Collected Short Fiction, page 278
Her white body lay very still. He could barely detect the motion of her breathing, the slow throb of the pulse in her wrist. He still sat beside her, fighting a deadly and ultimate fear, when he felt a sudden, disquieting lurch of the vessel.
“RON!” quavered Seru’s voice from the speaker. “Come! For we are through—and there are stars!”
The sleeping girl seemed undisturbed by that abrupt, giddy plunge from universe to universe. He left her, hurried to the bridge.
Seru Gyroc stood weary and haggard over the controls. “The reflecting barrier yielded as Before,” he reported, “until the field effect rotated us into the fourth axis.”
Peering eagerly into the dark space without, Ron Goneen saw a long spiral of silver dust, splendid with innumerable many-colored points of diamond light that burned through green streamers of nebulium.
“There!” His cry was a deep sob of joy. “There is a galaxy—one like our own that was destroyed! There are suns in it. There must be planets—a place for Lethara——”
The old man nodded gravely. “Yes, a home for my daughter,” he said. “For your children, and the new race to come. Orthu played fair.”
“It is strange,” Ron Goneen whispered suddenly, “to think that we are now so infinitely small—that all this universe must be smaller than the smallest particle of our old one!”
“But is it?” questioned Seru. “We have spent none of our mass. Remember the relativity of——”
Ron Goneen had ceased to listen. His rugged, red-bearded face was suddenly grim with agony. In a choked, apprehensive voice, he sobbed, “Lethara! She called me——”
There had been no sound. He could not define the manner of his impression. But dread was cold in his heart as he ran back to her small cabin.
“My darling, I am here——”
The words stuck in his parched throat. He walked slowly toward her bed, looked down. She lay still. Her eyes were closed. A quiet, strangely peaceful smile touched the corners of her lips.
Gently, almost reverently, he picked up her cool, lax hand. But already he knew that she was dead.
XVI.
LETHARA IS DEAD! Again and again the words throbbed through Ron Goneen’s numbed, stricken mind, like hammers of leaden pain. Lethara was dead—and with her his heart—and the race of man.
He gently folded the cold, small hands on her breast, and covered her face. Kneeling beside the bunk, he thought aimlessly of the grim, strange life the girl had led since her birth in their exile on dark Pyralonne, of her shattered chance for happiness.
He stayed there until Seru called from the bridge: “Come, Ron! Quickly!”
Purpose and vitality had died in Ron Goneen. A dull automaton, his big body rose stiffly and reeled mechanically forward.
The emaciated little scientist was tinkering excitedly with the vessel’s long-range hyperchron receiver. His thin hand jerked tremblingly toward the telescope.
“Look!” he cried. “At the suns in that galaxy!”
“But it doesn’t matter, Seru,” Ron told him wearily. “It’s no use now. Nothing is any use!” His tanned hand dropped sympathetically on the old man’s shoulder. “Because, Seru——”
He gulped. “Because Lethara is dead.”
But Seru Gyroc’s bright-eyed excitement was not affected by that statement. Heedlessly, he pushed Ron’s hand away, went on with his feverish efforts to tune the hyperchronoscope. Thinking dully that this greatest mind must at last have cracked under the awful pressure of cosmic disaster, Ron caught the shoulders of the old scientist, swung him away from the instrument.
“Don’t you understand, Seru?” his grave voice said. “I told you that your daughter is dead.”
The old man struggled desperately. “But she isn’t!” his cracked voice sobbed wildly. “Not yet! Let me go, Ron!” He twisted free, sprang back to the receiver. “Look in the telescope!” he begged. “Go ahead—look! I’m not insane!”
The space captain staggered heavily at last to the little instrument, put his lusterless, bloodshot eyes to the oculars, scanned the luminous whirlpool of that distant island universe.
And all his grief and apathy were suddenly gone!
“What is it, Seru?” His voice was deep and tense again, electric. “What did you see? Why does that galaxy look so much like our own?”
The old man’s voice jerked brokenly from where he bent over the receiver.
“Remember the relativity of size? Magnitude, like space and time, is cyclical. We have completed the cycle of change, and come back to our starting point.
“Yes, that galaxy is our own!”
“Rut our universe is destroyed!” rumbled the bewildered objection of Ron Goneen. “Our galaxy perished with the rest. We saw it!”
“Rut remember,” the old man mumbled, still busy with the dials, “the direction of entropy is the arrow of time. When the Omega Effect reversed the current, we were flung backward——”
THE HUM of a carrier way came suddenly from the hyperchron receiver, then a snatch of military music. The once-familiar features of a newscaster appeared on the rectangular screen.
His brisk voice barked: “Hello, universe! I bring you the latest hyperchron dispatch from the Goneen-Gyroc Expedition, on the far-off planet Pyralonne. After two hundred years of work in exile, Seru Gyroc is about to make the crucial test in his great Omega Ray experiment.
“Success will open the door to a new age of wonder. Mastery of entropy, Gyroc believes, will make anything possible—even to cooking on ice!
“But if it fails?
“Well, two centuries ago in a speech before the Galactic Council, Captain General Ron Goneen made some dire hints of cosmic disaster. That same day, he joined the expedition!
“Listen to-morrow, universe, for the latest——”
The old man’s trembling fingers spun a dial; voice and image faded. “That proves it!” he cried. “We are back in our own universe, a few hours—or perhaps only a few minutes—before the moment of our fatal experiment!”
Ron Goneen’s deep-set blue eyes were staring at him in anxious bewilderment. “Then they—we—are all still alive on Pyralonne?” he gasped. “Even she is still alive—Lethara? Our experiment has done no harm?”
“Not yet,” said Seru, gravely. “But it is about to be performed. You heard the announcer!” A strange, fanatic elation of despair burned in his bloodshot eyes. “We have returned to witness the doom that we wrought! And to perish, fittingly, by our own act! For the jewel is left behind. There is now no way to any other universe!”
The space captain’s rugged face was suddenly stern with purpose, his blue eyes narrowed and grim. Low and hard, his quick voice rapped: “Then we must stop our own experiment! How far is it to Pyralonne? The charts——”
“Only a few light years, probably,” said the terrible-eyed oldster, “since, according to the principles of inter-continua dynamics, we tended to return to the point we left. But the experiment cannot be stopped!”
“It must be!” Ron Goneen was already over the controls. “To save the universe!”
The old man shook his haggard head. “Impossible!” he shrilled. “The chain of events is now inevitable—for the experiment resulted in our being here. Logically, a result can never change a cause!”
Ron Goneen’s narrowed eyes scanned the charts, while his long-practiced fingers set up their position on the automatic control board.
“I think,” his deep voice said gravely as he worked, “that the direction of entropy increase is the only objective distinction between causes and effects. And we have reversed entropy——”
He moved swiftly to the telescope. “There it is—cold, dark Pyralonne!” he whispered. “We shall see if there is time——”
THE soft humming of the generators rose again to a painful, ceaseless screaming, as the Life of Man flashed into that last desperate race through the void. Wearily pacing the tiny floor, Seru Gyroc clutched suddenly at Ron’s green tunic.
“If it should be possible,” he gasped, “to undo my crimes! To save my daughter, and Karanora! To spare mankind——”
He was interrupted by the clanging of a detector gong.
Still tense at the telescope, Ron Goneen distinguished a familiar pattern of red-and-green lights drifting far away, athwart the faint, flattened spiral of the Andromeda Galaxy.
“The Silver Bird!” he whispered hoarsely. “Already it is standing away from Pyralonne. The two of—of us—are now alone in the tower—about to begin the experiment. Time is short!”
“Yes,” quavered old Seru, “our time is short. This time we are to be destroyed, by our work, forever. That is cosmic justice——”
Ron Goneen was standing rigid at the controls. His great body, wet with sweat, gleamed like a statue of bronze. His narrowed eyes peered resolutely ahead.
“Pyralonne!” he whispered again, hoarsely. “The only world Lethara ever knew—— There’s the tower, the landing lights!”
His eyes probed the eternal darkness that lay upon that cragged, frozen plateau. He could make out the squat bulk of the laboratory tower, faint gleams filtering from its shuttered ports.
It was strange—maddening!—to know that he and Seru were there in the dark tower, setting in motion a force that would destroy the universe, yet also here, racing desperately to avert that doom.
His intent eyes were watching the tiny stars of red and green that outlined the rectangle where the Silver Bird had rested. They went suddenly dim.
“The lights——” It was a sob of agony. “The current drain, when the apparatus started! They—we are just beginning! There is no time——” The old man shook his tangled, hoary head. “I told you we must fail—must perish for my cosmic crime! For logic allows nothing else——”
“No!” The space captain’s voice was a rumbling drum. “We can’t fail!” His quick fingers flung the little ship into a dive; tortured generators shrieked again. “I’m going to ram the tower!”
“You can’t!” shrilled Seru. “For if you destroy us then, we can’t exist now, to do it——”
But the cruel plateau of frozen crags, the squat night-shrouded bulk of the tower, were rushing upward. Still steady, Ron Goneen’s long, bronzed fingers moved to aim the ship accurately at the flat dome. His big body braced itself for the impact. Calmly, in that last mad moment, his deep voice was saying: “When the law of entropy has been overturned, there is no then, no now——”
XVII.
RON GONEEN was dreaming again. It had to be a dream he knew. It couldn’t be real! It was strange enough even that he dreamed, it came to him; for he had expected to perish in the ramming ship.
But it was a very satisfactory dream, he felt—even if all his body up to his eyes seemed to be wrapped in bandages, and his first effort to move brought a series of dull, vague pains.
It was becoming curiously real and persistent for a dream, of course. And yet it must be! For he had seen Lethara dead, had folded her cold hands and covered her pallid face.
Now, however, she was sitting beside his bed, and smiling down at him. And she looked radiantly well—as utterly beautiful as she had been before the fateful experiment. The glory of her hair was no longer white, but golden again. Her oval face was serenely young. Her violet eyes no longer held any horror, but only sympathy, concern for him, a bright hope.
“Ron?” her soft voice was asking. It was thrillingly familiar, thrillingly real—alive! “Can you hear me? Can you see me? Is it too painful to speak?”
“No.” The voice that came through his bandages was very weak and low. It set a sudden dull aching in his strapped chest, that, so experience told him, meant a few cracked ribs. “Where—am I?” he whispered. “Is this—no dream?”
“No dream at all,” the huskily sweet voice of Lethara assured him. “You are in the hospital of the Silver Bird. And don’t worry!” She touched his bandaged shoulder, very softly. “You’re going to be all right, Ron, dear—and so is father.”
“But what—happened?” he breathed the painful words. “You are—alive?”
“Of course I am, darling,” she said. “But it’s just luck that you are!” Great and dark, her violet eyes were suddenly glistening. “I was so afraid——” She bit her full trembling lip, swallowed. “Anyhow, you’re going to get well!” She was smiling gloriously through the tears.
“But I think,” she added, “that the great experiment is ruined.”
Ron Goneen took a cautious breath and whispered two words: “What—happened?”
Her cool, soothing hand touched the little bare streak of his brow, very gently. “Don’t talk any more—it hurts you too much. Just keep quiet, and I’ll tell you. Of course you and father didn’t have time to realize what hit——”
“What!”
“Quiet!” she commanded. “I promised not to disturb you.”
He liked the soft stroking of her fingers on his forehead. He waited obediently.
“We were standing off into space to wait for the experiment,” she told him. “But suddenly our detectors revealed a large meteoric object—and showed that it was hurtling toward the tower!
“We raced back in the Silver Bird, to try to deflect it and save you. But we were one minute too late. The thing—whatever it was—struck the laboratory, shattered it!” Her great eyes were briefly solemn and disturbed.
“It seems very queer that a meteor should strike here, so far outside the galaxy, and just in time to stop the experiment! The officers have been talking about a conspiracy of nature to protect the law of entropy——” Her golden head shook; her eyes were again smiling.
“ANYHOW, we were in time to pick you and father up out of the wreckage. You were both pretty badly battered, and, of course, nearly asphyxiated. And something—queer—must have happened to father.” Her voice was grave; puzzled dread shadowed her violet eyes.
“His hair has turned white,” she said. “And he seems suddenly so very old!”
“I know.” Ron Goneen caught his breath, made the effort to speak again. “No other—bodies?”
The girl stared at him, questioningly. “Of course not. How could there be?
You and father were alone in the tower.” She bit her full lip absently, and added in a puzzled voice: “It was a queer thing, though, that we couldn’t find an atom of that meteor!
“It went through the floor beneath the dome, to the life tube in the safety chamber. The little ship was completely wrecked. We found you and father near it. But there wasn’t a trace of the meteor left.”
Ron Goneen shut his eyes and tried to think. Entropy. Reversal of time. Annihilation of cause and effect. Three who had lived twice—and returned to destroy themselves. Where were the missing bodies? His head began to ache a little. Lethara’s hand was very comforting on his forehead.
“Oh, yes—Ron!” the girl’s soft voice came to him suddenly. “Father sent you a message. I don’t know about it. You might want to hear. He seems a little—well, out of his head. Mother is with him now.”
Ron breathed, “Message?”
“Wait,” she said, “and I’ll tell you the exact words.” Her smooth brow wrinkled with effort, as she repeated slowly: “ ‘The closing of our world lines in space and time, when the cycle was completed, created an independent subspace manifold which is therefore detached from our continuum. What happened to us is real in that new subspace, but not in this universe.’
“That’s it,” she said, “if it means anything!”
“It does——” he gasped. “Every thing!”
“Somehow, father has changed his mind about the experiment,” she said. “He told the men not to try to save any of the apparatus. He’s giving it up.”
Her dark eyes looked at him suddenly, regretful. “There’s another thing—that I know you’ll be sorry about,” she said. “The stone from Andromeda—the Jewel of Dawn—was gone from the pouch in your tunic. I asked the men to search, but they couldn’t find it anywhere.”
“Doesn’t—matter!” breathed the space captain. “This universe—good enough—now.” He took a careful breath. “Because—of you—my darling!”
“Don’t talk,” she commanded.
And Ron Goneen, captain general of the Galactic Patrol, he who had taken the Jewel of Dawn from the warrior crystals of Andromeda, obediently closed his eyes.
Her lips were cool against his forehead.
THE END.
1938
Dreadful Sleep
A thrilling tale, a romantic and tragic tale, a weird-scientific story of the awakening of the fearsome beings that lay in dreadful slumber under the antarctic ice, and the weird doom that befell the world
AN INITIAL apology seems due the reader of this history. For I, Ronald Dunbar, am not a man of letters. Three of the books that bear my name—those entitled Antarcticana I, II, and III—are merely the necessary scientific records of my various polar explorations. And the popular abridgment of them called An Odyssey of the Ice was no more than an effort (which turned out very happily) to wipe out the deficit of my third expedition.
It happens however, that no accomplished literary historian was present to observe those mind-crushing events that made the year 1960 the most terrible in human history. I am the only surviving witness to much of that hideously enigmatic catastrophe. Despite my disqualifications, therefore, as well as the natural reluctance of an active man to spending some months confined to on unaccustomed desk, I feel it my duty to set down a plain, simple account of what happened. If without much literary embellishment, it will at least be accurate and clear.
The event of June 11-December 24, 1960, is already recognized to be the most astounding and terrifying phenomenon that ever overtook our world. It was high noon over America, on June 11, when summer sun abruptly vanished and the chill blackness of a wintry midnight fell, soundless but infinitely apalling. At the same instant, in the eastern hemisphere, night was turned incredibly into day.
