Collected Short Fiction, page 162
Ellis shuddered. “Sorry, Keening,” he muttered. “I got you into this.”
He heard the little man’s whispered protest, “But we had to come, Drew. I understand that. Though I was afraid. . . . But why are these men like that?”
“I don’t know, Keening.” He looked down at ghastly, shimmering faces. “They weren’t even alive. The one that touched me was cold.”
“Let’s get back into the ship,” whispered Keening.
Ellis retreated with him. “The luminescence of these rocks,” he muttered, “must be caused by radio-activity. And that is what makes them—transparent. A penetrating radiation.”
“Must be,” assented Keening. “They do look as if they were under the X-ray. Bones surrounded with shadows of flesh.”
“But that doesn’t explain what brought them here. Do you suppose——” and mute horror struggled in his voice, “Do you suppose all humanity is—like these?” Keening never replied, for then the music smote them.
Music of madness!
It beat upon their brains. High, swift, pizzicati notes, strumming upon taut nerves like a crystal hail of sound. Tinkling, exciting, calling. A challenge and a lure.
Liquid, soothing rhythms, mellow sussurations, lulling, slumbrous.
Deep and throbbing infra-bass, booming, commanding, dominating.
Ellis realized from the first that he did not hear that music with his ears. It was not sound, but penetrating, all-pervading radiation. It pulsed through all his brain.
Music of madness. It swept him, conquered him, thrust aside his mind. He was pushed aside. His body was surrendered to the music, moving freely to its wild rhythm.
Keening was beside him. They had dropped the rifles; they were running. Running after the mystic music, the thought beat through his mind, as the rats and the children of Hamelin ran after the Piper—and in the contrast of the familiar legend with their own desperate plight, he found a peculiar horror.
The physiological effect of music is undeniable. And this was more than music. It was not sound, but a vibration that thrummed through all their bodies, impinging upon every fiber of their nervous systems. It was hypnotic.
Was it thus the human race had been drawn across the void? By mad music that had mastered their bodies, made them slaves of vibration?
Along the ravine they ran, their minds sitting helplessly apart in bodies ruled by that weird and soundless music. Past the looming, titanic mass of the silver-walled cube. And on, across what must once have been a city.
A level space, nearly circular, a mile wide. Surrounded with a curving ridge, it was scattered with heaps of crumbled stone. The piles, Ellis thought, were too regular to be anything save remains of buildings, but buildings that had been ruins five hundred thousand years, or a million. Where had the survivors gone—if there had been survivors?
The question was answered without words.
The silent music swept them on beyond the cube, and across the dead mounds, toward the cyanic-shining, vertical wall of the pit. It carried them out of the ruins, upon a worn and ancient road. And the road sloped downward, curved into a vast crevice whose jagged walls glowed with light of sapphires.
From the crevice they passed into lofty and interminable vaulted caverns, whose smoothed walls yet bore the mark of tools. Dust of eons lay thick upon the floor, swirled up chokingly about them.
The compelling, noiseless chords led them downward once more, and into a lower system of artificial caverns. Here the rock was brighter still, glowing with radiance softly electric-blue, shadowless and unearthly. The air was heavier here, and warmer, and the floor was clear of dust.
They were drawn into a colossal space, blue-walled, domed and circular, and far out across its floor. The mad music abruptly ceased its throbbing in their brains. The journey was ended.
FREE of the dread, hypnotic music, Ellis was yet strangely paralyzed. His body stood erect, stiff and oddly tingling. If took all the power of his will to turn his head, to survey this weird space into which the vibration had swept them.
The place was titanic. Not less than two thousand feet across could the circular floor have been; the dome was fully half that high.
Resting in the middle of the floor, and surrounded by colossal mechanisms, was a red, pulsating mountain. A monstrous, quivering mass, scarlet, cleft, convoluted, wrinkled, folded. A heap of red, palpitating flesh, a full hundred feet high, supported by frames and plates of metal.
From the strange and intricate apparatus that surrounded it rose two tall, cylindrical tanks, of glass or other transparent substance, filled with luminously violet liquid. At the base of each cylinder was a throbbing pump, and a thick tube connected it with the mountain of flesh.
Soft, crimson mass, surrounded by weird and complex mechanisms. About it stood scores of men—or of things such as Ellis and Keening had fought. Monsters, with shining flesh translucent and grim skeletons visible.
Ellis, fighting that lingering paralysis, stared at the red mountain, and wondered. Then he saw the face of it, and understood.
The face was grotesquely and incredibly tiny, situated just above the blue floor, with quivering, wrinkled red folds bulging out above it. A thin, sharp, chinless beak, and two hideously malevolent, amazingly ancient eyes.
The eyes riveted his gaze. Two of them, protruding above the beak, at the corners of the tiny, triangular face. They were green. And compound, like the eyes of insects. Each had seven orbs. Age-old wisdom was writ cold in each septuple eye, and malign power, ruthlessly evil.
The scarlet mountain was a brain. A living brain, hypertrophied to the ultimate degree. It answered Ellis Drew’s old question; it was the hideous consummation of organic evolution upon the oldest planet.
Body it had none. Metal plates and girders formed its supporting pan. Its face was fantastically tiny, pressed down against the floor.
Then he saw its arms.
The virescent, septuple eyes rested with cold and unutterable malignancy upon Ellis, and then moved to Keening. And the little man ran stiffly forward from beside Ellis, like one in a dream, toward the dwarfed and hideous face beneath the crimson, palpitating mountain.
Thin and eager tentacles reached out to meet him, from beneath the brain. The hands of the monster. They were four, white and whip-like and many yards long, writhing and twitching avidly.
They grasped little Keening, twisted snake-like about his limbs, drew him toward the face. Abruptly he was struggling with fierce, futile energy. And Ellis heard him scream—a gasping and inchoate sound bursting through the bandages on his face, thick and clotted with horror.
Just once he screamed. The twining white tentacles brought him up to the tiny face. And the thin black beak found his throat.
Ellis tried to move.
Tingling paralysis still held him. He surged forward vainly against it, in a terrible attempt to follow Keening. Lifeless muscles failed him, and he almost fell.
Through cold, stark lips he gasped out futile curses. He felt as if the black and hideous beak of the brain were sinking into his own throat. He and Keening had been long together. The little man had proved a true comrade, staunch and daring.
Must he stand and see his body drained by this red vampire-brain?
Ellis forced himself forward once more, in a vain battle against the rigor of his strange paralysis. Then, belatedly, he remembered the heavy revolver in his pocket.
His hands were numb and stiff and dead, tingling painfully. But at last they had grasped and lifted the weapon. Holding it clumsily in both hands, he shot into the mass of the red brain.
The scarlet mountain heaved and trembled. The white tentacles released Keening, dropped him inertly supine before the tiny face. The septuple green orbs stared at Ellis with maleficent evil, with a fear that was terrible and a hate that was consuming.
Fighting the tingling numbness of his stark body, Ellis stumbled forward, firing at the virescent eyes. One of them became a pendulous smear of green jelly, and then another.
Then the revolver was empty. And the things that had been men were rushing at him. Skeletons swathed in ghostly blue, running with dumb and implacable automatism.
Ellis realized that he had not time to load again. The things, in seconds, would be upon him. And bullets, after all, might do little great or immediate hurt to the mountainous brain. What could he do? His thoughts raced wildly, and one idea leapt into his mind.
The body of the giant brain was the mechanism that surrounded it. The thick tubes were obviously its veins, the throbbing pumps its heart, the violet liquid in the tanks its blood. If the mechanism had some vulnerable part . . .
If he could break the glass tanks . . .
HIS body was still stiff with the icy, numbing deadness in which the soundless music had left him. And the stalking, mechanical, half-transparent men were near. He staggered toward the nearer tank, grasping the heavy revolver by the barrel.
He stumbled against the side of the tank, hammered desperately upon it with the gun. Apparently it was glass, but very thick and tough. White cracks radiated from the points of impact, but it did not shatter.
Then the monsters were clawing at him with gleaming, skeletal talons—shocking him with the contact of their death-cold bodies. They dragged him back.
He saw little Keening, lying limp and helpless on the blue floor before that malign, black-beaked face, the white, ophidian tentacles writhing over his body.
Ellis twisted in the cold, glowing hands that held him. Savagely he struck with the gun at grinning, blue-dad skulls. And once more, for a little time, he was free.
The glass was unbreakable. He flung himself at the mechanism of the throbbing pump—the heart of the red brain. It looked delicate enough. A few blows upon the gears and gliding plungers . . .
But he did not reach the pump.
The music of madness once more struck him, beat through all his body with its soundless and hypnotic melody. A helpless tool of weird vibration, he dropped the revolver. And he was swept toward the tiny, malevolent face of the red brain.
White, slender tentacles reached out, whipped around his body. With irresistible strength they tightened, contracted. Toward the shrunken, hideous face he was drawn. Toward the narrow black beak and the evilly green, seven-orbed eyes.
He saw Keening struggling to his feet, gasped at him:
“Run, Keening! I’ll make a fuss! You might——”
A hard white coil wrapped around his neck, cut off his voice. He saw the little man running toward him, heard him cry out:
“Oh! Ellis! My——”
It was the first time Ellis had heard the whispering man speak aloud, or address him by his Christian name.
Another white tentacle darted out, coiled about the technician’s body. The two were drawn helpless toward the black-beaked face.
Then the brain rotted.
It had none of the immunity to terrestrial bacteria that has been developed by the higher life of Earth. Its soft tissues must have formed an ideal culture for the micro-organisms of decay introduced into them by Ellis Drew’s pistol bullets.
It collapsed. It sloughed into a heap of writhing ruin. It flowed in rivers of red corruption.
The tentacles softened and broke. Ellis and Keening flung them off and staggered away.
The translucent, glowing men died with the brain—if they had not been already dead, and merely animated by the supernal will of that colossal intelligence.
Ellis and Keening ran out of the great room, pursued by the reeking stench of rapid dissolution.
ONCE again, and slowly, they crossed the circular plain that must have been the site of the planet’s last city. Ellis whispered as they walked across it: “That brain must have been alive when this city was inhabited. It was that old. It clung to an unnatural existence after its world and its kind were dead, gathering evil power of science, until it was able to reach across space with that music. It must have been something like radio. Vibration in the ether. Hypnotic suggestion borne on a carrying wave. It mastered the human race. Made them build the cube, and brought them here. For slaves? For food?”
“Now, Ellis, we can go back,” Keening whispered through his bandages.
“I’m going,” said Ellis, “to look into that cube. I had a friend; I told you when we were coming back from the moon——”
“Durand?”
“Yes, Durand.”
They approached the mile-high cube. Midway of its silvery wall they found a broad stage leading up to a small, square door. Side by side they walked up, and entered the cube.
The interior was lit with cold, pallid, sourceless blue radiance. In it they saw infinite corridors of metal shelves, stretching to far distances, rising tier upon tier. The whole cube was filled with shelves.
And upon the aluminum shelves, side by side, lay human beings, the uncounted millions who had been carried from the Earth. They were motionless, deathly quiet. They lay in heavy, utter silence. Their flesh shone translucent and blue, and skeletal frames were visible beneath it.
Ellis stared at them, and touched the arm of one.
“Dead,” he whispered. “All dead.”
“Better that,” breathed Keening, “than to live as those others did.”
THE Cosmobile lifted above the ghostly blue radiance of the pit, and came once more into the clean light of the stars. A bright yellow point, the sun shone across the void, warm and welcoming. Ellis and Keening remained together upon the bridge until the course was set, until the grim and cragged desolation of the black planet had dropped for ever behind.
“We are left alone, of all humanity,” Keening whispered solemnly. “Think of it.”
“There’s really no use in going back,” Ellis said. “We can only grow old and die, the last men on a dead planet.
“I haven’t ever told you, Keening. But there was a girl who wanted to go with me to the moon. It was she I wanted to see, when we came back. If I had taken her——”
“You mean Tempest Durand?”
“Yes. But how did you know her name? I didn’t tell you!”
Keening seemed to smile behind his bandages.
“I know,” he whispered. “But do you mean you were looking for Tempest Durand—all the time?”
“Yes, Keening. No good to say so now, but I’d give my life for one moment with her, I was a fool. I left her for fear she would take my attention from my cursed work.”
“Then you would really like to see her?”
“Yes, Keening!” Ellis spoke almost angrily. “But there’s no use thinking what might have been. . . . Yet, that’s all there is left for us to do.”
“I’ll go find her, then,” whispered Keening. And he slipped away from the bridge, leaving Ellis puzzled at his words.
Ellis was staring through the ports at the pale, tiny point of the sun, when a clear, melodious and well-remembered voice rang out behind him.
“Ellis, won’t you even look at me?”
He spun around, mouth sagging open in incredulous amazement.
Tempest Durand was standing behind him, slim and beautiful as she had ever been. Her oval face was pale, but it bore a roguish smile.
“Tempest!” he gasped. “Tempest?” He choked, and a strangling tension came into his throat. Two strides across the floor, and he seized her slight shoulders, stared into her mocking eyes.
“Tempest, I’m not dreaming?” he cried, in poignant, dawning joy. “Speak to me, Tempest!”
For a time she gazed silently at him. And then tears broke into her quizzical eyes. She slipped forward into his arms, laughing almost hysterically.
“Oh, Ellis, I’m so glad!”
“Tell me,” he demanded, holding her quivering body. “How did you get here? I don’t understand. Did Keening have you hidden?”
“Lord, no!” she laughed, tearfully. “Don’t you see? There is Keening!”
She held up the familiar mask of bandages.
“You were Keening? Of course not! I’d have known you!”
“But you didn’t!” She laughed, reminiscently. “When you wouldn’t let me go with you, I meant first to hide on board. Then I thought of the disguise. I had often played masculine parts in dramatics at college. The bandages hid my face, and the same story of the X-ray burns was the excuse for a different voice. Even then I gave myself away a hundred times, but you were so wrapped up in your science you hardly noticed poor Keening.”
“But Tempest, why didn’t you tell me, when we got back to the Earth?”
“I’d no way to know your—your attitude had changed. Anyhow, I was about to. And you called me a coward. Don’t you remember? I wanted to show you. Anyhow, we had to come.”
And thus the Cosmobile drove back to Earth, carrying an Adam and Eve, an Epimetheus and a Pandora, to lift the curtain on another act of the infinite and varied drama of Man.
Dead Star Station
THE DIFFERENCE between a fool and a genius can be stated in one word—success. And success had not found Gideon Clew. We all tolerated the old man; most of us pitied him; some of us genuinely liked him. A neat, trim old fellow, white-haired, marvelously erect for his age, with cheeks like wrinkled red apples, and bright, sober blue eyes.
The lisp in his speech made him unintentionally droll. That must have been the chief reason why he had been so long scorned and obscure. For the lisp increased with his earnestness; he could never put his great idea into words without inadvertently rousing a desire to laugh.
Fourteen of us were waiting on Dead Star Station, in the wild, lonely Orion Passage, for the coming of the space liner Bellatrix. Thirteen men and a girl. Twelve of us made up the crew of the station. And the thirteenth man was Gideon Clew.
The old man, of course, had no official right to be upon the station. But mild old Captain Manners was soft-hearted, and the rest of us sympathetic. Gideon Clew had been aboard since before most of us were born—fifty years, he said. Fifty years is a long time for a man to be shut up in a little metal world, away from life. He had lost his place outside; he had no one to go to. It would have been cruelty to send him away.
