping Storm and Ardina between them, electronic rifle held ready. A small Setphron squad patrolled the area, evidently on alert for such a break. But the sudden appearance of the Earthman and the girls caught them by surprise. There were eight of them, and four went down to a combined fire of Gina and Hammond before they could train their rifles. Then Storm, laying Ardina on the hard floor, took a hand. Only one of that crustacean squad emerged from that withering fire. He succeeded in reaching a huge wall switch. A moment later, a huge bell clanged its harsh alarm through the ship. Hammond killed him without regret. They took the nearest war tank, a small, fast scout vehicle. Gina sent it clattering toward the far wall just as Zagoff and a horde of Setophonians burst into the room the electronic rifle bolts splattered harmlessly against the armor of the speeding tank. Unharmed, the fugitives passed through the dilating door and dipped down the side of the huge spacecraft. Hammond hung onto the hand grips, watching Storm. The blond American held Ardine in the curve of his strong arm, anxiety in his face. Only when the brunette began to stir her open her eyes did relief finally ease the grimness in Storm's face. The girl smiled up at him, her arms tightening. Hammond took his gaze away from the oblivious pair and peered through the observation windows. Gina was guiding the small tank along the huge ledge that was the boat's side. Back of them, a score of bigger war tanks were following. Huge rays were blasting at them, burning scars in the ledge about them. The small tank finally dipped down the boat's side into the far seat. For a moment they were safe, out of the range of the bigger tank batteries. Gina brought the tank to an abrupt halt. Our only chance, she snapped. We must use the size expanding ray. They clambered quickly out. Far across the void between seats, the big ones loomed nearer. Coming toward them along the heavier boat side clattered the Setphron war tanks. For a brief moment, Gina's eyes mirrored a deep regret. Then she set the adjustment on her ray gun and turned it on Hammond while Ardine did the same to Storm. The familiar whirling darkness, the bitter cold, claimed Hammond. The darkness faded. He found himself facing Storm on the boat seat. The skiff was rocking crazily. Hammond teetered, stumbled back into the stern. And at the same moment Ardine and Gina appeared, a wave shipped over the side, washing tiny ant like things that a moment before had loomed as colossal war tanks into the bottom of the boat. And at the same moment, Gina stiffened, thrusting from the turret. In the Ctphron spacecraft appeared a small glinting tube, similar to the one Gina had used to change them to tiny mites. In another moment, they would experience again the sickening change to ultra smallness. Twin reports, like small firecrackers going off inside the big ones, cut across Hammond's instinctive yell to dive overboard. The space cruisers on the boat seat, with the degravitators gone, seemed suddenly sucked down with irresistible force. They crashed through the seat, through the bottom of the skiff, and vanished in a swirl of water. The crawfish foundered, precipitating Hammond and his companions into the sound. Hammond stroked instinctively to Gina's side, but the girl was as good a swimmer as he. Ardena and Storm swam alongside, and together they idled, looking back to where the Crawfish barely showed above the swells, her thwarts awash. That's the end of Zagoff and his crustacean hordes, storm remarked with relief. Both ships must be buried deep in the muck and rock of the Sound. Gina's eyes clouded. Hammond had the sudden knowledge she was thinking of the Amazon warriors that had gone down with the Vandar 3. Yet he knew, too, that it was better this way than the more horrible fate that had been in store for them. Gina stroked closer, her shoulders brushing his. She was still staring at the bobbing skiff, a strange, half fearful doubt tightening her wet face. Hammond sensed the trend of her thoughts. The occupants of the pursuing war tanks, unfit for water travel, must have surely drowned. But the huge spacecraft were watertight. It might be that Zagoff and his crustacean horde, buried in the muck of the Sound by their tremendous weight relative to their size, would yet succeed in repairing the degravitator of his ship and wind free before death overtook them. Hammond thrust the chill apprehension from him. He grinned reassuringly as Gina looked up at him, eyes dark with uncertainty, with sudden loneliness. She was no longer master of a million warriors, commander of a mighty ship of space. She was just a girl now, soft and lovely and somewhat afraid. Frank, she said softly, tremulously, what is it like on Earth? We are lost, Ardine and I. Not lost, Gina, frank answered, his voice serious over the girl's wet shoulder. In the west he could see the swollen red orb of sun setting behind the wooded island he saw further into tomorrow and after to his friends in the lab, to a story he knew would be incredulously received, to a world he and Storm would have to try to explain to these girls. From across the star hung void. You'll be with me, Gina, he said, his voice gentle as my wife. And perhaps someday, with your knowledge and Ardine's. The girl smiled and followed the lines of his upward glance. Shadows were lengthening across the heaving sound, but in the still flushed sky a pinpoint of light beckoned like a smiling answer. The brilliant disk of glowing Mars. The End of Meteor Men of Mars Mars by Harry Cord and Otis Aldebert Klein. The Scandalized Martians by Arnold Marmor this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org Read by Dale Grothman David Fry wanted to make an epic movie in the realistic school. The trouble was, his ideas wouldn't pass the censorshere or anyplace else. The Scandalized Martians by Arnold Marmore. David Fry was a realist and also slightly crazy. Maybe that helped in this buggy business, but David Fry overdid it. I want her nude. He screamed. Naked. Impossible, I informed him as calmly as I could. Naked. He bellowed. The Breen office won't allow it and you know it. I defy them, those radicals. It'll be my most realistic picture, a milestone in filmmaking. It won't get the seal of approval. So what? I don't need it. Every state will ban it. Nevada won't ban it. Besides, you couldn't get Harriet Desmond to strut around in the raw. Oh, no? No. Her option comes up in three months. So what? You're a director. You have nothing to do with it. It's Dwight Howard's department. Look, David, I'll have her in a slip or a bathing suit. Ronny, he said, shaking his head, I like you. You're a writer. But I like you anyway. I feel that the audience will get the proper impact. Only if she's naked. It'll be an impact, all right. You write the script the way I tell you. I don't want to argue any more. I like you, Ronny. If you want a sexy script, I'll make it sexy without being lewd. Sexy? Don't be vulgar. I want a down to earth picture like the French and the Italians make. I want to surpass them with my realism. David, what good would it do if I write the scenario your way? The scene would never be shot enough. He screamed. He clutched his chest. I feel an attack coming on. Leave me. Get out. Dwight Howard was chief production man at Silver Studios. He listened gravely as I spilled my heart out to him. He's a great director, dwight Howard said. He was a large man with tiny ears, liquid blue eyes, and the cigars he smoked cost a buck a stogie. Sure, I said. A great goofy director. He's nuts, just like all directors. He grinned at me. Directors believe all writers are crazy, and writers believe all directors are crazy. You want me to write the script his way. You want that scene shot with Harriet Desmond nude? No, no, of course not. The whole idea is too ridiculous for words. He sighed. I'll have a talk with him. David Fry resigned the following day. Tortured and abused actors and actresses celebrated for three days and three nights. Dwight Howard didn't have to accept the resignation, as Frye was bound to Silver Studios by an ironclad contract. But a director's work gets sloppy if his heart isn't in it. So out with David Fry, the realist. Nobody in Hollywood heard from Frye for seven months and nobody seemed to care. One night as I came home from a party, I was greeted by the screaming of the telephone. I held the receiver to my ear. Maternity hospital, I said. Ronny. It was David Fry. Oh, hello. How's everything? Fine. Great. I've got to see you. Well, I'll hop right over. He hung up and I sighed. I built myself a solid drink and got comfortable. He showed up about 20 minutes later. He was thinner, more nervous than before. He flopped on a divan. You won't believe it, he said. Believe what? I want to do a picture. A science picture about a trip to Mars. It's been done, and more than once. With real Martians. I blinked. I'll get you a drink. No, I want a clear head. Hear me out. I've met them.
- [551:33]
Who?
- [551:34]
Martians. A whole gang of them. Real honest to goodness Martians. It's fantastic. But it's true. They landed in the San Fernando Valley. That figures. I've got my home there. They ask for directions to Hollywood. You know what they came to? Revolutionize the industry. Maybe they're commies. You should see their equipment. Fantastic. I talked them into staying over at my place. They dismantled their ship and have it stored away. I want you to do the screenplay. It'll be great. They weren't detected flying over. They used an anti radar beam. Oh, they can speak every language under the sun. Look, David, I'm tired and I want to go to bed. So be nice and go sober up. You don't believe me? No. In plain language, no. He extracted a square shaped box from a pocket. See this gadget? I'll make myself disappear. Do that he did. Yow. I screamed. He reappeared. I staggered to the liquor cabinet and made myself a double triple whiskey and soda. Well? There was a look of triumph on his face. They gave you that? A present. I've got nothing doing this week. I'll be there to morrow morning. No, tonight. You're liable to blab about it. Don't you trust me? No. I know you went to see Dwight Howard about me. Then why do you want me to write the story? I feel you owe me that. You're honest in some ways. Well, Right. I'll pack a grip if I'm staying over. Do that. I've got my car downstairs. David Fry's home was a Spanish style ranch which consisted of a herd of cattle and horses. The Martians looked like us except they had no necks and no Finger or toenails. Their leader was a giant of a Martian with the name of Dumas. They wore slacks and sport jackets, which Fry had bought them. They seemed pleasant enough. I got some sleep and woke that afternoon. Duma, Fry, and myself sat in the front room and talked over the story we were to do. We can't trust anyone, fry said. So you and I will play the Earthlings in it. We'll land on Mars and discover life on the planet. Dume and his crew will play the Martians. Real typecasting. What about sets? I asked. Plenty of background on Mars, Dume said. What? I exploded. Sure, Fry said. We'll go to Mars and shoot most of the picture there. Has anyone ever done that before? Sure, Dume said. I mean anyone on Earth, Fry said. I don't like it, I said. We'll bring you back, Duma said. I still don't like it. And we'll do that nude scene, Fry said. We'll have a couple of Martian girls taking a bath. Oh, no, Dume said. That's out. But why? Fry wanted to know. The Martian censors. They won't go for it. I grinned there, too. But I want to film life in the raw, fry said. Dume shook his head. Out of the question. We'll do it my way, Fry snarled. Or we won't do it at all. Duma stood up. Well, if that's the way you feel about it. Now wait a minute, I said. Hold on, David. We've got a great thing here. Don't mess it up. I'm the director. Fry screamed. Nobody's going to tell me my business. Is everyone in Hollywood like him? Duma asked me. Some of them are worse. I realize we've made a grave mistake. I made the mistake of taking you into my home. Fry shouted. I treat you like human beings and this is the thanks I get. I won't hear another word. Dume turned and marched out. Now see what you've done. I was as mad as a wet hen. What have I done? All I wanted to do was make a great picture. You insulted him. Why, he's liable to go back to Mars and talk them into invading us. That idiot. What does he know about making pictures? Activity brought me to the window. I looked out and saw the Martians getting their ship together. Fry came up behind me. The ship blasted off and the Martians went back home. They were hammy actors anyway. Fry rationalized the end of the Scandalized Martians by Arnold Marmore.