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“ The Magazine of Prophetic Fiction'
VOL. 7 No. 5
OCTOBER, 1935
Table of
Contents
Published by Continental Publications. Inc. H. Gernsback, President; I. S. Manhelmer. Secretary. Publication Office, Myricb Building, 29 Worthington Street. Spring- Held, Maas. Editorial and General Offices. 99 Hudson Straet, New York. N. Y.
EDITORIAL
WONDERS OF EXTRAVAGANCE by Hugo Gernsback
517
WONDEB STORIES — Monthly — Entered as second-class matter at the post office at Springfield, Mass., under the Act of March 8, 1879. Title registered U. S. Patent Office. Copyright, 1985, by Continental Publlcationi, Inc. Text and Illustrations of this magazine are copyrighted and must not be reproduced without permission of the copyright owners. WONDER STORIES la published on the first of the preceding month. 12 numbers per year. Subscription price is $1.50 a year In United States and Its possessions. In foreign countries, ex- clusive of Canada. $2.00 a year. Single copies, l5e. Address all contributions for publication to Editor. WONDER STOR- IES. 99 Hudson 8treet. New York. Pub- lishers are not responsible for lost MSS. Contributions cannot be returned unless authors remit full postage.
WONDER STORIES is for sale at prin- cipal newsstands in the United States. IF YOU WISH TO SUBSCRIBE to WONDER STORIES, make out all re- mittances to the Continental Publications, Inc. Be sure to mention the name of magazine you wish to subscribe for, as we are also agents for the following maga- zines: RADIO-CRAFT and EVERYDAY SCIENCE AND MECHANICS. Subscrip- tions can be made in combination with the above publications at a reduced club rate. Ask for Information. Subscriptions start with current issue unless otherwise speci- fied.
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• COMPLETE STORIES
THE COSMIC PANTOGRAPH by Edmond
Hamilton 554
MARTIAN GESTURE by Alexander M. Phillips.... 560 THE SEX SERUM by H. O. Dickinson 588
• SERIAL NOVELS
THE PERFECT WORLD by Benson Herbert 518
(In Three Parts — Part One)
WORLD OF THE MIST by Laurence Manning ........ 602
(In Two Parts — Conclusion)
• CONTEST RESULTS
Winners in Our July, 1935, Cover Contest ................ 553
• DEPARTMENTS
Forthcoming Stories ............ 622
What is Your Science Knowledge? 625
Science Questions and Answers 626
The Science Fiction League 628
The Reader Speaks 632
The Science Fiction Swap Column 638
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ON THE COVER
This month we find a scene suggested by Edmond Hamil- ton’s thought-provoking short story, “The Cosmic Panto- graph.” We see Man migrating from Mercury as the sun burns to a cinder, leaving a lifeless Solar System. Cover by Paul.
514
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THE increasing demand by our readers for new titles to be added to the SCIENCE FICTION SERIES has now been met. Six new books have been published and are now ready. Many new authors have contributed excellent stories which you will en- joy reading. A short summary of the new titles will be found below.
These new books, as usual, are printed on a good grade of paper, and contain brand new stories never published before in any magazine.
Each book (size 6x8 inches) contains one or two stories by a well-known science fiction author.
The Titles Are:
IS — MEN FROM THE METEOR by Panzle E. Black
In the unexplored heart of Australia lay the bizarre and cruel civilization of the meteormen. And into their midst came the two men from Outside, to pit their puny strength against the meteormen’s power.
14 — THE FLIGHT OF THE AEROFIX by Maurice Renard
Renard is the H. G. Wells of France. With sly humor and yet grim reality he describes the most unusual and startling flight made by man. An en- tirely new type of transportation dawns upon the world in this master- ly story 1
15 — THE INVADING ASTEROID
by Manly Wade Wellman
Into the vision of the Earth swam the huge but innocent asteroid. Mara, at death grips with the Earth, was far away ; but the asteroid loomed ominous, menacing. Two men were delegated to solve the mystery; and what they found is revealed in this startling story.
16 — IMMORTALS OF
MERCURY by Clark Ashton Smith Under the sun-parched surface of Mercury, we follow in this story, the experiences of a man, reminiscent of Dante’s Inferno. Every force of grotesque nature, the bitter enmity of the Immortals track him down in hif wild escape to the surface.
17— THE SPECTRE BULLET by Thomas Mack and
THE AVENGING NOTE by Alfred Sprissler are two surprises for the lovers of scientific detective mysteries. Death strikes suddenly in these stories ; clever scientific minds and cleverer detectives are pitted against each other in a duel with Death.
18 — THE SHIP FROM NOWHERE by Sidney Patzer A trip to infinity is this unusual story ; a mad chase across the infinite emptiness. tracked always by the avenging Marauder. Here is a story that deals with millions of years and billions of billions of miles.
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VOLUME 7 No. 5
OCTOBER
1935
. . . . Prophetic Fiction is the Mother of Scientific Fact . . . .
Hugo Gernsback, Ediior-m-Chief
CHARLES D. HORNIG, Managing Editor FRANK R. PAUL, Art Editor
C P. MASON, Associate Editor
WONDERS OF EXTRAVAGANCE
By HUGO GERNSBACK
WHEN it comes to extravagance and downright waste, there is probably nothing to match Mother Nature. This is particularly so in the matter of repro- duction, whether in vegetable life, or in the animal kingdom. Consider the seeds of most plants ; you will find that Nature here is tre- mendously prolific in her waste. There is hardly a plant or flower or tree that does not give forth thousands or, in some cases, millions of seeds. Most of these seeds are wasted ; and only an insignificantly small amount are ever used to produce the particular plant. In the animal field it is even worse. We find that male animals produce several million seeds at one union, each one of which would fertilize and bring into life a new living being; but, of course, the overwhelming majority is wasted completely. It has been computed that, without loss, the offspring of one oyster would in a few years be a mass larger than the earth. As to the human being, one man gives forth millions of sperms, yet only one egg can be fertilized. Hence, we have here the proportion of a hundred-million- to-one loss ; yet Nature goes madly on — and has been doing so for millions and billions of years — in the same fashion, manufacturing billions upon billions of seeds, spores, etc., practically all of which are wasted.
What is the reason for this tremendous ex- travagance? As far as scientists can ascertain,
it is only an effort of Nature in order that, un- der all circumstances, reproduction shall be insured, no matter what almost unsurmountable obstacles the coming generation will encounter. When it comes to life, Nature apparently does not wish to take any chances at all and, under such circumstances, the titanic waste is probably justified.
But Nature is concerned, not only with our own puny little planet, but evidently with myriad other worlds. Thus many years ago the Swed- ish scientist, Svante Arrhenius, was certain that living spores, microscopically small, are con- tinuously leaving the Earth’s atmosphere, never to return. These spores travel by the pressure of light, for billions of years in space ; then per- haps encounter another world where conditions for life might make reproduction possible. Given a sufficient amount of spores, billions upon billions, floating in space for an unlimited period, some of the spores are sure to find, in time, surroundings where life might begin anew. Who knows? — life itself originally may have come to us, on this planet, in the self-same manner.
As I said before, Nature does not take many chances. For that reason, she is just as ex- travagant in worlds as she is in seeds. When we contemplate the firmament that contains billions upon billions of stars and worlds, we can ap- preciate this extravagance still better.
517
(Illustration by Paul)
The suicide rate increased a thousand times; men and women flung themselves from windows and cliff-tops.
518
THE PERFECT WORLD
By BENSON HERBERT
PART ONE
• Ilse Lieben was sitting in an electric
tramcar, reading a Bible. She was not reading it reverently, but hastily and rath- er anxiously, as she had been asked by a friend to take a Bible class. Now she was turning over the pages, trying to ascer- tain which writers wrote in which Testa- ment.
Fraulein Ilse, an athletic girl of twenty- two, was the secretary of the Grafin von Freiburg, the sociological writer. She was an expert fencer, and a member of a ladies’ boxing club; she was quick at lan- guages, spoke Spanish like the Spaniards and French like the Swiss.
After a time, she began to turn the pages mechanically and her thoughts wan- dered to her father, who was working studiously in the fuel laboratories.
“He works too hard,” she muttered, “far too hard. Fancy working on a Sun- day !”
But Herr Lieben thought nothing of working on a Sunday. Was he not one of the great pioneers of fuel who had helped to make soaring machines pos- sible, and ought not his daughter to be proud of him? Only a few years ago, aeroplanes had to fly on internal-combus- tion engines — petrol blowing itself up, in- side— then, a spark of genius, came the great simplification, the external-combus- tion engine — fuel blowing itself up out- side! As a result came the soaring ma- chine or “rocket,” as it used to be called, which could do things that no aeroplane could ever do.
In six months, transportation had been transformed. Unheeding the fluttering pages of her Bible, Use’s mind went back to all the excitement and strangeness of
• A few months ago we presented to you the first novel by one of our pop- ular English authors, Festus Pragnell, entitled “The Green Man of Graypec.” Here, once again, we are publishing the first novel of another English author who has made himself famous through a num- ber of shorter stories.
There is something about the various styles of writing that makes stories from foreign authors particularly interesting. We find here a typical English inter- planetary story, though it also boasts of the German thoroughness that is so well liked. Much of the first installment takes place in Germany.
A couple of years ago, the American public was thrilled by those amazing novels, “When Worlds Collide” and “After Worlds Collide,” by Edwin Balm- er and Philip Wylie— novels written in the United States by Americans. Here is your opportunity to compare American and English styles on the same theme.
In this first installment, we meet the characters face to face that are to carry us through the rest of the novel. Action and realism are but two of the cleverly- handled qualities of these first chapters.
those few months. She was just old enough to be able to remember them.
With the new fuels and metal alloys, people built mechanical devices which could, in a crude and frequently fatal manner, ascend above the earth’s atmos- phere and proceed through space by the powers of reaction. People experienced the awful thrill of leaving the earth com- pletely behind. They came back and de- manded better fuel and got it — better metal also, but they did not get that for a long time.
Ilse had read in the papers of the first flights to the moon; she recalled her fa- ther’s jubilation at the wonderful news. There was also the time (she was very young) when she went out one night,
519
520
WONDER STORIES FOR OCTOBER, 19S5
with opera glasses, and stared hard at the cold full moon, trying to see the human beings who had landed there.
Up to the present, it had been found impossible to travel to other planets, which were so much further away than the moon, owing to the enormous diffi- culties of fuel and provision capacity; but Engineer Lieben was always telling his daughter that, one day, he would find a fuel which would take him to Venus and back.
Fuel, fuel! Fraulein Lieben was sick of the subject.
“Aren’t you content with the moon?” she demanded. “Isn’t that far enough?”
“No, no,” her father would reply, “noth- ing is far enough.”
He had spent half his life in the fuel laboratories at Munich ; for a whole year, he had been working on an improved ex- ternal-combustion engine of his own de- sign, but it was not yet fit for applica- tion. But one day he would finish it, and then he would make a fortune.
Use sighed. She would very much like to have a fortune. Was she to be secre- tary to this woman all her life? Use felt that she had typed out every corner of the Grafin’s mind, and there could not possibly be anything left in it. She was certainly a voluminous writer, and she was always fingering the beautiful string around her neck — one of the famous neck- laces of the world.
What a lot Use could do with all the marks that necklace had cost. Would they have as much as all that, if her father made a fortune?
“The harder he works, all day Sunday and every other day, the sooner we shall have money; but if he works too hard, he will make himself ill ; then we shall never have money.”
Engineer Lieben was a hard worker, but he was getting old ; yet he had an ease of movement and firmness of skin which showed athletic health.
He found it very difficult to understand anyone who took no interest in fuel. It seemed to him that the whole principle
of the universe was fuel. All transporta- tion and power depended finally upon it. We were immersed in a matrix which we breathed and which burnt the fuel inside us. We ate fuel, in effect, and often drank it. All plants and animals consumed air in slow burning. All around us were liv- ing flames — oxidization was the key-note of existence.
That was what Use’s father thought, and he had a dream of one day discov- ering the perfect fuel, which would yield unlimited power per kilogram. But he had not yet thought out what he would do with it if he got it
• Fraulein Lieben’s attention was at- tracted by a roaring overhead; she looked out of the window of the tram and saw, with longing eyes, a large soaring ma- chine flying over them. Rockets sym- bolized freedom to her ; people with money could walk into a soaring machine at any time they wished and blow themselves off the face of the globe, right out of the trivial world, into places where there were new and exciting sensations.
She peered up at the huge mass driv- ing across the sky ; below the row of win- dows in the metal hull, red words shone on a grey background: MUNCHEN- BOMBAY FXW2.
In a moment the “soarer” drove sharp- ly into a feathery cloud and was lost.
Use let her gaze drop, and in doing so she noticed the newspaper of the pas- senger sitting in front of her. There was a large photograph which drew her at- tention with the irresistible attraction which other people’s newspapers possess. It showed the head and shoulders of a plain-looking Parisian of twenty-two, Grindin by name.
Though plain-looking from a photo- graphic point of view, in person he was vivid and striking, one of those people who make everyone turn around and look at him when they pass.
Use looked closely at the photograph, then leaned forward over the shoulder of the man who was holding the paper,
THE PERFECT WORLD
521
in order to read the caption under the photograph :
“Monsieur Paul Grindin, the Parisian geologist, who has been enjoying a vacation in Switzerland, is re- ported to be leaving Europe today for India.”
“I wonder if he was in that soarer,” the girl thought, listening to the distant rattle of the machine echoing from the clouds.
She glanced at a page of the Bible, resting on her knee: “And. a new star had risen.” A few pages fluttered over. “And he looked up, and he saw fire and death dropping from the sky.”
When Use had finished with her Bible class, which passed off more pleasantly than she had expected, she returned home as quickly as she could so as to make tea for her father, who might come back at any moment. She unlocked the front door herself, as the maid was away on a trip to Hohenlinden.
The house was an old one in the Kaiser- platz, so old that the front of it was en- tirely covered with deep ingrained dirt. It had certainly been built before 1940, and it showed all the signs of the artificial old-fashioned architecture of the fourth decade. Somewhere about 1950, two rooms in the front had been knocked into one, to form a very roomy lounge. This was twenty years before the Liebens had rented it, partly furnished.
There were three sofas in the lounge, and numerous gilded chairs, built to with- stand generations of sitters. There was an old upright piano in one corner, whose strings had been stretched so many times that it was a fine tribute to the stretch- ability of copper.
In another corner, on a small table, stood a heavy paper-weight, made of bronze and moulded to represent a soar- ing machine in flight, with exaggerated rocket-tubes sticking out at the back, and curling bronze flames coming out of the tubes.
In a third corner, on a shelf, was a domed glass case containing a very or- dinary-looking piece of yellow rock, which had been brought all the way from the Sea of Serenity on the moon. The fourth
corner was empty, and always draughty, because of a crack between the bricks which let the wind through.
There were two fireplaces in the double room, and two mantels. One of the fire- places had been papered over, but it was still obviously there. Hanging above one of the mantels was a mirror, while over the other was a large coloured sketch of a lunar landscape — a jagged fantastic out- line of wild crags, the eastern slopes of the Crater of Copernicus.
The room was invisibly lighted at night by narrow electric gas-tubes, hidden in the cornice and running right around the room. The year-old wallpaper, in the polychromatic fashion of the tenth decade, designed to startle and stimulate rather than harmonise, was entirely black on one wall, green on another, yellow circles with red background on the third, and purple triangles with white background on the fourth. There were no carpets, since those comfortable collectors and conceal- ers of dirt had become unpopular in the fifth decade; the floor was strewn with small octagonal rubber mats. In the mid- dle of the floor, with chairs and sofas arranged around it, was a circular depres- sion—a sunken copper vessel or basin, where cigarette ends and other litter could be thrown.
Below the mirror, partly hiding the mark on the wallpaper made by the con- cealed fireplace, was a small silver harp with one string missing.
When Use came in, she opened the door of the lounge and threw the Sunday pa- per onto one of the sofas. Her father usually went into the lounge after Sun- day tea and liked to be the first to read the paper, while it was still unhandled and neat.
• Stepping across the passage-way, she
glanced into her father’s study, to see if anything needed tidying.
This room was less than half the size of the lounge; its floor had no rubber mats ; it was not lighted by gas-tubes, but in a striking and original manner — by the
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old-fashioned electric globe. There was a hard angular chair, with gilded legs, drawn up to Otto Lieben’s desk. He could never work in an easy-chair, he said ; it was too comfortable, and he could not keep himself awake. But he allowed himself a thin cushion on his chair, to save his trousers. The Liebens had al- ways been careful of expenses, even now, when their income kept them in comfort, though not in luxury.
The cushion had slipped off the chair, so Ilse put it back. Then she dusted the desk with a handkerchief and smiled as she saw the old ragged logarithmic tables lying beside the slide-rule. Her father re- fused to get a new set of tables, though the back was off, and the corners were all turned down and torn.
On the desk there was a copy of The Weekly Rocketeer, yesterday’s issue. It was a trade magazine, cost one and a half marks, and was full of advertisements for soarers, metal hulls, rocket-tubes, ex- ternal-combustion engines, fuel mixtures, and so on. On the back was a coloured picture of a soarer breaking out of a cloud, and underneath it :
Schweiner & Schweiner, Augsburg, Bavaria Second-hand Soaring Machines. Perfect Condi- tion. Certificate of Airworthiness. From 20,000 Marks. Machines Bought.
At the side of the desk was a low cush- ioned chair, bearing a pile of reference books. Ilse picked them up and impa- tiently put them on a shelf fastened to the wall above the desk.
“I wish he would try to keep things in order,” she muttered with a frown.
As she turned to leave the room, she caught sight of a white laboratory jacket hanging behind the door. The ends of the sleeves and the outside of the pockets were thickly covered with dirt and there was a yellow-edged acid hole in the back.
“I must get that put among the other things, or I’m sure to forget it for the laundry tomorrow morning.”
She jerked it off the hook and pulled the detachable buttons from it, slipping them into her pocket.
Turning, she gave the desk another flick, then ran out into the hallway. She found time to look closely at her face in the hall mirror. She felt as tired as she looked; she had been fatigued the day before, mainly due to the Grafin von Frei- burg, who had dictated to her for three hours on Saturday morning without a stop. The material she had had to plough through on her electric typer was so pon- derous that it had exhausted her. That same night she had recklessly spent two days’ salary for a seat in the Munich Fes- tival Theatre, and the thought of that extravagance exhausted her nearly as much as the typing had done.
She hurried into the kitchen, flinging the jacket on a pile of laundry, and be- gan to prepare the tea.
The water was just on the boil when she heard the front door open and Herr Lieben came in. There was a character- istic sharp hollow sound from the hall- way ; Ilse always knew it was her father by this noise. Invariably he banged the glass of the barometer with his knuckles several times, as if doing his best to make it point to “fair.” After a last enthusi- astic bang, he came down the passage and entered the dining room, which was next to the kitchen at the back of the house.
Ilse followed with a tray and set the table for tea.
“Guten abend, Ilschen”
“Good evening, father.”
• The engineer always spoke in a slow and regular voice, making a pause at nearly every consonant. He was not very old, and his pale blue eyes had a healthy look about them. He had shaved off his beard two years ago. He was a level- headed man, but his thoughts were not elastic; he was prejudiced on many sub- jects.
“Well, Ilschen,” he said, as she was pouring out the tea, “how did you come on with your Bible class?”
“Oh,” she laughed, “not so bad. I think the pupils taught me more than I taught them.”
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Lieben frowned. He did not like levity in such matters. He had hardly read a chapter of the Bible himself, but he al- ways pretended he was familiar with it.
“By the way,” he added, “have you asked the Grafin for a rise yet?”
“No, not yet,” replied Use, and blushed faintly. She had been going to ask for a rise for several months now, but she had not been able to summon up the mor- al courage.
In, order to change the conversation, she went on quickly.
“Isn’t it time you stopped working on a Sunday, father? Here you are, tiring yourself out every weekend, when you should be taking things easy, and walk- ing with me in the park !”
“What,” cried her father, looking up, “haven’t you got any young men to take you out?”
“Yes, plenty.” She sighed wearily, for he always evaded.
“Well, then,” he said, and bit a piece of cake. “Just a little more, Ilschen, of this hard work. Another month should do it, at the most, then I shall have it !”
“What ?” asked Ilse sharply. She knew perfectly well what he was talking about, but a young girl who spoke three or four languages fluently had a right to be pre- cise, now and then, in the matter of gram- mar.
“Improved fuel, of course,” retorted her father, briefly, for he was annoyed.
Ilse sat down and commenced tea.
“Can you guess what one of the pupils in the Sunday School asked me today? He was just a little fellow of six, with a mop of red hair, and when I was get- ting ready to leave, he came up to me quite seriously, and whispered, ‘Miss Lieben, do you think they’ll ever make soaring machines big enough to take us to Heaven?’ What do you think of that?”
“Ha! What did you say?”
“Well, for the moment I couldn’t think of anything at all. At last I said, ‘No, they
will never get as far as that.’ ‘Why not ?’ he persisted. ‘Oh, the fuel isn’t good enough,’ I answered, and he went away with a puzzled look on his face!”
“Not a bad answer at that !”
After tea, Herr Lieben walked towards the lounge in order to read his paper, but his daughter ran after him and pulled him back.
“Do you know what you’ll do if you go in there, father?” she asked, banter- ingly. “You’ll read the news for half an hour, then it will be too dark to go out. You’ll go into your study and work till midnight, and make yourself ill! Now isn’t that right? Come and have a walk before it gets too dark.”
“Ordered about by my own daughter !” grumbled Lieben. Then their faces re- laxed and they laughed at each other.
“All right, I suppose a bit of fresh air won’t do me any harm. But not more than twenty minutes, mind you!”
In high spirits, Ilse pushed a hat on his head and practically dragged him through the front door.
They sauntered between the formal flower-borders of the park in the chilly sunset light.
“Do you know, father, this is the very first time you’ve walked out on a Sunday since that night two years ago, when mother died.”
“So it is ; so it is !”
Frau Lieben had been drowned acci- dentally in the Danube.
Ilse glanced sideways at her father and wondered how he would take it if she asked him to give up work and rest for a whole week or more. It struck her that he would worry far more and make him- self really ill through impatience. She decided she had better not suggest any such thing as a holiday, at least for an- other few weeks.
They turned a corner by a shrubbery and came to a large open space with a bandstand where a brass band was play- ing rather loudly, and in a bouncing man-
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ner, the familiar hymn-tune by Leo Cheovrensky :
“Men of space I Men of space!
“God save those who fly through space
“Beyond the Moont
“God save those who brave the Depths,
“May they return soon!
“Let the men who in their chrome-steel vessels ride, the starry night rending,
“Come at last to a safe haven and attain a happy landing!
“In Thy Wisdom and Peace may they lie,
“For they seek Thy Wonders in the sky!”
“Let’s get out of here,” said the en- gineer, turning around. “I don’t like noise, except explosions,” he added, rath- er grimly. -
They returned to the house and Herr Lieben sat on the sofa in the lounge, reading his paper. His daughter was looking over his shoulder and caught sight of that photograph she had already seen a few hours previously in the elec- tric tram.
“Didn’t you meet him once in Paris, father ?” she asked, pointing at the photo- graph.
“Who’s that? Grindin? Never heard of him before.”
“Why, I remember you telling me that you had met him at an International Con- vention in Paris — you know, the one last autumn.”
“Paul Grindin? Oh, yes, recollect now. Middle of October, raining cats and dogs; tons of boring speeches — only one sen- sible speech, about fuel. Grindin gave an address on geology, but I didn’t take any of it in.”
“Is he anything like his photograph?”
“Nowhere near it. He looks better than that, I should hope. It’s a rotten photo.”
Ilse was startled, and did not speak. To her, the photo seemed attractive.
“Yes, he’s more or less good-looking, but he puts enormous quantities of oil on his hair. All the time I was talking to him, when I met him after the speeches were finished, drops of oil were trickling down his face from his hair. Can’t under- stand the fellow — dressed to a vulgar de- gree of perfection — and invariably clicked his heels together and bowed stiffly every time he shook hands. I thought that had passed out years ago. Also,” continued Otto Lieben, “he’s a barbarian— hardly
speaks a word of German! Talks high- class Paris, quickly, and a bit nervously.
“When the convention was over, some of us went to a cafe and got absolutely soaked in the rain, merely while stepping into a cab. Quite a number of us — Lor- rain, high-explosives, a fine chap ; Devine and Lecocq, ferro-chemists ; Chortle, an Englishman — in petroleum, I think; and Gabbi, specialist in asbestos insulation. Our interests were all more or less con- nected, you see, and I can’t imagine how Grindin joined us. He’s geology, you know ■ — oh yes, he was a friend of Chortle; that’s how he came in.
“Hadn’t a hat, for some reason, and the rain made a mess of his hair. When we went into the cafe, the water and oil made a queer mixture on his forehead. He took quite an intelligent interest in fuel and soarers, so I suppose he must have been human. Wasn’t greatly struck by him, however. The paper says he’s go- ing to India?”
“Yes. Did you see the Bombay soarer pass over the town this afternoon ? It was nearly half-an-hour late.”
“No, I didn’t see it — too busy. But I heard it, all right — awful row! He was flying below the regulation height, I’m sure.”
“Would Monsieur Grindin be in it, do you think?”
“Very likely — wouldn’t be surprised.”
* * *
• Grindin was sitting alone on a front
seat in the soarer, looking calmly out of the window. He was not thinking of geol- ogy or the Swiss glaciers but of the ter- rible distance the hard earth was below him, and how undignified was this fash- ionable method of travel.
He picked up a paper and began read- ing it, but he saw an account of a soarer accident, so put the paper down. Paul Grindin was a nervous man. He described it to himself as “an affliction of the nerves,” a kind expression. But he did not allow his nervousness to become evident to other people; he was calm always, without emotion, judging by his face.
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The soarer was crowded with passeng- ers; there was hardly a vacant seat and the luggage-racks were overflowing.
Paul Grindin looked down the soarer to see if there was anyone there he knew. In the seat just behind him a big man and a small man were sitting together. The big man’s face seemed familiar; he did not remember it, but he had seen it numbers of times in journals and magazines. The small man had a good-looking face, and by his nimble motions, he seemed to be alert. They were talking in tones so low that Grindin could not hear, although the de- tonations of the exploding gases outside could not pierce through the sound-proof walls.
The big man was Henry Guidance, of the Bombay Institute of Technology; he was the most courageous financier of the latter half of the twentieth century.
He appeared especially big beside his small companion. His face was amazingly wide, and this gave him a look of great resolution and wisdom; nor was his jaw much less powerful than his cheek-bones.
He had been bom in India and had spent all his early life there; from the moment the first successful aeroplane driven by reaction left the ground, he had shown an increasing interest in soaring machines. Most people had heard of Guidance — when the first soarers flew to the moon, he had supplied money and plans for the building of his Soaring Rocket No. 1.
Eagerly he had waited till it was fin- ished, and he had proudly watched its de- parture on its first trial flight. It came back safe and sound, and was at once put into commercial operation. It leaped from the ground, with a useful load of many tons, but half-an-hour later it fell from a height of thirty miles and burst into flames off the coast of Portugal; all the crew perished, drowned or burned.
With admirable persistence, Guidance at once commenced his Soaring Rocket No. II and Soaring Rocket No. III. As soon as Number Two left the workshops, she started her career and completed four successful flights to the moon. On taking
off for the fifth flight, however, she blew to smithereens as she left the ground.
This disaster cost Guidance so much money that he was compelled to postpone the completion of Number Three ; he felt it keenly, because there were only a few minor fittings to finish.
He was waiting impatiently till he could gather together more resources while his machine lay idle in a great iron factory on the left bank of the Rhine.
Mr. Guidance’s friend, who was sit- ting next to him in the Munchen-Bombay soarer, was Gystak. He had formerly been an aeroplane pilot; in fact, he was the man who had taken the Number Two on her first two flights to the moon; but after she had blown herself up, he had lost his nerve and taken to journalism. Just now he was working on the staff of a Stuttgart periodical.
He was explaining to Mr. Guidance, in his clear, sharp voice, that he was going to be dropped at Baghdad, in order to travel to the canal zone where he was go- ing to contribute a series of articles to his paper.
When Gystak had finished, Guidance stood up to take a newspaper from the rack above, but he fumbled and the paper fell on the head of Paul Grindin on the seat in front. He started nervously, but in a moment he had dived again behind his rampart of coolness, and picked up the paper.
Very soon they were deep in conversa- tion, and Monsieur Grindin told Guidance all about his excursions into geology, while Mr. Guidance informed Grindin of his exploits in Soaring Machine fi- nance. Mr. Gystak was backward with people he did not know well, unless he was seeking news, so he did not join in the conversation a great deal.
A lady came walking up the passage- way between the seats carrying a bird- cage in her hand containing a small bird. She set it down near the outlet of a ven- tilation pipe, so that the bird could get some air, and the pipe happened to be just in front of Grindin’s seat.
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Mr. Guidance’s face went strangely stiff, and he hid himself behind his news- paper. After a few moments, he rose and turned to Gystak and Grindin.
“Come on, shall we sit at the back for a change?”
Without waiting for an answer, he led the way to the back of the soarer, and the other two followed him, greatly surprised.
For what reason should Henry Guid- ance turn pale and shudder at the sight of a bird-cage?
•It was remembered that, when he was
twelve years old, he was climbing with an older friend in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies and a large fierce bird attacked his friend. The man was sup- posed to have died later from his in- juries, but Guidance would never repeat the story. Ever since then, so rumor said, Guidance had had a hopeless fear of birds, of any size — a feeling of horror which he found impossible to overcome.
His companions were too polite to ask what was wrong, and he did not offer to explain ; naturally, he was ashamed of his idee fixe. The Parisian sat silent, wonder- ing, but not speaking, while Gystak, who had known such a thing to happen before, racked his brains to discover a topic of conversation, so as to put an end to this incident.
There was an awkward silence, then the journalist spoke abruptly.
“What do you think of this fellow, Jonathan Gorstein — the robber, I mean. I see he has got away again with someone’s jewels — this time, at the Bayreuth Opern- haus. The Stuttgart Tageblatt — that’s my paper, you know — has a front page col- umn on it.”
The Frenchman responded brightly.
“One day he’ll get a little too bold, that Gorstein fellow, then he’ll get nabbed.”
After that, there was nothing more to be said; Guidance did not speak, but sat wrapped in gloomy morbidness.
Then happily an idea struck Mr. Gy- stak, something which he knew would be a catching topic:
“What d’you think of the new star?”
CHAPTER II The Blue Planet
• Never before in the history of the world
had so many people been convinced that the Day of Judgment had arrived at last. Waves of unprecedented emotion swept through all nations and sects and civiliza- tion came near to extinction. The suicide rate increased a thousand times ; men and women flung themselves from windows and cliff -tops, under trains and omnibuses, strangled themselves, gassed, poisoned, shot themselves, stabbed, hanged, drowned.
Disorganization and immorality were universal and excesses of all kinds were freely practiced.
Every kind of crank raised his voice and shouted unheeded. Mass prayers took place in the public streets. Pilgrimages were started, but many of the pilgrims dis- banded before their destination was reached, in order to loot or destroy them- selves. In America, on the average, five new creeds were founded every day, to swell the ranks of the fanatics among the Latter-day Saints, the Theosophists, the Spiritualists, the Christian Scientists, and many others.
Although this was the last decade of the twentieth century, not all the wonder- ful advancements in scientific thought could allay the fear of universal cataclysm.
The beginning of these frightful condi- tions was a singular but quite unspectacu- lar occurrence in the sky on Midsummer’s Eve.
A Czecho-Slovakian amateur astrono- mer was observing the midnight sky through a cheap low-powered telescope, when he noticed the sudden eclipse of a star of the fourth magnitude near the constellation of Orion.
With instant presence of mind, he glanced at his wrist-watch and kept his telescope pointed towards the vanished star. The star reappeared ten and a half minutes later. Looking up records, he could see no mention of such an eclipse at that time, so he telephoned his observa- tions to Prague University the next day.
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More expert object-glasses confirmed the existence of a dark body of unknown dimensions which was crossing the heav- ens in a westerly direction.
The following night was perfectly clear, and as the sunset-line passed around the globe, telescopes and field-glasses everywhere swung to a certain locality in the heavens, as if directed by a magnet. Tokyo Observatory was the first to call attention to the faint crescent of light hanging in the sky.
Astronomers watched the new planet with great curiosity, not to say amaze- ment. Day by day it waxed, until the full disc was displayed, about half the width of Mars. It was established beyond doubt that this was no comet ; it was pursuing a closed conic around the sun. Why had it never been seen before — where had it come from?
There was a singular air of mystery at- tached to this wanderer of the heavens which drew excited attention from the press.
Then the remarkable controversy arose as to who had the right to name it.
A newspaper brought forward proof that three hours before Hesker had tele- phoned Prague, a youth living in Riigen- walde on the Baltic had reported the same phenomenon. “Therefore,” said the news- paper, “we suggest that the planet should be named New Pomerania.”
Immediately messages came from all over the world, claiming priority in the discovery. An astronomer in Oslo was one of the first.
“The name must be Christiania,” said Norway.
“No, no,” protested Milwaukee, “ ‘Wis- consia!’ ”
A professor of Manchester University put forward Georgia, in honour of King George the Eighth. A Rumanian de- manded Buchar; a Slav Belgradia; while the indignant Hesker, from the suburbs of Koniggrat, vainly suggested Titanus, in honour of King Titan the Second.
Incidentally, at a congress held a fort- night later, all these were discarded in
favour of Arion, the ancient Greek bard become immortalized in the heavens — for no particular reason, except that celestial convention demanded classical titles.
But while these undignified discus- sions were proceeding, from the moment the new planet swam into human percep- tion, soberer astronomers were calculat- ing its elements, its mass, diameter, spe- cific gravity, major axis, and ellipticity of the orbit.
The first person to make the horrible discovery was a professor of Durham University. He sat down at once and be- gan his calculations all over again. Find- ing only a minor mistake, which barely af- fected the result, he repeated them a third time. Then he sat for a long time, staring at the scribbled figures. He went to the mirror and looked at his calm, pale face, while gripping the mantel-piece with hands which had lost their strength. Finally he took his papers to a colleague as a check; neither of them slept that night.
The news that reached the public the next day was very vague and conflicting. Some periodicals spoke of it in a light- hearted manner, as if it were a joke or an obvious hoax. The people of Glasgow were puzzled by large posters announc- ing: “END OF WORLD!” while the Manchester Guardian proclaimed : “DUR- HAM PROFESSOR’S PAINFUL LAPSE!” and the Yorkshire Post had: “UNDIGNIFIED LEVITY IN UNI- VERSITY.”
• For the most part, people took no no- tice whatever, and for five days an at- tempt was made to erase the affair alto- gether. Then, on the sixth day, came the most remarkable broadcast the B. B. C. had ever given.
It expressed the results of hundreds of calculations, repetitions by numerous peo- ple of the work of the Durham professor.
The Astronomer-Royal, sitting grim- faced in the Observatory at Greenwich, looked down at the green bank of the Thames and spoke to the Empire for twenty-five minutes.
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An inn-keeper in Shrewsbury was drinking port and listening to his wireless set.
“According to the irrefutable laws of celestial mechanics, the fact is definitely established that, on the evening of the forty-seventh day from today, with a probable error of four thousand miles either way, the planet Arion and the earth will coincide in space.”
“What does ’e mean ?” demanded a cus- tomer.
The innkeeper pointed his glass towards the loud-speaker and laughed.
“ ’E means a ’ead-on collision,” he said, and slapped his hands together.
“Do you realize what this means, ladies and gentlemen ?” continued the announcer. “It is very necessary that you should realize exactly what this means .... in seven weeks time, every living creature on the globe will suffer immediate anni- hilation. The heat produced will be enough to boil sixty billion billion pans of water. In an instant, nothing will remain of the two planets but a vast cloud of tenuous gas, while you and I, and all humanity, will be floating in that cloud.”
The innkeeper did not finish his glass of port.
Even then it was several days before the world became convinced of its imminent destruction ; indeed, full realization only came on the day when Arion grew visible to the naked eye. Distributors of cheap telescopes and field-glasses made unpre- cedented sales, and the prices of lenses soared to an absurd figure. Every night, millions of people turned out of doors to catch a glimpse of Arion, and strained their necks and their eyes. People had al- ways regarded the heavens as harmless, so this unwarrantable intrusion from the pretty twinkling depths of space seemed incredible.
Soon the apparent angular diameter of Arion began to grow perceptibly.
It was about this time that the first signs of the fall of civilization com- menced.
All life was to come to a sudden stop, leaving nothing ! The blood-stained finger
of the Creator was to write The End, close the book with a snap, and fling it into the waste-paper basket.
The people who prepared the posters and banners for the Salvation Army set to work with eager zeal. All trades, ex- cept Optical Instruments, began to de- cline; the followers of Spineza enjoyed an astonishing prosperity. The roar of traffic in the cities was replaced by the rattle. and blare of brass bands, by the loud singing of pious hymns, and the chanting of prayers, all desperately try- ing to attract the attention of God.
But Arion grew in the skies daily.
• The more fatalistic scientists found
plenty to occupy their attention during the last seven weeks of the earth’s career.
The new planet was describing a defi- nite ellipse, like any other planet, and countless times previously it must have been in conjunction with the earth. It was inconceivable that such a large body, so near at hand, had entirely escaped at- tention till now. Moreover, its presence could have been calculated by its perturb- ing effects on other planets, unless Ein- stein’s mechanics was no nearer an ap- proximation to reality than Newton’s.
It looked as though this new world had presented a startling mystery, and then was committing the incivility of destroy- ing them before they had time to solve the mystery. They set to work impatiently, for they knew that they had only seven weeks.
They recorded all the known facts about the planet as accurately as possible.
What was the length of the major axis of its orbit ? About a hundred and twenty million miles.
What was its ellipticity? It was very eccentric, more so than Mercury.
Its weight? It turned the scales at three-quarter earth weight.
Diameter? Six thousand miles.
Its year was a little longer than that of the earth, its colour was distinctly blue, even to the unaided eye, but reports as to the length of its day were unreliable; there were no landmarks on the surface.
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No one had as yet seen any satellites. Spectroscopy indicated the presence of oxygen in the atmosphere.
All this information had been obtained in the first two weeks, so advanced was the astronomy of the last decade of the twentieth century.
Appeals were made to the European Bureau for Interplanetary Communica- tion— could they not offer some hope of escape from the approaching cataclysm?
The headquarters of the Bureau was the great Tempelhof Aerodrome at Berlin, where hundreds of telegrams were re- ceived daily, bearing suggestions and ap- peals.
Could they not build a monstrous fleet of soaring machines, and transport the entire population of the globe to another planet, before the day of the disaster?
Impossible 1 The record flight by a soar- ing machine was a mere six hundred thou- sand miles, and then the crew had suc- cumbed to starvation.
Why not transfer mankind to the moon, and construct shelters beneath its lifeless surface ?
Absurd ! It would be an impossible task to manufacture air indefinitely for mil- lions of people; besides, how could they turn out so many machines in a few weeks? In any case, it would be useless, for the moon must be involved in the collision, if indeed the whole solar system were not gravely affected.
What, then, was the use of astronomers, or any other scientists, for that matter? They plunged humanity into despair, then ; with all their boasted learning, their com- placent, well-fed professors in dignified gowns, their expensive Universities, which made undergraduates feel superior to the common herd, they could offer no help or hope of any description!
Tli ere came a time during those seven weeks when a movement was begun to assassinate all scientists ; it was shown that they had always been dangerous parasites in society; it was demonstrated that they were responsible for unemploy- ment, armaments, discontent, atheism, and
a thousand other evils; but soon all this was forgotten, despite the logic of the arguments ! The end of the world was too near for humanity to think of other things ; all irrelevant thoughts were swept aside by the shadow of universal Death.
A dreadful day came when the placards announced: THREE MORE WEEKS!
• Beggars, kings, thieves, policemen,
murderers, judges, prostitutes, priests, Christians, Jews, Islamites, Brahmins, ag- nostics, spiritualists, and at last even Christian Scientists, listened to their trembling hearts, and whispered, three more weeks!
Everyone fell on their knees and prayed at the rising and setting of the blue planet — that is, all except the isolated explorers, who looked upon the new star with as- tonishment, for it was now half the width of the moon.
The famous volcano in Japan, said to claim a victim a day, now saw hundreds together jump from the crater’s edge in a frenzy.
Previously a man had been hired to keep the people from the edge of the crater, but now they had to put in his place several armed men. Then, one day, the guards themselves jumped over as well.
One sixth of the world’s population went insane.
Soon the blue planet outshone the moon, making the night quaint with its peculi- ar radiance. One night, the watchers in London gasped and shivered with fear at its unbelievable size ; it rose slowly into the sky, a monstrous arc of blue, now more than twice the size of the moon. But the most incredible spectacle was the sight of its blue disc in full phase. It took the breath away. It was so bright as to be just bearable to the eye. All who saw it thus became convinced from that moment that nothing whatever could prevent the colli- sion. The frightful cold vision in the sky, blotting out thousands of stars, did more than all the astronomical calculations to convince men that here was their doom.
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Disease and starvation arose through the dislocation of commerce and com- munications. The whole world experi- enced what Europe and Asia went through in 1348, when the Black Death began which slew forty million souls. The pas- sionate religious revivals helped to make conditions worse. People stayed up at night to count the passing of their last hours. Many thousands tried to escape from the earth ; they bought soaring ma- chines and blew themselves up or starved to death in space. Several commercial en- terprises advertised and sold “New im- proved machines,” guaranteed to reach Mars or Venus. Undreamed-of profits were made by these fraudulent manufac- turers, for not one of them was brought to justice. Law was a thing forgotten.
Meanwhile the astronomers were no nearer explaining why the blue planet had never been seen before. Indeed most of them had given up the attempt; however they might proclaim the impersonal de- tachment of the true scientist, the intense emotions of the time showed them to be ordinary human beings.
“Two weeks more,” whispered the crowds in the neglected streets, with ach- ing eyes, whirling brains, and empty stom- achs. “Two weeks more!” Look how Arion filled a quarter of the heav- ens .... their faces shone ghastly in this blue light. Two weeks, fourteen days, three hundred hours ....
Eight days !
One week more of life !
CHAPTER III Chaos
• By far the greater part of the popu- lation of the globe had given in to a most frightful horror and fear, the like of which had never before been conceived.
But an exceedingly small percentage retained an amount of calmness and dig- nity, continuing their ordinary labors to the last minute. Among these few were Henry Guidance and Herr Lieben of Munich
Guidance believed in a self-contained strength of soul, and was always striving to keep up to that belief.
As he saw the immense battering-ram of the planet Arion rushing towards the earth, preparing to break it into a million fragments, he declared firmly:
“I will not be put out by this thing. Whatever happens, I will continue along the road of my destiny up to the ultimate second of mortal time, the very dawn of doomsday. I will go on with my business, just as if that thing were not there at all.”
He carried this out so effectively that he took advantage of the chaotic crisis in the world’s finance and brought off a deal which ordinary people would call shady. A large sum of money fell to his share, .which, however, was not of much use, since trade was almost at a stand- still.
While Guidance was gathering togeth- er a somewhat useless amount of wealth, Engineer Lieben was showing a similar spirit of defiance, or indifference. This re- markable courage was due to the fact that, while revolutions were upsetting nations and insanity was killing millions, Herr Lieben had at last completed the discov- ery at which he had been working so hard for many years.
This filled him with such excitement that a trifle like the end of the world was simply excluded from his imagination. Yes, he had at last perfected a more ef- fective fuel than had ever been made be- fore, and he had also applied the fuel to a new external-combustion engine of his own design.
“Now,” said his daughter, bitterly, “we can have as much money as we need, but we can’t buy anything with it! We are really wealthy at last, but we shall starve, because trade has stopped ! Even if we could use the money which is right- fully ours, in about a week’s time this planet Arion, this clumsy monster from the skies, will put an end to us all !”
The coming disaster had another im- mediate effect on Fraulein Lieben; fright had dried up the literary output of the
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Grafin von Freiburg, so her secretary had nothing whatever to do. Like thousands of others thrown out of employment, she had plenty of leisure in which to con- template the approaching doom.
Engineer Lieben, as well as Guidance, displayed some business ingenuity, but his was of a more honest order. One day he gathered from the press that Mr. Guid- ance had restored the loss to his resources due to the explosion of his Soaring Rocket No. II, and that Mr. Guidance was seri- ously considering completing his third model, which was still lying idle in the Rhineland factory.
The radio service from Munich to India had not yet broken down, and that same evening Henry Guidance received a radio- gram, which read as follows :
“HENRY GUIDANCE BOMBAY TECH- NICAL INSTITUTE OFFER IMPROVED ENGINE FOR YOUR SOARER NO 3 GIVES 60 PER CENT MORE ACCELERA- TION OTTO LIEBEN OBERINGENIEUR MUNCHEN SCHWABING KAISERPLATZ 103 DEN 16 MAI 1992”
When Guidance received this, he felt a tremendous elation. Here was a gesture of enterprise at the very crack of doom ! Here was a kindred creature who was ca- pable of proceeding defiantly with ordi- nary business under the actual shadow of Arion! He was so enthusiastic over this human magnificence that he wired back at once:
“WILL CONSIDER PROPOSITION AWAIT ARRIVAL AT MUNICH TO- MORROW GUIDANCE.”
Gystak was too busy collecting news to have much time to think about the cos- mic collision ; there was such an enormous amount of news, far more than any pa- per could print.
He had written one postcard to Guid- ance from Cairo:
“Do you know they have tramways to the pyramids ! The Great Pyramid at Ghizeh ! Ac- tually had trams there since 1930! This is the last straw!”
Then Gystak had been recalled to Ba- varia, to cover the further exploits of Jonathan Gorstein, the jewel robber, who
had been almost too bold, and had been nearly captured, but he had fled to Czecho-Slovakia.
• Tremendous, pitiable struggles of self-
control took place in the soul of Paul Grindin during the last week of Time. The vaster and more despicable his fear, the nobler was his restraint.
Unlike Guidance and Lieben, who con- tinued their work as if nothing unusual were happening, the Frenchman lost all his interest in geology.
Thousands were giving up earthly af- fairs, and committing suicide in the bar- gain. Paul Grindin was far more scared of suicide than of the blue planet, so he dragged on a miserable existence, doing nothing, not daring to do anything to end it.
There were others who showed a calm exterior while the world went mad ; among them were Mr. Hergesheimer, the noted New Zealand astronomer, and his able and skilled assistant, Mr. Dickens.
Like most astronomers at that time, they were intensely interested in the blue intruder from the unknown. The most no- ticeable feature physically about Herges- heimer was his size ; he was fat !
When he read in a newspaper about the remarkable new external-combustion engine Mr. Guidance was installing in his soarer, he muttered with a thoughtful light in his eyes.
“Ah now, if one only had the plans of this powerful new engine of Lieben’s, one could make quite a lot of money !”
His assistant, Mr. Dickens, looked ex- traordinarily young, and he was nearly as young as he looked. Like a large number of very clever people, he was inclined to be slightly unstable mentally ; his tem- perament was artistic and excessively sen- sitive— he had an extremely bad temper.
He had a wife, also, but unhappily, they did not get on well together. She was one of those modem creatures to whom a large minimum income was an absolute necessity, if life was to be merely toler- able; she was luxury-loving, and an as-
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tronomer’s assistant does not get much pay.
For a long time she had pestered him for money he could never give, until gradually a genuine affection had turned to something rather different.
Even without this annoyance, Mr. Dick- ens inclined occasionally to a slight mor- bidness, which was actually much deeper than it appeared. But whenever this un- - pleasant mood came upon him, he was al- ways aroused out of it by his wife, and put into a worse one. She delighted to take a petty revenge for her lack of luxuries, and waited specially for him to fall into this mood of wretchedness, before pounc- ing upon him with her arguments and naggings.
Many mental institutions suffered from neglect. A number of the keepers, through fear, became madder than the inmates; some killed themselves, others were killed in riots, and there was no one who cared enough to see that their places were re- filled.
During the confusion and terror, Dr. Nacht escaped. A native of Brunsnicht, he had been a talented doctor, but suf- fered from an attack of madness which developed during the night-time. It was daylight when he did it, and he was sane. But, at the time, the hellish blue monstrosity in the heavens was hanging directly overhead, as if with a symbolic significance. Nacht, free to roam through the chaotic countryside, looked up at Arion with wonder and awe. Here was a star that had come nearer to him than any star had befope.
• Alfred Smith, the neurotic surgeon who
lived at Shanklin in the Isle of Wight, grew more and more painfully excited as the day of collision approached.
His wife made no attempt to comfort him, because she was scared out of her wits. Smith was not frightened; if he had felt fear, he might have been healthier in his mind. But as he stared up at the great orb dominating the sky, huge impulses tugged at his thoughts, and
sometimes he wept with emotion when he was alone.
He was a materialist, and his creed was negation. He felt no fear of death, and this in itself was unnatural.
* * *
Hesker, the Czecho-Slovakian astron- omer who was the first to discover Arion, felt that he was bound to keep dignified to the last. It was his pet, his discovery ! It was not his part to feel anything but pride for the blue planet, which had as- sumed such spectacular importance in the affairs of the world.
A new planet which he himself had found, and which was to destroy the world ! He made quite a stir in the Ama- teur Astronomers Society of Koniggrat, of which he was a member. All the other members expressed their profound sym- pathy, and their extreme indignation that the new world had been named Arion, and not Titanus.
Every member of the Koniggrat As- tronomers Society signed a huge petition, caused other people to sign, sowed propa- ganda and printed leaflets, and produced speeches and articles, in order to persuade the Czecho-Slovakian government to urge a serious and sustained protest against the name “Arion!” There were massed meetings, parades, shoutings, tub-thump- ings, and even threats, unhappily — all in vain.
Hesker, the Czech, became famous in his own country. He was photographed, filmed, written about, and written to. Among his mail there were a few dis- cordant letters. One young lady wrote :
“Dear Sir : It was you who discovered this monster Arion, whatever it is, so it is up to you to deliver us from it. If any- thing happens, you will be responsible.”
One of the first letters he had received was from a film company in Belgrade:
“What offer would you accept to take the leading male part in our new futurist film, The Girl from Mars ? The first se- quence is shot three weeks from today. Wilhelmina Toge will play opposite you.”
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To this, Hesker could not help reply- ing:
“I regret to decline your offer, as there will unfortunately be no time to finish the film, since the end of the world takes place a fortnight before the production commences.”
• There were also some pathetic post- cards: “I am a widow, with eleven growing children to keep. My husband shot himself because he believed you, when you published that criminal rub- bish about the world coming to an end. What are you going to do about it?” “Mr. Hesker, they’ve shut me up in this asylum, and it’s really because of the things you’ve been saying in the papers, which made me go queer. But you’ll come along and explain everything to them, won’t you ; then they’ll let me out.” Meantime, while the Grafin von Frie- burg was nervously fingering her useless but brilliant necklace, her secretary, Use Lieben, was weeping because her father would have money now, but they would be dead before they could spend it, and Jonathan Gorstein was reaping a burglari- ous harvest, because the police were no longer of any use — Henry Guidance was rushing north-west in the Bombay-Mun- chen soarer, to keep his appointment with Herr Otto Lieben at Munich.
His anticipations concerning Lieben’s new fuel and engine were disturbed by the marvellous sight of Arion sinking in the west. However slight, there was an inward turmoil and trembling in his mind. One week was such a short time!
His thoughts assumed an even graver aspect when he recalled the second rea- son for this hurried visit to Europe. Just a half-hour or so after he had despatched the telegram to the engineer, telling him he was leaving India, his phone bell had rung and the Indian girl operator at the exchange had spoken to him.
He was in his room at the Institute of Technology, seated at his desk. It was the middle of the day, and he was very hot a A uncomfortable, because something had gone wrong with the cooling plant.
The operator had said : “Long distance call from Bath, England, per wireless telephone. Hold the line.”
• Bath! He pushed back his chair and
* stood up with anxiety, put his head un- necessarily near the microphone.
He had only one near relation in the whole world, so far as he knew, and he lived in Bath. This was his cousin, Tim Guidance, a boy of twelve, a rather pre- cocious little man, with fiercely curling hair, dark blue eyes, and a pale attrac- tive face.
Tim depended upon Henry Guidance for support. He was being kept at a school in the outskirts of Bath, and he slept and lived entirely in the school. Had some- thing happened to him, and was the head of the school about to announce the news?
Guidance wiped his forehead and moved impatiently. There was a confused mur- mur of cross-talk from the speaker. The last time he had seen Tim was no less than eight months ago. Then he had been in good health, though not particularly robust. Since then Guidance had not re- turned to England, but he had written and received replies, usually once a week, sometimes once a fortnight.
Although he felt no deep affection for Tim, he would hate to have anything hap- pen to him while he was responsible.
There came a click, a low cough, and a voice.
“Is that you, Dr. Topler?” asked Guidance.
“No, no— Tim.”
“Tim! What are you doing? What has happened ?”
“Why, Uncle Henry, I wanted to call you up, so I came to the post-office and gave them your address.”
“What, all by yourself? What’s the matter ?”
“Nothing, but everyone in the school has been telling me that soon every per- son in the world is going to be killed. Even the teachers have been saying that. It’s not really true, is it, Uncle Henry? There’s been some fighting in the town.
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and half the shops are shut up, and we aren’t getting any more lessons. We shall have to go on rations. Can you hear me all right?”
“Yes, yes.”
“No more trains are running on the railway, Uncle, except once or twice a day, sometimes. Oh, and the head’s gone away. He got hurt in a fight. Somebody threw bricks at the school yesterday and broke two windows.”
“Now, don’t you worry, Tim. Don’t be- lieve a word that people tell you. Noth- ing’s going to happen, believe me. Are you keeping all right?”
“Oh yes, except I feel hungry.”
“Look here, Tim, I’ll tell you what — I’m leaving India today, and I’m coming to Europe.”
“Will you come and see me?”
“Yes, certainly I will. I’ll be at Bath before the end of the week.”
“Oh, that’s fine, Uncle. Oh, Timothy’s got kittens.”
“Timothy?”
“That’s what I called that cat you gave me. Three kittens!”
“Well, that’s splendid. Now you mustn’t worry . . . .”
He wanted to reassure Tim, but he did not see how he was to do it. He knew the world was finished.
The Munich soarer banked steeply, and he saw the Arabian Sea far below, roll- ing and glittering in a light which no other sea had reflected in the whole history of the world.
Again he looked along the dazzling sun- set track of Arion. His anxiety for Tim, for someone outside himself, made him realize, as he had not done before, just how utter and final the coming holocaust was going to be.
He stared at the blue ball through the veil of sunset haze. That was the thing whose name made men weep, go mad, jump over cliffs.
He pulled himself together, and his eyes grew hard and sharp.
He grasped his left wrist firmly and grimly in his right hand and continued to
gaze out of the window, while the flat coastline of Persia came into sight from the north.
• By the time the soaring machine
reached the end of the Persian Gulf and was heading for Damascus, Guidance had full control over himself. Night was falling upon Damascus, as they sailed se- renely through the Syrian sky. Several large fires could be seen, flickering and puffing up masses of smoke, the results of disorder and madness.
Guidance leaned back and dozed lightly. Over the Dardanelles, the rockets were cut out and the machine glided for a kil- ometer or so in order to get below the base of a cloud-bank.
He was awakened by the sound of dis- tant thuds and whines. He looked closely through the window, shielding his eyes from the interior lighting. He could make out some large ships off Constantinople, apparently fighting. He could see the flashes of the guns as they kicked out their eighty-ton shells. They were not so much shells as soaring machines, full of high explosives. He could see and hear them bursting, as they spread ton- frag- ments of iron over a square-mile.
“What’s up?” he asked a neighbor.
“Oh, I expect it’s the Turkish muti- neers. Half the Turkish navy’s gone out.”
He spent the night at the Rocket Gast- haus, Munich, and in the morning took a cab to 103 Kaiserplatz.
“Is this the place?” he asked the cab- man as he stepped out, looking up at the dark old house rather doubtfully. “All right; don’t wait.”
He had seen a face at one of the win- dows, so someone was in.
The door was opened before he could ring.
“Step right in, Mr. Guidance,” said the simple-faced Bavarian maid. Guidance was well-known by his photographs in The Weekly Rocketeer and elsewhere.
He stepped into the lounge, and two people stood up to greet him. He saw be- fore him an old man with a fresh face, a thin nose, and slightly greying hair at
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the sides of his head, dressed in a loose green coat, slashed so as to show the purple shirt beneath, long tight-fitting yellow stockings, and sandals. The young girl was probably twenty, dressed in a full-length white robe, white sleeves, and white gloves, her hair concealed by a broad-brimmed, flapping hat. She had a rather prominent chin, the same nose ex- actly as the man, ears like those of a doll, and bold but restrained eyes.
The old man stepped forward and took Guidance’s hand.
“May the sun never stop shining,” he said, using the conventional greeting of rocketeers, and those associated with them.
' “I am Otto Lieben, and this is my — ”
Use stepped forward and took his hand in turn.
“Gutentag,” she said. “I am his daugh- ter, Ilse Lieben.”
Her father turned and frowned.
“Oh, what’s the use of etiquette,” she exclaimed, with a show of weariness, “when in a few days we shall — all be gone !”
This was hardly tactful. They knew that things were already finished and done with, for practical purposes, and that they might as well consider themselves straight- away as discarnate souls floating in a soundless ether. It probably did not mat- ter in the least what anyone did. But she did not realize that these two men had a firm belief in the value and purpose of hu- man dignity, and that they meant to up- hold it, and would not be diverted by the prospect of mere material extinction.
What on earth did she think Guidance had come all the way from India for, and her father had sent an expensive radio- gram to Bombay? What on earth did she think was the reason for this interview, for which they had dressed and prepared themselves with unusual care?
Although she could speak and write several languages and could wrestle and box and fence with skill and ingenuity, she was not yet subtle enough to appre- ciate such demonstrations.
• Henry Guidance sat down on the near- est sofa and spoke tactfully and loudly.
“Well, Herr Lieben. I had a very com- fortable flight last night from Bombay. We were not disturbed by a single air- pocket.”
The others sat down also, the father feeling slightly confused, the daughter still cool.
“I am glad to hear it, Mr. Guidance. They say it is usually rough over Persia at seven thousand meters.”
Lieben blushed faintly as he thought of his daughter’s rudeness.
“But the rocket was twenty minutes late — such service 1” added Guidance sar- castically.
Owing to Lieben’s confusion, he hinted delicately that this was possibly due to the world panic, which had dislocated so many public services. Immediately he realized that he had referred to the forbidden sub- ject of the coming doom, and there was an awkward silence.
Ilse did not understand this awkward- ness and stiffness.
“He’s a bit old-fashioned,” she was thinking to herself, “calling a soarer a ‘rocket!’ They used to call it that, way back in the seventies, and I heard mother say it, but nowadays ! Still, a man who is going to give us a whole lot of money for father’s fuel is entitled to be as old-fash- ioned as he pleases ! But what earthly use it is going to be, I can’t imagine, when all the fuel and all the soarers and all the men and women and children are going to be smashed into little bits when Arion drops in on us 1 Still, he’s quite a nice man, but too grave.”
“How soon can I see the results of your fuel-tests, Mr. Lieben?” asked Guid- ance, breaking the silence.
“Oh, as soon as you like, Mr. Guidance. We will go straight away, and I will show you the fuel laboratories where I work. It is only a few minutes in the electric tram. Ah, it is a wonderful fuel I have produced ! It puts the best grade of Metel- lex in the shade, believe me ! Light as air, less than two grams per cubic centimetre. Ignites from absolute zero after a bare
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seven minutes in the heating-coils. Such a kick* Swish f Seventy metres per second per second! You never saw the like! Would yon like some coffee ?”
“No, thank you very much.”
The two men stood up, talking excited- ly-
“Oh, before we go, I must show you these.”
The engineer eagerly displayed the crumbling yellow rock in its glass case, from the Sea of Serenity, the bronze soar- ing machine in the corner, with its stiff curling flames, and the sketch above the mantel of the Crater of Copernicus. Then they went into the study, ignoring Use, who remained on the sofa with a bored expression. The visitor was shown some publications and original papers, composed by the engineer himself. Finally Lieben pulled up his right sleeve and brought to light some scars on bis elbow, where, two years before, he had been caught in an explosion which no one had calculated.
At last they walked through the front door, Guidance finding time to speak briefly to Use over Iris shoulder.
“ Gutenmorgen f”
The door slammed and they were gone. Use pulled off her huge hat.
“I don’t understand,” she said to the maid, "how they can he so serious and ab- sorbed ia such a thing, when — ”
She stopped, because any mention of the earth’s doom caused the maid to- go into hysterics.
“Anyway,” she sighed, "Guidance looks as if he has caught on — -we shall die rich !” tier chief concern was with the domes- tic arrangements. She was wondering if her father was going to bring Guidance back for lunch, or whether they would lunch in the town.
CHAPTER IV Riot and Death
• Guidance did return to lunch, and Use was treated to another hour of Fuel. They conversed, as if magnificently indif- ferent to Doom. Use got the impression that an introduction of that subject would
be considered extremely bad taste. Of world-panic and world-end there was no mention — there had been no such refer- ence since that awkward moment in the morning.
They went out again and came back in the evening, and to her horror, Use heard her father announce that Guidance had consented to stay the night in their house.
But, to her agreeable surprise, when they were sitting in the lounge after din- ner, their visitor assumed quite a social air, and even went so far as to hint at the possibilities for a game of bridge. Lie- ben got out the cards at once.
Use began to catch on to the atmosphere of this affair. This was rather thrilling. Here were three intelligent and sane peo- ple, calmly amusing themselves at cards, while the street outside the windows was lit by the light of Arion! She looked at Guidance, if not with respect, at least with interest and curiosity, while she ob- served her father in a new light.
She was quite moved when Guidance began to talk casually of trivial affairs.
"I wonder if there is anything in this dignity business ?” she asked herself. Certainly it helped one to keep one’s head, and even to forget that hlue disc drop- ping from the sky.
Guidance talked about his young cou- sin Tim. Use felt a faint sense of incon- gruity, which she had sometimes felt be- fore when an efficient machine-like man of business had revealed suddenly he was a human being after all, and had such things as relations and personal opinions.
“Yes, Tim's the only relation I’ve got,” remarked Guidance, puffing at one of Lie- ben’s cigars, the leaf for which had been obtained from rock-plants hidden in a deep hollow in the side of the great lunar Crater of Plato. "Just a kid, at a school in England. I shall be running .up to see him either tomorrow or the day after, I expect. That reminds me — have you such a thing as a rocket time-table I could consult ?”
“Yes, I believe we’ve got a soarer time- table somewhere knocking around,” fe- plied Use, putting an accent on “soarer.”
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“Good, He’s a queer little chap, Tim. Do you know what he did while I was still in Bombay? He actually went to the post- office on his own initiative, and telephoned to me by radio-telephone!”
“Qiildren seem able to do most any- thing nowadays,” remarked the engineer, lighting a cigar by means of an electric sparker. “I heard of a boy of sixteen who stole a single-seated soarer and flew to a height of five kilometres.”
Lieben set out on a long and wandering reminiscence.
After that, Use decided that she must show a brave face as well, so she began to talk in a manner which was just a shade too casual about the Grafin von Freiburg, and her secretaryship, and the Sunday- school pupil who had asked her if soar- ing machines would ever get as far as Heaven.
“I’ve been in several parts of the sky,” said Guidance, “and I’ve been to the other side of the moon and back, but I don’t re- member striking a place called Heaven.” Then, as if he was rather ashamed of his flippancy at laughing at the joke, the old engineer remarked : “It’s not because Heaven is too far for soaring machines, but because it is too near.”
When they had been playing bridge for an hour and a half, they tired of cards, and Use suggested four-sided chess. This was a game that had been revived recently by an Ohio Amerindian ; the moves were similar to chess, but all four sides of the board were used instead of only two, making it much mere complicated and full of incident.
“But there are only three of us,” re- marked Guidance.
“Oh, that’s all right. I’ll get Gersche, our maid — she can play.”
“Fine!”
The people of the tenth decade had at- tained a better understanding of the ways of maids and servants ; they treated them as if they were as good and intelligent as any other human being. With universal education, servants were encouraged to join in anything they wished, were often chosen for their social assets rather than
for their manual or cooking abilities. They would have been horrified if they had been treated as anything but equals.
Use went into the passage.
“Gersche,” she shouted, “leave those dishes and come and have a game of chess, will you ?”
• There came a clatter from the kitchen,
and Gersche appeared in the doorway. She had a round, not too full face, wholly Bavarian, with fair hair and pale blue eyes. She was dressed in thick velvet trousers, covered by a white cotton jack- et to keep off what little dirt there was in the electric kitchen. She also had a red bow tie which looked startling when at- tached to the large green collar.
She came forward with an astonished expression on her face and a plate in her hand.
"Frdulein Use,” she said, “how can you expect me to play chess when we’ve got less than a fortnight left to live?”
Use had completely forgotten that there was a cosmic collision due in a few days, and she was taken aback. For a mo- ment a vivid and frightful picture leaped into her mind, of billions of creatures crawling and crying in the dust, carried along helplessly on a whirling ball, and a great jagged rock tumbling from the skies. She stiffened with the reality and horror of the vision; then she recovered. To hide her passing terror, she pulled the white dust-jacket from Gersche, and dragged her along the passage.
“Come on; it’s no use thinking about that,” she managed to say. “We must try to forget, mustn’t we? We can all feel as much as you, but — forget — for- get—”
The two girls burst into the lounge, almost sobbing. But the men did not notice anything.
“Mr. Guidance, this is Gersche Prengl, our maid from Hohenlinden.”
Guidance stood up and shook hands.
At first the girls were too distracted to be able to distinguish bishops from pawns, but soon they calmed down and began to enjoy the game.
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Towards the end of the game, Guid- ance made a false check.
“Oh, I beg your pardon, Miss — Gert- cher,” he said.
“Gersche,” corrected Use, laughing, and Guidance apologized again.
At the end of the game, the guest con- fessed that he had enjoyed it very much, and they retired for the night as the ghostly world passed silently by over- head, flooding the streets with unchang- ing blue.
Next morning, Lieben spoke to his daughter.
“Don’t prepare lunch today, Ilschen — we’ll have something in a cafe. Expect us back about eighteen o’clock.”
Ilse was disappointed.
She had been so much cheered the night before that she did not like the idea of passing a whole day alone, except for Gersche, whose mournful disposition was depressing. The Grafin did not want her, for in these days she was incapable of thinking, so there would be nothing to take her mind off Arion. She would just have to wait for the dreadful hour, in the middle of the afternoon, when the blue world would rise and climb up from the horizon, altering the colour of the daytime sky, putting fear into the very atmosphere. She knew what she would do if she was in the house when Arion dawned ; she would draw all the curtains and switch on the electric gas- tubes, to keep out the ghastly light. The girl had done this more than once be- fore.
When her father and Guidance disap- peared through the front door, she de- cided that she would visit a friend. She could not, dare not, remain inactive.
She was fitting on her grey pill-box hat when the door was opened again, and in walked her father and Guidance.
“Whatever is the matter? Have you forgotten something?”
“What do you think!’’ exclaimed the engineer. “The tramway service is on strike! The drivers and conductors have stopped working — they refuse to work any longer! Do you hear that row out-
side? There’s a free fight going on in the next street.”
For a moment they stood looking at one another. They were silently won- dering what would be the dreadful con- dition of affairs on the eve of the last day, if things were as bad as this.
“I’ll telephone for a cab,” said Ilse, in a disjointed manner.
• Her father came to her and spoke in
a low voice.
“Before you do that, Ilschen, I think there’s something else you’d better do first. Order in a fortnight’s supply of groceries — you never know what’s going to happen. Also a gross of candles, as it won’t be long before the lighting sup- plies fail. Add anything else we may need as well. It will be wise to be prepared. I hope to goodness the prices haven’t risen any higher than they were last week-end. Run along now.”
A few minutes later Ilse came back from the telephone, which was in a room by itself, with a door opening into the dining-room.
“No taxis or cabs can be got anywhere in Munich,” she announced breathlessly, “for less than five hundred marks! It’s dreadful !’’
“We’ll walk,” said Lieben briefly. “It isn’t very far, Ilschen,” he added, over his shoulder. “It’s quite possible we may not be able to get any lunch in a cafe, so don’t be surprised if we come back here early. Oh, and don’t forget to bolt the front door. There was some daylight looting yesterday in the Wilhelmstrasse. Why have you put on your hat? You weren’t going out, were you ? It’s hardly advisable to go out alone, Ilschen.”
The girl decided to stay in and make the best of Gersche’s company.
The men did not return for lunch, and she was annoyed, because she had care- fully prepared some.
At fifteen-ten promptly, Ilse and the maid drew the curtains and switched on the lights, so as to shut out the sight of the sky, which was already changing colour towards the east.
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Twenty minutes later, the lights failed abruptly. Use looked at the fuses, but none had blown. Gersche lit a number of candles, and there they sat, waiting in the faint, barbaric light, women of the tenth decade on the eve of the twenty- first century.
Suddenly the ground shook, ornaments fell off the mantels, the bronze model soarer fell to the floor and was smashed, while every window in the house was shattered. Waves of terrible rolling sound poured in. Their eardrums were oppressed; they could hardly keep their feet and were almost senseless with ter- ror. The candles fell over and became extinguished.
Gersche fell on her knees and screamed wildly.
“The end of the world ! It’s come al- ready !”
Something heavy seemed to hit the roof, and she began to recite the Lord’s Prayer, very rapidly and incoherently.
Nothing more happened, so Use relit some of the candles. They calmed down gradually as the silence continued. She walked slowly to and fro, but Gersche remained kneeling on the floor, as if trans- fixed. She was weeping silently.
Suddenly there was a thunderous knock on the front door, but Use did not dare to open it. Then there was the sound of people running, some screams, a scuffle in the street, and a man out- side the door began groaning and shout- ing.
To drown the awful noise, Use turned on the radio, which was driven by a “Long-Life Battery Plant,” installed in the cellar.
“Transport is almost at a standstill in the city,” said the loud-speaker. “A fire has broken out in the southern suburbs, covering several acres, and the firemen despair of getting control over it. It was started by the blowing-up of the entire Munich Central Gasworks, apparently due to neglect, or absence of the work- men. It is stated that not a single por- tion of the Gasworks or the adjoining buildings are left standing. Two hundred
houses have been knocked flat, and Konigstrasse, the road leading to the premises, has disappeared. So far no sign has been found of the Church of Theos- ophy, which used to stand at the end of the road. The hood of an automobile came down in the Wilhemplatz and knocked over a lamp-post. The top of one of the gasometers landed two and a half kilometers away on the main road to Hohenlinden.
“A piece of wreckage dropped into a village half a kilometer to the south— it is believed to be a domestic bath. Short- ly afterwards the upper half of a house arrived.
“Since early this morning there has been much looting and rioting in the city, and many shops have been broken into. Householders are warned to guard their property. It is impossible to ask the police to assist, as unfortunately, most of the force are also engaged in rioting.
“Further reports will be issued in half an hour, if circumstances permit.”
• It seemed to be fairly quiet outside
the house now. A sharp sound, like the shot of a revolver, came from the end of the street, and there was a distant murmur, as of many people shouting, from the direction of the city centre.
Use went fearfully to one of the shat- tered front windows and looked out into the street. There was nothing human in sight, except a pair of feet covered in muddy boots, which she could just see by looking down at the pavement, and as far to the right as possible. Someone was lying on his back just outside the front door.
The man must be drunk or dead. It struck her that it would be an unpleasant shock for her father, when he returned home, to find a dead man sprawling over his doorstep. She decided that she would open the door and remove the body. It was no use asking the morbid Gersche for help; in any case, she was quite strong enough to do it herself. She felt no reluctance, for she had spent some time in a hospital.
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She paused with her hand on the bolt. It would certainly be very unpleasant if the man was merely drunk. She looked out of the window to see if the feet were moving. No, they were quite still. She made up her mind and went once more to the door.
But she was stopped by the sound of footsteps and voices — it was too late now. She could hear her father, Mr. Guid- ance, and a third unfamiliar voice.
There was an exclamation, then she heard her father shout.
“Come on, we’d better pull this body out of the way. It wouldn’t do to let the girls see this.”
Ilse smiled. Her father was doing for her what she had just been about to do for him.
“The devil !” said the unfamiliar voice. “There’s a table on the roof, impaled on the chimney!”
Through the window she watched the two boots dragged out of sight. Then she ran back to the kitchen to rouse Gersche from her stupor of terror.
“Quick, get up,” she exclaimed, pull- ing the girl to her feet. “They are com- ing back, and they’ve got someone else with them. Make yourself presentable, for goodness sake.”
The door-bell rang, so Ilse went to unbolt the door while Gersche dried her eyes and pulled herself together.
Her father and Guidance stepped in, carrying rifles; there was a stranger be- hind them, standing rather awkwardly on the doorstep, and he also was carrying a rifle. The two men held their rifles as if they had done so all their lives, but the third handled his differently — not so much as if he had never carried one, but as if he had never even heard of one before.
He stood peeving around the shoulder of the massive Guidance.
He was a Frenchman, in the early twenties, with a vivid, sharply-defined face, and bare-headed. He was a tall man, but he did not look it beside Guidance, who could stand comparison with the big- gest. He was dressed neatly in a brown
leather smock with knee-breeches of the same material, and his hair was glisten- ing and flat.
There was something familiar about his face, but Ilse could not place him — youthful cheeks, rather pale — though paleness was no unusual sight in these adventurous weeks — clear eyes, a nose which was perfectly straight and deli- cately cut, and a good-humoured mouth.
Lieben started on an attempt to ex- plain away the presence of so many rifles, but thought better of it, and turned around to introduce the stranger. He need not have bothered to explain any- thing to Ilse, as the situation was per- fectly clear and she was far more capable in an emergency than her father.
“Come right in,” said the engineer. “Use, this is Monsieur Grindin, an ac- quaintance of Mr. Guidance. Monsieur Grindin, my daughter Ilse.”
The stranger shook hands with Ilse, dropping his rifle in the process.
• Paul Grindin ! She remembered him
now, for she had seen his photo in a paper somewhere.
Guidance and Lieben left their rifles in the hallway, so the Frenchman did not bother to pick his up. They drifted into the lounge, except the engineer, who stayed behind to bolt the front door se- curely.
When this was done, he went to the lounge, hesitated, then returned, giving the front door a tug, to make certain it was fast. On the way back to the lounge, he gave the barometer a hearty rap in an absent-minded manner, but did not stop to see if the pointer moved at all.
Unfortunately, Ilse had had no time to take away the candles from the lounge and draw back the curtains from the broken windows. But no one commented upon this ; they seemed determined to take everything unusual for granted.
There was a rapid whispered consulta- tion in the doorway of the lounge, be- tween the engineer and his daughter, while the others were finding seats.
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“Shall I pull the curtains back?” asked Ilse. “The smashed windows will look awful.”
“No,” he whispered, “best leave them as they are. Perhaps when they come and see the drawn curtains, they may think this is a house of mourning and show more respect for it, you see?”
“They?” asked Ilse, frowning.
“A mob of factory workers have run mad,” whispered her father cautiously, “and they’re heading this way. Run along to the kitchen, will you, and ask Gersche to make some coffee.”
When, a few minutes later, the maid came with a coffee tray, she was half- paralyzed by the sight of the three rifles lying in the passage, and Ilse had to take the tray herself.
It was a chilly evening, and they were sitting on two of the sofas drawn up to the fire.
“What brings you to Munich, Monsieur Grindin?” asked Lieben in French.
“Oh, I was on my way to Paris from Bombay, and I was not in any particular hurry, so I thought I would remain here for a day or two.”
Actually it was nothing of the kind, though Grindin would never have con- fessed it. The nervous Frenchman had been returning to Paris because condi- tions were very grave in Bombay, and he thought he would feel safer among his French friends. When he had alighted at Munich to catch the Paris soarer con- nection, he happened to read in a news- paper that several serious riots had just taken place in Paris, and that the Opera had been sacked and burnt to the ground.
He began to reconsider his decision, and to wonder whether he had been wise after all to leave India. Things seemed more or less quiet in Bavaria, or at least as quiet as could be hoped, so he made up his mind to stay here some time. He took his luggage to his usual hotel, which lay in the southern district of the city.
Coming away from there, he went for lunch to a restaurant in the city centre, where, by accident, he met his friend, Mr. Guidance, and Herr Lieben.
Soon he learned that things were not so quiet in Munich as they seemed. In the middle of the afternoon, the three men had been walking along a main road, when suddenly the city was shaken by a heavy explosion and they were blown off their feet by a tremendous gale and deaf- ened by a terrible sound. There seemed to be a volcanic eruption going on to- wards the south of the city.
Later Grindin found that his hotel had been made uninhabitable by the Gasworks explosion. His bedroom, together with other important parts of the building, had been wrecked ; his luggage could not be disentangled from the debris, and if it had been possible to extricate it, it would certainly not have been of the slightest use.
When the engineer learned of this dis- aster, he invited the Parisian to stay at his house; he felt that he had to make up somehow for the inhospitable man- ner in which Munich had received Grindin.
When the Parisian tried to explain his presence in Bavaria, he was not as glib as he might have been. For the same rea- son that he fled from Bombay, he de- clined to arrive in Paris. It struck him now that k would not matter where he went; he would not be able to escape dangers of the world panic.
For several days now Grindin had felt an almost continuous alarm which he found difficult to conceal, and which he could not annul by philosophical argu- ments, because he did not know any.
But when he had been sitting an hour or two in the lounge of the engineer’s house, he felt this sense of alarm leaving him. He wondered why this was and tried to trace out the thread of his sen- sations. Eventually, somewhat to his sur- prise, he tracked it down to the presence of Ilse, the engineer’s daughter, whom he had never seen before in his life.
Dusk fell. It seemed curious to be sit- ting there, talking by the weird firelight and the five flickering candles. It was possible to forget that, just outside the
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door, a city wa-s slowly going mad and death was dropping from the sky.
Later Gersche came in and joined in the conversation. Her nerves seemed to have improved.
Remembering that the Frenchman was a geologist, Ilse turned to him.
“I used to attend some weekly lectures in geology at the Rathaus — ”
All conversation ceased suddenly. In the distance could be heard a throbbing and a roaring sound, like the voices and the tramping of a large number of people.
Lieben motioned the words “They’re coming’’ with his lips, and signed to everyone to be quiet.
With incredible speed the sounds drew near, till they were almost deafening — shouts, screams, stampings, blows. Not far away there was an interchange of rifle shots.
Then, abruptly and unexpectedly, the noise receded. They must have passed down an adjacent street.
“I went to a series of ten geology lec- tures,” continued Ilse, coolly, “the winter before last, but I’m afraid I can’t remem- ber much of it now.”
Gersche had restrained herself while the danger was near, but now she burst out of the room, weeping. Ilse followed her, and Grindin confirmed his idea that his feeling of calmness was mainly due to her presence, because now he felt an un- due alarm creeping back.
Lieben switched on the radio, and they learned that the fire in the southern quar- ters of the city was still spreading rapidly, and that two more had started in the east.
No one felt like playing chess that night.
CHAPTER V The Last Week
• In the mountain fastnesses of New
Zealand, there was an observatory where working conditions were main- tained till the last.
The astronomer, Hergesheimer, and his small staff lived alone on the eastern
slopes of Mount Franklin and they had just received a six week supply of food from Kaikoura. They were so far from habitations that they could remain there, untroubled physically by the great world excitement, and they determined to keep on observing the blue planet as long as they were able. They worked in order to preserve their sanity, not from any thought of advancing knowledge ; no ab- stract principles of truth guided their pa- tient fingers — they had nothing else to do I
Six days from the end, at four in the afternoon, Hergesheimer made incredible discovery.
On the previous night, his assistant had taken several photographs of Arion at various times during its transit' and Hergesheimer was working on the un- printed negatives. After he had measured the apparent diameter, he checked the orbit, in order to while away another half-hour.
Suddenly his assistant was startled to see him running towards him, plainly in a state of high excitement, waving a writ- ing-pad in his hand. He was puffing and gasping. Hergesheimer was prone to over- eating.
“Dickens,” he cried, “look this over, will you, and tell me whether I’m in my right senses!”
Dickens looked at the paper curiously and began to scribble. A few minutes later he stood up, bewilderment on his face.
“But these figures show that Arion’s orbit — ”
“ — does not intersect that of the earth ! Exactly !”
“Can everyone else be mistaken, except ourselves? The Astronomer Royal—”
“To hang with him and the rest. Our results agree.”
“Then this means — ”
“ — There will be no collision ! Dickens, we must see if the telegraph cables are still working. The beam wireless was sus- pended last week. We will operate the cables ourselves, if need be.”
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Five hours later, the inhabitants of all the large cities had learned the amazing news. A man from Australia told them that the earth would remain !
The astronomers were indignant. Ab- surd ! Had they not measured and checked the orbit* of Arion a score of times ?
But that night they took fresh ex- posures, and repeated their calculations. It was impossible, but Hergesheimer was right !
A tumult swept around the world. The orbit was no longer what it had been, but what force had performed this cosmic miracle? Every sect claimed that it was their prayers alone that had done the trick. As for the professors, they could no longer think.
How near, then, would the blue planet approach the earth ? At the nearest, more than twice the distance of the moon — that is, some six hundred thousand miles from centre to centre. There would be no se- rious danger, the only effect being an al- teration in the tides, and some perturba- tions in the earth’s orbit.
“Don’t be so sure!” said the president of the Republic of Siam. “The orbit has altered once ; it may alter again.”
But three-quarters of the world became optimists, and hope predominated.
The day of doom came, and was past! No one feared any longer. Festivals and orgies, joyful religious meetings and triumphal rejoicings were held in all parts of the globe. Measures were taken to an- nihilate the plagues and restore order.
A great storm of derision arose against the astronomers.
They had suavely pointed out that a planet had sprung from nowhere, and prophesied the end of the world! Mil- lions had perished, misery and disease had strangled the nations, but now, when the time had come, they said they had made a mistake, and it wasn't the end of the world after all ! Could scientists be trusted any longer? Was there any more faith in figures, or sense in science?
Three days after the “day of doom,” the blue planet was due to arrive at its nearest point to the earth. It grew larger
and larger until the moon could barely be noticed, and many people could not es- cape acute anxiety when looking at it.
When there were still two days to go before the juncture, a strange advertise- ment appeared in the international news- papers, which had already recommenced circulation. Intense excitement, derision, and laughter, were created by this mem- orable paragraph :
“Mr. Henry Guidance, of the Bombay Institute of Technology, wishes to announce that he is refitting the Soaring Rocket No. Ill , for an attempted expedition to the planet Arion. Eighteen able men are required at once, of good scientific ability, who are willing to con- tribute capital to the enterprise, and to share, the un- known hardships and dangers.”
The surprising brevity of this an- nouncement was not the least remarkable feature.
Most people had heard of Guidance; the story of the end of his first two soar- ing machines was household property.
He had suffered two enormous losses ; now, like the famous maker of airships, Santos-Dumont, he was rising again with untired energy. But what a daring propo- sition ! In a few hours, hundreds of en- quiries reached him, and he found it nec- essary to make several statements to the press.
Hitherto the only heavenly body that had been reached by the soaring ma- chines was the moon; the other planets were too far. Here was a magnificent opportunity; for the blue planet was only twice the distance of the moon ! It was just possible for a large soaring machine to carry enough fuel and food for the journey there and back. Guidance had much reason on his side.
The world waited curiously to see if the eighteen men could be found. There was no need to fear; there were seven hundred and twenty-three applicants.
Guidance had no time to lose ; he made his choice, and sent the rest grumbling about their business. It was only fair that Hergesheimer and Dickens, of Franklin Observatory, New Zealand, should be included; they were regarded as the saviours of the world’s sanity. Hesker of Czechoslovakia was also one of the choseii; he had a proprietary in-
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terest in Arion, though he was still feel- ing ruffled because the blue planet had not been named Titanus.
• Henry Guidance had an office in Pots- dam where he received the applicants. One of the first was a tall dark man who presented him with papers of reference and said that his name was Dr. Nacht. Guidance found it difficult to refuse him.
Then there was Mr. Alfred Smith, a surgeon from the Isle of Wight, whose pale face had a rather convincing air; he was accepted.
Herr Otto Lieben of Munich had to go in order to look after his new engine, and administer his new fuel.
While Guidance was busy looking up references and making telephone calls, his old friend, Gystak of the Stuttgart Tageblatt, burst in upon him.
“Good morning, Mr. Guidance,” he said, in his cheerful manner; “I see you are very busy.”
“Very busy indeed, Mr. Gystak, but never too busy to speak to you. Do you want an article for your paper?”
“I do not belong to a paper now, Mr. Guidance, if you will but say the word.” “What do you mean?”
“Wasn’t I a good enough pilot to fly the Soaring Rocket Number Two to the moon and back? Am I not good enough to fly Number Three to Arion?”
“But I thought you had lost your nerve after the accident?”
“That was a long time ago! Besides, Arion is much more interesting than the moon !”
“Then, if you feel fit for it, I have no hesitation in offering you the post of chief pilot.”
“Fine, Mr. Guidance!”
The rest of that day, and the following one, Mr. Guidance found himself dis- tracted with the enormous amount of or- ganization that had to be settled in a very short time. There were thousands of pounds worth of scientific equipment to be bought, tabulated, and packed, and that too when trade was still disorganized. There was the technical crew to select,
all men of the highest ability and train- ing. Preserved foods of every kind had to be prepared, and a score of irritating details. This was something more than a pleasure excursion to the moon and back. Emergencies had to be provided for in advance, as far as possible ; oxygen supplies to last a long time had to be taken ; no one knew what might happen !
In view of all this necessary arrange- ment, and the restricted time, Guidance could not pay much attention to the ref- erences of his passengers, though he took especial care over the essentials, such as the crew.
One morning, all those who were go- ing to take part in the flight to Arion received a telegram: your presence is
REQUESTED AT ONCE IF POSSIBLE AT FOL- LOWING ADDRESS 103 KAISERPLATZ SCHWABING MUNCHEN BAVARIA GUID- ANCE
Guidance wanted everyone to meet be- fore the flight for many reasons, partly social. It was certainly desirable that they should become acquainted with each other before leaving, and he wanted various personal details, which he thought fit to obtain in this way.
He decided on Munich for the meeting place because it occupied a central po- sition in Europe and was equal in impor- tance to Berlin ; moreover, it was a mere three hundred miles from Berlin, less than an hour’s journey by express soarer, and only half that distance from Prague, the capital of Hesker’s country. It would save some time on the long journey which Hergesheimer and Dickens would have to undertake from New Zealand.
But the main reason was that he wished to be there in person, because he had to see to the transportation of Lieben’s spe- cial fuel, which was being made in large quantities. He did not believe in asking anyone to do anything important, or vital for his purpose, if he could possibly do it himself.
Engineer Lieben had consented reluc- tantly to the use of his house for the meet- ing. The affair had been sprung upon him rather unfairly, in such a manner
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that he could hardly refuse without giv- ing offense. At times Guidance could summon a certain impelling manner and a persuasive voice, which was extraordi- narily irritating but impossible to oppose, while having the appearance of being nothing more than a request, or even a hint.
• It was all very well in a way ; he wanted to see them all together in one place, for an hour or so, and it was not worth- while going to any expense in the way of entertainment. It would be time to start spending money on them when the day for the take-off arrived.
But Lieben took an exaggerated view of the importance of the occasion; he felt worried at the responsibility which Guidance had put upon him, and it caused a stir in the household.
As a result, there were numerous hur- ried consultations between Lieben, his daughter, and Gersche.
“I wonder what exactly he wants me to provide for them?” grumbled the en- gineer. “I’m not made of money.” “Not yet,” retorted Use.
“Let me see — just how many will there be, anyway? There will be Dr. Smith, Mr. Hesker, Dr. Somebody — ”
“Dr. Nacht?”
“ — And our handsome Parisian — ” “And the pilot?”
“That's Mr. Gystak, the journalist fel- low.”
“The New Zealand people.”
“Ah yes, Hergesheimer and Dickens, of course. Then the mighty Henry Guid- ance himself, and we two.”
“That makes ten.”
“Quite enough ! Ilschen, tell Gerche to make a note of that number — ten people, including everybody. I wish to goodness Mr. Guidance would let me know what I am to do with them.”
“Why don’t you ask him, father?” “Oh, I can’t very well do that. Do you know anything about entertaining?” “Hardly, seeing that I’ve never had any practice.”
“Well, I’m not going further than cof- fee, and perhaps wine. That’s flat. I don’t have to be obliging to Guidance, just because he’s going to pay me a generous sum for my engine and fuel. After all, I’ve earned it ! If he wants anything more elaborate, he’ll just have to take them to a hotel, that’s all.”
“Don’t you worry, father; I’m sure he means it to be an informal meeting, and it won’t last very long. With so many distinguished people coming to our house, there’s bound to be some newspaper men here. We may even get our pictures in the papers!”
“That’s true,” said Lieben, pleased at the thought. “That reminds me — we’d better get those upstairs windows cleaned. They were looking very dirty this morn- ing.”
“It may be risky anticipating our com- ing wealth,” muttered Ilse, “but I’m go- ing out to buy myself a new dress."
During this hubbub and bustle, Gerche was wondering if it would be wise to ask for a rise in wages so soon.
As it happened, the Grafin von Frei- burg had little need of her secretary as yet, since she had not recovered com- pletely from her paralyzing fright at her narrow escape from being crushed be- tween earth and Arion, like flour between millstones. At the most, Ilse had only to attend an hour or two daily, to deal with correspondence.
The girl was seriously thinking of aban- doning the secretaryship altogether, on account of her father’s happy success in perfecting his fuel; but she decided it might be premature. Also she did not want to rush off and resign straight away, as she felt this would be too obviously a confession that she preferred a life of idleness to a life of labour.
Meanwhile she had plenty of spare time in which to help Gersche to get the place tidy. All traces of the terrible Gas- works explosion had been cleared up ; new panes of glass were in the windows ; new ornaments had been bought to replace those that had been smashed; the bronze
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model soaring machine, which had broken into three main pieces, had been patched up and stuck together and put back on its pedestal.
Unfortunately, however, one of the charming curling bronze flames had been broken off, and Gersche had not been able to find it, though she had worn down her knee-breeches in crawling about the lounge floor. As a result, the soarer looked curiously bare, with one of its flames missing.
The table that had fallen on the roof had also been taken away.
On the morning of the day when the meeting was to take place, Gersche dressed herself in a brand-new and very becoming plus-four suit. It was made neatly in dark-brown leather, covered with red zigzags, with voluminous branch- ing tassels hanging from the garters. She wore a crimson tie and large plush epaulettes. The ensemble gave her a charming, old-fashioned air. At the last moment, she decided to wear an imita- tion African sun-helmet on her head, which added a last perfecting touch.
• The busy Guidance had imposed his
presence overnight unasked, and after breakfast, he and Lieben set off for the fuel laboratories. At the same time, Use left the house as well, in order to get rid of the morning’s correspondence at the Grafin’s residence.
Her employer was still in bed when she arrived and did not make an appearance all the morning. Use went through the letters, then returned home for lunch. When she got back, Gersche showed her a mysterious oblong parcel that had been sent.
“Whatever is it?” she asked.
“I’ve no idea, Use. The man who brought it didn’t know himself. He said it had to be delivered for Mr. Guidance, and there was nothing to pay.”
“Oh, well, I suppose it will have to stay here till he comes. Not content with using our house as a hotel, he has con- verted it now into a left-luggage office. Not that it matters! But we’d better
carry it into the kitchen, hadn’t we ? It’s far too bulky to leave in the passage — all our guests will be stumbling over it.”
With some difficulty, Use and Gersche managed to carry the package out of the way. This task was just finished when the doorbell rang in a rather timid fash- ion.
“Surely this isn’t the guests starting to come already !” exclaimed Use. “The meeting is supposed to be this afternoon, fifteen o’clock!”
Use answered the ring. To her sur- prise, there was a little boy of twelve or thirteen standing on the doorstep with a case in his hand. Behind him a taxi was waiting.
He was dressed expensively in a leather travelling suit, but his hair, which dis- played countless curls, was uncovered to the wind. His eyes were of a very dark blue, while his small face was pale but not unattractive. He looked quite at ease, although he appeared to have trav- elled a long distance.
“May the sun never stop shining!” he greeted Use, precociously in English. “Please, miss, is this a hundred and three, Kaiserplatz ?”
“Jawohl. Yes, indeed. Where are you from ?”
“Bath.”
“Bath?”
“Yes, I’m Tim. My name’s Tim Guid- ance.”
“Oh — Himmel, are you the cousin of Mr. Henry Guidance?”
“Well, yes, but I call him uncle. He asked me to come here so that I can see him fly off to Arion.” He put the accent on the first syllable, instead of the second.
“Indeed! Yet he did not arrange to meet you, nor did he tell us you were coming! That’s just like him. Come right in ! Have you paid the taxi ? All right, taxi, you needn’t wait.”
Tim came in and removed his travel- ling-suit, showing a blue sailor suit be- neath.
“The cheek of him,” whispered Gersche to Use, “telling Tim to come here, and not letting us know !”
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Have you holiday from school, Tim?” asked Ilse, in a friendly manner, though she was feeling very indignant.
“Not exactly,” replied the boy. “You see, there isn’t any school left. There was a riot, and a lot of fighting, and it got burnt down. There’s nothing left of it, and I haven’t been taken to another one yet.”
“Oh, I hope you didn’t get hurt. Did you try to stop them from setting the school on fire?”
“Not exactly,” retorted Tim, in a casual manner. “As a matter of fact, it was me who started the fire.”
Gersche coughed, and Ilse thought she had better change the subject.
“Would you like some lunch with us now, Tim, or did you eat on the jour- ney?”
“No fear ! Uncle told me not to bother, as I should be certain of getting some here.”
“Oh! Well, then, Gersche, we’d better have lunch right away.”
The maid took hold of the boy’s case, to take it away, but she dropped it on hearing a kind of squeaking noise coming from it.
“What on earth’s that? What are those holes in the case for?”
“Oh, that's only Timothy,” replied the boy.
He opened the case, and out jumped a large black cat and three kittens.
Not knowing what to expect next, Ilse went into the dining-room, and they pro- ceeded to have lunch.
It was not long after the meal when the doorbell rang again.
“I hope that is Mr. Guidance and fa- ther,” exclaimed Ilse. “It’s high time they were back.”
Gersche went to the door and an- nounced Mr. Hergesheimer and Mr. Dickens.
“For goodness sake,” whispered Ilse, “clear out Tim Guidance’s menagerie !”
While Gersche was bundling Tim, the cat, and the three kittens into the kitchen, Ilse showed the two men into the lounge.
“Well, you’re the first arrivals,” she
said pleasantly. “Now isn’t that remark- able, when you’ve had the furthest dis- tance to come ?”
“All the way from Mount Franklin,” said Hergesheimer. “But we always do things slick in New Zealand, you know.”
He took off his helmet and his stiff hair sprang up. At first sight, his eyes were rather startling, for one was blue and the other grey, but people soon became used to it.
So this was the man who had saved the sanity of the world! It must have taken some courage to announce his dis- covery, in the face of the opposition of all the other astronomers — to say that Arion was not really going to hit the earth at all, when everybody else had been driven mad, because they were assured it would !
Ilse was surprised when she looked at his assistant, Mr. Dickens, for he seemed so extraordinarily young, despite his pale face and gloomy air — far too young for a dangerous expedition into unknown space. Yet he was old enough to have been married some time, for so long in- deed that he was on very bad terms with his wife, as Use’s father had told her.
Dickens seemed to find it difficult to attend to the details of life, such as the casual remarks and pleasantries of other people ; it was Hergesheimer who did all the talking, and plenty at that.
“Thank goodness we weren’t here a few days ago, when all the trouble was going on. It must have been pretty bad in the cities. Did you get much of it here, Frciu- lein Lieben?”
“Well, yes, it certainly was — trying."
“While we, you see, were safe and snug in our observatory on Mount Frank- lin with enough supplies to last ages, and no one to trouble us!”
“You were certainly very lucky to es- cape all the excitement, Mr. Herges- heimer.”
Not long afterwards, Paul Grindin ar- rived, to Ilse’s relief.
“Thank goodness,” she muttered; “at any rate, here’s someone I know.”
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WONDER STORIES FOR OCTOBER, 1935
Then Mr. Gystak arrived, the former journalist. As the little man stepped into the lounge, he said : “Good afternoon, gentlemen. I’m just in time, as there’s going to be a shower. A few drops had started to come down when I rang the bell.”
He was right. It came on to rain heavi- ly, and Gersche had to shut all the win- dows. Use was annoyed, because she sus- pected her father had not taken a coat with him.
Dr. Nacht came ; he was a dark man who rather frightened Use; he was ac- companied by Mr. Alfred Smith, the Eng- lish surgeon front the Isle of Wight, a markedly morbid person.
“We bumped into each other at the Soarer Terminal,” explained Nacht, in a deep Teutonic voice.
CHAPTER VI Final Details
• There was still no sign of Lieben or
Guidance ; Ilse was feeling “put out.”
During a particularly violent burst of rain, which rattled loudly against the brand-new window-panes, the overworked doorbell gave another ring.
“Surely,” thought Ilse, “this must be them this time.”
She opened the front door, but there, to her disappointment, stood another stranger in the teeming rain. He had a face which unmistakably belonged to the eastern side of Europe, strongly-marked, obviously capable of expressing much feeling, and there was real humour, a sar- castic humour, behind those eyes.
He was wet through. His raincoat was too thin to be of any use ; water was drip- ping off the brim of his soft hat, stream- ing down his cheeks and his neck.
“I’m Mr. Hesker,” he said, hurriedly stepping in. “May the sun never stop shining!” he added ironically, and Ilse laughed.
“You’re certainly wet, Mr. Hesker! Come right in and get dried. I’m Ilse Lieben, Herr Lieben’s daughter.”
Ah, here was a real man, the girl de- cided, while she shook the water from his hat — an intelligent man, with a reasonable sense of humour.
“Himmel!” said Gersche, in an under- tone. “Wherever has Herr Lieben gone?”
Ilse was feeling worried. Here was a roomful of people, and she did not know what to do with them. She walked self- consciously around the lounge and looked through the window at the pouring rain.
A brief diversion was caused by the escape of one of the kittens. It slipped through the door and raced around the lounge, closely followed by Gersche, who hunted it out again.
It struck Ilse that it would be a good idea to turn on the radio. Why hadn’t she thought of that before? She switched it on, and the room was filled with a voice :
“We will now play a hot number, In a Soarer in the Blue — ”
Gersche opened the front door and in walked Henry Guidance, flinging off his coat. He stepped straight into the lounge.
“Please, Miss Ilse,” he said, with enough irritation to show that he was in a hurry, “do turn off that radio! How on earth shall I be able to hear myself speak ?”
Naturally, he would have to come in just then! Firstly, he had burdened her with the responsibility of entertaining his guests by failing to appear at the time he had himself appointed; then he was an- noyed at her for doing her best to amuse them! Ilse was working up quite a lot of cumulative indignation that afternoon, in the way known only to women.
“Well, how are you, gentlemen?” con- tinued Guidance, when the radio had ex- pired. He wiped the raindrops front his face with a handkerchief. “Are we all here?” He made a rapid mental count.
“Yes, that’s fine. Everyone’s present except Herr Lieben, but he’ll be here in a minute or two; then we shall be able to proceed.”
“Your young cousin has arrived from Bath, by the way,” remarked Ilse, “and
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also an extremely heavy parcel. They are both in the kitchen.”
“Oh, that’s fine. I’ll see Tim presently, but can I have that parcel in here ? I shall be wanting it shortly.”
“All right, but it’s very heavy; Mr. Grindin, will you help me fetch it?” “With pleasure, Mile. Ilse.”
They went down the passage and soon reappeared, struggling with the oblong parcel.
“Thanks very much,” said Guidance, graciously. “Set it down here, will you, in front of the fire?”
• Guidance stooped down and cut open the parcel, disclosing to view a kind of metal platform with a dial attached. “Whatever have you got here?”
“This is a weighing machine. I want all your weights checked up, if you have no objection. I don’t want any slips or mistaken calculations at the last minute, you know.”
Once more the doorbell rang, then there was the sound of a key turning in the lock. This must be the engineer ; usual- ly he rang the bell first, then impatient- ly unlocked the door with his own key, before anyone could come and open it.
“He’s here at last,” muttered Ilse. “He will be half-drowned.”
There came a characteristic knocking sound from the hallway, as Herr Lieben rapped at the barometer-glass.
He had done this an uncountable num- ber of times, and what happened next came to him as a startling surprise.
At the end of a hearty series of taps, there was a sudden loud cracking sound. Ilse dashed out of the lounge. Two jagged lines crossed the misused barom- eter-face, and the outraged pointer was bent beyond repair. It was a calamity, but from that moment, the engineer never again touched a barometer, and hardly dared to look one in the face.
“Now look what you’ve done!” ex- claimed his daughter. “Come in and get your wet things off !”
The engineer obeyed without saying a word. He felt like starting an argument,
but he could hardly do so when he was next to a roomful of people.
Guidance was rather taken aback. Be- sides his personal horror of birds, he had a few other mental peculiarities. On oc- casions he was superstitious. Here was Otto Lieben, the man who was supplying the very life-blood of the expedition, the precious and almost miraculous fuel which was to feed the tubes of the soarer, and he had broken glass at the very moment that the final arrangements for the flight were commencing.
Was it an evil omen? Otherwise, why should the glass have broken on that par- ticular day, when the engineer must have tapped it some thousands of times pre- viously? Why should it have cracked at such a significant moment, when all the company was assembled, and within ear- shot of it? His mind went back to a night, seven years ago, when his brother lay dying in Hartlepool, yet he had heard the unaccountable ticking of the death- watch in his private room in Bombay, six thousand miles away.
Furtively, he moistened a finger and traced a cross on the front of his jacket.
Gystak came up to him with a note- book and pencil.
“Well, I'm ready, Mr. Guidance, to take down all the details you want.”
Guidance banished the foolish super- stition which had for a moment engulfed his mind.
“Will everybody come in rotation and stand on the weighing machine, please? Mr. Hesker first? Right you are. At the same time, I should like full particulars of your name, age, academic distinctions, and so on. You will easily understand that I’m in rather a hurry, so I must apologize for the informality.” *
One by one they stood on the machine, and Gystak put them all down in his book. When it came to Mr. Hergesheimer’s turn, the machine creaked under his weight, which made Gystak look anxious. Finally the pilot himself stood on the platform and recorded his own weight. “My featherweight is hardly worth put- ting down !” he laughed.
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WONDER STORIES FOR OCTOBER, 1935
“Take care when you’re adding up those figures,” said Guidance grimly. “Every kilogram is going to count.”
“Don’t you worry,” exclaimed Otto Lieben confidently, “there’ll be plenty of reserve with my fuel!”
“Before we go any further,” said Guid- ance, standing in front of the fire, and addressing himself to the whole com- pany, “I should like to read a message I received this morning from his Majesty, George the Eighth, King of England !
“Here it is:
"'We note with pleasure that you are undertaking a voyage so full of scientific importance and human interest, and we sincerely hope that you will bring it to a successful and safe close.
GEORGE REX.’ ”
• Ilse felt staggered. Royal patronage!
This was a bigger thing than she had realized.
“My word,” exclaimed Hesker, the Czech, “we’re causing some stir, aren’t we?”
Ilse left the room, saying that she was going to ask the maid for some coffee, but actually she was going in order to tell her the news.
When she arrived at the kitchen, she found Gersche childishly playing with the cat, while Tim was romping with the kittens. The maid was recalled to gravity when Ilse informed her of the message. Indeed, she was overawed.
“Surely I shall be able to ask them for a rise, and, out of very dignity, they won’t be able to refuse,” was the first thought that occurred to her.
When Ilse got back to the lounge, she found Guidance explaining to the com- pany what their various duties would be during the voyage, and during their stay on the planet Arion, if they were so lucky as to make a safe landing there.
He laid much stress on the many perils they would probably encounter, and the numerous inconveniences they would cer- tainly suffer, and the quite likely pos- sibility that the day of the take-off would be the last day on earth they would ever
enjoy. Then he asked, in a too dramatic fashion, whether anyone wished to with- draw? If they did, they must do so at once, because, after this moment, he would consider the whole thing settled.
Naturally, no one answered.
“What on earth can he be thinking of ?” wondered the engineer. “Does he imag- ine that all these people have journeyed to my house from all parts of the world and haven’t yet made up their minds ?”
But Guidance was wise in having everything quite definite and clear, when there was so little time left before the take-off, and when he himself was per- sonally acquainted with so few of the men.
An impatient ring at the front door was heard.
“Oh, Mr. Guidance,” said the pilot, “I expect that’s my friend from the Muncher Illustrierte Presse. He wants an interview, to get some particulars for his paper. I told him you wouldn’t mind if he came about this time. Was that all right ?”
“Certainly, Mr. Gystak. Show him in. The more press I get, the better for me, and the better I like it !”
By this time, the excited Gersche had already let in the reporter and he entered the lounge, smiling, with a camera in his hand.
There were several curious things which Ilse noticed about the interview. The first was that the dark Dr. Nacht, who had hardly spoken a word the whole afternoon, kept in the background the whole time, especially while the photo- graph was being taken at the end of the interview. Then Mr. Hesker slipped quietly out of the room while the re- porter was in the act of fixing his cam- era in readiness to take the photograph.
These things struck her as peculiar, be- cause she did not associate nervousness or shyness with either of these men. Hesker was talkative and almost jolly, Nacht reticent and gloomy.
Another thing she noticed was that, half-way through the interview, the jour- nalist unobtrusively slipped a folded
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551
piece of paper into Gystak’s hand. It was done so quickly that she was sure no one else had observed it, and she was also certain that the action had been concealed intentionally. •
This struck her as peculiar, because she did not associate Mr. Gystak with any- thing secretive. She could hardly imagine the small fellow being anything other than frank.
At the end of the interview, they posed in a group for the press photo, and there were so many of them that nobody remarked on the absence of Hesker.
“I suppose I’d better get out of the way,” said Ilse. ‘‘You won’t want any- one on the print who isn’t actually going on the flight.”
“Oh come, Fraulein,” said Monsieur Grindin, “I am sure the daughter of our estimable engineer should not be left out of the photograph! You do not mind, Mr. Guidance?”
“Not at all.”
The addition of a charming young lady would probably increase the press-value of the snap, so Ilse Lieben knelt on the floor in front of the group.
• A blinding flash, and their faces were
fixed forever on the film.
“Thank you very much, Mr. Guidance, for the time you have allowed me and the trouble you have taken. If you will buy a copy of the Miincher Illuslrierte Presse tomorrow morning, you will see the snap there, and also the account of the interview which you have so kindly given me. Good afternoon!”
The reporter went out, and the group relaxed and broke up.
“These reporters are certainly very courteous,” muttered Guidance.
“Oh,” muttered Gystak, with a bored expression, “we have to learn those little speeches off by heart, you know.”
“Are you then a journalist?” asked Dr. Nacht.
“I was,” said the pilot, with unneces- sary haste. “I used to be on the Stuttgart Tageblatt, until Mr. Guidance accepted
me as pilot for this trip. By the way," he added, turning to his new employer, “have you any objection to my taking a small motion-picture camera with me on the trip ?”
“How much does it weigh ?” asked Guidance instantly.
“Oh, less than a kilogram and a half — a mere trifle!”
The reply was firm.
“A kilogram and a half ! Well, you will have to leave behind a corresponding weight of your other luggage, Mr. Gystak, that’s all! I can’t allow any particular person any special privileges.”
“Oh, come, Mr. Guidance, think of the scientific value of a visible record of our flight.”
“Why,” added Grindin, “I would will- ingly leave behind five whole kilograms of provisions, just for the pleasure of watching a film of our adventure, when we get back.”
“Then,” remarked Hergesheimer per- suasively, “supposing we meet 3ome in- habitants of Arion, if there are any; how interesting it would be to have living pic- tures of them. People would clamor to see moving views of real-life Arionians !”
“All right, I suppose it would be rather a good thing.”
“Then, of course,” went on Gystak, in a small voice, “there will be a further kilogram for film reels.”
“I’ll leave some of my luggage behind, to make up for that,” offered Hesker.
“No, no,” exclaimed the leader, “a couple of kilograms extra won’t matter. That’ll do. But I want you to understand clearly, all of you, that there must be no further pleas for anything extra at the last moment. If everyone brings a few pounds extra weight, it will be a serious matter! Is that settled?”
"Alles erledigt!”
After this the general business of the meeting was finished and the party broke up into small conversational groups. Ilse saw the surgeon, Mr. Smith, sitting alone, staring vacantly at the brilliant wallpaper.
“Poor man !” 3he thought. “He looks so lonely and gloomy ; I must try to cheer
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WONDER STORIES FOR OCTOBER, 1935
him up somehow. How is it possible that such a downcast man, with such an obvious lack of spirits, should embark on an adventure like this? There is young Mr. Dickens, standing in the corner with a look on his face as if he were suffering an acute disorder of the stomach. I can’t imagine what brought such people here ! They look as though they had strayed by accident from a funeral party. Heavens, I feel myself getting depressed at the very sight of them ! A fine idea the Arionians will get of us earth people, if they catch sight of those two. I must try to raise a smile on their stony faces.”
She went across and sat down by Mr. Alfred Smith.
“You are a very lucky man, Mr. Smith, going away on such an exciting trip as this, while I have to stay behind in this dirty old city.”
“Have you a job here, Miss Lieben?” asked Smith listlessly.
“Yes, I am secretary for the Grafin von Freiburg. You must have heard of her famous necklace, which has been talked about so much in the press recent- ly?”
“I’m afraid I don’t read the papers.
“Ah, if you could only see her! What an opinion she has of herself ! The stuff she gives me to type !”
Her conversational bombardment was rewarded by a gradual softening of Mr. Smith’s manner, and she left him well pleased. But when she tried the same line on Mr. Hergesheimer’s youthful assistant, she had to give up, wholly unsuccessful, and she joined Grindin and Hesker to thaw herself out.
Meanwhile Gystak sat down beside Smith and began to detail his memories of the Soaring Rockets No. I and II, which had come to such a disastrous end.
“Do you know, Mr. Smith,” he re- marked with much gesticulation, “it was snowing fiercely the day Number One took off, and the heat from the rocket- tubes was so great that the aerodrome became a lake with the melted snow !”
"Oh, yeah,” said Smith, sitting up, “and did you hear the one about the soarer
which sprung a leak half-way to the moon, and the pilot who kept the air in by sitting on the leak?”
Gystak looked annoyed.
Ilse was surveying the -room, wonder- ing where Guidance had gone, when she heard excited voices coming up the pas- sage into the hallway. Then Gersche en- tered the lounge with a coffee-tray, close- ly followed by Guidance and Tim, who was laughing and holding the cat by the neck. Guidance had two kittens in his jacket pockets, while a third perched un- certainly on his head.
Ilse blinked at the sight of the digni- fied Guidance becoming suddenly child- like.
Tim dropped the cat and ran to the piano-stool; playing a melody with one finger on the piano, he sang loudly a nursery-rhyme.
Under cover of the noise, Lieben was telling his stock jokes to Dr. Nacht.
“Yes, this old lady had just been left a fortune, so she charted a soarer to fly around the world. When they had been flying a few thousand miles, she fell asleep, and when she woke next morn- ing, they were back where they had started from, at the beginning of the round! ‘Hell,’ she said to the pilot, ‘is this all there is of it?’ Then, you know, she went to the moon, and when they were half-way there, the old lady shouted to the pilot, ‘I say, open the window and let in some fresh air! It’s getting stuffy in here !’ ”
“I can’t hear a word you say,” said Nacht frigidly, “with that boy banging away at the piano like that.”
* * *
That night, after everyone had left, Herr Lieben went into the hallway and stared mournfully at the broken barom- eter.
(In the next installment of this realistic novel, we find ourselves upon the wan- dering world of Arion, the intruder, and what happens there wiU thrill every lover of science-fiction.)
PRIZE WINNERS
in our July, 1935 Short-Short Cover Story Contest
are as follows:
FIRST PRIZE
$25.00 in cash for “The Rays from the Asteroid”
R. D. Parkinson, 441 B. 140th St., Belle Harbor, L. I., N. Y.
SECOND PRIZE
$10.00 in cash for “The Bipeds of Bjhulhu” Kenneth Sterling, 26 Burling Ave., White Plains, N. Y.
THIRD PRIZE
$7.50 in cash for “Futility”
Gerald H. Adams, Wiley College, Marshall, Tex.
FIRST HONORABLE MENTION
Space-rates for “The Malign Intelligence”
Morris Miller, 744 Schenck Ave., Brooklyn, N. Y.
SECOND HONORABLE MENTION
Two . year subscription to Wonder Stories for “Cosmic Tragedy” Thos. S. Gardner, 204 W. Locust St., Johnson City, Tenn.
THIRD HONORABLE MENTION
Two year subscription to Wonder Stories for “The Dream Warning” Arthur B. Gnaedinger, 95 Pierrepont St., Brooklyn, N. Y.
FOURTH HONORABLE MENTION
Two year subscription to Wonder Stories for “The Room and the Picture” John B. Michel, 3214 Beverly Rd., Brooklyn, N. Y.
FIFTH HONORABLE MENTION
Two year subscription to Wonder Stories for “The Integral Universe” Richard H. Jamison, 5141 Dresden Ave., St. Louis, Mo.
SIXTH HONORABLE MENTION
Two year subscription to Wonder Stories for “Return of the Golden Comet” Fred H. Miller, Route Two, Box 245, Greenville, S. C.
SEVENTH HONORABLE MENTION
Two year subscription to Wonder Stories for “The Gift of the Great God” Lawrence E. Larkey, Maces Spring, Va.
Entries were judged according to originality in plot and literary development. These stories were written around the cover on our July, 1935 issue, which por- trayed a peculiar-looking space-ship shooting jagged lightnings at a gun-like af- fair mounted on an asteroid and pointing at the earth. The first thing this scene would remind the author of is a space-war between the earthmen and the creatures of some invading asteroid — in fact, many stories were entitled “The Invading Asteroid” or “The Invading Planetoid” or just plain “The Invaders.” Stories of this nature were immediately disqualified after a careful reading, for they showed no ingenuity on the part of the authors. Scientific accuracy was also taken into ac- count. For many reasons, the small world shown on the cover could not have been the moon, yet it was figured so in many of the submitted manuscripts.
The three prize winners and the First Honorable Mention stories will be pub- lished in the magazine in order of their prizes, the first (“The Rays from the Asteroid”) in the November number, next month, and the last of the four in our February, 1936 issue. This will assure readers of getting at least one short-short story a month.
553
(Illustration by Paul)
They saw the humans of the microcosm crashing dark stars together to form new molten suns.
554
THE COSMIC PANTOGRAPH
By
EDMOND HAMILTON
• “Immutable law,” Doctor Robine used to say to his classes. “An inevitable working out of unchangeable forces which, in the end, must spell extinction for our race.
“We have millions of years yet, per- haps millions of millions. But in the end, the slow, remorseless workings of the cosmos will destroy humanity. Nothing can prevent it.”
He would stand there looking out over his class with his gentle, elderly face and thoughtful blue eyes, one thin hand raised in an unconsciously dramatic gesture.
And as always, when Doctor Robine made that assertion, young Gregg Felton’s square, strong face would frown and he would shake his big head in slow, dogged denial.
“I can’t quite see that, sir,” young Fel- ton would say. “The human race is pretty tenacious and unconquerable, and by the time that emergency faces it, it will be able to fight it somehow.”
Doctor Robine always smiled. “You are to be commended for your unalterable faith in our race, Felton. And indeed man is a wonderful fighter, who has struggled up from brutish apehood to his present status, and who will surely struggle higher.
“But no matter how high he goes, there will come a time when he must admit de- feat at the hands of the blind forces of the universe. When the planets are too cold for life, when the suns have wasted away their energies and are dark and dead, man will meet his end, his power and craft unavailing. It may be that someday I will actually be able to show man’s end ”
9 In our March, 1935 issue we published
a short story by this favorite author, entitled “The Eternal Cycle.” This tale received much higher acclaim than many of our ‘novels and has been accepted by our readers as a short science-fiction classic.
We do not hesitate to say that you will find the present yarn of at least equal merit to “The Eternal Cycle.” It also presents some brand-new conceptions never before hinted at in scienee-fiction. And we all know how rare stories like that are.
Though Edmond Hamilton goes, at times (as he does in this story), into the very heights of fantasy, his work at no time becomes illogical or unconvincing. He makes you believe what he is telling you, tearing down all the barriers of con- vention and routine, but always making things real and lifelike.
A few minutes from now you will be entering upon a new train of thought, inspiring, enthralling, fantastic.
The elderly astrophysicist had broken off at that point, and none in his classes had ever learned just what it was he hoped to show. Most of them had forgotten all about it in the five years since then, but Gregg Felton was remembering it now.
Young Felton stood in the chilly dusk of the sad November twilight on the porch of Doctor Robine’s big, old-fashioned suburban home. Turning up his topcoat collar against the keen wind, he pushed again on the bell-button beside the door.
As he waited, he took a crumpled tele- gram from his pocket and re-read it in the failing light, his broad forehead wrinkled into a puzzled frown. Even now he was not sure that he had acted wisely in an- swering its summons.
“GREGG ONCE I HALF PROMISED AC- TUALLY TO SHOW YOU THE END OF OUR RACE STOP I CAN SHOW YOU NOW IF YOU WILL COME STOP DOCTOR THOMAS ROBINE.”
555
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WONDER STORIES FOR OCTOBER, 1935
Felton thrust the telegram back into his pocket as the door before him swung in- ward.
He saw a familiar, thin figure sil- houetted against the lights inside, and heard a familiar, gentle voice.
“I knew that you would come, Gregg. You were the only one of my pupils ever really interested in the highest questions of human destiny, and that is why I want- ed you here tonight.”
Gregg Felton asked perplexedly, “But what is it you’re going to show me, Doc- tor? Of course, I understand that you were speaking figuratively when you wired that you’d show me the end of the human race.”
“No, I was speaking quite literally,” replied Robine quietly. And as the young man stared amazedly, he added, “And I am not in the least out of my head, Gregg. You will soon see.”
He led back along the hall to an open door beyond which a flight of steps de- scended into a lighted basement.
“It’s down here, Gregg,” he said, wait- ing for the other.
“The end of the human race is down there ?” Gregg Felton asked in half-jesting incredulity.
Doctor Robine said unsmilingly, “Not only the end — the whole future of the human race and the cosmos is down here.”
Felton followed him down into the brightly lighted basement, and then stopped and looked astonishedly around.
The big, deep basement of the old man- sion had been thrown into one great room. Along its walls was arranged a tangle of high-powered electrical apparatus, motor- generators and condensers and trans- formers, linked by bewildering wiring.
But at the center of the room rested an object that dwarfed all else. It was a steel sphere thirty feet in diameter, supported by a set of giant gimbals. The upper part of the house directly over it had been partially cut away to make foom for it.
Felton observed that in the steel wall of the sphere at one point was a round glass window, and beside the window
were the eye-pieces of telescope-like in- struments that were set in the wall. Into the sphere at two points ran wiring from the massed apparatus.
He turned inquiringly to the astrophy- sicist. “What in the world is that?” Doctor Robine’s eyes were brilliant, but he only answered evenly, “It is an in- strument with which I am going to create a microcosm.”
“A microcosm ?”
“Yes, an exact but infinitely smaller replica of the great cosmos in which we live. Atom for atom it will be identical with our cosmos, but the atoms of the microcosm will be infinitely smaller and so the tiny cosmos they make up will be infinitely smaller — so small, in fact, that that steel sphere will contain the whole microcosm.”
• Gregg Felton, jaw dropping, said slow- ly, “A tiny replica of the whole cosmos, inside that sphere ?” Then he burst, “Why, it’s crazy! How on earth can you repro- duce the cosmos, atom for atom, on an in- finitely reduced scale like that?”
Robine asked in return, “You’ve seen a draftsman using a pantograph, haven’t you? You know what it is, an instrument with two pencils — you trace a map or pic- ture with one pencil, and the other pencil automatically produces an exact but much smaller copy of the map.”
“Yes, but there’s no pantograph by which you can produce an exact miniature of the cosmos.”
“There is, Gregg. You’re scientist enough to know that every atom of mat- ter in the cosmos vibrates and emits vibra- tions of force, though some are so weak as to be hardly discernible. The vibrations of the different atoms differ, too.
“Well, I have set up apparatus here to catch, amplify and transmit the whole range of cosmic atomic vibrations! Milli- kan has shown that such vibration can be built up into matter, and that is what my three-dimensional pantograph does, builds them up into atoms exactly like those which emitted them, only infinitely smaller.
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“So you see, when I turn on the thing, it will create inside that sphere a micro- cosmos that will be an exact reproduction of our cosmos in every atom.’’
Gregg Felton’s staring eyes searched the other’s face, his lips at last moving stiffly.
“By heaven, it could be done. A micro- cosm exactly similar to the cosmos — but what has all this to do with the end of the human race?”
“I was coming to that,” Doctor Robine assured him. “Being the same in every atom, the microcosmos will have galaxies exactly like those of our cosmos, suns and worlds and an earth just like this earth, and people on it exactly the same as the people on earth now.
“Since it is the same in every atom, the suns and worlds and peoples of the micro- cosm must act exactly as our cosmos and its worlds and peoples will act. You see that, don’t you?”
“Of course,” Gregg answered. “An ex- actly like set of conditions must produce an exactly like set of results.”
“Precisely,” the scientist nodded. “Only, since the space-time continuum of the microcosm is millions of times smaller, time will proceed at a rate mil- lions of times faster.
“We shall see millions of years of changes in the microcosm in a few min- utes. And those changes will be exactly the same as the changes our costnos and worlds and people will experience mil- lions of years from nozv!”
“Good God!” gasped Felton. “Then in the microcosm we can see in advance just what the fate of the universe and of man will be !”
“We can,” said Robine, his own face illuminated with long-repressed emotion. “And that is just what we are going to do.”
With these words the scientist stepped quickly to the apparatus along the walls. As his trembling hands touched the in- tricacies of an insulated control-board, the ranked machines broke one by one into life.
Motor-generators hummed, huge vacuum-tubes silently glowed up, brilliant violet brush sprayed from condensers and transformers. Robine hurried to the glass window in the steel sphere and peered into its dark, empty interior, with Gregg Felton now beside him.
The scientist’s hand sought a switch, his fingers clenching tightly around its handle.
“Watch, Gregg,” he whispered. “When I turn this switch, the microcosm will come instantly into existence.”
“I still can hardly believe — ” Felton muttered, and then he heard the switch click.
The next moment the interior of the sphere was no longer dark and empty, but held a countless number of groups of tiny points of light, infinitesimal little galaxies of suns exactly reproducing the mighty galaxies of the greater cosmos !
They floated in the darkness of the sphere’s interior, those galaxies, like di- minutive clouds of sparks. These little galaxies were mostly spiral in shape, like those of the cosmos, and though they were so tiny as to be hardly visible, there were vast numbers of them, separated from each other by proportionately immense distances.
Gregg Felton, staring shakenly into the window at that astounding microcosm, was suddenly aware that there was some- thing queer about the arrangement of these hosts of miniature star-clouds. They seemed to the eye all to lie in a fairly even plane that was quite straight, and yet the ends of the plane that should have been farthest from each other were in fact adjacent.
Doctor Robine’s awed whisper ex- plained it. “See, Gregg! The microcosm reproduces even the curvature of space of our own cosmos — that is why it can be contained inside this sphere.”
Felton, his eyes glued to the window, said stumblingly, “Every one of those tiny clouds of sparks a galaxy — each spark a sun, a real, tiny sun ”
“We shall look at our own sun, our own world, in the microcosm,” said
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WONDER STORIES FOR OCTOBER, 1935
Robine, turning and feverishly manipu- lating the bulky controls of the telescope- instruments in the sphere’s wall.
He was muttering as he worked, “These micro-telescopes are almost as great a wonder as the rest, magnifying to the nth degree by using electromagnetic forces to bend light-rays in super-refractive in- dexes—
“Now I’ve got it!” he exclaimed sud- denly, his eye close against the eyepiece of one of the unfamiliar instruments. “Look now, Gregg !”
• Felton applied his own eye to the other
eyepiece. Instantly it was as though one of the tiny clouds of sparks of the micro- cosm inside the sphere leaped to vision in immensely greater size.
Now he saw that galaxy of the micro- cosm as though from close at hand, and it filled the whole field of his vision. It was no mere patch of sparks now but a great assemblage of swarming suns and nebulae, roughly spiral in shape and turning slow- ly in space.
“You are seeing the galaxy of the microcosm which corresponds to our gal- axy,” came the rapt voice of Robine. “I’ll show you the sun that is exactly similar to our sun.”
Felton heard the scientist’s hand mov- ing the controls of the micro-telescopes. The young man’s vision seemed now to leap at unearthly speed through the swarming suns of the microcosmic galaxy, toward a single sun halfway between cen- ter and rim of the swarm.
It was a yellowish-red star of medium size compared with the others in that gal- axy, and as it grew larger in his vision, Gregg saw that around it revolved little planets.
“That is the duplicate of our sun in the microcosmos,” Robine announced. “The third of those planets is the duplicate of Earth.”
“But that star’s a reddish one, not like our own yellow sun at all,” Felton pro- tested.
“You forget, Gregg,” said the scientist, “that time in the microcosm is transpir-
ing at a terrific rate. In the few minutes since we created the microcosm, it has undergone changes that will take millions •f years to happen in our own cosmos.
“In these few minutes, countless gen- erations have been born and lived out their lives and died, on the microcosmic earth. Empires have risen and fallen, cities been built and ruined and reduced to dust. And the sun, growing older, has also grown redder and less hot accord- ing to the immutable laws of stellar evo- lution.”
He added, “Earth must already be al- most uninhabitable — the doom of the hu- man race at hand. We shall see.”
Their vision closed down upon the microcosmic Earth, spinning in black space. The planet was covered with a gleaming sheath of ice from pole to pole.
“You see?” said Robine. “That is the way Earth will end, must end, and with it mankind.”
“I don’t believe man could be beaten down so easily,” Felton said stubbornly. “Let’s look at the other planets, those nearer the sun.”
Robine shifted the focus of the micro- telescopes and their vision leaped to Venus, only to find it too covered with ice and barren of life.
But as the little world of Mercury came into their view and grew larger, a tiny sphere clinging dose beside the dying sun, Felton exclaimed aloud in triumph.
For there on the rocky surface of the microcosmic planet Mercury reared cities, strange cities that were all enclosed by transparent shields, and under which were structures and streets and crowding hu- mans.
“You see!” cried Gregg. “Man has managed to reach Mercury, to build air- tight cities in which to live there.”
“It’s but for a short time,” came Robine’s voice. “The sun will quickly be so cool that even Mercury won’t support life.”
And indeed, as they watched, the sun was reddening and darkening, so that within less than a clock-tick, the surface
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of the microcosmic Mercury was also covered with ice.
“You see?” said the scientist. “Man must die with the waning of his universe.”
"They could have got from this sun to worlds of some other star,” Gregg in- sisted. “Look at the nearer stars.”
Robine complied, and when their vision swung to the worlds of some of the nearer stars of that microcosmic galaxy, they found that, in fact, those worlds were now inhabited by hosts of humans.
“Man, the unconquerable!” cried Fel- ton triumphantly, from his eye-piece. “They’re spreading out to all the stars with planets !”
“Though they spread to the farthest limits of their cosmos, it will avail them nothing in the end,” said Robine, “for their cosmos must die finally, and they with it.”
As the minutes ticked by, the enrapt two men looking in at the microcosmos inside the sphere saw a titantic epic of human struggle and endurance, the awful fight of future man against the blind forces of the universe.
They saw the human hordes spread out through the whole galaxy, settling at every sun that had worlds and colonizing those worlds. Finally they had planted them- selves everywhere through their own galaxy.
Then they began to edge out toward other galaxies of the microcosmos, other island-universes of stars. First they crossed the gulf between them and the small, nearest two star-clouds. Then with time they reached the greater, distant gal- axies, spread through them and colonized them also.
The human seed that had been spawned on Earth long ago was carried farther and farther out into the reaches of the cosmos — until at last Robine and Felton, watch- ing, saw that around the whole micro- cosmos there was no galaxy that had not been colonized by man.
“Thus man reaches his zenith,” said the fateful voice of the scientist. “Now watch the coming of the inevitable.”
“They’ll find some way ” exclaimed
Gregg Felton, watching tensely.
• Now the microcosmos was changing
very swiftly. During all the time that the human colonists had spread through it, many of its suns had been reddening, darkening, growing old and cold and end- ing up as dark stars, their energies dissi- pated.
More and more of them were dimming and dwindling as the minutes — as the mil- lions of millions of microcosmic years — flashed by. Felton saw whole galaxies growing dim with appalling swiftness.
The microcosmos was dying, just as the real cosmos would die aeons in the future. Its suns had dissipated their mat- ter and energy into mere radiation, and only burned out embers of blackened stars remained. It was growing dark inside the steel sphere.
Through the micro-telescopes, Felton and Doctor Robine saw the desperate fight of the humans against the creeping doom. They saw the humans of the micro- cosmos perform stupendous feats, moving planets from dead suns to other stars that still had some life, crashing dark stars to- gether to form new molten suns.
But these measures could not halt even for a moment the colossal process of dis- solution and death. Like a candle flick- ering out, the microcosmos approached its end. Inside the sphere, only a few ominous red sparks of old, dying suns now glim- mered in the blackness.
Then these too, one by one, went out. Gregg Felton, unable to breathe, peering in now through the window, saw the last of the crimson sparks darken and vanish. There was only blackness inside the sphere, the blackness and death that now held the microcosmos.
Gregg Felton turned to meet Robine’s face, in which a strange exaltation strug- gled with fascinated horror.
“You see?” cried the scientist. “It is the end of their cosmos, and there is no place else for them to go now so that the doom they have long postponed is at last upon them. (Continued on page 623)
(Illustration by Schneeman)
Before the Martians had recovered from their initial surprise, the Shentolian had raised his metal tube and the silence of the city was split and sundered.
560
MARTIAN GESTURE
By
ALEXANDER M. PHILLIPS
• Again came that swift flash of colored
light across the face of the planet. It was successively repeated in a series of diminishing sparks that finally disap- peared. The shadowed side of the planet was still for a time, then from the thin crescent which marked the daylight side, a dark, slender line traced its way into the darkness and burst in a slowly bil- lowing golden cloud. Minute sparks leaped and glowed, danced along the limb of the planet — and the lights of a city went out. That city’s lights had been burning nightly for five hundred years.
The dancing sparks began in another quadrant. Swift, stabbing flashes, a brighter one, then a slow roll of smoke or cloud surging up to the limits of the at- mosphere. Another age-old city’s lights winked and were gone.
The giant telescope picked up a slight vibration in the thin Martian air and the image of the planet flickered, swam wild- ly for a moment, then steadied again. Vraughn ic Dalfca Sconnefecot, chief as- tronomer of the Planetary Observatory, peering into his telescope at the bewilder- ing and mysterious behavior of this neigh- boring world, twitched with impatient ex- citement at the interruption.
For six months, at least, the inner planet had been behaving in this unnatural manner and had aroused the intense in- terest of the Martian observer. He had first noticed disturbances of a similar sort as Mars’ next inner neighbor was ap- proaching superior conjunction. Then, as it neared the sun and passed behind it, observation became impossible and ic Dalfca waited impatiently for its reap- pearance, convinced that the unusual phe-
• The most narrow view we have ever heard of goes to the memory of the patent office clerk who quit his job over a hundred years ago because “there was nothing left to be invented.” And that was before the invention of the electric light, telephone, automobile, radio, and a million and one other things that are in use today. In fact, most of the inventions made up to this clerk’s resignation have been discarded by this time.
The most broad view that has come to our attention is that held by some scientists conjecturing that life is but a disease, and a world in a perfect state could not harbor life.
Science-fiction fans and author have, of necessity, very broad views. They pic- ture creatures on other planets as physi- cally alien to mankind, but few writers conceive of these aliens with equally alien minds.
In the present novelette, in which we are sure you will find great enjoyment, we live next to creatures who, in some major respects, have an alien psychology — for they lack one of the most out- standing emotions that is characteristic of man on this world.
Our new author introduces his ability very successfully with this classical nar- rative.
nomena would have ceased before the third planet of the sun’s family was again visible. He was consequently not a little surprised, as the planet passed superior conjunction and approached its greatest elongation affording a better and better view of its night side, to discover that its strange activity had not ceased, but on the contrary, spread even more widely over its surface.
The Martian leaned back from the tele- scope and gazed speculatively at the bright, rather greenish star that hung with such deceptive calm in the clear, star- sparkling Martian sky. For five hundred years the astronomers of the Planetary
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Observatory had nightly watched the lights of cities on the inner planet and never had they seen any such exhibition as was now transpiring on that body. For more than five hundred years they had known that life existed on the other planet, but it was not until the light-con- densing and amplifying telescope had been developed that they had finally seen the lights of cities. And now something of tremendous import to the inhabitants of those cities was extinguishing their lights. Ic Dalfca was excited and not a little frightened. Suppose some dread cosmic phenomena — some rare disease of planets — was attacking that greenly glowing sphere. Would Mars be next? Would those leaping sparks, those abrupt, vicious flashes of light attack Mars next, to de- stroy her age-old cities and leave a dead and darkened globe to circle the sun ? The Martian astronomer knew that the sparks and flashes were not volcanic. Volcanoes did not flash and stop, did not leap across continents to burst again into short-lived, flaming life. Nor could a meteoric shower account for the disturbance. Meteors would have flamed as they struck the at- mosphere. These flashes came from the surface.
Ic Dalfca leaned again over the view- plate of the telescope. The green star vanished and reappeared as a crescent moon in the instrument. The thin cres- cent gleamed greenly on, but in the night- shadowed hemisphere the bursting lights still flickered — flickered and danced over the surface as they had done for the past half-year. The observer rose and swung the spectroscope into place, preparatory to photographing the planet once more. At that moment the radio-vision signal buzzed and a tiny light glowed in one corner of the darkened observatory.
Ic Dalfca, with the ease of long fa- miliarity, made his way in the darkness past the huge, delicately poised mass of the telescope and switched on the radio- vision plate. A dim light flooded in upon the plate and cast a vague, weird illumi- nation upon the instruments nearby. For a few seconds the vision-plate remained
blurred, then it focused and the face of another Martian gazed out at ic Dalfca.
® The species upon Mars which had fought the long, bitter, uphill fight of evolutionary progress, to stand at last on the lonely heights of intelligence, re- sembled a human being only superficially. The Martian “MAN” — if etymologists are right and the word “man” is derived from an ancient root-verb meaning “to know” — was about eight feet in height. Contrary to the conceptions of Terres- trial artists, he had no huge, bulging chest, no wide, flaring ears or thin, pipe-like limbs. His body was heavy and solid and bore, as do the higher forms of life on earth, four limbs. Also as on earth, in the climb toward consciousness, the species had risen upon the hinder pair of limbs, releasing the front pair for purposes other than locomotion. Many anthropolo- gists claim that intelligence owes a large part of its existence to the freeing of the forepaws from service as locomotory ad- juncts. This emancipation permitted the development of hands, capable of convey- ing to the dawning mind thousands of facts and sensory impressions which paws could never do.
The Martian fore-limbs had, in the long sweep of time, evolved far from any- thing resembling paws. In the place of hands were long, fragile, intricate groups of digits, each “wrist” supporting a score or more of such digits or fingers of vary- ing lengths and shapes. The dexterity with which ic Dalfca controlled his massed clusters of fingers revealed the complexity of the motor centers of his brain.
The head of the Martian “man” had long ago lost all suggestion of its animal ancestry ; it was round in shape and heav- ily furred, or haired, over crown, occiput, and cheek, the long, thick fur concealing almost completely the tiny side-closing, double pairs of jaws. Two large eyes, guarded by a tough, transparent, chitin- like substance, were placed beneath the swelling brow and a third insect-like, com- pound eye, smaller than the other two,
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gleamed like a tiny jewel in the fur of his forehead. The lower limbs, sturdy and strongly made, were jointed twice and terminated in a compact, fused pad where- in could he traced the larger and stronger digits of the hand, here united for nearly their entile length.
Little could be guessed of the disposi- tion of the organs of the body. It was narrow near the joint corresponding to the hip and widened slightly as it ap- proached that of the shoulders, but a cer- tain rigidity in its motions concealed or- gans and muscles' entirely. This bodily rigidity was accounted for by the fact that the skin of the Martian, or what cor- responded to skin, was of a hard, shell- like tissue, uniformly reddish in hue and endowed with but a slight amount of elasticity. At the joints it was folded and convoluted somewhat in the manner of a bellows.
In the long ages of evolution on a planet so remote from the heat-giving sun, resistance to cold was a primal ne- cessity, and the species best suited to en- dure extreme cold was most likely to sur- vive. So the skin of the Martian, the re- sult of ages of nature’s experimentation, was almost perfectly thermostatic. Body heat was radiated very slowly. As a con- sequence, oxidation was far less rapid, very little oxygen being necessary to sup- port life, thus admirably fitting the crea- ture for survival in the thin, rare, frigid atmosphere of Mars.
So ic Dalfca, standing in the dim light cast by the vision-plate, did some- what resemble a gigantic man, but a near- er approach, or a stronger light, would have frightened a Terrestrial visitor into believing himself mad, or in the presence of a Chinese devil. Actually the Martian was not hideous — merely different, fan- tastic, and unusual to a human eye.
He apparently knew the other, whose image showed in the vision-plate, for ic Dalfca nodded to him and spoke familiar- ly. His speech was an intricate series of faint clicks and clear, bell-like sounds.
“You are at your telescope late tonight, Varb,” said ic Dalfca, with a note of
genial mockery in his voice. “I did not think you preceptors were so diligent. Do you know the morning leans toward us?”
The other astronomer clicked his jaws rapidly in mock irritation. He was Varb il Thistacan, an instructor at the ancient teaching-centre at Bab-vir-Gratvon, one of Mars’ oldest cities. The city was about one hundred miles south of the Planetary Observatory, where ic Dalfca, holding the governmental office of chief astronomer, was stationed. The two astronomers were naturally frequent visitors at each others’ establishments, although ic Dalfca insist- ed that the scholastic astronomers devoted more of their evenings to slumber than to observation, and always pretended sur- prise when his friend signalled him in the early morning hours.
“Your envy of our better equipment is working again, ic Dalfca,” the teacher as- tronomer replied, and together the two friends laughed.
“What has had your attention tonight,” asked ic Dalfca, after a few moments conversation, “the group of binaries that you and that southern observatory have been concentrating on recently?”
“No.” II Thistacan became very seri- ous. “As you know, Bab-vir-Gratvon is working on the course to be followed by the space-ship which the Interplanetary Society is launching. I have been com- puting more carefully the orbits of the asteroids they are most likely to meet in crossing the asteroid belt. Remembering your assertion that Shentol, the third planet, which is behaving so strangely, is for that reason more worthy a visit than Chavroe, I left my quarters tonight and went to the observatory. Ic Dalfca, all night have I watched your green enigma and I am definitely opposed to making it the destination of our space-ship. This will be our first flight beyond our own moons. What unpredictable dangers may await us upon such remote bodies as the planets is, I think, worthy of very seri- ous consideration, and Shentol is evi- dently in a condition of violent agita- tion.”
“No danger is unpredictable,” inter-
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nipted ic Dalfca. “We can determine gravity, mean temperature, and the na- ture and density of the atmosphere. Our explorers will land upon the planet fully cognizant and prepared for any physical difficulties which they may meet.”
“What, then, is occurring upon Shen- tol,” demanded Varb il Thistacan tri- umphantly, “which is apparently of such serious nature as to destroy entire cities? What are the flashes of light upon her surface? And what is happening to Shen- tol’s atmosphere?”
• Ic Dalfca tapped impatiently upon the studded control board before him.
“That, my friend,” he insisted, “is what we must know. If some set of circum- stances of which we have no knowledge is attacking our neighboring world, we must discover what they are. Have you thought that Aftwan, our own planet, may be next? Possibly some magnetic disturbance is responsible, induced by the tremend- ously potent field of the sun. As it is, we know nothing, and a visit to Shentol might enlighten us so that we would be prepared in the event of a like disturb- ance here upon Aftwan. It would not be necessary for the interplanetary travelers to land upon Shentol. Merely to encircle it several times should be sufficient.”
“True.” The small image of il This- tacan looked more cheerfully from the vision-plate. “They would not have to land. But whatever knowledge they might bring back would be only of academic im- portance. We could do nothing to avert or control a catastrophe of such magni- tude.”
Ic Dalfca laughed. To human ears it would have sounded like the whirring of minute machinery. “Varb, you are a despairist,” he said, “and you are also timid. You may speak for Chavroe, if you wish, but at the meeting of the Inter- planetary League, which will occur in three days, I shall do all in my power to make Shentol our destination.”
“But they would not have time enough to plot the course to Shentol,” objected il Thistacan. “Soon it will -be receding
from us and the voyage would have to be postponed until it had again revolved about the sun and returned.”
“I have worked out all the computa- tions,” replied ic Dalfca. “All that would be necessary is the checking of them. That could be done quickly.”
The little image in the vision plate shook its head. “I think you will have your way.”
“I know I shall,” replied ic Dalfca. “Try to be present at the meeting, Varb. I should like you to check my projection of the course to be followed.”
The figure in the vision-plate nodded and flicked its hand before its face in the customary Martian, or Aftwanian, salu- tation ; then the plate blurred and became dark. Ic Dalfca stood momentarily in thought, then returned to the telescope where he busied himself about the spec- troscope and the photographic plate be- hind it.
Presently he withdrew the plate from its case, and, switching on a light set above the observer’s seat, stared at the spectrum thoughtfully.
“Strange,” he murmured, “strange. Compounds of several elements not native to the atmosphere are certainly being re- leased into it.”
The light seemed very tiny in the huge observatory. Darkness encircled it and seemed to press in upon it, and huge and very black shadows added a gloomy ob- scurity to the ponderous mechanism placed here and there about the floor. Dominating all, the barrel of the telescope, enormous and indistinct, reached upward like a great, black bridge into the deep blue, star-studded strip of sky which the long, narrow slit in the distant roof re- vealed. The cold was bone-cracking, but ic Dalfca was unaware of it, as he was also unconscious of the heavy silence. A ghost of a wind, noticeable only because of the absolute stillness, drifted across the floor, and some flying thing, which had wandered in, blundered about the vast dome in melancholy confusion.
The fluttering of the flying creature aroused ic Dalfca from thought and he
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extinguished the light and left the ob- servatory. Outside, the level, monotonous landscape of Mars extended away in every direction to the dark line of the horizon. Above arched the luminous, blue- black sky, brilliant with stars whose light pierced the cold, thin air with unearthly intensity.
Phobos, the inner moon of Mars, was climbing the western sky, and its scarred but brilliant face shed a pale illumination upon its parent body, revealing to ic Dalf- ca the endless miles of nodding, reddish grass which carpeted the flat, Martian plain. No sign of path or roadway was visible in all that expanse, nor did a build- ing other than the observatory break the level surface. Mars was very, very old, as were her people, and her water and air had eroded her mountains until -but a few low, rolling hills remained scattered here and there across her surface to mark a gone and forgotten feature of her youth. And now her air and water, their work done, were following the mountains into the all-engulfing sea of the past. Soon the planet would attain the perfect, unchang- ing stillness of an airless, waterless waste where nothing ever moved but the sharp, black, crawling shadows.
In the thin air, the glare of the inner moon did little to obscure the light of the thickly clustered stars ; on earth a light of such brilliance in the sky would have blotted out half of them. Nor did it hide the glow of Bab-vir-Gratvon, which, a hundred miles to the south, sent an arch- ing fan of light reaching above the ho- rizon— a signal in that vast emptiness that there dwelt Life.
Ic Dalfca, a tiny figure against the moon-lit bulk of the towering observatory, walked across the broad esplanade which encircled it, and, leaning on the strangely carven parapet, stared into the southern sky. High above the glow of Bab-vir- Gratvon a brilliant green star blazed steadily, and it was at this that ic Dalfca gazed. A huge, wingless air-liner, lights ablaze, appeared in the north and swept silently down upon him, following a straight, invisible line that finally carried
it into the glow of the southern city, but ic Dalfca seemed unaware of it. And so the dawn found him when it burst, un- heralded by any refractive glow, in the eastern sky.
He turned and surveyed the now bright and sunny landscape, sparkling redly in the morning sunlight, and then returned to the observatory, entering a lower floor which contained his living quarters.
CHAPTER II
The Decision
• On a morning three days later, the Martian astronomer ran his small air- car from its housing in the base of the huge observatory. His assistant astron- omer, a young student from the school at Bab-vir-Gratvon, and the small staff of servants and mechanics which the civil authorities had assigned to the Planetary Observatory, stood upon the esplanade and watched as the air-car ran out into the gardens encircling the buildings. It took off, rising steeply for a few hundred feet, there to level off and strike a course to the west. Smaller and smaller it be- came, until it was nothing but a silvery, sun-reflecting spark high in the deep blue western sky. Presently it disappeared.
“We must focus the vision-plate upon Thuron tonight,” remarked the assistant astronomer, as he turned to enter the ob- servatory. “The Interplanetary League should be much surprised by our master's proposal.”
Three hours later ic Dalfca, having traversed nine hundred miles of unbroken, lifeless plain, discerned upon the quiet sky line, level as an ocean horizon, the first faint hint of color other than the unvarying red of the plains-grass. First came a shadowy green that strengthened and broadened momentarily until it be- came a wide band reaching westward. Then, as the rushing air-car swept the miles behind, the green was under him, mingling brokenly with the reddish grass. It widened swiftly, replacing the plains grass entirely, until a new, verdant vege-
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tation filled the landscape. And then one of </