Collected Short Fiction, page 255
Berringer motioned young Bradley to the controls of the ship. Then the aged little scientist stepped over to his tall colleague and looked up at him with burning eyes.
He said softly, “Korth. you don’t believe, even after what we just went through, because you do not want to believe. You do not want to solve the mystery of the cosmos.”
His thin hand flew up when Korth made as if to protest. “Don’t deny it, Korth. I know your secret thoughts, and they are those of every other scientist earth has had. Science is a hunt, a perpetual hunting down of the truth, and the lure of it for the scientist is the wild lure of the chase.
“All your life, Korth, you have been engaged is that chase, trailing truth amid forests of incomprehensible facts, seeking and seeking to ferret it out and always finding that it lies still further ahead. You hare said, and have believed yourself, that you really wanted to track down and finally expose the ultimate secrets. But you have only said that because you thought such a thing impossible—in reality, you would hate such success because it would end your work, your thrilling hunt, forever! That Is why you shrink from believing me, even now. You fear that your great chase of truth is coming to an end.”
“It is not so,” Korth denied steadily, though his eyes could not meet Berringer’s. “The thrill of hunting truth is great, but I am not afraid to find the quarry. It Is simply that our experience just now has not entirely convinced me of the truth of what you say.”
“Then convince yourself!” flamed old Berringer. He motioned to the air-lock of the space-ship. “Out on the walls of the ship still sticks the slime from the creature we met Just now. Get some of that slime and analyze it—see If it does not have dimensional strangeness I say—”
Korth hesitated, looked almost appealingly toward Bradley and Forijay. The two younger men were silent, staling, held by the spell of Berringer’s personality.
“I will do it now,” Korth said suddenly. “I am convinced that it will not prove what you say.”
Rapidly he donned a space-suit, and entered the air lock. Opening the outer door, and hanging inside the lock, he reached forth a gloved hand to scrape from the wall of the ship some of the strangely glowing green slime which had coated it. ever since their encounter with the monstrous entity of the void.
Korth re-entered the ship, and carefully deposited the slime in a leaden vessel at the little laboratory cubby. Slowly he took off his space-suit, and then, without looking at the others, began a minute analysis of the stuff.
They saw his face growing paler and paler as be worked. His bands moved stiffly, his lips worked like those of a man in a dream. Of a sudden, the leaden vessel clattered to the floor. Korth had risen staggeringly, was gazing wildly at them.
“It—It Is true—” he whispered, his eyes dilated as though he looked into ultimate horror. “The dimensional difference in the atoms of that thing’s body—it proves your theory, Berringer—”
“Of course it proves it!” shrilled Berringer triumphantly. “You know now that what I said is so, that we are heading straight to the last secrets of the cosmos, and shall solve those secrets.”
“Solve them?” whispered Korth. “No—no!”
He had made a sudden leap back toward the table. Bradley yelled, “Stop him!”
Forijay leaped, but was too late. Korth had grasped the ray-gun in his hand and had turned it against his own breast. He sank, a suicide.
Berringer looked down, almost unmoved. yet with a certain pity on his face.
“I knew he would do that,” the old scientist said. “He could not stand the prospect of ending the bunt forever that has occupied him all his life. He died, rather than finally attain the truth he has been seeking.”
The old man turned to Forijay. Silently they lifted Korth’s body and thrust it into the airlock. A twist of the ship flung it clear into space, a moment or so later.
The ship fled on, toward the final secrets. Far back in space floated the body of the man who had died rather than witness the attaining of his ideal.
[4]“Illusion, boys? Yes! But still, just as definitely, no!”
Bradley and Forijay both looked at old Berringer with impassive though intense interest. They felt that they knew him very well now; and yet they were sure they could never fathom all the dark and devious channels of his penetrating genius.
There he sat before the controls of the space-ship, weird helmet on his head, his thin face shrunken and sweat-streaked, his emaciated chest heaving with his labored breathing; but his eyes alight with the glow of cosmic truth. They had respected him before, though they had doubted some of his Incredible theories; but now that doubt was waning fast.
“I’m sure Fo and I will listen patiently after what we’ve just seen, Doctor Berringer,” said Bradley quietly.
“Good!” the aged savant piped. “The whole universe Is a paradox. Things are real that are not real—in a sense! I can give you a very simple analogy: Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry. One teaches that parallel lines never meet; the other claims that parallel lines do meet—at Infinity. And both concepts are right!
“But that is nothing. I have said many strange things before, and I say them again now. In one way the universe Is a concrete thing, composed of stars, planets and endless seas of empty ether. Real energy flows In It, real atoms and molecules compose its substance. In another way all this Is illusion—the vast, ethereal dream of some mighty Mental Essence, of which we human beings are each tiny separate parts!
“Back on earth I built a shaft that was a miniature model of the component parts of the cosmos. With it I could predict much of what the greater cosmos contains; for, by the very nature of things, the pattern of the two must be the same. In It I saw the blue electrical creatures, who are nearer in nature to the Great All than anything that can be said to exist. In one sense I brought those creatures to Earth in my experiment; in another sense I brought only their images; and in still another sense they did not and do not exist at all!”
“It seems beyond all sense and reason, Doctor,” Forijay muttered. “And yet—”
Berringer’s cadaverous face was crossed by a fleeting grin of elfin amusement. “Reason is sometimes a doubtful thing to stand on,” he chuckled. “Look at those velocimeters. There is absolutely nothing wrong with their mechanism; their readings can be depended on to tell the truth! They register a speed of 147,000 miles per second. Yet repeated tests by trigonometry, equally reliable, show that we are not moving in space at all!”
“Then nothing is reliable! Nothing is predictable!” Bradley exclaimed.
“Quite the contrary,” Berringer laughed. “I’ve told you that before. This helmet I am wearing gives me contact with the Mental Essence, and so I can read all the diverse branches of past, present, and future. You could not do this, for your minds lack the receptivity of mine. But if you could, you would clearly see how the factors of time, space, and energy combine to form the great cosmic pattern. Many, many dimensions are Involved, and many, many things that are beyond description. From one angle all are the illusive parts of the intellect of the universe.”
“And you are sure that we are doomed in this adventure?” Forijay demanded.
“So I told you before we left,” the savant responded. “You knew the risks you faced, but you thought we had a chance to survive, since you did not entirely believe me. We set out to probe the cosmos, and we are doing it. The very core of things is being unfurled to us. We will die, but it does not matter, for we have really lived. Isn’t it so, boys?”
Both of the younger men swallowed hard. They said they thought so. Both had put the thrills of adventure above the promise of long lives. That was why they had accompanied Berringer.
Berringer smirked, mockingly. He glanced at a chronometer. “In two minutes all the stars will vanish,” he predicted in the tone of a seer. “A strange, airless, bitterly cold world will appear beneath us. We will land.”
“And then what?” Forijay questioned.
The savant shrugged. “You will see,” he said.
Berringer was unruffled, but not his young friends. Each second counted by the ticking of the chronometer was a lagging eternity.
And then there was a dizzy shifting, a momentary sensation of an impossible motion. The two minutes had passed, and the stars had vanished. Close beneath was an utterly rugged terrain, illuminated only by a faint bluish glow.
Coolly Berringer spiralled the ship to a landing. Bradley and Forijay donned space-suits.
“You will need those out there, boys, more than you would need them on the moon,” said the scientist. “Remember what I told you about negative pressure?” Berringer grimaced knowingly.
“Yes,” Bradley said without interest. “Aren’t you coming with us?”
“It is part of the plan of things that I remain here,” Berringer replied. “I have seen all there is to see, and I know that I am about the die in a strange way. Besides, the radiations of my experiments have made me ill. There is no reason why I should exert myself during these last moments of existence. Good luck, boys!”
“Good luck, Doctor,” they echoed, eagerness to see more of the unknown. making them abrupt.
They left the ship. They had advanced across the rough ground for perhaps two hundred yards when there was a mighty flash of electrical blue behind them. When they turned about, the ship was gone, dissolved by some invisible enemy.
Neither of them became outwardly excited. “Just like he said,” Forijay remarked, very low. “This place, his finish—everything. Uncanny, dammit. Poor Old Berringer!”
[5]Forijay relapsed into silence, then at a. mutual nod from his companion they walked slowly and cautiously forward. It was as they walked through the midst of the hard rockery, frozen with eternal cold of absolutely empty space, that they became aware of something. Nothing tangible—just Something. A conviction of murky presences, invisible, hovering in that unbelievable temperature of absolute zero.
How long the sensation lasted they had no idea, but presently it became so absolutely insistent that they stopped and looked back towards the spot where their space ship had been standing.
“Somehow, even though the ship’s gone, I’d feel safer where it was,” Bradley murmured. “We’re proving Berringer too accurately for my liking. Come on!”
He turned to move, then before he could do so, something entirely invisible smote him a tremendous blow that dropped him flat on the rocks. He looked up in dazed astonishment and beheld nothing, save his companion likewise sprawling with all the wind knocked out of him.
They jumped to their feet again and made swift movements to tug the disintegrators from their belts, but before they could accomplish the feat the same unknown power held their arms tightly to their sides. They were whirled off their feet and propelled through the airless expanse at tremendous speed, perhaps for a distance of two miles or more. It was difficult to determine in that vast terrain—then at last they beheld that which they dreaded to behold, the very thing instanced In the Berringer Experiment a mine of gigantic dimensions, sinking into bottomless profundity in the depths of this strange world. Within it, just visible to the eyes of the two as they were borne down the vast shaft, there floated lambent blue spots of flame—the blue of electricity itself.
As they sunk lower and lower the two hapless earth-men thought again of old Berringer; they could not help but do so. How deadly accurate his forecast had been; how he had been ridiculed for daring to say that there were no worlds or constellations in the sky at all! And that electricity experiment of his! And those strange occurrences on the way out here . . . The two earth-men now realised the vivid truth that had underlain it all.
Faster and faster they were borne into the depths, on the wings of the invisible, or rather, now the intense darkness prevailed, they could discern their captors as similar beings to those of Che blue flame . . . Then there crept into the stupefying gloom a dim sense of light, of sunlight, rapidly increasing.
Alighting at last, they beheld the source of light. Lying flat on rocks they surveyed a circular area of unguessable dimensions.
Bradley sat up, Forijay beside him. For the first time they looked above them and from Forijay came an exclamation of profound amazement. The stars had returned! Incredibly far distant lay the greenish globe of Earth, but from this position they could distinctly see the sun, visible only by their looking over the cliff edge, was the exact center of everything, as well as being the source of light on this queer world.
Little by little they took it all in. The stars, the Earth—a free floating body in the strange concavity that was apparently empty space—end the tiny attendant moon. The stars had returned, yes, but the planets were still missing. And, ever snore extraordinary, the stars only filled the space directly opposite to them.
Then at last the two came to face the strange luminescent beings that surrounded them, beings that required neither air nor heat, who existed in that infinite cold of empty space upon this world . . . A world? The two earth-men pondered that, and as they did so they noticed how the light of the sun caught the myriad facets of the brightly guttering rock about them, turning them into a myriad hues of orange, green, sapphire and saffron.
Suddenly there came through the communicator the bitter laugh of Bradley. He couldn’t help himself. The beings came closer.
“Forijay, if ever two guys from Earth got absolute proof of an earthly scientist’s experiments, we have!” he breathed. “Everything fits in exactly, just as he said It would. The rock facets, the central sun, the floating earth, the absence of stars at the top of this Inconceivably deep shaft, and yet the presence of stars at the bottom of it! These blue beings, obviously born of electricity, existing under hardly any pressure. Berringer’s experiment to the life! And to think we laughed at what be told us! Why, damn it man, if we took off oar space suits now we’d blow asunder; existing under pressure common to Earth we’re safe enough, but otherwise . . .”
He stopped and faced his helmeted comrade grimly. They searched each other’s eyes in the varicolored lights.
“We’re doomed, Fo,” Bradley went on steadily. “We know that now. It’s a one way passage—and according to Berringer that works out right, too. Remember this energy-flow equations and what we saw back there in space. If only we could get back now and prove that Berringer was right.”
“And now?” Forijay asked quietly.
“Only this,” Bradley answered steadily, and with that tugged a sharp knife from its sheath upon his belt.
Before the Blue Beings had the slightest chance to interfere he had made a lightning movement and slashed both the space-suits of himself and his companion down the center. Instantly, even as Bradley had theorized, they burst asunder, deprived of the vast pressures common to their own world.
The Blue Beings surveyed the empty space where they had been, all unaware that a supreme ultimate riddle of infinity had been solved. Then they turned their back to pursue their eternal movement in their multi-colored darkness that was their home.
The End.
[1] Beginning of Eando Binder’s installment.
[2] Beginning of Jack Williamson’s installment.
[3] Beginning of Edmond Hamilton’s installment.
[4] Beginning of Raymond Z. Gallun’s installment.
[5] Beginning of John Russell Fearn’s installment.
1937
The Blue Spot
Part I of a great scientific two-part novel
SWIFT AND SILENT the compact, streamlined egg shape of the aerodyne flung westward, high in the moonless dark. Ivec Andrel, alone at the controls, shivered to a little chill of ruthless apprehension. In the whisper of the wind he heard the rushing wings of doom. In the coolness of the night his excited imagination felt all the deadly rigor of the age of cold ahead.
His gray eyes fixed and solemn, he peered northward. “Remote and motionless, the eternal stars burned in the blue of midnight—and newly written among them was the doom of man. Across the constellations, from Perseus to Lyra, coiled a monstrous cloud. It had the shape of an octopus, and its writhing tentacles were icy blue with a bitterness of cold beyond imagination.
Tense with a living dread, he saw again his father’s face as it had been that afternoon in the bright oval of the telephone—pallid and graven with care, stern with an undying purpose. He heard again the solemn, urgent words: “My son, the time has come. The sign is in the sky. My part will be done tonight, and yours cannot be delayed. I shall expect you by dawn.”
Brief and guarded as the message was, it conveyed a dreadful meaning. There in the great lyceum of sciences, upon the green, sea-pressed Bermudas, Ivec had made hasty farewells to instructors and friends.
Now, sitting rigid in the aerodyne, he opened the motor coils to full drain upon the planetary power field. The whisper of the wind against the hull became a rushing hiss. His hard, white-skinned body leaned forward, as if to press the flier ahead. Cold sweat pearled his face. Dilated with indwelling dread, his gray eyes clung to the shapeless thing of chill blue in the north, the formless cloud of doom.
Yet a little joyous eagerness crept up beside his dread. For be might once again see Thadre Jildo. A glance, a word, a touch—a crumb of life snatched from the maw of death.
It was six yeans, now, since he had left her at the mountain laboratory, to take up his arduous course at the lyceum; yet the loveliness of her still burned clear in his mind. A tall girl, fair-skinned and graceful. Her copper-glinting head tilted proudly. Her blue eyes large, expressive, often imperious.
Their last meeting had ended, as usual, with a quarrel. Ivec held his breath with the memory of her, so beautiful in anger.
Deliberately, to touch her pride, on that last day, he had boasted: “I’ll be back one of these days, Thadre, to be director of the laboratory.”
Her fair skin flushed, at that. Her bronze head lifted; her blue eyes flared at him. For the rivalry between the families of Andrel and Jildo was almost a feud.
