Collected Short Fiction, page 127
It was hard to realize it all. I was safely back on the earth, at the old ranch. Then Eric and Sharothon must be here, too! And I knew that the glorious girl could not live long, away from the cosmic radiation which had maintained her body, out in space.
Suddenly there was a clatter at the door, and Sharothon came silently into the room, and up to the bunk where I lay. My eyes searched her exquisite form eagerly.
She wore a strange, clinging garment of pure-white, silken fabric. The silvery girdle, which I was so used to seeing about her, was gone; nor did she carry the emerald ytlan rod. Her golden hair was bound to her lovely head with a wide black band. In one hand she carried very carefully a full bowl of fragrant, steaming broth—which had probably been prepared by “Shorty Joe.”
“Eric—” I began the question.
“He is in the other room, beyond the hall. He says he will come in to see you, soon. He is getting strong very rapidly. He could sit up yesterday—”
“Yesterday?”
“Yes. It is four days since Kerak’s men left us here. You and Eric were very weak. Shorty Joe helped me take care of you. You have been sleeping. But you will recover very quickly, now, since you are safe beyond the power of the ytlan.”
“And you, Sharothon?” I asked eagerly. “How do you feel?”
“I am yet strong.” Her blue eyes darkened suddenly, with the shadow of dread. She added quickly, “You must drink this broth. You need food.”
She held the bowl with her slim white hands, while I sipped the hot fluid from it.
It seems strange to think that I had heard her sweet, clear voice only once before, when she had tried to imitate Eric’s words, at our first meeting, in the wrecked rocket. She seemed to have learned English during the time we had been together. Her soft, golden voice was singularly pleasing.
When I had finished, she went out with the bowl—and a shadow fell upon the room with her going.
It was some time later that she and Eric came in together. He was still weak; several times she steadied his tottering steps with an arm about his waist. But I could see that his eyes were not so hollow as they had been, and that a healthy glow was returning to his skin.
“Welcome back to the land of the living, Higdon!” he greeted me, with his old smile. “Shorty Joe has been wanting to send for the undertaker, but Sharothon insisted you would pull through. You will probably be building another rocket, in a month!”
I knew that Eric was himself again.
On the second day following, Eric and I were able to walk about the yard with Sharothon. Within a week, he and I felt quite strong, though it was much longer, of course, before we had regained normal weight and vigor.
It was early in May, 1931, when we arrived at the ranch house—nearly eleven months after we took off in the rocket. The most of that time must be accounted for by the period we spent in the crimson cone, in that strange, timeless flight that led us beyond our galactic universe.
Through the rest of May, we lived on at the ranch, very simply. Shorty Joe and two more of the boys stayed about, to care for us as well as they could. One of them rode almost daily to the railroad, for supplies—it was difficult to find food which Sharothon could eat.
Slowly the wonderful girl grew weaker. Eric and I insisted that she go to some hospital, where she could have scientific attention, and the care of the greatest specialists. But she refused. Her only trouble, she said, was lack of the life-giving power of the ytlan. And no terrestrial specialist could give her that. She insisted that it would make her happier, just to stay at the old ranch, with Eric and myself. Yes, she included me; I shall always rejoice that she did.
She and Eric were together almost every hour of the day. During the first two weeks, after he was strong enough, they often walked in the sunshine about the yard and corrals, or out across the freshly verdant range. Once the three of us rode together, and Sharothon pronounced that striding a running pony was almost as thrilling as mounting through space with the power of her lost ytlan rod.
But after the second week she was unable to walk or ride very much. She had to spend most of the time? in bed. Beautiful she was still, though I thought she looked thin, and paler than she should have been. Eric cared for her with-such devotion that I feared for his. health, though I and the boys were always ready to do any service in our power.
One evening, about the end of the third week, Eric was sitting by Sharothon’s bed, reading to her from a book of poems which she liked—Browning, I think. I had just come into the room with a glass of water; I was standing near the door, looking at the girl—her frail liveliness was very striking, as she lay beneath a clean white sheet, with her golden hair glistening against the pillow, with her bright blue eyes, gazing upon Eric from her thin, pallid face, filled with tender, hopeless, wistful longing.
The door was abruptly flung open behind me, and into the room strode—Kerak!
His powerful, white-skinned body was mantled in a splendid aura of purple light. He wore the purple tunic of the leader of the Nine, fastened to his waist with a ruby-studded silver girdle. He carried a black ytlan rod. His bleak face was set in hard determination; a strange light was flashing in his pale, cold blue eyes.
In one hand he carried an emerald staff, and a second silver belt—Sharothon’s!
He held them out to the girl on the bed; his pale eyes were upon her. His communication with her was by thought alone, and since the little transmitters had been taken from Eric and me, along with our transparent suits, I did not receive it.
I watched Sharothon. She seemed to shrink back from Kerak. Suddenly she reached a slender white arm from beneath the sheet, grasped Eric’s hand and drew him toward her.
“Hold me,” she pleaded, in a small voice. “He wants to take me away. He says he will give me the rod and belt, if I will go with him—or leave me here with you, to die. And I am not going.”
Eric gathered her slight form up in his arms, held her fiercely, close against his breast. Once he looked uncertainly toward the grim form of Kerak, as if about to speak. Sharothon shook her head; he closed his mouth, and clutched her more firmly.
Black rage was again upon Kerak’s harsh face. Suddenly he flourished the green rod and the argent girdle before me, stepped quickly toward Eric and the girl. Sharothon shrank from him, clung to Eric.
Kerak turned abruptly, in the purple radiance that bathed him, rushed out of the room. . . .
As the days of the next week went by, Sharothon appeared to become steadily weaker. It was on one of the first evenings in June that Eric, white and trembling with grief, took me aside and whispered chokingly that he thought Sharothon was about to die.
With an aching heart, I went back with him into the room where she lay. She was very thin and pallid, and her glorious eyes were closed. Breathing in short gasps, with tears streaming down his face, Eric fell on his knees beside the bed, and put his arms very tenderly about her slight, motionless shoulders.
The scene was too painful for me to watch.
Assured that I could be of no service, I went out into the yard. An hour later I was pacing restlessly up and down in the darkness, among the black masses of the locust trees, glancing up, occasionally at the yellow-lit, curtained window behind which was taking place the last act of a tragic drama.
I There was no moon, and the stars were bright. My grief-numbed mind was bringing up scattered recollections of our adventure in space.
Then I saw the ray. . . .
A slender pencil of rosy light. It shone upon the roof of the old house, apparently from some point in the constellation of Leo—in which, I knew, the city of Yothanda hung at that time.
A slim shaft of pure, coral-pink radiance. It was no more than a yard in diameter where it struck the roof. Above, it seemed to taper to a fine line of rosy incandescence, pointing toward splendid white Regulus.
For a moment I was dumbfounded, petrified with amazement.
Then, nerved to action by a chill of apprehension, I dashed for the front door, and raced down the hall, and into Sharothon’s room.
The shaft of roseate radiance had cut a clean, round hole through roof and ceiling. It fell, a torrent of coralline flame, upon the bed where Sharothon had been.
And Sharothon was gone!
Eric was standing alone in the room, beside the bed. A queer expression was upon his haggard face. It was lined with weariness and grief, of course. There was wonder upon it, and something of fear. And in his gray eyes was a gleam of mad, incredulous hope!
He saw me, turned nervously.
“She’s gone!” he blurted out. “The pink ray snatched her up! And I’m going, too! Drop in to see me some evening, Higdon.”
With those swift words, he grasped my hand, squeezed it painfully. Then, as quickly, he released me, and leapt across the room, toward the rosy ray which fell upon the bed.
“Wait!” I gasped. “What—”
He had sprung upon the bed, full in the torrent of coralline, light.
For a moment he stood there, a strange figure, bathed in rose-flame.
Then he was gone. . . .
An instant later, the ray went out. . . .
That is a month ago, now. I have spent the last three weeks in the writing of this narrative. The occupation has helped to keep me sane; and I feel a certain satisfaction from having recorded these incidents, though I am under no delusions as to how my work will be received.
I cannot honestly say that I expect ever to hear more from Eric and Sharothon. My reason tells me that the girl had died, that the ray was merely recovering her body so that it might receive appropriate rites, and that Eric’s leap into the ray was a vain sacrifice of life.
But, if that is so, why the sudden, eager hope that I saw in his eyes, before he leapt?
THE END
The Electron Flame
l We think that no better introduction to Mr. Williamson’s story can be written than that he has written himself. He puts very well the case for imagination in science fiction. It is only three hundred years ago when men and women were being put to death in Salem, Mass., for being “witches” and the conviction for being a witch often applied to one who claimed powers that today we would call scientific.
Thus in the year 1632 a man who claimed he could hear voices through the air would certainly be called a witch and promptly hung. Radio is today a commonplace. Let us look forward to the year 2232 or 2432 and ask what will then be commonplace and what will be extraordinary. That is the point of view with which we should approach this clever story.
l In this story the writer has imagined an incident of the future. It will seem fantastic, perhaps even improbable, to the reader of the present day. Yet the writer feels that he has been conservative, that if by any miracle these words should be preserved and read after five hundred years they would be laughable not from excess of wonders but for falling far short of predicting the full scope of the inevitable advance of science.
Suppose for a moment that some medieval scholar, in the year 1432, could have read a newspaper account of a New York robbery in this year. The occurrence would be to him a fantastic adventure in a city too great and too wonderful for him to visualize, upon a continent of which he did not even know. The automatic pistols and submachine guns of the criminals, the police car with its radio, would be to him incredible marvels.
The writer has imagined that space has been successfully navigated, that men have overcome difficulties in temperature and atmosphere and gravitation, and have established themselves upon other worlds. He has imagined the inferior planets to be colonized, and Mars, some of the planetoids, and the larger moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Some readers may laugh at that, but our medieval scholar would have laughed at great nations to rise upon new lands beyond the Western Sea.
Let us imagine farther that this story has been translated into our English from whatever tongue may be spoken in 2432, and that technical references beyond the reach of twentieth century science have been omitted or explained—without someone to help him understand, our medieval scholar would find little but confusion in our world.
It would be impossible to claim that the future will be exactly as the writer has described it—or a tiny section of it. We cannot lift the veil of time completely, even to see tomorrow. But the writer feels that something more varied and more wonderful than this is sure to come, unless our young science fails its promise.
Whatever may chance, life is apt to go on pretty much as it always has, with pretty much the same sort of people doing just about the same things, for very nearly the same old reasons. The feudal lords of 1432 have become the “captains of industry” of today, but the change means little to the common man. Human nature and human motives are very likely to be unaltered in 2432. The writer feels that he is well justified in imagining desperate criminals in this future empire of humanity, and resourceful men setting out to hunt them down.
CHAPTER I
White
l In a blue-black sky so dark that a keen eye could pick out a few stars in it burned the small, white-hot sun. Beneath its merciless glare the illimitable flat wastes of the red desert of Mars shimmered darkly, and against the somber horizons marched pillars of swirling ocherous dust, like spectres redly grim.
The space-port sprawled across the crimson plain, a square field five miles on a side. Westward, above the straight horizon, towered up the white, graceful spires of Acestron, the second city of Mars. Far off in the east, across the desolate flatness of the dark, age-parched plain, loomed a range of low hills, motionless and almost black beneath the sober sky. Dark as that desert was, it flamed with radiant heat, and its yellow-red dust was mordant alkali. Men avoided it when they could, for the hostile power of it struck through pith helmets and tinted goggles, struck through to the brain with the venom of fear and madness.
In endless rows across the red dust of the field lay two hundred and eighty colossal silvered spheres. Two hundred and eighty gigantic war rockets—the First Fleet of the Planetary League. Within those huge gleaming hulls waited half a million men, apprehensive, restless. They knew that grim, sudden peril menaced the League, that all the ancient power of the Fleet was helpless to protect humanity.
They knew that the rising of a single great ship from the port would be the signal for the destruction of Mars.
At one end of the field rose the majestic, white-roofed pile of the Admiralty Building. Upon its topmost floor was the great, guarded room called the Comet Chamber, its high walls covered with panels of pale ivory. The Comet Chamber is said to be the most difficult room in the System to reach. Its walls are heavily insulated against sound and spy-rays; an elaborate system of automatic alarms and a score of trusted sentries complete the protection of the grave secrets that are discussed at the massive semi-circular table in the center of its floor.
Four men were now seated at that table. They were men used to carrying upon their shoulders the supreme public burdens of humanity, accustomed to handling weighty affairs efficiently, and without display of their private feelings. But now each of them was under strain, and each was showing his strain in his own characteristic way.
“What could be keeping the man?” muttered the Secretary of the League. He was a thin man, tall, gray and sparse of hair. He sat bolt upright, with his long fingers locked in front of his stomach, and stared blankly into the air, with an absent frown upon a face plainly used to smiling.
The President of the Planetary Council looked at him without speaking, and drummed nervously on the table with his knuckles. A short man, the President, bald of head and very dark. His ancestors had lived two centuries on Mars and the mark of its desert sun showed upon him.
The Director of Defense stirred from the sullen despondency in which he had been sunk, and said, “He should be here! The liner from earth docked an hour ago.” The Director was a blond giant from Venus; his face was gray and bloodless and his despair seemed to have sapped all energy from him, for he moved but seldom and slowly.
“We are fools, gentlemen!” boomed-the Admiral, like the Secretary a native of the mother planet. “When even the Fleet is helpless, what can he do? What could any one man do, when half a million are helpless?”
l They all looked at the Admiral. He was a man to inspire confidence, respect, even awe. His great shoulders had not been bowed by the burden of years and responsibility that had salted his temples and his short, crisp moustache with grey; upon his trimly uniformed figure was the unmistakable stamp of conscious, confident authority. His stern face was set in habitual lines of iron determination and his eyes possessed an undying glint of steel.
At the tips of his fingers the Admiral had the authority that was impressed upon his face. Every man in the hundreds of giant war-rockets beyond the windows, every man upon the six other fleets of the League, lying helpless, like this, at their bases upon Earth, Venus, Mercury, Ceres, Callisto and Titan—every man was alert to obey his slightest command. He was supreme master of the space fleets, of the most tremendous fighting machine the System had ever seen. He wielded all the fighting power of the human race—
And on that hot, dusty Martian day he was visibly afraid. He sat restlessly in his chair, looking from one to another of the three men with him. With thumb and forefinger he tugged continually at the skin along the angle of his jaw; and he had set his teeth into his lower lip until it was bruised, bleeding a little.
