Collected Short Fiction, page 399
“Thank you, Jerry. We’ll look into what you learned. But your father says the reptiles have lost the secret of their Suns. There is no way, except for us to take those that still exist.” Mark Drake’s smile tightened grimly. “We’ll see who’s annihilated. We have a hundred new moles boring into their caves. We’ll mine the cities, and give them a breath of poison gas.”
“Don’t try it,” begged Jeremy. “Remember, they’ve got million of years behind them. You haven’t got a chance.” His voice dropped earnestly. “And there’s still another way, Mark. I’ve a plan that I want to place before the Regents.”
“The Regents have placed the conduct of the war in my hands,” Mark Drake said. “I’m the government. What is your plan?” Jeremy stood for half a minute, looking at the First Regent’s pink handsome face. Admiration, old friendship, struggled with sharp resentment. At last he gulped, spoke uncertainly.
“I made spectrographic studies of that Sun. I believe the secret is on my film, if only we can see it. I think—” He swallowed again. “I believe we can make a Sun of our own!”
Mark Drake smiled, a slow superior smile. “Your old fantastic dream, isn’t it, Jerry? Only it keeps growing more fantastic every time you think about it. Well, I’ll have the staff of scientists make a routine examination of your films. But it won’t help, Jerry. The war has already begun. Success is the only thing that can end it.”
“Listen to me,” begged Jeremy. Heart sinking, he recognized the wilful mulishness that must come when men give autocratic power to one of their own kind. “I’ve earned something tremendous! The subspace shells that enclose those cavern Suns are stable. They are everlasting! Even after millions of years, the Suns are failing only because the matter inside has been used up, until the pressure is falling below the reaction-point. If the shells were simply shrunk a little, to increase the internal pressure, the dying Suns could be restored!”
HIS fists clenched in helpless fury at Mark Drake’s skeptical smile.
“You know what a stable wave-sphere means,” Jeremy blurted angrily. “Before the Blot came, it was your father who found that almost any element would serve as atomic fuel. The only trouble with his ME-converter is that the subspace shell is unstable. Except in the case of the cereum isotope, it takes more power to maintain the shell than he gets out of the reaction. Even there the shell uses up all but six percent of the power.”
Jeremy leaned urgently over the huge, richly polished desk.
“Look what a stable shell means! You can use almost anything for fuel. You get almost one hundred percent of useful power, instead of a maximum of six!”
Ruthlessly, Mark Drake’s gray eyes probed into his.
“Can you make a stable sphere, Jerry?”
“Not yet,” Jeremy admitted. “But I know that the spectrograph must reveal the stable-wave formula. It must be hidden in the radiation-curves on my films. If only I can analyze it out!” His voice sank entreatingly. “Mark, please let me try.”
The First Regent shook his head decisively.
“Any experiment would take time, brains and power. And we can’t spare a single unit of any.” For a moment his suave face appeared worriedly grave. “Things are really serious, Jerry. There’s another job waiting for you, a much more important one. I want you to draw up a full report of everything you learned about the reptiles, for the benefit of our military strategists.”
Trembling, Jerry tensed, unwilling to ask the question that must be asked.
“And if I refuse?” he questioned finally. The First Regent’s gray eyes glinted ominously.
“You will join your father in prison. Let me warn you, Jerry. Being in prison won’t save your cowardly hide. Military necessity will soon force us to make really drastic economies of power and air.”
“Mark!” Jeremy cried in anguish. “You were my friend. Have you gone mad with the lust for power?”
“Jerry, my father was a great man,” Mark’s voice remained smooth, but Jeremy shuddered at the rigidly disciplined murderousness in the Regent’s eyes. “Once he saved the human race. I’m going to be as great as he was, before he went soft. If mankind can be saved at all, I’m going to be the one to save it!”
The characteristic, humorless smile returned to Mark Drake’s lips, but Jeremy would never forget the revealing glint behind the gray eyes.
Shrugging with assumed indifference, Jeremy opened his mouth to speak. A buzzer halted him. Drake snapped a switch, and Jeremy heard a metallic voice rasp from the office communicator.
“Regent Drake, there’s been another disaster! All communication has been cut off with New Boston, sir. Seismographs indicate a terrific explosion there. The city is believed to have been mined by the reptiles. There’s no hope for the survivors.”
Grim-faced, Mark Drake looked slowly back at Jeremy.
“You see, Jerry, it’s war,” he stated softly. “No time to play at making Suns. Have you changed your mind?”
Jeremy shook his head. “But I do think I could make a Sun!”
“You’ll need one in the prison.” Mark Drake smiled.
CHAPTER X
How to Make a Sun!
WORLD’S end had come! Jeremy’s prison cell was comfortless enough. Icy water dripped from the durite walls. Dank cold seeped deep into him. The air was stagnant, foul. The only light was a scarcely visible glow, somewhere beyond the bars. He had received no food. Somewhere, another prisoner was screaming with nerve-shredding monotony. And one was coughing dreadfully.
Yet Jeremy forgot all that in his torture of his mind. He knew that his father was near him. Perhaps that was his father coughing. But Mark Drake and his jailers had refused to let him see Morley Cord, or even to take a message to him.
Hungering for a glimpse of Gay Ferrand, he paced the cell, driven by a restless fever. Stale air overwhelmed him. He dropped on the damp cot, shivering. Doggedly he worried at the puzzle of his spectrographic analysis of the cavern sun. The answer would be useless now. But the effort, he thought, would help him keep his sanity. And he just had to know.
The police had taken the films and all his papers. The cell was too dark for paper work anyhow. But all the elements of the problem were in his mind. The spectrum had told him that the strange Sun was composed of the common elements of the Earth’s crust. Its efficiency was ninety-four percent. Some elusive familiarity in the ancient mechanisms of the Sun-tower still haunted him. But the answer—
“Jerry!”
He tumbled off the bank. Incredulous eagerness surged high in him, for that was Gay’s hushed whisper, speaking his name. A terrible fear shook him. That couldn’t be! It was just a dream of wish-fulfillment.
“Jerry!”
He heard it again, and even her light step. Drowning it was the heavier tread of a guard. The lock clicked. It was Gay! He stumbled to the door, caught her in his arms.
“Gay, my darling!”
Her quick hand covered his lips.
“Come with us,” she whispered. “Quietly!”
“Where?”
“I don’t know!” Her troubled, breathless whisper ran on swiftly. “I learned that you were here, so I came. I’ve a pass as a Regent. And I once befriended this guard. He’ll let us out. But I don’t know where we can go.”
HER clinging arms shivered. “Mark would have you shot. Perhaps even me. He seems almost insane. I don’t know how I ever loved him. He’s desperate now, in a hopeless situation. I think he knows there is only disaster ahead for all mankind. But he can’t turn back. Oh, Jerry, where can we go?”
“I know, darling.” Jeremy’s whisper was suddenly confident. “To the Outside Station!”
A supply elevator dropped them out of the prison to the station level. Pressing through the frightened, freezing, starving men and women there, they were challenged by a squad of the green-clad police. Jeremy recognized the sergeant, and apprehension clutched him.
Gay showed her pass. Jeremy could only hope that filth and a beard made a sufficient disguise for him. He kept his face averted, coughing. The sergeant saluted.
“Regent Ferrand, your destination?”
“Outside Station.” Gay’s voice was tense, brisk. “On a mission for the First Regent. Dr. Sabin is going to make some important observations concerning the Sun’s return.” Obviously puzzled, the sergeant looked keenly at Jeremy.
“But the Station has been abandoned by the First Regent’s order,” he said. “The power tubes there have been exhausted. There’s some misunderstanding—”
Jeremy repressed a shudder, caught his breath.
“I know, officer,” he said, glad that he was hoarse from the cold of his cell. “I have supplies to renew the solar elements.”
The sergeant saluted again.
“Thank you. I see. I’ll have a rail truck ready for you in five minutes.”
The five minutes seemed five hours. But at last a driver brought out the vehicle. Jeremy helped Gay into the cab, sealed the door. He took the wheel. The tiny converter hummed feebly, and they lurched into the air-locks. Relief on his haggard face, Jeremy smiled at Gay.
“You’re right,” he whispered. “Dr. Sabin is going to do something about the Sun.”
“Jeremy!” she cried. “What do you mean?”
“Once,” he said quietly, “I dreamed of making a new Sun.”
GAY’S dark eyes stared at him, unbelieving, terrified for his sanity.
“Don’t hope for too much,” Jeremy grinned. “But I’m going to try.”
“Jerry!” Her trembling fingers caught his arm. “How?”
“I know how the saurians made their cavern Suns, or I think I do,” he told her. “And there’s matter enough in the old Moon—if it didn’t get lost in the Fault!”
She still searched his face.
“A new Sun!” It was half question, half protest. “That sounds almost insane!”
He nodded, with a brief little grin.
“It is insane,” he said soberly. “I told his nibs, back there, that I had supplies to renew the converters. But I don’t. Just one tiny crystal of the monazite, on my father’s watch chain, and an idea in my head. If the idea doesn’t work, we may freeze to death in the Station.”
Gay shuddered a little, still doubtful.
“And new solar elements are just the beginning,” he told her. “We’ll have to build a field-projector to control the new Sun’s subspace. Probably the elements of the auxiliary converter can be rewired to do the trick. And still the biggest job is left. We’ll have to build an atomic bomb, to start the solar reaction, and carry it out to the Moon. If we can find the Moon in the dark, that is, on whatever new orbit the Fault has given it!”
For another long instant, Gay Ferrand looked into his eyes. Suddenly all the doubt melted from her.
“Jerry, you can do it!” she gasped. “I know you can.”
Jeremy kissed her, leaving the truck to its automatic controls.
“But there are still a few little problems to solve,” he reminded her presently. “If you happen to have anything that will write—My head is splitting from trying to remember sub-atomic conversion formulae!”
She found a pen and a book of CRO ration cards, and then took the wheel. Jeremy fell to furious calculation. He was still busy when she stopped the machine beneath the Outside Station.
They donned pressure suits, brought a power cable to the elevator. It lifted them to the Station. Shivering even in their heated suits, they climbed through silent blackness into the dome. Gay caught her breath. “Jeremy, the stars!” she sobbed.
He saw the diamond splendor of space, and knew that the Blot had passed at last. Against the broad silver track of the Milky Way, he found a tiny sharp black circle. “The Moon!” he whispered. “The Sun that is to be!”
He went back to the power room, and Gay followed to watch him. She saw him flatten three tins that had held crow milk, hammer them into a rough little ball, which he placed in the converter tube. He exhausted the tube again, through a vacuum system that gave upon the Outside.
“Now!” he whispered breathlessly.
A switch clicked. Battery current built up the sub-space. A blue transparent shell enclosed the crumpled ball. It rose into the metal cage, glowed red, then yellow. It fused to a perfect sphere, gleamed blue.
The oscillators began to purr like a great contented cat. Lights and heater coils came on. Air sighed from the ventilators. Jeremy turned to Gay. smiling, and took her in his arms. “Power!” he whispered. “Now, to make a Sun!”
A few minutes later the Station trembled to a far-off shock. A red trouble-light flashed above the telephone. Jeremy tried the instrument.
“Dead.” He looked solemnly at Gay. “We’re cut off. Probably a mine of the saurians. If the things come here—We’d better hurry, darling.”
Gay watched him, sometimes helping with her own deft hands, as he rebuilt the parts of the auxiliary converter into something that vaguely resembled the long pointing cylinder he had seen in the Sun-tower. He set it up under the dome.
“The control projector,” he explained. “You operate it with these dials.”
She watched again as he crumbled three more empty milk tins, to make a new solar element for the mole’s dead converter. A little bewildered, she watched him batter three more for the thing he called an atomic bomb. The heart of that was the little crystal of yellow-green monazite.
Then he took her in his arms again, kissed her thirstily. “Good-by, darling,” he whispered. “Till the new Sun shines!”
He put on the clumsy bulk of his pressure suit again, and clambered out through the air-lock. The stars were bright and unwinking above the ghostly desert of frozen air. The Moon had risen.
Gay stopped the roving circle of the searchlight, to rest upon the dark, awkward-seeming mass of the flying mole. Jeremy climbed into the machine and repaired the dead converter.
Lights and heaters shone again. He warmed up the reactor tube, and winked the lights in a farewell signal to Gay. The searchlight blinked in answer. The scream of the reactor rose into silence.
The flying mole floundered up through feathery drifts, driving a blast of phosphorescence back across the dome.
Jeremy soared out toward the Moon.
WHEN an excavator’s cutting wheel was heard, screaming against the durite wall of a tunnel street in New Chicago, panic shocked the disaster-shaken refuge city. The vengeful monsters of Yogroth had come to strike a final blow!
Hastily, at Mark Drake’s harried command, a counter-mine was prepared. Its detonation rocked the city. The invading mole crashed down with thousands of tons of debris into the level below.
The armored excavator, however, was not demolished. Bewildered rescuers dragged Jeremy Cord out of it, and started with him to a first aid station. He came back to consciousness. and made them take him to the upper level. Hollow-eyed, haggard, Mark Drake was speaking to an emergency session of the Regents.
“Demands of the war,” Jeremy heard him say, “have exhausted us. Tomorrow, even New Chicago will be blacked out, dead. Unless another of their mines gets us first.” His voice sank. “There’s nothing—”
Then he saw Jeremy, swaying in the doorway, streaked with dust and blood.
“Mr. First Regent. Gentlemen!” Jeremy’s voice was a mere halting croak. “I’ve news for you. The Fault has passed. Outside, a new Sun is shining. Already the air is rising.”
The hall fell silent, breathless.
“A new Sun!” Mark Drake cried. His characteristically handsome smile suddenly flashed again. “Then—after all—you did it, Jerry?”
Jeremy nodded, wearily. “I did,” he said. “And, until the Outside is warm enough, I can make new solar elements for the converters—out of old tin cans! Don’t need the isotope.”
“I knew you could!” Mark Drake gripped Jeremy’s bruised hand, called: “Bring in Morley Cord.”
A stir at the door, and Jeremy saw his mother’s pale face, breaking into an incredulous smile. Beside her was a tattered little man, limping and bald. Jeremy could just barely remember those alert mild blue eyes. “My thon! Jeremy, my thon!”
Jeremy stumbled, grinning eagerly, to meet them.
“The war is over, Morley,” Mark Drake was saying. “We won’t need the maps. I want you to go back to Yogroth and make peace with the reptiles.”
“You can promise Nanaiya,” Jeremy whispered, “that we will restore the forgotten secret, so that they can rekindle their dead Suns. Tell her also that our First Regent was really desperate and sincere in trying to save the remnants of humanity. His tactics simply happened to be wrong.”
Mark Drake, smiling handsomely, rose to nominate Jeremy Cord to take his place as First Regent. But Jeremy declined.
“Soon, men will be back in the freedom of the Outside,” he said. “Perhaps they won’t need a First Regent there. Anyhow, I haven’t time.” He grinned. “I’ve got to start back to the Station, and the new Sun’s control. Gay is waiting for me there.”
Crystal of Death
WHAT WERE THOSE MONSTERS FROM SOME FORGOTTEN AGE?
It is with extreme pleasure that we welcome Jack Williamson to the pages of STARDUST. The author of such great novels as THE LEGION OF SPACE, and THE LEGION OF TIME, can always be depended upon to turn out an unusual story. CRYSTAL OF DEATH is no exception.
Do the rays of the moon actually produce madness? Is there some strange force emanating from the Lunar surface which causes men to go mad? The author of this story tells you the answer, and in doing so provides a unique piece of weird fantasy.
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Fourteen days before we had left behind the waters of the mighty Negro River. For a fortnight we had been pushing up a small tributary stream through the gloom and ominous mystery of the Brazilian jungle. Its implacable, all-pervading spirit weighed oppressively upon us. It seemed that a sinister intelligence lurked in that dull twilight just beyond our vision, a malignant entity, baleful, waiting for us to come to our doom.
