Collected Short Fiction, page 262
The green cube, poised in the air, seemed hesitant, doubtful.
“If Gogok is honest with you,” Lakne put in again, “he will give you the secret, now.”
And Barthu Jildo demanded of the red sphere: “Reveal the principle of the catalyst, so that I may know.”
The red globe made no reply, but swelled suddenly with surrounding zones of defensive radiation.
“Tell me,” the green cube demanded again, “or I shall join the others.”
“Join them!” flamed the sphere. “And perish with them!”
A narrow blade of burning red leaped at the green cube. An invisible barrier deflected it. It cut in twain a colossal white pillar at the side of the room, which toppled with appalling deliberation.
Gogok’s white, shapeless photon creature released Ivec and Lakne, flung to attack Barthu Jildo. The green cube met it with a white sword of radiance. It vanished in a flare of blinding light.
But when the light had gone, the green cube of Barthu Jildo was fast upon the red-and-ebon floor, held motionless with invisible fields of force. Gogok’s scarlet sphere hovered over it, malevolently.
“Perish!” The vibrations of the scarlet sphere were cold, snarling, ruthless. “All you three who desire my power. For it is mine—forever!”
And Ivec, still hanging in the air beside the sphere of Lakne, sensed the swift up-building of terrific potential forces about the crimson globe that menaced all their lives. He tried to draw back, with Lakne, but Gogok’s expanding energy fields already held him powerless.
Staggered by a deadly burden of despair, he waited. It was now too late to struggle. They were all to be destroyed by the release of material energy—a power that nothing could resist. No recourse was left.
Fleetingly, before his reeling mind, passed a vision of horror unutterable. He saw the stricken Earth, darkened and helpless before the nebula’s cold, seized in the dread tentacles of Gogok’s power. Saw it transformed into the mindless living death of abject slavery to this eternal tyrant. The white, dead loveliness of Thadre Jildo looked at him, the wide glazed eyes beseeching, terrible with the accusation of his failure.
OVERWHELMED by the sense of terrific hostile forces rising, he prepared to die.
Beside him, however, the nacerous sphere of Lakne struggled in the web of resistless energy fields. Her challenge flashed at the red globe, clear and strong: “Hold, Gogok! Remember that all you have, I have given you. Remember that you were afraid and mortal and about to die, beside that last salt sea, when I gave you that body of deathless energy. Remember that my father’s life was sacrificed for yours. Remember that I have seen you crush my people into slavery more cruel than death. Remember the ages of imprisonment that I endured, because of my old love for you.”
“I remember,” the scarlet globe radiated coldly. “But you will not, any longer.”
Still suspended beside Ivec, the sphere of Lakne shone with a serene and steady light.
“Destroy me if you will,” it returned, “for I am long since weary of the mockery of life. And obliterate your kindred selfish being, Barthu Jildo. That will be a service to the universe.”
“Gladly,” interrupted the red globe, still hovering evilly over the helpless green cube on the floor.
“But you must spare Ivec Andrel, who set me free from prison and shared with me his vital strength.” The voice of the milky globe seemed, now, to Ivec more commanding than entreating. “Give him knowledge of the catalyst. And restore his lost energy, so that he may carry it back to preserve his threatened people.
“Thus, you may live on here, unharmed. Ivec Andrel will give his pledge not to attack you. And Earth may, also, survive, with the catalyst secure against the menace of the nebula and against your selfish schemes.”
The radiations of the opalescent were now stern, commanding—and yet, Ivec thought, somehow touched with infinite pity and blackest regret, as they finished.
“Gogok, do that!”
But the red globe had continued to build up its tremendous reservoirs of threatening energy. Its swift reply came, cold and deadly: “You are foolish to appeal to any sentiment in me. Love and generosity in others I can use, but my own weak feelings I conquered long ago, in my bitter youth by that salt sea. And yours can now serve me no longer. So die——”
The thing that happened was too swift for the senses of the cube to follow. But Ivec knew that Gogok had released his vast, accumulated tide of destructive forces. He was aware that Lakne moved quickly beside him, made some abrupt, terrific effort of her own.
Then free radiation struck him, with a violent, stunning impact. The senses of the cube were numbed. It was flung into an abysm of searing fire; it spun in endless, hurtling flight, through infinitudes of flaming radiance. Terrific forces wrenched and battered at it.
XI.
WHEN THE LIGHT was gone, and the cube was at rest again, Ivec found that he lay upon a field of shattered, colossal boulders. The space about him was airless, frozen, dark. The sky above was black again, and half covered with the hideous spirals of the nebula.
From the degree of the stellar cloud’s advance, and the positions of the distant planets, Ivec perceived that more than three months had passed since he left Earth—although the period had seemed far shorter, due to the retardation of time associated with the velocity of his outward flight, and the space-time warp caused by the terrific etheric vortices in which he had been meshed. There was now no time to return before Earth was lost in the maw of the nebula, he thought wearily, even if he had the catalyst and the energy for the journey.
But he lifted the cube, nevertheless, to take stock of his surroundings. At first he had thought himself flung to some distant part of the barren planet. Then he was aware that these shattered boulders still radiated a trace of heat. He saw the delicate curve that faced one near-by broken mass. He then perceived that each boulder was formed of myriad tiny jewels, exquisitely cut and cemented.
These riven masses, he knew then, were the fragments of Gogok’s dwelling. The building had been destroyed, with its fantastic gardens and the queer, mindless slaves that tended them. The radiant haze was gone. And the glowing purple dome—with the priceless secret of material energy.
The Blue Spot was gone. Persephone was dead—as soon, now, Earth would be.
“Ivec Andrel, here I am!” He recognized the faint thought emanation from Lakne’s sphere. “Come to me.”
With a weary and painful effort, for the cube was near total exhaustion, Ivec rose above that boulder field of utter desolation. He caught the faint gleam of the opalescent sphere, dropped beside it. Half covered with debris, it burned with a feeble, uncertain glow.
“Ivec,” it radiated weakly, “my energy is spent. I am dying.”
“Share mine again,” Ivec invited. “I can give you life for a time.”
“No,” returned Lakne. “You are too generous; you have none to spare. And it is my wish to die—for I have destroyed the one that I loved once, and hated.”
“Gogok?” Ivec asked. “You killed him?”
“Yes—I killed him,” Lakne said. “I have known the use of the energy catalyst from the beginning. I did not tell you that, lest you demand that I use it, or perhaps unwittingly betray me to Gogok. But the keen senses of this photon globe discovered the nature of the catalyst from observing the apparatus of the five troglodytes, even before they disclosed it to Gogok.
“I could have slain him then, or when he imprisoned me, or when he murdered my father, or at any time since—for my mastery of the process was more complete than his own, and the quanta structure and energy fields of the sphere afforded all the equipment I needed.
“Yet I spared him because I once had loved him, and because even when I hated him, his life was vital to mine. It was enough to know that he was in my power, that even from the prison I could destroy him.
“But you had risked grave danger to set me free; you had shared your very life with me; I could not allow him to destroy you. Nor did I like to see a brave young world slain to make a monument to him, as this planet was.
“Therefore, I destroyed the one whom I loved and hated. And hence my own life is done.” Ivec began a protest, but the urgent, fading radiations cut him off. “I am perishing; there is no more time. Now, here is the secret of the energy catalyst, which you must strive to take back to Earth.”
THE faint emanations brought him the long-sought information, the treasured knowledge of the five murdered troglodytes, the key to Gogok’s immemorial power; a simple modulation of continuum field tensions, expressed in a few brief equations.
When Ivec had committed them to memory, he perceived that the small sphere, lying upon the black, shattered debris beside him, had grown dim. Its milky light was flickering feebly.
“Farewell, Ivec,” came the dying voice of Lakne, Sardoc’s daughter. “I am weary—glad to go. Use your power—generously——”
The outlines of the opalescent globe grew misty. It burst into a flying wisp of silver vapor. It vanished. Lakne, who had lived since before Earth was born, was dead.
The green cube of Ivec Andrel lay for a little while alone upon the broken stones, weary and saddened. It had been tragic to watch the death of a world’s last being. But it came to him, slowly, that his sorrow was less for Lakne than for Thadre Jildo, whom he had left upon the menaced Earth, weeping upon his own dead body.
He stirred among the ruins, as if to launch himself upward into space. But it came to him again, with a sickness of ultimate frustration, that he had far too little energy for the return to Earth, nor time for the journey, unless the cube could be made far swifter than it had ever been.
Yet, he thought wearily, he must try—for Thadre Jildo’s sake——
“Stay, young Andrel!”
It was the heavy, harsh voice of Barthu Jildo—who, Ivec realized with a sickening dread, had also escaped the cataclysm. The other green sphere was suddenly hanging over him, paler now, itself flickering and unstable.
Yet even here there might be hope, Ivec thought desperately—if he could touch some fiber of reason in the mad mind of the cube. Some spark of humanity must linger in this thing that had been a man.
“Barthu,” he begged, “will you aid me? I have been given knowledge of the catalyst. If I can reach home with it, our Earth may yet be saved from cold. Earth—and Thadre! With your help——”
“I knew all Andrels were fools,” rasped the thick voice. “But I am not—not fool enough to give you fame and honor, and let you make all men scorn the name of Jildo. I am injured. I must soon expire—but you shall perish with me!”
A harsh and mocking laugh grated from the green cube. It was wholly insane, Ivec realized—a dread machine of doom. And this would be a duel to the death.
A white needle stabbed at him. Ivec set up a deflecting field—at an energy cost that staggered him. Fighting a numbness of scarlet pain, straining the weakened cube to the point of disruption, he generated a counterray.
The other cube turned it aside harmlessly, and agony fell like a dazing hammer upon Ivec. The black, writhing arms of the nebula swept over all the sky. Frozen Persephone dropped away, and he was lost in a void of pain.
“Die,” gasped the faint, triumphant voice of Barthu Jildo. “You are the last Andrel. There is another Jildo——”
Another Jildo—that was Thadre. Her name, and the sweet memory of her, stirred Ivec to a last, grim effort. Abandoning his defense, reckless of a shattering pain, he concentrated all his energy in one intense, jetting ray.
That white needle cleft the cube of Barthu Jildo, and it vanished in a flood of blinding light.
IVEC ANDREL lay alone again upon the black, riven face of Persephone. The green cube was flawed, now, with forked lines of black, its radiance very dim, unsteady. Twice it sought to lift itself, and fell back upon the broken debris.
Ivec tried to laugh, at the bitter mockery of circumstance. The ultimate jest. The catalyst he possessed was the key to all the energy of the universe—yet he was too weak to lift the cube’s remaining featherweight, even against Persephone’s feeble gravity.
The warning scarlet tide of pain rose higher. Soon it would submerge all his being. The cube would shatter from its ancient flaw. Knowledge of the catalyst would be lost, as free photons scattered. Earth would fall beneath the cold and the horror of the nebula. And Thadre Jildo——
Sense of his surroundings, somehow, had grown vague. Black sky and black boulders were lost. And suddenly, altogether incredibly, the girl was beside him.
He saw again the slim grace of her tall body, her skin milk-white and clear, light glinting in her copper hair. He saw the blue of her eyes, greenish and cool, dancing with malice—and yet soft with a new, tender warmth of love.
Her hand stretched toward him in the darkness. It touched him, warm, life-giving. It lifted him. A strong, living current flowed into him from her body. He relaxed, and she supported him. Her contact eased his pain.
“Ivec!” Her voice was low and rich and anxious. “Ivec, do you hear me?”
Her voice, he knew suddenly, was no illusion. A quick flood of strength restored his senses. Again he was aware of grim, barren Persephone—and now of a green, pale cube beside him, like his own. It was the strong flow of vital energy, from it, that had revived him.
“Ivec, you are alive?”
Her voice came again, out of the cube—and he knew then that it was Thadre. Thadre Jildo, whom he had left sobbing upon his body, back in the laboratory on far-off Earth.
“I am, Thadre, thanks to you,” he said. “But if you came to find your uncle, he is dead.”
“I came for you, Ivec,” she answered. “And I have more energy for you—enough so we may both safely return to Earth.”
Gratefully, he drank it in. The cube glowed stronger, with new, throbbing strength. The pain of the old weakness grew less, ceased. A deep peace filled him. At last he was satisfied.
“This is Cube One,” Thadre explained, “the first model your father made. He improved it after you were gone, made it far stronger, and supplied it with a reserve of strength for you. I brought it to you.”
Her voice trembled uncertainly.
“I am sorry for aiding my uncle, Ivec. When you were gone from your body, I knew I loved you. I came to seek you, to share all your efforts and dangers, to aid you and be with you—always.”
“You gave up your body?” Ivec asked. “For me?”
“I did,” she said. “Our bodies now lie side by side, in a vault upon the mountain. But we can live forever, now, or so long as we will. For these photon cubes can be renewed with material energy. We can range all space together, for adventure. And our powers can do many things to aid the progress of mankind.”
Beside her, Ivec mounted into a loftier rapture than he had ever known. The remarkable senses of the cube were keenly attuned, until he felt the pulsing life of every sun, knew the wondrous rhythm of every ray in space, shared the life dance of every atom through all the universe.
Thadre Jildo was beside him. She was his, he hers. And all the universe was theirs, its wonder, its mystery, its beauty—theirs to explore, to know, to love. Peril there would be yet, effort, and pain, but none greater than had passed. None too great to be spice and salt to living——
“Come,” Thadre was saying, beside him. “The nebula is rushing on. We have time and strength to reach Earth with the knowledge you have gained. But we must not delay.”
And the twin green cubes rose up together from dead Persephone and flashed away Sunward, carrying life to the waiting Earth.
The Ice Entity
Deep in the Frozen Arctic Wastes, One Man and a Girl Strive to Solve the Secret of a Strange Sentient Life That Would Blot Out the Sun!
CHAPTER I
Fingers of the Ice
BLAKE had tried to dissuade Jean Adare from undertaking the fatal journey.
“Better stay here with me, Jean,” he had advised. “Here, there’s a chance. Out there, on the ice, you won’t live an hour.”
“Non,” muttered the little ’breed. “I go! I know we die here. Ze wood almos’ gone. We freeze, or worse—” His trembling hand seized Blake’s arm. “You come wit’ me, mon vieux?”
“No, Jean. I’ve got work to do.” Blake’s big hand had gestured at the crude bench across the end of cabin, where the white radiance of an electric bulb fell on his delicate and tiny instruments. “If I get it done we can live without a fire.”
“Mon Dieu! Ze ice has made you crazy. Au revoir. I go, before it is too fate—”
“Wait,” Blake protested. “Listen, man. You’ll be killed—”
Later, rubbing the thick frost from a tiny window, Blake watched Jean Adare try to fight his way south across the shining horror of the glacier, toward the Chandalar-Yukon trail. Watched him—die.
Pear had preyed upon them all the dreadful winter; and for three weeks terror had lived with them in the cabin.
The tiny building stood on ground almost level, a hundred yards above the glacier that had come down the valley of the Mannabec. The arctic barrens, southward and east, spread shining desolation. Northward the plateau lifted into ice-armored hills, cleft with the glacier gorge of the Mannabec.
Mason Blake was a big man. His wide-shouldered body was bulky with furs. His red hair was unkempt, shaggy; his blue eyes, hard with little glints of steel, shone above the winter’s growth of curly red beard. His great hands, bare to the chill in the room, trembled as they handled delicate metal objects.
He strove to find forgetfulness in the details of this task that had so many years absorbed him. But the horror that had driven Jean Adare out to die still lurked in the silent room.
Blake thus far had resisted the madness that drove the ’breed to death. Yet he understood it, because it had claimed one corner of his brain. He felt nothing but sympathy for the fugitive.
