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Evelyn and I ore engaged. Things are getting better at the office, too. What a chump a fellow is not to take pre- cautions against halitosis.
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Volume XXI
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SCIENCE-FICTION
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Feature Serial Novel:
THE LEGION OF TIME . .
s . Jack Williamson 4
A great author with another great story, and a genuinely new concept of time - travel. A true mutant story.
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"CATASTROPHE!" Edward E. Smith, Ph.D. 118
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The man of the past, of the present, and of the future meet the quintessence of
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STATIC Kent Casey
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4
LEGION OF
THE beginning of it for Dennis Lanning — the very beginning of his life — was on a hushed April evening of 1927. Then eighteen, Lan- ning was slender, small-featured, with straw-yellow hair which usually stood on end. He commonly wore a half-dif- fident smile — but his gray eyes could light with a fighting glint, and his wiry body held a quick and unsuspected strength..
A great MUTANT story New Concept of
In that beginning was the same fan- tastic contrast that ran through the ■ whole adventure: the mingling of every- day reality with the stark Inexplicable.
Lanning, that last term, shared a Cambridge apartment with three other Harvard seniors, all a little older than he. Wilmot McLan, the mathematician, was a slight man, grave and reticent, al- ready absorbed in his work. Quietly cheerful, studious Lao Meng Shan,
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presenting a time travel.
proud son of a mandarin of Szechwan, was eagerly drinking in the wonders of modern engineering. Good friends and swell fellows, both. But the one who stood always closest to Lanning was Barry Halloran.
Gigantic red-haired all-American tackle, Barry was, first and last, a fighter. Some stern, bright spirit of eternal rebellion he and Lanning shared in common. Companions in everything,
Two women of two mutually exclu- sive possible futures seek to enlist the aid of a man of the present — by demanding his death!
6
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION
they had been taking flying lessons to- gether at the East Boston airport.
The other three were out, however, on this drowsy Sunday evening, and the house was still. Lanning sat alone in his room, reading a thin little gray- bound book. The flyleaf was inscribed, “To Denny, from Wil — a stitch in Time!” It was Wil McLan’s first sci- entific work (which he had just pub- lished at his own expense) entitled. Re- ality and Change: The Nature of Time.
Deep-hidden in its abstruse mathe- matics, Lanning had sensed an excit- ing meaning. He leaned back, with tired eyes closed, trying to complete the tan- talizing picture he had glimpsed through the mist of symbols on the page. The book began with Minkowski’s famous dictum: “Space in itself, and Time in itself, sink to mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two retains an independent existence.”
Was Time, then, but another exten- sion of the universe; to-morrow as real as yesterday? What if one could leap forward ?
“Denny Lanning!”
A clear silvery voice had spoken his name. Dropping the book, he sat up- right in his chair. He blinked, swal- lowed. A queer little shudder went up and down his spine. The door was still closed, and there had been no other sound. But a woman was" standing be- fore him on the rug.
A plain white robe swept long to her feet. Her hair, a glowing mahogany- red, was held back with a blue, brilliant band like a halo. The composure of her perfect, classic face was almost stern. But, behind it, Lanning felt agony.
Before her, in two small hands, she held a thing about the size and shape of a football — but shimmering with splen- did prismatic flame, like a colossal, many-faceted diamond.
HER GRAVE EYES were on Lan- ning. They were wide, violet. Some-
thing in their depths — a haunting dread, a piercing, hopeless longing — choked him with emotion, dimmed his eyes. Then amazement came back, and he stumbled to his feet.
“Hello!” he gasped. “Yes, I’m Denny Lanning. But who are you?” His glance went to the locked door be- hind her. “How’d you get inside?”
A grave smile lit the white cameo of her face.
“I am Lethonee,” she said. Her voice, Lanning noticed, had an unfamiliar mu- sical rhythm. “And I am not really in your room, but in my own city of Jonbar. It is only in your mind that we meet, through the chronotron,”- r-her eyes dropped briefly to the immense flashing gem — “and only your study of Time made possible this complete rap- port.”
Open-mouthed, Lanning was drink- ing in the slim, clean youth of her, the glory of her hair, her calm, deep loveli- ness that was like an inner light.
“Lethonee ” he murmured, relish- ing the sound. “Lethonee Dream
or not, you are beautiful !”
A quick little smile, pleased and ten- der, rewarded him. But instantly it was gone, before the deep solemnity of trouble.
“I have come a long way to find you, Denny Lanning,” she said. “I have crossed a gulf more terrible than death. Will you help me?”
A queer, trembling eagerness had seized him. Incredulity struggled with a breathless hope. A throbbing ache was in his throat, so that he couldn’t speak. He walked uncertainly to her, and tried to touch the slim bare arms that held the great jewel. His quiver- ing fingers met nothing but air.
“I’ll help you, Lethonee,” he gulped at last. “But how can I?”
Her silver voice sank to a low, urgent tone. From the startling whiteness of her face, the great, violet eyes seemed to look far beyond the room.
THE LEGION OF TIME
7
"Because destiny has chosen you, Denny Lanning. The fate of the human race is on your shoulders. My own life is in your hand — and the doom of Jon- bar!’’
“Eh!” Lanning muttered. “How’s that?” He rubbed his forehead, be- wilderedly. “Where’s Jonbar?”
His wondering dread increased when the girl said : “Look into the chronotron, and I can show you Jonbar.”
She lifted the great flashing jewel, holding, its ends in her two small hands. Her eyes dropped to it. Colored rays shattered from it, blindingly. It ex- ploded into a prismatic glare. The fire- mist slowly cleared, and he saw — Jon- bar!
The lofty, graceful pylons of it would have dwarfed the skyscrapers of Man- hattan. Of shimmering, silvery metal, they were set immensely far apart, among green park-lands and broad, many-leveled roadways. Great white ships, teardrop-shaped, slipped through the air above them.
“That is my Jonbar, where I am,” the girl said softly. “Now let me show you the city that may be — New Jonbar — lying far-off in the mists of futurity.”
BRIGHT FLAME veiled the city, and vanished again. And Lanning saw another wondrous metropolis. The green hills along the horizon were the same. But the towers were taller, farther apart. And they shone with clean brilliant colors, against the wooded parks. The city was one artistic whole ; a single stupendous jewel whose beauty caught Lanning’s breath.
A reverent awe was in the girl’s voice when she whispered: “New Jonbar! Its people are the dynon.”
There were fewer ships in the air. But Lanning now saw tiny figures, clad it seemed in robes of pure, bright flame, launching themselves from lofty roofs and terraces, soaring above the parks in perfect, wingless freedom.
“They fly through adaptation to the power of the dymt," breathed the girl. “It makes them near immortal, almost — godlike! They are the perfect race to come.”
Prismatic flame hid the vision. The girl lowered the crystal in her hands. Lanning stepped back. He blinked be- wilderedly at the reading lamp, his books, the chair behind him. From that old, comforting reality, he looked back to the girl’s white wonder.
He spoke again, diffidently : “Lethonee Tell me, are you real?”
“I am real as Jonbar is.” Her voice was hushed and solemn. “You hold our destiny — to. give us life or death. That is a truth already fixed in the frame of Space and Time.”
“What — ” Lanning gulped, “what can I do?"
Dread was a shadow in her eyes.
“I don't know. The deed is dim in the flux of time. But you may strike for Jonbar — if you will. To win or to perish! I came to warn you of those who will seek to destroy you — and, through you, Jonbar.”
The rhythm of her voice was almost a chant, a prophecy of evil.
“There is the dark, resistless power of the gyrane, and black Glarath, the priest of its murderous horror. There are the monstrous hordes of the kothriti , and their savage commander, Sorainya.”
The white beauty of Lethonee had become almost stern. A sorrow dark- ened her eyes, yet they flashed with a deathless hatred.
“She is the greatest peril.” It was a battle-chant. “Sorainya, the Woman of War! She is the evil flower of Gy- ronchi. And she must be destroyed.”
Her voice fell, and Lethonee looked at Lanning over the giant crystal, her eyes full of a tender and almost childish concern.
“Or,” she finished, “she will destroy you, Denny.”
Lanning looked at her a long time.
8
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION
At last, hoarse with wonder, he said: “Whatever is going to happen, I’m will- ing to help — if I can. Because you are — beautiful. But still — what, exactly,
am I expected to do ?”
The words almost crackled from Lethonee’s lips: “Beware of Sorainya!” Then, her rhythmic voice once more soft and musical, “Denny, make me one promise. Promise me that you will not fly to-morrow.”
“But I’m going to!” Lanning cried. “Max — he’s the instructor — said that Barry and I could solo to-morrow, if the weather’s right. I couldn’t miss it.” • “You must,” said Lethonee. “Or Jonbar will be slain !”
Lanning met her violet eyes. Emo- tion had burned away some' barrier. He looked into her very soul — and found it beautiful.
“I promise,” he whispered. “I’ll not fly.”
“Thank you, Denny.” Her smile set a throbbing ache in his throat. “Now I must go.”
“No !’■ Alarm tore Lanning’s heart. “I don’t know half enough. Where you are, really. Or how I could find you again. Don’t go !”
“But I must.” Dread clouded her face again. “For Sorainya might follow me here. And if she finds that the crisis turns indeed on you, she will strive to take you— yes, destroy you ! I know Sorainya.”
“But — — ” Lanning gulped. “But — will I see you again?”
“It is your hand on the wheel of time,” the girl said gravely, “and not mine. Good-by, Denny.”
“But wait !” gasped Lanning. “I must tell you ! I ”
But the fire of a million sunlit prisms had burst again from the jewel in her hands. Lanning was momentarily daz- zled, blinded. Then, blinking, he found himself alone in the room, speaking to vacant air.
DREAM — or reality? The question racked him. Could she have been an actual person, come across the gulf of time from the remote, possible future? Or was he going crazy ?
Dazed, he picked up the little gray book, and reread a paragraph of Wil McLan’s: “To an external observer gifted with four-dimensional senses, our quadraxial universe must appear com- plete, fixed, and forever unchanging. The sweep of Time is no more than the hand of a subjective watch ; it is no more than the intangible ray of con- sciousness, illuminating human experi- ence. In any absolute sense, the events of yesterday and to-morrow are alike eternal as the structure of space itself.”
But the white, troubled beauty of Lethonee rose against the page. How did that fit with her tale of worlds that might be ?
He flung aside the book, helped him- self to a generous slug of Barry Hal- loran’s pre-war Irish whisky, and walked blindly down through Harvard Square. It was after three when at last he came in to bed, and then he slept with a dream of Lethonee.
He wanted to tell Barry, in the morn- ing, for they had been closer than brothers. But he thought the big red- head would only laugh— as he himself might have laughed if another had told him the thing. And he didn’t want laughter at his dream of Lethonee — not even from Barry.
Half sick with a confusion of wonder and doubt, of hopeless hope for another glimpse of her, and bitter dread that she had been all illusion, Lanning waited for the fatal hour.
“Buck up, kid !” Barry boomed at him, heartily. “I never thought you’d be shaky — Max says you’ve got the nerves of a hawk. I’m the one that should be turning green around the gills. Come out of it, and let’s go catch some sparrows !”
Lanning wanted to solo that morning
THE LEGION OF TIME
9
more than he had ever wanted anything — until he saw Lethonee. He had prom- ised not to fly. But what signified a promise made in a dream ?
He stood up, uncertainly — and then the phone rang. He had made his own expenses, that year, covering university activities for a Boston paper — and this was his editor. It was an assignment that could have been evaded. But, listen- ing, he saw the tragic eyes of Lethonee again, beyond her glowing jewel.
“Okay, Chief,” he said. “On the job !” He hung up and looked at Barry. “Sorry, old man. But business first. Tell Max I’ll be out to-morrow. And — happy landings, guy.”
“Tough luck, kid.”
The big tackle grinned, crushed his hand, and went out.
Lanning read in his own paper, four hours later, how Barry Halloran died. The training plane had gone out of control two thousand feet over Boston harbor, and plunged down into the Charles River Basin. Grappling hooks had brought part of the battered wreck- age up out of the mud, but the body had not been recovered.
Lanning shut his eyes against the black headlines, reeling. He was sick with a dread that was almost terror, numbed with a black regret. For Leth- onee had saved his own life, he knew — at the cost of Barry Halloran 's.
II.
LANNING felt no gratitude for the warning that had saved his life. Rather, a sick regret, an aching sense of guilt for Barry’s death. Yet he could feel no actual resentment toward Lethonee — the tragedy seemed a terrible proof of her reality — for in her grave, trou- bled beauty, surely, there had been no evil.
A kind of excitement, however, buoyed up Lanning for a few days, and relieved his grief. There was a bright
hope that Lethonee would return. Her memory was a haunting pain of loneli- ness, that would not die. Her enigmatic warnings, even the vague expectancy of peril, lent a spice to existence.
But life went on — after the funeral preached for Barry’s never-recovered body — as if Lethonee had never come. Lao Meng Shan returned to China, eager to put his new science at her service. Wil McLan was off to Europe, on a fellowship in theoretical physics.
And Lanning presently embarked for Nicaragua, on his first foreign press as- signment. American marines were straightening out the Sacasa-Chamorro fracas. .Barry’s uncle had offered him an advertising job. But a burning un- rest filled him, born of the conflicts of doubt and hope, wonder and grief, dread and bitter longing. He saw no way ahead, save to break old ties, to forget.
It was on the little fruit steamer, bound for Corinto, that he first saw Sorainya! And knew, indeed, that he would never forget, never escape the strange web of destiny flung across Space and Time to snare him.
Velvet night had fallen on the trop- ical Pacific. The watch had just changed, and now the decks were de- serted. Lanning, the only passenger, was leaning on the foredeck rail, watch- ing the minute diamonds of phosphor- escence that winged endlessly from the prow.
But his mind saw, instead, the great jewel that Lethonee had called the chronotron, and her slim haunting form behind it.
And it startled him strangely when a ringing golden voice, in pealing mockery of her own, called: “Denny Lanning!”
His heart leapt and paused. He looked up eagerly, and hope gave way to awed wonderment. For, flying beside the rail, was a long golden shell, shaped like an immense shallow platter. Silken cushions made a couch of it, and lying amid them was a woman.
10
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION
Sorainya — Woman of War !
Lethonee’s warning came back. For the long-limbed woman in the shell was clad in a gleaming, sleeveless crimson tunic of woven mail that yielded to her full lissom curves. A long, thin sword, in a jeweled sheath, lay beside her. She had put aside a black-plumed, crimson helmet, and thick masses of golden hair streamed down across her strong, bare arms.
The white, tapered fingers, scarlet- nailed, touched some control on the shell’s low rim, and it floated nearer the rail. Upraised on the pillows and one smooth elbow, the woman looked up at Lanning, smiling. Her eyes were long and brilliantly greenish. Across the white beauty of her face, her mock- ing lips were a long scarlet wound, voluptuous, malicious.
FLOWER OF EVIL— Lethonee’s words again. Lanning stood gripping the rail, and a trembling weakness shook him. Swift, unbidden desire overcame incredulity, and he strove desperately to be its master.
“You are Sorainya?” He held his tone grave and low. “I had warning to expect you.”
She sat up suddenly amid the cush- ions, as if a whip had flicked her. The green eyes narrowed, and fler body was tense and splendid in the gleaming mail. Her red mouth became a thin line of scorn.
“Lethonee!” She spat the name. “So that slut of Jonbar has found you?”
Lanning flushed with anger, and his fingers drew hard on the rail. He re- membered the cold glint of an answering hate in the eyes of Lethonee, her sadly stern ultimatum : “Sorainya must be de- stroyed.”
“So, you are angry Denny Lanning?” Her laugh was a mocking chime. “Angry, for a shadow? For Lethonee is but a phantom, seeking with lies and tricks to live — at the cost of other lives.
Perhaps you have discovered that?”
Lanning shuddered, and wet his lips.
“It’s true,” he whispered, "that she caused Barry’s death.”
The scorn had fallen like a mask from Sorainya’s face. Now she tossed her splendid head, and pushed back the tum- bled glory of her hair. The sea-green eyes danced an invitation, and she smiled.
“Lethonee is no more than a spectre of possibility.” Her tone was a suave caress. “She is less than a single speck of dust, less than a shadow on the wall. Let us forget her, Denny Lanning — shall we?”
Lanning gulped, and a tremor shook him.
Her bare arms opened, beckoning.
“But I am real, Denny. And I have come for you — to take you with me back to Gyronchi. It is a mighty empire, more splendid than the pallid dream of Jonbar. And I am its mistress.”
She stood up with one flowing move- ment, tall and regal in the scarlet mail. Her bare arms reached out, to help Lanning to the golden shell. Her cool, green eyes were shining with intoxicat- ing promise.
“Come, Denny Lanning. To rule with me in Gyronchi !”
Lanning’s hands gripped the rail un- til his knuckles cracked. His heart was pounding, and he drew a long shudder- ing breath.
“Why?” His voice rapped harsh and cold. “Of all men, why have you come for me?”
The shell drifted closer, and Sorainya smiled.
“I have searched all Space and Time for you, Denny Lanning. For we are the twain of destiny ! Fate has given us the keys to power. Together on the golden throne of Gyronchi, we can never fail. Come !”
Lanning caught a sobbing breath.
“A11 right, beautiful,” he gasped. “I don’t know the game. But — -you’re on !”
THE LEGION OF TIME
HE CLIMBED upon the rail, in the moonlight, and reached out his hand to take Sorainya’s.
“Denny — wait!” an urgent voice spoke beside him.
Lanning drew back instinctively, and turned. A ghostly figure in her straight white robe, Lethonee was standing by the rail, holding the prismatic fire of that colossal jewel between her hands. Her face was drawn, desperate.
“Remember, Denny!" her warning rang electric. “Sorainya seeks to de- stroy you !”
Sorainya stood stark upright upon the shell, her tense, defiant body splendid in the scarlet armor. Slitted, her green- ish eyes flamed with tigerish fury. Strong teeth flashed white in a snarl of hate. She hissed an unfamiliar word, and spat at Lethonee.
An Lethonee trembled, and caught a sobbing breath. Her face had drained to a deadly white, and her violet eyes were flaming. One word rang hard from her lips : “Go !”
But Sorainya turned to Lanning again, and a dazzling smile flashed across the blackness of her hate. Her long, bare arms opened again their white invitation.
“Come with me, Denny,” she whis- pered. “And let that lying ghost go back to her dead city of dream !”
Lethonee bit her pale lip, as if to con- trol her wrath.
“Look. Denny,” she warned, “where Sorainya would have you leap !”
She pointed down at the black tropic sea. And Lanning saw there the glit- tering phosphorescent trail that followed a shark’s swift fin. The shock of cold dread had chilled him, and he climbed stiffly back from the rail.
For he had touched — or tried to touch — Sorainya’s extended hand. And he had felt nothing at all.
Shuddering, he looked at the slim, white girl by the rail. He saw the gleam of tears in her eyes, and the pain
11
that ran like a hurning river beneath the proud composure of her face.
“Forgive me, Lethonee !” he whis- pered. “I am sorry — very sorry!”
Her voice was small, stricken: “But you were going, Denny ! Going — to
her!”
The golden shell had floated against the rail. A warrior-queen, regal, erect, Sorainya stood buckling on the golden sword. Her long, green eyes flamed balefully.
“Denny Lanning,” the bugle of her voice pealed cold, “it is written on the tablets of Time that we must be ene- mies, or — one! And Gyronchi, de-
fended by my kothrin — by Glarath and the gyrane — has no fear of you. But Jonbar is defenseless. Remember!”
One sturdy foot, scarlet-buskined, touched something at the rim of the yellow shell. And instantly, like a pro- jected image from a screen, she was gone.
Lanning turned slowly toward Leth- onee. Her face, beneath the band of blue that held her red-glinting hair, was still white and stiff with tragedy.
“Please,” he whispered. “Forgive me.”
No smile lit her solemn face.
“Sorainya is beautiful.” her voice came small and flat. “But if you ever yield to her, Denny, it is the end of Jonbar — and me!”
Lanning shook his head, dazed with a cold bewilderment.
“But why?” he demanded. “I don’t understand.”
THE WIDE, VIOLET eyes of Leth- onee looked at him for a long time. Once her lip stiffened, quivered, as if she were about to cry. But her voice, when at last she spoke, was grave and quiet.
“I’ll try to tell you, Denny.” Her face was illumined like a shrine by the shimmer of the jewel in her hands. “The World is a long corridor, from the Be- ginning of existence to the End. Events
12
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION
are groups in a sculptured frieze that runs endlessly along the walls. And Time is a lantern carried steadily through the hall, to illuminate the groups one by one. It is the light of awareness, the subjective reality of consciousness.
“Again and again the corridor branches, for it is the museum of all that is possible. The bearer of the lan- tern may take one turning, or another. And so, many halls that might have been illuminated with reality are left forever in the darkness.
“My world of Jonbar is one such pos- sible way. It leads through splendid halls, bright vistas that have no limit. Gyronchi is another. But it is a barren track, through narrowing, ugly passages, that comes to a dead and useless end.” The wide solemn eyes of Lethonee looked at him, over the slumberous flame of the jewel. Lanning tensed and caught his breath, as if a light, cold hand, from nowhere, had touched his shoulder.
“And you, Denny Lanning,” came the silver rhythmic voice, “are destined, for a little time, to carry the lantern. And — yours is the choice of reality.
“Neither I nor Sorainya can come to you, bodily — unless perhaps at the moment of your death. But, through a partial mastery of Time, we can each call to you, to carry the- lamp into our
different halls. Denny ”
The silver voice caught with emotion. “Denny, think well before you choose ! For your choice will bring life to one possible world. And it will leave an- other in the darkness, never to be born.” A choking lump had risen in Tan- ning’s throat. He looked at Lethonee, her slim white beauty shining pure and innocent in the jewel’s clear light.
“There can be no choice — not now!” he whispered huskily. “Because I love you, Lethonee. Just tell me what I must do, to settle the thing. And if — if I can ever come to you.”
Her fine head shook, in the blue halo.
“The time has not come for you to choose, Denny,” she said slowly. “And the event is vague and ambiguous in the mist of possibility.”
Lanning moved closer to her, and tried again to touch her arm — in vain.
“Just remember me, Denny, and what I have told you. For Sorainya still has her beauty, and black Glarath the gyrane’s power. Beware of Gyronchi ! And the hour will come.”
Her eyes dropped to the jewel, and her fingers caressed its bright facets. Splintering diamond lances burst from it, and swallowed her in fire. She was gone.
Shaken with a curious weakness, sud- denly aware of complete exhaustion, Lanning caught the rail. His eyes fell to the water, and he saw the glitter of the shark’s black fin, still cruising after the ship.
III.
HIS LIFE was a dusky corridor, and the present a lamp that he carried along it. Dennis Lanning didn’t forget Leth- onee’s figure of speech. And eagerly he looked forward to discovering her again, at some dark turning. But he walked down the hall of years, and looked in vain.
Nor could he forget Sorainya. De- spite revulsion from a ruthless evil he had sensed in her, despite Lethonee’s warning, he found himself sometimes dreaming of the warrior-queen in the splendor of her crimson mail. Found himself even dwelling upon the mysteri- ous menace of Gyronchi, an eagerness mingled with his dread.
The hall he walked was a corridor of war. An old hatred of injustice made him forever a grim champion against the Right of Might. War correspondent, then flying instructor, pilot, and mili- tary adviser, he served on four conti- nents.
He fought with pen as well as battle
THE LEGION OF TIME
13
plane. Once, waiting for Viennese doc- tors to persuade an obscure African amoeba to abandon his digestive tract, he wrote a utopian novel, The Road of Dawn, to picture the world that ought to be.
Again, in the military prison of a dic- tator whose war-preparations he had exposed, he wrote an historical auto- biography— the latest style among jour- nalists— in which he tried to show that the world was nearing a decisive con- flict between democratic civilization and despotic absolutism.
His scathing foreign dispatches, lay- ing bare oppression and imperialistic ag- gression, closed to him the frontiers of several nations.
In all those years, he had no glimpse of Lethonee. But once, on the field with the native army in Ethiopia, he woke in his tent to hear her grave warn- ing voice still ringing in his ears: “Denny, get up and leave your tent !”
He dressed hastily, and walked out through the camp in the thin, bitter wind of dawn. The tent, a few minutes later, was struck by an Italian bomb.
But Sorainya came to him, again.
It was a night in Madrid — the next year — where he had gone to join the Loyalist defense. He was sitting alone beside a little table in his hotel room, cleaning and loading his automatic. A queer little shudder passed over him, grimly reminiscent of the malaria he had contracted in the Chaco, covering the Jungle War. He looked up — and saw that long, shallow shell of yellow metal floating above the carpet.
Sorainya, in the same burnished, scar- let mail — and looking as if it had been five minutes since he had last seen her, instead of nine years — was lounging voluptuously on her silken cushions. A bare arm flung back the golden wealth of her hair, and her greenish eyes smiled up at him with a taunting insolence.
“Well, Denny Lanning.” Her voice was a husky, lingering drawl, and her
long eyes studied him with a bold curi- osity. “The ghost of Jonbar has guided you safely through the years. But has she brought you happiness?”
Lanning had grown rigid in his chair. He flushed, swallowed. The sudden white dazzle of her smile caught his breath.
“I am still the mistress of Gyronchi,” came the lazy caress of her voice. “And still the keys of fate are in our hands — if we but choose to turn them.”
Her white and indolent arm indicated a space on the silken couch beside her.
“I have come again, Denny, to take you back with me to the throne of Gyronchi. I can give you half a mighty empire — myself, and all of it ! Will you go, Denny?”
LANNING tried to control his breath. “Don’t forget, Sorainya,” he said, in a dead flat tone. “I saw the shark.”
She tossed back her head, and her hair fell like a yellow torrent across the colored cushions. And the white lure of her smile set a pain to throbbing in his throat.
“The shark would have killed you, Denny. But death alone can bring you to me — and to the strong new life the gyrane gives! For our lives were cast far apart in the Stream of Time. And not all the power of the gyrane can lift you out of the time-stream, living — for then the whole current must be de- flected. But the stream has small grasp upon a few dead pounds of clay. I could carry that to Glarath, to be restored by the gyrane.”
She came with a gliding, pantherine movement to her knees on the cushions. Both hands pushed the flowing gold of her hair behind her red-mailed shoul- ders. And her bare arms reached out, in wide invitation.
“Denny, will you come with me to- night?” urged the golden voice. “The way is in your hand.”
14
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION
Trembling, hot with desire, Lanning looked down at his hands. The auto- matic had slipped in his unconscious fingers, until its muzzle was pointed at his heart. His finger was near the trig- ger. One little pressure — it would be so like an accident.
Her indolent voice was seductive mu- sic : “Gyronchi is waiting for us, Denny. A world to rule ”
The white and gold and crimson of her beauty was a stabbing pain in his heart. His pulse was hammering. His finger curled around the cool steel of the trigger.
But sanity remained in one corner of his mind, and out of it spoke a voice like the quiet voice of Lethonee: “Remem- ber, Denny Lanning! You are carrying a light for the world to come.”
Carefully, he made his quivering fingers snap on the safety. He laid the gun down beside him on the little table. His voice a breathless rasp, he said, “No soap, Sorainya!”
The green eyes glittered, and her red lips snarled with rage. She flashed up- right.
“I warned you, Denny Lanning!” All the indolence gone, her voice crackled brittle and sharp. “Take the side of that phantom of Jonbar, and you shall perish with her. I sought your strength. But Gyronchi can win without it.”
With a tigerish savagery, she whipped out the long golden needle of her sword.
“When we meet again, it shall be at war. Guard yourself!”
A savage foot stamped down, and she was gone.
THOSE TWO antagonistic women set many a problem that Lanning could not solve. If they were actual visitors from conflicting possible worlds of fu- turity, he had no evidence of it save his own tortured memory. Many a weary night, pondering the haunting riddle, he wondered if he were going insane.
But a package that presently came to him in Spain contained another thin lit- tle book from Wilmot McLan, now the holder of many degrees and professor of astrophysics at a small western uni- versity. Inscribed, “To Denny, from Wil — another stitch in Time, to repair my last.” The volume was entitled Probability and Determination.
One underlined introductory para- graph Lanning searched desperately for a relevant meaning:
“The future has been held to be as real as the past, no more different from it than right is from left, the only directional in- dicator being k ; the constant correlating entropy and probability. But the new quantum mechanics, destroying the abso- lute function of cause and effect, must likewise annihilate that contention. There is no determination in small scale events ; consequently the ‘certainties’ of the macroscopic world are at best merely statistical. And probability, in the un- folding future, must be substituted for de- termination. The elementary particles of the old physics— electrons, photons, etc. — may be retained, located probably in a continuum of five dimensions. But any consideration of this hyper-space-time continuum must take note of a conflict- ing infinitude of possible worlds, only one of which, at the intersection of their geodesics with the advancing plane of the present, can claim reality. It is this new outlook of which we attempt a mathe- matical examination.”
Conflicting — possible worlds!
Those words haunted Lanning. Here, at last, was light. Here, in his old friend, was a possible confidant — the one man who might understand, who might tell him whether Lethonee and Sorainya were miraculous visitors out of Time, or — insanity.
At once he wrote McLan, outlining his story and requesting an opinion. De- layed, doubtless, by the military censors, the letter at last came back from Amer- ica, stamped Removed — Left no Ad- dress. An inquiry to the University authorities informed him that McLan had resigned to undertake private re-
THE LEGION OF TIME
15
search, and that his whereabouts were unknown.
And Lanning groped his way along, through the dark hall of wars and years, to 1938. Lao Meng Shan’s cable found him at Lausanne, recuperating from the war in Spain, the splinter of a shell still aching in his knee. He was writing an- other book.
Turned philosopher, he was trying to analyze the trends of the world, to pick out the influences of good and evil. The resolution of those conflicting forces, so he believed, would either establish the new technological civilization — or hurl the race into martial doom.
“Denny, American friend,” the cable ran, “humanity needs you. Will fly for China?”
Direct action had been the only ano- dyne for Lanning’s tortured mind. And the newspapers, that day, stirred his blood with accounts of hundreds of women and children killed by ruthless aerial bombardment. Ignoring the stiffening pain in his knee, he abandoned the ancient problem of good and evil, flew to Cairo, and caught a fast steamer east.
IV,
WINGED DOOM was awhisper in the sky. Sirens moaned warning of the pel chee — “flying engines”. Hapless Hankow had been swiftly darkened, but already yellow bursts of ruin and death had flared above in the north and east- ward along the river docks, where the first bombs fell.
Stop the raiders! was the frantic, hopeless order.
Limping in his game left leg, where bits of steel still made an excellent barometer of impending weather, Lan- ning stumbled across the field to the battered, antiquated American plane that jabbering mechanics had roaring in the line. The cool of midnight cleared the sleep from his head, and he shuddered
to the drumming in the sky.
Lao Meng Shan, now his observer, was already beside the machine, dole- fully shaking his watch. Solemnly, in habitual careful English, he shouted above roaring motors : “Our orders, to- night, are over-confident. For my watch stopped when the first bomb struck. That is a very bad omen.”
Lanning never laughed at supersti- tion— few fliers do. But his lean face smiled in the darkness.
“Once, Shan,” he shouted in reply, “an ancient warrior named Joshua stopped the sun until his battle was won. Maybe that’s the omen. Let’s go!
Adjusting his helmet, the Chinese shrugged.
“I think it means that time is stopped for us. If it is written, however, that we must die for China ”
He clambered deliberately into the rear cockpit.
Lanning tried the controls, signaled the ground crew, and gunned the motor. The machine lifted toward the thrum- ming in the sky. The fact that most of the defending aircraft had been bombed into the ground on the day before, he thought grimly, was a more conclusive omen than the watch.
Darkness was a blanket on the city northward, hiding cowering millions. Troop lorries and fire trucks shrieked through the streets. Anti-aircraft bat- teries were hammering vainly. Probing searchlights flared against the white puffs of exploding shells, uselessly seek- ing the raiders.
Spiraling for altitude, Lanning nar- rowed gray eyes to search a thin cloud- wisp above. He winced to a yellow flare beneath. For his mind could see the toppling wreckage of a splendid modern city ruined, hear shrieks and groans and wailing cries for aid, even smell the sharp odor of searing human flesh. His body tensed, and he fired a warming burst from twin guns.
16
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION
The wraith of frozen mist was at last beside them. It burned white, abruptly, in the glare of a searchlight. And a dark bomber dropped out of it, sway- ing between the gray mushrooms of shells.
Lanning tipped the ancient plane after it, into a power dive. Shan, open- mouthed, yelling, waved cheerfully. Their machine guns clattered. The bomber swerved, and defending guns flickered red. But Lanning held his sights on it, grimly. Black smoke erupted from it suddenly, and it top- pled downward.
One
HE WAS pulling up the battered ship — gingerly — when a roving searchlight caught them, held them for a fatal mo- ment. Black, ominous holes peppered the wings. Glass shattered from the instruments before him. A sudden
numbness paralyzed his shoulder.
The betraying light had passed. But gasoline reeked in his nostrils, and a quick banner of yellow flame rippled backward. Twisting in the cockpit, he saw behind them the second enemy, div- ing out of the cloud still firing.
And he saw the dark blood that stained Shan’s drawn face.
They were done for. But Shan
grinned stiffly, raised a crimson hand to gesture. Lanning flung the creaking ship through a reckless Immelmann turn. The attacker was caught dead ahead, still firing.
A red sledge of agony smashed all feeling from Lanning’s right leg. But he held straight for the other ship, guns hammering. It dived. With flaming gasoline a roaring curtain beside him, Lanning clung grimly to its tail. The tiny puppets of its crew jerked and slumped. Then it, too, began to burn.
Two !
Explosion buffeted Lanning’s head, deafening. Metal fragments seared past. Hot oil spattered his seared face. The
motor ceased to run, and a new tortur- ing tongue of yellow licked back.
Strangling, Lanning sideslipped, so that the wind stream would carry away the heat and suffocating fumes. He looked back at Shan. The crimson face of the little Oriental was now a dread- ful mask. With a queer, solemn little grin, he held up something in a dripping hand — his watch.
A cold shudder went down Lanning’s spine. He had never laughed at super- stition. And there was something ter- rible, now, in this hint that something could perceive the future.
Then stark incredulity froze Shan’s grin, and he pointed stiffly. Lanning’s eyes followed the crimson-streaming arm. And a cold hand stopped his heart. For'something was flashing down beside them.
Something — incredible.
It was a queer-looking ship — or the gray, shining ghost of a ship. It was wingless, flat-decked — like no ship the sky had ever seen. Its bright hull sug- gested that of a small submarine, save that its ends terminated abruptly with two massive disks of metal, which now shone greenishly.
A singular crew lined the rail, along the open deck. At first they seemed spectral and, like the ship, unreal. Sev- eral were strange in odd, trim tunics of silver-gray and green. But there were a few in familiar military uniforms — a French colonel — an Austrian lieutenant and a tall, lank captain of the Royal Air Force.
Lanning’s mouth fell open, and a sud- den agony of joy wrenched his sick body. For he saw Barry Halloran!
Unchanged since that fatal April day of ten years ago, even wearing the same baggy cords and football sweater, the gigantic tackle stood among the rest ! He saw Lanning, and grinned, and waved an eager greeting.
The phantom craft swept closer, dropping with the burning plane.
THE LEGION OF TIME
17
Lanning’s pain was drowned in won- derment, and he ceased to breathe. He saw a thin, white-haired man — a fig- ure puzzlingly familiar — busy beneath the small, crystal dome that capped a round metal turret, amidships. A crys- tal gun thrust out of the turret. A broad blinding-yellow ray funpeled sud- denly from it and caught at the plane.
LANNING felt a momentary wrench- ing pull. The plane and his body re- sisted that surge of mysterious force. Red mighty hands of agony twisted his hurt body, squeezed intolerably. Then something yielded. And the spectral ship was suddenly real, approaching.
Yellow flame wrapped Lanning again, for his fingers had slipped useless from the stick. He coughed, strangled, bat- tled a sea of suffocating darkness. Sear- ing torture bathed him. Then he was being drawn over the rail of the stranger, out of the furnace.
The ghost ship seemed real now. Quick, tender hands were laying them on stretchers. But Lanning was star- ing up at big, red-headed Barry Hal- loran, magically unchanged by ten years of time.
“Sure, old man, it’s me!” boomed the once-familiar voice. “Just hold that line ! These guys will fix you up as good as new — or better. And then we’ll have a chin. Guess I’m way behind the times.”
A spectral ship, manned with a crew of the dead ! Lanning had not been superstitious — not even, in the conven- tional sense, religious. His faith had been a belief in the high destiny of man. He had expected death to blot him out, individually ; the race, alone, was eternal. This Stygian ship, therefore, was ut- terly incredible — but it looked decidedly interesting.
“Barry!” he whispered. “Glad — see you ”
A wave of shadow dimmed his eyes. Blood was welling from his aching
AST— 2
shoulder, hot and sticky against his body. A dull throbbing came from his shat- tered leg. Dimly, he knew that the meh in gray and green were picking up the stretcher. Awareness faded.
V.
WHEN Dennis Lanning began to be fully conscious again, it seemed that he had always been in that small, green- walled room. His old roving life, rest- less and haunted, seemed dream- like, remote beyond reality — all save, somehow, the visitations of Lethonee and Sorainya.
Dimly he remembered an operating room — blinding lights and bustling men in white masks, the gleam and tinkle of instruments, Barry Halloran standing reassuringly near. Then a whiff of some strange anaesthetic.
Shan was lying in the opposite bed, quietly sleeping. And Lanning, in some forgotten interval, had met the two others in the ward. They were Silvano Cresto, Spanish ace shot down in the Moroccan war; and Willie Rand, U. S. N., missing when the ill-fated air- ship Akron was destroyed at sea.
The latter was now propped up on his pillows, inhaling through a cigarette. He grinned. “Smoke ?”
“Thanks.” Lanning caught the tossed white cylinder, felt a dull twinge from his bandaged shoulder. He asked, “What’s up?”
Willie Rand exhaled white vapor.
“Dunno.”
“What is this — ship? Where’re we going?”
Rand blew a great silver ring.
“Her name’s the Chronion. Cap’n Wil McLan. We’re bound, they say, for a place called Jonbar — wherever that is!”
Wonder stiffened Lanning. Wil Mc- Lan ! His old roommate, the student of Time. And Jonbar ! Lethonee’s city.
18
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION
that she had showed him, far-off in dim futurity.
“But why?” he gasped. “I don’t un- derstand !”
“Nor me. All I know, messmate, I turned loose when the wreckage of the Akron was rolling over on me, and tried to dive clear. Something smashed into me, and I woke up on this bed. That was maybe a week ago ’’
“A week!” muttered Lanning. “But the Akron — that was back in ’thirty- three !”
Rand lit another cigarette from the first.
“Time don’t make no difference here. The last man on your bed was the Austrian, Erich von Ameth. He came from the Isonzo front, in 1915. The one in the Chink's bed was the French- man, Jean Querard. He was blown up in the defense of Paris, in 1940.”
“Forty!” whispered Lanning, softly. Was to-morrow,, then, already real? Lethonee? And Sorainya?
A brisk man in gray and green hastened into the ward, gently removed their cigarettes and replaced them with odd-looking thermometers. Lanning took the instrument out of his mouth.
“Where’s Barry?” he demanded. “I want to see Barry Halloran. And Wil McLan.”
“Not now, sir.” The rhythmic ac- cent was curiously familiar — it was like Lethonee’s! “It’s time for your last dynat intravenous. You’ll be able to get up when you wake. Now just lie back, sir, and give me your arm.”
He put back the thermometer. An- other man rolled in a wheeled instru- ment table. Deft hands bared and swabbed Lanning’s arm. He felt the sting of a hypodermic. And quiet sleep came over him.
When at last he woke, it was to a new, delicious sense of health and fitness. The bandages were gone. His shoulder, his shattered leg, felt well and whole again.
Even the steel no longer ached in his knee.
Shan, he saw, was gone from the op- posite bed. In it lay a big man, swathed in bandages, regarding him with dark, stolid Slavish eyes. A silent orderly came in, thrust a dozen little glowing needles into the Russian’s bandages, and laid Lanning’s old uniform, cleaned and neatly repaired, beside his bed.
“Boris Barinin,” he gave brisk in- formation. “Soviet rocket-flier. We picked him up near the pole in 1942. Smashed, starved, frozen. The dynat repair-hormone activators will take him through, however. You may go above, sir.”
LANNING put on the uniform, elated with his new sense of well-being, and eagerly mounted a companion to the deck of the Chronion. It was seventy feet long, between the polished faces of the great metal disks, broken only with the domed turret amidships. Some mechanism throbbed softly below.
The ship must be moving. But where ?
Looking about for a glimpse of the sun, or any landmark, Lanning could see only a curiously flickering blue haze. He went to the rail, peered down. Still there was nothing. The Chronion hung in a featureless, blue abysm.
The flicker in the azure mist was oddly disturbing. Sometimes, he thought, he could almost see the outline of some far mountain, the glint of waves, the shapes of trees or buildings — incongru- ous, impressions, queerly flat. Two- dimensional things piled one upon an- other. It was like a movie screen, he thought, upon which the frames were being thrown a thousand times too fast, so that the projected image became a dancing blur.
“Denny, old man !”
It was a glad shout, and Barry Hal- loran came to him with an eager step. Lanning gripped his hand, seized his
THE LEGION OF TIME
19
big shoulder. It was good to feel its hard young power, to see the reckless freckled grin.
“You’re looking fit, Barry. Not a day older !”
The blue eyes were wide with awe.
“Funny business, Denny. It’s ten days since they picked me up, trying to swim away from that smashed crate in the Charles, with both legs broken. But — you’ve lived ten years !”
Lanning shook his fine-chiseled head, bewildered.
“What’s ahead of us, Barry? What’s it all about?”
The big tackle scratched the unkempt tangle of his red hair.
“No savvy, Denny. Wil has prom- ised us a scrap, all right. And it’s to save this place they call Jonbar. But what the odds are, or who we’re going to fight, or how come — I don’t know.”
“I’m going to find out,” Lanning said. “Or try. Where’s Wil McLan?”
“He’s on his bridge. I’ll show you the way.”
They met four men in the gray and green, just coming on the deck carry- ing two rolled stretchers. Following them was the little group of fighting men in their various uniforms. Lao Meng Shan grinned happily to see Lan- ning, and presented the rest.
They were the Spaniard, Cresto ; Wil- lie Rand; the lank British flier, Court- ney-Pharr; hard-faced Erich von Ar- neth; dapper little Jean Querard; and Emil Schorn, a blue-eyed herculean Prussian, who had been taken from a burning Zeppelin in 1917.
"Where we go?” Cresto shrugged, white teeth flashing through his swarthy grin. “Quien sabe? Anyhow, amigos, this is better than hell! Verdddf” He laughed.
"We are fighting men,” rumbled Emil Schorn, grimly smiling. "We go to fight. Ach, ’s ist genug!”
“Quite a gang, eh?” Barry Halloran led Lanning on, to a small metal door in the turret. Inside, another man in gray and green waited alertly behind a bulky thing like a cannon with a bar- rel of glass. “You’ll find Wil up under the dome.”
Lanning climbed metal steps. Stand- ing behind a bright wheel, under the flawless shell of crystal, he came upon a slight, strange little man — or the shat- tered wreck of a man. His breath sucked in to the shock of sympathetic pain. For the stranger was hideous with the manifold print of unspeakable agony.
#
THE HANDS — restlessly fumbling with an odd little tube of bright-worn silver that hung by a thin chain about his neck — were yellow, bloodless claws, trembling, twisted with pain. The whole thin body was grotesquely stooped and gnarled, as if every bone had been broken on a torture wheel.
But it was the haggard, livid face, cross-hatched with a white net of ridged scars that chilled Lanning with its hor- ror. Beneath a tangled abundance of loose white hair, that face was a stiff, pain-graven mask, terrible to see. Dark, deep-sunken, the eyes were somber wells of agony — and of a deathless, brooding hatred.
Strangely, those dreadful orbs lit with recognition.
“Denny!” It was an eager whisper, but queerly dry and voiceless.
The little man limped quickly to meet him, thrust out a trembling hand that was thin and twisted and broken, hideous with a web of scars. His breath was a swift, whistling gasp.
Lanning tried to put down the won- dering dread that shook him. He took that frail dry claw of a hand, and tried to smile.
"Wil?” he whispered. “You are Wil McLan?”
20
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION
He choked back the other, fearful question: IV hat frightful thing has hap- pened to you, IVil?
“Yes, Denny,” hissed that voiceless voice. “But — I’ve lived forty years
more than you have. And ten of them in Sorainya’s torture vault.” Lanning started to that name. And the old man stiffened as he spoke it, and something flared in his hollow eyes — the baleful fire of hate, Lanning thought it was, that kept his shattered body alive.
“I’m an old man, Denny,” the dry rasping ran on. “I was fifty-three when the Chronion was launched on the time- stream, in 1960. The ten years in Gy-
ronchi ” The seamed face went
white, the whisper sank. “They were a thousand! And the last four years, in Jonbar, I've been preparing for our cam- paign.”
His gnarled body came erect with a tense and desperate energy. A grim light flamed in his sunken eyes.
“An old man !” he husked again. “But not too old to fight Gyronchi ! The dynat has given me life enough for that.”
A sudden eager hope had risen in Lanning, above his wonder and dread.
“Jonbar?” he cried. “Then — then
have you seen a girl named Lethonee?” Desperately, he searched that scarred and tortured face. A painful pulse was throbbing in his throat. The tension of his hope was agony. Was it possible — possible that that “gulf more terrible than death” could now be crossed?
The old man nodded, slowly. The stern strength of hate seemed to ebb out of him, and the bleak grimness of his face was lit with a stiff little smile.
“Yes, Denny,” his whisper came softly. “Indeed I know Lethonee. It is she who set me free from the dungeons of Sorainya. It is for her, and her peo- ple, that we must fight — or Gyronchi will obliterate them.”
Lanning caught his breath. Trem- bling, his fingers touched Wil McLan's
twisted, emaciated shoulder.
“Tell me, Wil," he begged. “This is all a riddle — a crazy, horrible riddle. Where is Jonbar? Can I go to Leth- onee, help her? And, Sorainya ”
Dread choked him, “What — what did she do to you ?”
“I’ll tell you, Denny — presently.”
McLan’s hollow eyes flashed to the dials of a bewildering instrument board. Moving with a swift precision that amazed Lanning, his gnarled fingers touched a series of levers and keys, spun a polished wheel. He whispered some order into a tube, peered ahead through the crystal dome. An alert, surprising strength moved his shattered frame.
“Presently,” his hoarse whisper came aside to Lanning. “As soon as this task is done. Watch, if you like.”
STANDING wonderingly behind him, Lanning stared out through the crystalline curve of the dome. The blue, enveloping haze flickered more violently. Bent over a creeping dial, McLan tapped a key. And the blue was gone.
The Chronion was flying low, over a gray, wave-tossed sea. It was late of a gloomy afternoon, and thick mists veiled the horizon. The little craft shuddered, abruptly, to the crash of mighty guns.
Lanning looked questioningly at Wil McLan. A twisted arm pointed, si- lently. And Lanning saw the long, gray shapes of battle-cruisers loom suddenly out of the haze, rocking as they erupted smoke and flame.
McLan tapped the keyboard beyond the wheel, and the Chronion slipped for- ward again. The turret revolved be- neath them, and the crystal gun thrust out. Below, the stretcher crews moved alertly to the rail.
Peering through the fog of battle at the reeling ships, Lanning distinguished the Union Jack, and then, on another vessel, the German imperial standard. Suddenly, breathless with incredulous
THE LEGION OF TIME
21
awe, he fitted this chaotic scene into his rubbed tiny beads of sweat from his knowledge of naval history. scarred forehead.
“The Defense and the Warrior!” he “Well, Denny,” he whispered. “One gasped. “Attacking the W eisbaden! more man to fight for Jonbar.”
Is this — Jutland?” “Now!” demanded Lanning, breath-
Wil McLan glanced down at the less. “Can you explain?” dial.
“Yes. This is May 31, 1916. We VI
await the sinking of the. Defense.”
Through the haze of acrid smoke, the LEANING against the bright rim of Chronion slipped nearer the attacking his wheel, Wil McLan pushed back the British vessels. Suddenly, then, the snow-white shock of his hair. Then, as German cruiser fleet loomed out of the if arranging his thoughts, he began mist, seeking with a hurricane of fire fingering with twisted broken hands the to cover the stricken W eisbaden. Two white scars that seamed his face, and terrific salvoes rocked the doomed flag- the pendant silver tube, ship Defense, and it was lost in a sheet “Please forgive my lack of a voice, of flame. Denny,” his hoarse whisper came at
The intermingled battle-cruisers of last. “But once in the dungeon, when both fleets were still plunging through I had had nothing to drink for a week the clouds of battle, great guns thun- but the blood of a rat, and was delirious derously belching smoke and death, as and screaming with thirst, Sorainya had Wil McLan brought the Chronion down molten metal poured down by throat, where the Defense had vanished. Shat- And not even the dynat can grow new tered wreckage littered the sea, rushing vocal cords. She’ll pay for that !” into a great whirlpool where the flag- Hate had flared in the sunken eyes ship had sunk. again, and drawn the gnarled body to
A long helix burned incandescent in a taut rigidity. But the old man seemed the crystal gun, and a broad yellow ray to make an effort to compose himself, poured out into the drifting smoke. His He unclenched his hands, and his twisted sweater stripped off, Barry Halloran face tried to smile. He spoke more de- leapt overboard, carrying a rope. He liberately. “Time was always a chal- was dragged back, through the ray, tow- lenge to me. When science lived in a ing a limp survivor. Dripping blood simple continuum of four dimensions, and brine, the rescued sailor was laid with Time the fourth, its conquest ap- on a stretcher, rushed below. peared relatively simple — through some
Courtney-Pharr was poised to dive, application, perhaps, of the classical when the steel prow of the disabled Newtonian dynamics.
Warspite plunged suddenly out of the “But Max Planck with the quantum blinding smoke. He stumbled fearfully theory, de Broglie and Schroedinger back. Lanning caught his breath. It with the wave mechanics, Heisenberg had run them down ! with matrix mechanics, enormously com-
But Wil McLan tapped a key, spun plicated the structure of the universe — the shining wheel. Green radiance lit and with it the problem of Time, the great terminal disks. And the bat- “With the substitution of waves of Sling fleets were swept away into blue, probability for concrete particles, the flickering twilight. The broken old world lines of objects are no longer the man sighed with weary relief, and fixed and simple paths they once were.
Save teveralcenl* a pack ! Try Avalon Cigarette*! Cellophane wrap. Union made.
22
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION
Geodesics have an infinite proliferation of possible branches, at the whim of sub- atomic indeterminism.
“Still, of course, in large masses the statistical results of the new physics are not much different from those given by the classical laws. But there is a fun- damental difference. The apparent re- ality of the universe is the same — but it rests upon a quicksand of possible change.
“Certainty is abolished.
“Let a man stand on a concrete floor. It is no longer certain that he will not fall through it. For he is sustained only by the continual reaction of atomic forces, and they are governed by prob- ability alone.
“It is merely a very excellent statisti- cal probability that keeps the man from radiating heat until his body is frozen solid, or absorbing it until he bursts into flame. From flying upward into space in defiance of Newton’s laws, or dissolv- ing into a cloud of molecular particles.
“Mere probability is all that is left. And my first actual invention was a geodesic tracer, designed for its analysis. It was a semi-mathematical instrument, essentially a refinement of the old har- monic analyzer. Tracing the possible world-lines of material particles through Time, it opened a window to_ futurity.”
The hoarse whisper paused, and old Wil McLan limped to the side of the dome. His scarred, trembling hands lifted a black velvet cover from a rectangular block of some clear crystal mounted on the top of a metal cabinet.
“Here is the chronoscope,” he said. “The latest development of the instru- ment. Scansion depends upon a special curved field, through which a sub- etheric radiation is bent into the time- axis, projected forward, and reflected from electronic fields back to the in- strument. A stereoscopic image is ob- tained within the crystal screen, through selective fluorescence to the beat fre-
quencies of the interfering carrier waves projected at right angles from below. But I’ll show you Gyronchi.”
THE OLD MAN snapped a switch, manipulated dials at the end of the crystal block. It lit with a cloudy green. The green cleared, and a low cry escaped Lanning’s lips.
For, microscopically clear within the crystal, he saw a miniature world. A broad, silver river cut a fertile green plain dotted with villages. Beyond the river rose two hills.
One was crowned with a tremendous castellated citadel. Its frowning walls and mighty towers were gleaming red metal. Above them flowed banners of yellow and crimson and black. A mas- sive gate opened in the foot of the hill, as he watched, and an armored troop poured out.
“Watch the marchers,’’ rasped Mc- Lan.
Lanning bent closer to the crystal block. Suddenly it seemed that he was looking through a window, into an actual world. He found the soldiers again, and uttered a muffled cry.
“They aren’t men!” he gasped. “They’re — insects !”
“They are ants,” came the whisper of McLan, “hypertrophied mutations pro- duced by the gyrane. They are the kotlirin, Sorainya’s savage horde. That is her castle on the hill, where she — held me. But look at the other hill.”
Lanning found it, topped with a tem- ple of ebon black. The building was vast, but squat and low, faced with end- less colonnades of thick, square columns. From the center of it rose a beam of blackness, of darkness thick and tangi- ble, that widened into the sky like the angry funnel of a vast, symmetrical tor- nado.
“The temple of the gyrane," husked Wil McLan, “where Glarath rules.” He
THE LEGION OF TIME
23
was adjusting the dials again. “But watch !”
A village of flimsy huts swam closer. The marching column of gigantic, up- right ants was swiftly surrounding it, driving the villagers — a fair-skinned, sturdy-looking folk, although ragged and starved — before them from the fields.
“This happened while I was in prison,” the old man rasped. “The of- fense of the people was that they had not paid their taxes to Sorainya and their tithes to the gyrane. And they had no grain to pay them, because So- rainya and her lords — hunting a con- vict for sport — had trampled and de- stroyed the fields.”
Armed with heavy golden axes and short thick guns of crimson metal, as well as with frightful mandibles, the six- limbed force made a terrible ring about the frightened village. And now an armored tanklike vehicle came down from the red citadel, and through the line of ants. A hot white beam flickered out of it, and miserable buildings ex- ploded into flame. The wind carried a wall of fire across the village.
A slim human figure, in black-plumed scarlet armor, sprang from the tank to join the great black ants. A thin yel- low sword played swiftly, cutting down the men and women and children that fled from the merciless flames.
The slaughter soon was done. That figure turned away from the smoking desolation, flung up the crimsoned sword in triumph, slipped back the helmet. A flood of yellow hair fell across the scarlet mail.
Lanning’s breath sucked in, and a bright pain pierced his heart.
“Why, that — ” he gasped, “that’s — Sorainya !”
“Yes, Sorainya,” whispered Wil Mc- Lan. “The warrior-queen of Gyronchi.”
HE SNAPPED a switch, and that grim scene dissolved in the pellucid
transparency of the crystal block. His hollow eyes lifted slowly to Lanning, and in them was rekindled the slumber- ous flame of hate. His gnarled hands knotted and relaxed, and lifted once more to fondle the little, worn, bright cylinder of silver that hung from his throat.
“It happened,” the hoarse voiceless gasp went on, “that Gyronchi was the first future world, out of all those pos- sible, that the chronoscope revealed. And I saw Sorainya, splendid in her armor, flying on the back of a gigantic winged ant. .
“You have seen that she is — well — at- tractive. And at first, the range of the instrument was limited to her youth, where scenes of — barbarity are less fre- quent. Remember, Denny, I was thirty years younger when I first saw her, in 1945. Her glorious beauty, the military- pomp of her empire — they seemed very foreign to my old scholar’s life. But I — ” the old man gulped, “I — loved her.
“Neglecting other possible worlds that I might have explored, I followed her, for months — years. I didn’t know, then, the fatal change the temporal ray was causing.” His white head bowed. For a moment he was speechless. “But no process whatever can reveal the state of an electron without changing that state — a consequence of indeterminism. Even the sub-quanta of my scanning ray were absorbed by the atoms that reflected them. The result was an increase in the probability factor of Gyronchi — that is the root of all the tragedy.”
The scarred face made a grimace of pain.
“The blame is mine. For — before I was aware of it — the absorption had lessened the probability of all other pos- sible worlds, so that Gyronchi was the only one the limited power of my in- strument could reach. And that blinded me to the crime that I was doing.
24
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION
“I hope you can understand my pas- sion for Sorainya.”
Lanning’s hoarse and breathless whis- per was an echo of his own : “I can.” The sunken eyes flamed again, and McLan fondled the silver tube.
“I watched her, with the chrono- scope,” the rasping words ran on. “Sometimes I was driven to despair by her remoteness in Time and probability — and sometimes to desperate effort. For I resolved to conquer Time, and go to Gyronchi.
“In 1952, after seven years of effort, I was able to communicate. By increas- ing the power and focal definition of the sub-etheric temporal radiation, I was able to project a speaking image of my- self to Sorainya’s fortress.”
Agony stiffened McLan’s scarred face. His lean jaw set. His breath came in rasping gusts, and it was half a minute before he could speak again.
“And so I made suit to Sorainya. At first she seemed puzzled and alarmed. But, after I had made several bodiless visits to her apartments, her attitude changed suddenly. Perhaps she had got advice from Glarath!”
His clenched hands cracked.
“She smiled,” the old man rasped. “She welcomed me and asked me to re- turn. And she began to ask about my discoveries — saying that perhaps the priests of the gyrane, being themselves able scientists, could solve my remain- ing problems. If I could come to Gy- ronchi, she promised, I might share her throne.”
Lanning bit his lip and caught a gasp- ing breath. Memory of Sorainya’s vis- its mocked him. But he did not inter- rupt.
“A mistrust of the priests, for- tunately,” McLan went on, “kept me from divulging very much. But So- rainya’s bland encouragements, her ly- ing smiles, redoubled my frantic ef- forts.
“THERE IS a terrific resistance to the displacement of any body in time. For the geodesics are anchored in the future, as wrell as in the past. The re- moval of a living person — which might warp all futurity — is impossible. And even to dislodge inert matter requires tremendous power.
“Nothing less than atomic energy, I soon perceived, could even begin to over- come that resistance. I set out, there- fore, with the searching ray of the chronoscope, to discover the secret of the atom from future science. And there I mot a curious difficulty.
“For the instrument — which, after all, can only analyze probabilities — some- times queerly blurred the fine detail of script or printing. I studied the works of many future scientists — of John Barr and Ivor Gyros and many more. But essential words always faded.
“There is a law of sequence and pro- gression, I found at last, operating along the fifth, rather than the temporal di- mension, which imposes inexorable lim- its. It is that progression which actu- ally creates reality out of possibility. And it is that higher law which prohibits all the trite absurdities met with in the old speculation about travel in Time, such as the chronic adventurer who re- turns to kill himself or his grandfather. The old logic of cause and effect is by no means abolished, but merely elevated to a higher dimension.
“The principle of the atomic energy- converter came at last only through in- dependent research based on various scraps of knowledge. I built the first successful working model in 1958. It developed eight thousand horsepower — and I could carry it in one hand! But listen.”
He paused, leaned his haggard, scarred head to hear the soft thrumming that pulsed up through the deck. His hollow eyes shone with a weary triumph.
“There you hear the power of three
THE LEGION OF TIME
25
hundred Niagaras, fed from the merest trickle of water. For each gram of mat- ter converted yields 900 quintillion ergs of energy — enough, if it escaped, to turn the ship into a puff of highly incan- descent gas.
“The very absorption of the temporal ray, which had so troubled me, now provided a resistance against which re- action was possible. An adaptation of the special field gave me a definite mo- ment along the time axis.
"Those two discoveries — driving power and reactive medium — made the Chronion possible. For two years I worked on it desperately. Designed only for travel in time — not for a fight- ing machine— it was finished in June, 1960.
“At once, from my lonely laboratory in the Colorado Rockies, I set out for Gyronchi.” The rasping whisper fell raw-edged, bitter. “Fool, blind with passion, I hoped to reach Sorainya and share her throne !”
A spasm of agony racked the white, tortured face.
VII.
THE GASPING whisper paused. The old man limped swiftly about the dome, reading dials and gauges. His gnarled, scarred hands deftly set con- trols, moved the shining wheel. Aware of the soft, steady thrum of the atomic converters beneath, Lanning realized that the Chronion was moving again, through the blue flickering chasm. On another incredible flight through Time?
Wil McLan at last looked back to him, with hollow, haunted eyes.
“I went alone,” resumed the painful rasp. “The Chronion, with all her mil- lions of horsepower, could not have drawn a crew of sound men from their places in Time. Even alone, I had dif- ficulty. An overloaded field coil burned out. The laboratory caught fire, and I
was badly injured. The very accident, however, so weakened my future ge- odesics that the converters could pull me away. And, at the very instant the burning building collapsed, the Cronion broke free into the time-stream.”
The dark, smouldering eyes stared away into the shimmering abyss beyond the crystal dome. The old man shud- dered.
“You have seen Gyronchi, in the chronoscope.” The husky whisper was slow and faint. “And one look at my body can tell you enough of what re- ception I had from Sorainya, when at last I came to her red citadel.*’
The lean, white-wealed face went hard again with agony and hate. Great tears burst suddenly from the sunken eyes. The broken, bloodless claws of hands came up again, unconsciously, to the bright enigma of the tiny silver tube. Lanning looked quickly away, until the hoarse whisper went on:
“Excuse my self-pity, Denny. I shall spare you the details of Sorainya’s treachery. But, the instant her smiling greeting had lured me from the deck of the Chronion, she commanded her war- rior ants to seize me. She mocked my audacity in desiring the queen of Gy- ronchi, and then demanded that I sur- render the secrets of the ship.
“When I refused, she threw me into the dungeons beneath her fortress, and turned the Chronion over to the priests of the gyrane.” The whisper had be- come a dry, terrible sob. “For ten years, in her torture vaults, Sorainya tried to make me talk. And the priests
studied the ship
“It was Lethonee who set me free,” whispered the shattered man. “You have seen Lethonee.”
A little tremor of eagerness and dread ran over Dennis Lanning. He tried to speak, made a little gulping sound, and nodded. Listening eagerly, he waited. “She came to me in Sorainya’s dun-
26
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION
geons,” softly whispered Wil McLan. “She was white and beautiful, holding in her two hands the jewel of her chronotron — that is another geodesic tracer, similar in principle to my cltrono- scope.
“Lethonee forgave the unwitting in- jury my experiment had done Jonbar. She planned my escape. She searched Time for the hour when the disposition of the guarding ants would make it pos- sible. She examined the locks, and brought me measurements of the keys.
I carved them from the bones of a previ- ous occupant of that cell.
“WHEN THE chosen night came, she guided me out of the dungeons, across the body of a drunken, sleeping ant. Sorainya had that beast roasted alive when the escape was discovered. Lethonee picked out a safe way for me down the cliff, and across Gyronchi to the black temple.
“Glarath and his priests had carried the Chronion there. Apparently they
THE LEGION OF TIME
27
had dismantled and re-assembled all the mechanism. Perhaps they had not un- derstood it completely, however, for they had not ventured into Time. But, utiliz- ing the principle of the chronoscope, with power supplied by the gyrane, they
had made a golden shell ”
Lanning caught his breath.
“I’ve seen that!” he gasped. “Car- rying Sorainya!”
“Or the projected image of Sorainya,” corrected Wil McLan. “But Lethonee guided me into the temple.” His whis- pered narrative went on. “The alarm was spread. The pursuing ants roused the priests.
“With seconds to spare, I got safely aboard the Chronion, started the con- verters, and escaped into Time. I re- turned to the early twentieth century. And then at last, guided by Lethonee down the fainter geodesics of her pos- sible world, I came to Jonbar.”
“Jonbar ” Lanning interrupted
again, with a quick gesture at the crystal block of the chronoscope. “Can we see
" They are the kothrin — Sorainya’s savage warriors,” McLan husked. "Hypertrophied ants produced under the gyrane.”
28
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION
Jonbar, in that? And — Lethonee?”
Very gravely, Wil McLan shook his white, haggard head.
“Presently, we shall try,” he whis- pered. “But the probability factor of Jonbar has become so small that I can reach it only with the utmost power of tire scanning beam, and then the defini- tion is very poor. Jonbar is at the brink of doom.”
His broken fingers touched the thin white cylinder that hung from his throat.
“But there is still one chance.” A stern light flashed in his dark sunken eyes. “Jonbar hasn’t given up. It was Lethonee’s father, an archeologist dig- ging in the Rockies where my labora- tory used to be, who found there the charred notebooks and age-rusted mechanisms from which he rediscovered the secret of time.
“He constructed the chronotron; and, with it, Lethonee soon discovered the menace born of my unwitting tamper- ing with probability. And she brought me to Jonbar to aid the defense. That is why I have been picking up you and your men, Denny.”
Lanning was staring at him, frown- ing. “But I don’t/understand,” he mut- tered. “What can we do?”
“These two possible worlds — each armed with the secret of Time — are en- gaged in a desperate struggle for — no, not survival. Perhaps existence, would be better.
“Denny,” the whispering husk of voice grew confused and troubled, “it is almost impossible to explain, or under- stand. Time involves the fourth dimen- sion, and its fixation and ultimate determination involves the fifth dimen- sional progression of the continuum. It is as difficult to grasp the inter-weaving actions of the geodesics, as to picture mentally that necessary phenomenon of the fourth dimension; that a body may rotate not around a point, as in two di-
mensions, nor about a line, as it would in three, but about a plane.
“I have not time now to show you the mathematics of the geodesic interac- tions. But this is the meaning in prac- tical things: neither Lethonee nor So- rainya is fixed in that fifth dimensional progression. In that sense, neither is yet real. Neither Jonbar nor Gyronchi. Somewhere, there is a turning in the Path of Time that leads, one way, to Jonbar. The other branch leads to Gy- ronchi.
“THE CRUX of it all is this: If Jon- bar exists, Gyronchi can ' not. And equally, if Sorainya exists — Lethonee never comes to be. Each of those cities — each of those women — represents a possible future, a possible epoch. And — they represent different possibilities of the same epoch.
“Each has the secret of Time. But neither can, by any means whatever, reach th« other ! They can see each other — but they cannot reach or affect each other. Those doctors of Jonbar aboard the Clironion — they cannot reach Gy- ronchi, even though this ship goes down the geodesics that lead there. They can- not— for Gyronchi and Jonbar, and all things of either city are mutually exclu- sive. Either is possible — but not both!
“Each is possible — but because of my blundering, I know now that the geodesics of Gyronchi are far stronger. The probability of Gyronchi is far greater.”
“But we can help!” Desperately Lan- ning clutched the thin, old shoulder. “What is our part?”
“No direct geodesics link Jonbar and Gyronchi,” rasped McLan. “Therefore they have no common reality. They are contradictory. They can explore each other’s trains of probability, but there can be no physical contact, remember, because the existence of each is a denial of the other. Their forces, therefore, can never come to grips.
THE LEGION OF TIME
29
“But our contemporary world is joined by direct geodesics with all pos- sible worlds. It has a common existence with both those possible — but mutually impossible — worlds of futurity. That accounts for your place in the picture, Denny.”
“Eh,” Lanning leaned forward, des- perately urgent. “Lethonee and So- rainya both talked of destiny. You can tell me what they meant?”
The blue, haunted eyes looked at him steadily, from beneath that startling shock of snowy hair. “Yours is the key- position, Denny,” the whispering husk responded. “Your triumph alone can save Jonbar. With your failure — it fails.”
“And that’s why they both came to me !”
The old man nodded. “Sorainya sought to cause your death in a way we could not restore. The life-giving pow- ers of dynat are great— but we could not restore life to bomb-shattered flesh, or to a shark-torn body. And that type of destruction would insure her victory. Had you, instead of Barry, flown that day, the plane would have exploded. Lethonee took it upon herself to watch over you, until such a time as Fate ruled your death in a way we could restore. Then we could take you aboard the Chronion. And only then.”
“Death ” Lanning whispered the
echo. “Then we are a Legion of the Dead.”
“I came back to find you and a band of your contemporaries to serve Jon- bar,” McLan whispered gravely. “Since it is impossible to draw a sound, living man from his place in Time — to do so would warp the whole continuum — we had to wait until the moment when each of you was actually dead to draw you aboard through the temporal ray.
“THERE ARE two civilizations for the future, and while neither yet exists
to us, each exists to its inhabitants. For in the fifth dimensional view, all things are co-existent, some more fixed than others. Like the exposed film of a cam- era, wherein the images already are. Part of the long scroll of film — Time — has passgd into the fixing bath of the fifth dimensional progression, and may not be changed. Part — that we call the future — has not, and the film is yet sen- sitive to change.
“But to those future beings, their yet- to-be civilization is real. And — they are fighting for it. But to do so, they must fight through us, they must reach us and influence us. Those two futures must fight over a modern, since they cannot fight each other.”
“And — we are the dead !” whispered Lanning.
“Not dead now,” the husked whisper of the old man came. “Jonbar has pro- vided the corps of surgeons and doctors to revive you immediately as the tem- poral ray drew you aboard the Chronion. The dynat can revive any reasonably whole man.”
“Dynat?” Lanning caught at the term. “I heard Lethonee use that word, and the doctors. What does it mean ?”
“It is the vital scientific power upon which the whole civilization of Jonbar is based,” said McLan. “The slow evolu- tionary adaptation to the use of its il- limitable power is what will give birth to the dynon, the perfect race that may exist — if you win for Jonbar !
“Tbe dynat is as important to Jonbar as the gyrane is to the Gyronchi. But there’s no time for that. I’ve explained the situation, Denny. What about it?”
The dark, hollow eyes searched his face with a probing keenness almost painful. Wil McLan thrust his white head forward. The hoarse whisper rasped, desperately: “Will you accept the championship of Jonbar — knowing that it is a nearly hopeless battle? Will you set yourself against Sorainya, and
30
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION
give up all that she may have offered? And remember, Denny, an act of yours must kill Sorainya — or Lethonee!”
A COLD shudder passed over Dennis Lanning, and a choking ache closed his throat. The- serene white image of Lethonee was before him, holding the jewel. And the proud, red-mailed splen- dor of Sorainya pushed it away. He couldn’t, he thought, endure the death of Lethonee. But could he — even if he would — destroy Sorainya? An agony crushed his heart, but slowly he nodded. “Yes, Wil,” he said. “I accept.” * Broken fingers gripped his hand. “Good for you, Denny,” gasped Wil McLan. “And now I give you com- mand of our Legion of Time.”
“No, Wil,” Lanning protested. “I’ve earned no right to command.”
“Gyronchi must be destroyed — and even Sorainya.” A stern bitter light flashed in the hollow eyes again, and the gnarled fingers touched the worn silver tube. “And I’ll do my part.” The whisper quivered. “But I’ve no knack of leadership. My life has been spent too much with abstractions. But you’re a man of action, Denny, and in the crucial place. You must command.” Lanning met the tortured eyes.
“I will.”
A scarred hand lifted in a salute al- most gay.
“Thank you, Denny. Now I suggest that you go down and lay the situation before the men, in the way you think best. They have this choice: to follow your command, or to be returned to where we found them in Time.”
“Which would mean — death?”
Wil McLan nodded. “There is no niche for them in Time — alive. If we win, a place can be made for those who survive, where the fifth-order pro- gression has not yet fixed the continuum — in Jonbar. If we fail, there is death — or Sorainya’s torture vaults.”
“In Jonbar ” repeated Lanning,
huskily. “Can I go to Jonbar, if we win? To Lethonee?”
“If we win,” the old man told him. “Now, if you will go down to your men, I’ll try to pick up Jonbar with the chronoscope.”
Eagerly, Lanning asked, “May I ”
A solemn twinkle flashed briefly in McLan’s hollow eyes.
“If I get Lethonee,” he promised, “I’ll call you. But it’s very hard to get Jon- bar.”
Lanning went back down through the turret to the deck, and requested Barry Halloran and Lao Meng Shan to call the rest together. Facing the expectant lit- tle group, in their oddly assorted uni- forms, he began : “I’ve just talked to Wil McLan.” He waited, for the flash of eager interest. “He has gathered us out of Time, saved each one of us from certain death. In return, he wants us to fight, to save one world that is struggling for survival against another. I know the cause is good.
“He has offered me the command. And I must ask you either to follow me, or to be returned to your own place in Time — to die. That may be a hard choice. But it is the only one possible.”
“Hard?” shouted Barry Halloran.
“Nein!” grunted Emil Schorn. “Are we craven, to turn back from Valhalla?”
“Viva!” shouted Cresto. “Viva el capitdn!”
“Thank you.” Lanning gulped, blinked. “If we win, there will be a place made for us in Jonbar. Now, if you will follow me, repeat : I pledge loy- alty to Jonbar, and I promise to serve dutifully in the Legion of Time.”
The eight men, with right hands lifted, shouted the oath. And then, led by Wil- lie Rand, roared out a cheer for “Jon- bar and Cap’n Denny Lanning.”
ONE OF THE orderlies from Jon- bar beckoned to Lanning. and he re- turned hastily to the bridge, his heart thumping.
THE LEGION OF TIME
31
"Did you — ” he asked breathlessly, "did you ?”
Wil McLan shook his haggard head, and pointed to the cabinet of the chrono- scope.
“I tried,” he whispered hoarsely. “But the enemy have moved again. One more triumph of Sorainya is fixed on the fifth axis. And Jonbar is one step nearer ex- tinction. The image flickered, and went out. And that is what I got.”
Looking into the crystal block, Lan- ning once more saw Gyronchi ! But it was strangely changed. Sorainya’s proud citadel on the hill had collapsed into a heap of corroded, blackened metal. The black temple of the gyrane, on the other eminence, had fallen to a tre- mendous mound of shattered stone. Be- neath, upon the denuded wastelands where fields and villages had been, was a desolate, untrodden wilderness of weeds and brush, leprously patched with strange scars of white, shining ash.
“Gyronchi ?” breathed Lanning. “De- stroyed ?”
“Destroyed,” rasped Wil McLan, “by its own evil ! By a final war between the warlords of Sorainya’s class and the priesthood of the gyrane. Mankind, in the picture you witness, is extinct.”
His hoarse whisper sank very low.
“If we fail — if mankind follows the way of Gyronchi — that is the end of the
road.” Wearily, he snapped off the switch, and the bleak scene vanished. “And now it seems that that road has been chosen. For the geodesics of no other remain strong enough for the in- strument to trace.”
His hands knotted impotently, Lan- ning stared bewildered and helpless out through the dome, into the haze of flick- ering blue.
“What — ” he demanded, “what could have happened ?”
Wil McLan shook his head.
“I don’t know. Gyronchi has done something. We must try to discover what it is, and undo it if possible. We had best return- to Jonbar, I think, to secure the use of the new geodesic analysis laboratory that Lethonee has or- ganized— if we can !”
Anxiously, Lanning gripped his thin shoulder.
"If ”
“It may be,” Wil McLan whispered, “that this latest move has so far at- tenuated the probability of Jonbar that its geodesics will not serve to lead the Chronion. That — we can never again reach it!”
“But we can try,” Lanning snapped with a sudden fierceness.
“Yes, try.” The old man shook his head slowly. The fumbling, broken hands twisted at the shining wheel of the Chronion.
TO BE CONTINUED
Probak Jr.
Blades next time— for double your money’s -worth in quick, clean shaves. You get four blades in each lOf! package — eight of the keenest shaving edges you ever used.
PROBAH
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32
But
they
don
understand us! Eight light- years — we will be dead long before we arrive ”
The Incredible V isitor
by Clifton B. Kruse
A tiny, fragile spaceship — a miniature — but it sailed through a battleship !
THE INCREDIBLE VISITOR
33
CHIPPER WHITNEY scrooched up his freckled face in order to get a clearer view of the strange bird flying about the upper story of the Jamestown City Hall. For a full five minutes he had neglected’ to sing out in his adolescent falsetto concerning the attractions of the latest edition of the Morning Times. Somebody clapped him on the shoulder.
“Selling papers today, Chipper, or star gazing?”
“Gosh !” Chipper grinned broadly as he flipped a paper from under his arm. “Thanks, Mayor Smithhurst. But say — what the heck kind of a bird’s that up there? It just keeps floatin’ round. Ivinda grayish in color, only I don’t see any wings, and it ain’t one of those pigeons from the park ’cause how could a pigeon kinda ease round a buildin’ like that, I wanta know?”
“Hmm.” Mayor Smithhurst shielded his eyes with the paper. “By George, you’re right. It can’t be a bird and yet — yes, indeed! It is flying about. There ! It’s stopped before the window to the County Attorney’s office.”
“But it’s hangin’ there!” Chipper shouted.
“What is it?” “Something the mat- ter?” Passers-by began to stop and stare along with the Mayor and the newsboy. “Queer looking bird !” “But that’s not a bird.”
“I think I’ll go up to the Attorney’s office,” Mayor Smithhurst muttered as he started hastily toward the City Hall entrance.
Chipper Whitney took a few steps after the Mayor then halted abruptly. The group had become a crowd for a city the size of Jamestown, Arizona. Chipper's face broke into a crafty grin.
“Paper,” he shouted. “Latest ’dition, th’ Times! Read all about it.” Enough of the later arrivals, sensing something peculiarly amiss, shelled out the nickels AST— 3
to relieve Chipper of his bundle. Then he looked up again.
The window of the County Attorney’s office was open. Both the Attorney and Mayor Smithhurst were leaning out, getting a close look at the strange bird- like thing which seemed to be suspended in free air. The rumbling of the crowd in the street reached a climax when Chief Morland came clanging around the corner with the Jamestown ladder-truck.
For an instant the small, grayish ellipsoid wavered, as if to ascertain the purpose of the shouting. The top of the fire-ladder swung within inches of the mystery. Chief Morland had stepped upon the bottom rung. The crowd gasped as the “bird” shot straight to- ward the window ledge and the two officials up there bobbed back into the building, slamming the window down. Yet even as the thing alighted there came a thunderous crash of smashing timber and masonry. The crowd in the street screamed, falling back in a mad scramble to get out of the way of down- crushing debris.
Chipper Whitney alone held his ground. Eyes wide in breathless won- der he placed curiosity above safety. “The bird’s ridin’ down,” the boy mur- mured. “Like a hunk of iron on a house made of stacked-up playin’ cards. Gosh — that piece of roof fell on it!”
Squinting his eyes against plaster dust, Chipper dashed to the pile of wreck- age which had been the corner wall of the City- Hall. For a minute he pried eagerly then jumped back and stared skyward.
“Get back, kid!” It was Chief Mor- land, red faced and visibly shaken, who was yelling. “You might have got your- self smashed in that mess.”
Chipper grinned weakly. “Maybe it was a sort of bird after all,” he said. “ ’Cause it flew away. I saw it shoot right up through that big rock and bust it to pieces and it just kept going right on up!”
34
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION
PROFESSOR Lewis Tanberry re- garded the one-fifteen Physics Lecture class without enthusiasm. Of the sixty- two high school seniors there were five, he felt sure, who really had an intelli- gent appreciation of the subject.
Perhaps he should be thankful for the inspiration those five furnished his har- ried pedagogical soul. Nevertheless, with the subject of “Matter” before him, the prospect was none too bright. Now if he could just excuse the fifty- seven who were after grades, and give his enthusiastic attention to those pre- cious five — oh, well! He rapped for attention.
Professor Tanberry ’s voice reverber- ated through the hall as his eyes, undi- rected by conscious volition, sought out the five who knew how to think with him.
“Thus we picture the atoms compos- ing this bar of iron as remote nuclear suns surrounded by negatively charged electrons, each single atom comparable to our own solar system, with the sun as the positively charged nucleus of the atom. The comparatively vast volumes of space between these apparently close- packed atoms within the iron bar ”
The sudden swell of half-muffled whis- pering drowned the instructor’s voice. For a second he stared open-mouthed at the assembly. Not oi\e pupil — not even one of the five — was paying him any attention. Hands gestured wildly toward the high ceiling. The pupils were getting out of their seats now. Voices broke out in bold shouts.
The cause of the disturbance was only a bird! Professor Tanberry felt a stab of resentment surge through him. But no! It was not a bird either. Slowly, deliberately, the strange oval swung about as if intently observing the amazed student body. Professor Tanberry, without removing his gaze from the pe- culiarly suspended object, mechanically replaced his notes on the desk, weight-
ing them securely with a physics text- book.
“What in the world’s the trouble?” an agitated voice shouted in his ear.
The young professor started guiltily. But explanations were unnecessary. The perplexed principal, too, was star- ing gapingly at the strange swaying mo- tion of the birdlike thing.
“It’s alive!” someone cried out. “Come on, fellows, let’s get it.”
A book swirled through the air, strik- ing the curious object head-on.
“It didn’t budge,” the principal mut- tered in Professor Tanberry’s ear. “But we’ve got to do something. These
Books were hurling from every direc- tion. Voices rose in shrill cries. The more cautious among the assembly were jamming the exits.
“It’s as solid as a pillar of stone,” Professor Tanberry remarked aloud, al- though by this time the clamor and shouting made ordinary speech inaudi- ble. “But I say — here comes that thing — look out!”
For a moment the incredibly stolid gray oval hung there a scant arm’s length from the lecturer. Professor Tanberry’s act was purely instinctive. With both hands he grasped the object, interlock- ing his fingers and pulling with all the strength he could exert upon the almost imperceptibly corrugated metal ellipsoid, the length of which could not exceed six inches and the breadth three.
“I — I can’t — budge ” he gasped
out.
The cries of the students blended into a concerted groan of amazement. Be- fore their wide-staring eyes the gaunt body of Professor Tanberry sailed swiftly overhead and out through an opened window. The man’s hands re- mained cupped about the fearful ovoid menace. His outstretched legs dangled helplessly. The few who dared rush to the windows saw the body shoot with
THE INCREDIBLE VISITOR
35
astounding acceleration far above the tree tops.
“He’s going straight up,” someone uttered in a hoarse, terrified tone. “Clear up out of sight. He’s hanging onto that thing still. It’s carrying him
DESPITE THE FACT that it was already well past midnight, the famous research laboratory of the American University of Science was brilliantly il- luminated. Dr. Henry Debruler sat hunched above the peculiarly complex controls of a strange apparatus. The opening and closing of a door followed by hurrying footsteps aroused him from his preoccupation.
Dr. Debruler smiled wearily up at the young woman who was approach- ing with what appeared to be several telegrams in her hands.
“You shouldn’t be here this late, Miss Martin,” he reproached her mildly. Then as if in answer to her questioning glance he added : “Not a thing yet. I’ve been in tune with every known wave- length. If the menace is really con- trolled by some intelligent force, I should be able to detect it. And I’m certain that it is. Every report indicates that the mad oval is being consciously di- rected in its prying operations over the face of the globe. But speaking of re- ports, I see you have something there.”
“Two more wires from Washington, Dr. Debruler. Also four more stories of depredations,” Miss Ann Martin sorted the messages as she spoke.
“Ah, yes.” Dr. Debruler mopped his bald head with a nervously clutched ker- chief. “They’re sending duplicate no- tices directly to me now. What are they ?”
“Only one more here in the United States. But it’s frightful enough. Two hours ago the gray oval was sighted slowly encircling the battleship New Hampshire. The commander ordered the gun crew to fire. A direct hit was
recorded but ”
Dr. Debruler jumped to his feet. “Then they’ve destroyed the menace!” “No, no,” Miss Martin hastened to correct him. “A six inch shell exploded on contact. The gray oval was repelled a distance of two or three yards but was apparently undamaged. A moment later, as though in retaliation, it flew straight toward the battleship, crashed the forward gun turret and completely penetrated two walls of heavy armor be- fore disappearing into the night. It is thought that it was coming westward across the United States again.”
Dr. Debruler slumped in his chair. “Twelve appearances since that report from Jamestown, Arizona, today noon. Or yesterday noon I should say.” For several minutes he sat there staring rigidly at his ultra sensitive all-wave receiver.
“It’s just — unearthly,” Ann Martin uttered softly. “Nothing can stop it. That brave young professor out in Ari- zona who tried to grab it ”
“They haven’t located his body yet?” “He was observed at two different points. Both times his body seemed to be sailing high above the clouds, like some grotesque bird.”
Dr. Debruler shook his head slowly. “Yes, I know. The last time he was at an altitude of fifteen thousand feet above Cleveland, Ohio, and headed north. But do you know! Yes, that’s a clue.”
“What do you mean?” Ann Martin brushed her hair back from her fore- head as she regarded the scientist in- tently.
“Just this. It is a physical impossi- bility for any human being to remain clinging to such a tiny lobe of matter for the more than ten hours between the time Professor Tanberry was snatched from the high school lecture hall, and when he was sighted above Cleveland. The distance covered indicates a veloc- ity not less than one hundred miles per
36
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION
hour. And the elevation — why, no one could retain consciousness under those conditions. Miss Martin, I tell you some force was deliberately holding on to Tanberry’s body. Do you follow me ? Tanberry was captured by an intelligent entity — the same alien being or beings now exploring this planet. I said ex- ploring. That’s a significant word. We can’t explain this mad, unbelievably powerful gray oval in terms of any known terrestrial strength or endurance. Why, our buildings, our guns, every man-made material force or obstruction is like so much tissue paper to this thing.”
ANN MARTIN nodded slowly. “I agree with you, Dr. Debruler.” Her voice came in a hushed, near tremulous whisper. “This — this tiny menace which has the whole world amazed and trem- bling is — is a visitor from space !”
“Exactly,” the scientist spoke with augmented fervor. “Recapitulate only those authentic reports which Washing- ton has sent us, disregarding the wild tales on the radio, and what do we have ? First, the gray oval has merely to alight upon a building in order to crush through solid masonry. Without visi- ble effort, it hurtles through the sky, bearing a man’s weight as though noth- ing retarded it. A six-inch, high-explo- sive shell can’t smash it. On the other hand, the gray oval can plunge through several inches of modern steelarmor.
“Unquestionably, there is no metal known to planet Earth — nor even to the entire solar system — which can either withstand such shocks, or hold up un- der such enormous pressures as these crushing forces would indicate.”
“But where? I mean ” Ann
Martin's voice faltered as she stared anxiously toward the scientist.
Dr. Debruler’s eyes narrowed in con- centration. “The matter composing that small, gray oval must be inconceivably dense. If I could only test it! Far
out in space, we know of a few suns where the atoms are so closely packed that a cubic inch of that sun’s substance would weigh more than a ton. Sirius B in Canis Major for example. Or the even denser van Maanen’s star. Both are relatively small astral bodies. How- ever the density of the tiny Companion of Sirius is 60,000 times that of water. If such a star as Sirus B had a satel- lite, bom of its own matter, upon which existed intelligent life ”
Ann Martin’s piercing scream brought Dr. Debruler to his feet. She was back- ing toward the door, her eyes wide with terror. The scientist whirled around in the direction of her horrified stare. A low-voiced moan escaped his tautly compressed lips.
There before him, for the moment motionlessly suspended in the air, hov- ered the innocuous-looking, dull-gray ellipsoid. Ann Martin’s pleading cries were agonizingly shrill.
“Don’t — Dr. Debruler, don’t let it come ”
Even as he ran toward the hysterical young woman the menacing gray oval shot forward.
“Miss Martin!” Dr. Debruler gasped out as his secretary crumpled in sudden unconsciousness. For the fraction of a second, her limp body swayed as though arrested in its fall.
Dr. Debruler screamed her name in amazement.
Ann Martin moved lifelessly through the air, her stiffly stretched arms seem- ing instinctively to reach for the oval. Dr. Debruler grasped for her as he threw himself forward. Frantically clutching the floating body he sought to pull her free of the magnetic hold of the ominous gray oval. She slid effortlessly through his arms.
Getting to his feet from an awkward sprawl to the floor, the elderly man saw Ann Martin’s wraithlike form sail swiftly beyond the window, out and sky- ward into the moonless dark of night.
THE INCREDIBLE VISITOR
37
MORD ZYGARTH, second in com- mand of the science expedition into the Metagalaxy, shifted his ponderous, crys- talline body into the magnetic tube. Surging lines of force carried him through the tube to the expedition’s mu- seum hall. His sensitive antennae picked up the swift etheric vibrations which in- formed him beforehand of the heated discussion among the officers in charge of the exploration.
The single eye in the bulbous body of each officer turned questioningly upon Mord Zygarth as his two absurdly short, stocky legs brought him before them.
“And now what do you say, Mord?” Aanth, first in command of the space- ship from the world of the lesser sun, spoke sharply. The score of wiry an- tennae bristling from the top of each monstrous, bipedal body were rigid in attention.
“You were right,” Mord Zygarth re- plied. “It is fruitless to attempt com- munication with these ethereal creatures. Nevertheless I have succeeded in in- tercepting a few of their thoughts. They call themselves ‘humans’ and this world of theirs ‘the Earth.’ They are not sure about us. In the mind of one of them is the idea that this is indeed a spaceship, and that we came from a distant and unimaginably dense star known to them as Sirius B.”
Aanth gestured his appendages ex- citedly. “Then the creatures of planet Earth have wisdom, science !”
“It is only in the process of develop- ing,” another of the officers spoke up. “I am sure that Mord’s two specimens are exceptional. Yet it is incredible that life can develop upon this gaseous planet.”
“The planet Earth is not gaseous,” Aanth exclaimed. “Obviously, the tenu- ous state of matter is truly solid despite the fact that, back upon our own world, their heaviest atoms would immediately react as such thin stuff should. But let’s hear further from Mord Zygarth.”
“I’m afraid I can’t add more to our observations, sir. As you suggested the ‘humans’ are clearly man and woman. I observed them carefully through the small telescope. Their actions toward each other are not greatly unlike the normal responses of our own people. To me, it seemed that the man-creature is endeavoring to console the woman.”
“But you were unable to speak to them ?”
“No, Aanth, I was not. Moreover, I am not certain that they could even see me. They are so vast themselves that we would be virtually microscopic in their eyes. Even our entire ship is less in measurement than a small part of one of their bodies.”
“If only we could talk with them,” Aanth mused, pivoting his tough, pear shaped trunk around, and carefully ad- justing certain controls upon a strange apparatus with the two ropelike append- ages which were joined to the bulbous body just below the single, deep eye- socket.
“Below is one of their cities,” he an- nounced as the distant sparkle of thou- sands of incandescent bulbs showed in the view plate above the controls.
“The lights they use are much easier to distinguish than the cloudlike material of their bodies,” one of the explorers suggested.
“I should like to go down again,” Aanth remarked. “But it is useless. No matter how carefully we maneuver the ship, there is inevitable damage to these humans of planet Earth. Not even the surface of the planet itself will bear the density of our ship. And it is evi- dent that the very sight of the ship strikes terror to these creatures."
“That is because they are unable to receive our signals.”
“Yes, that is so,” Aanth blinked his single great eye sadly. “I had hoped that we might reach them through these two we captured.”
Mord Zygarth spoke up. “But that
38
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION
seems useless, Aanth. I attempted every antennae vibration under our control. They are totally deaf to us — but not to each other !”
“You mean because of the speaking slit just below their two eyes, of course ?” Aanth replied. “However we have much valuable data, many pictures and sam- ples of this strange world of solid gas, with its amazing life form ”
MORD ZYGARTH interrupted. “Pardon me, Aanth, I was thinking of these two whom we have captured. We could never bring their strange, mam- moth bodies to our own planet. They could not endure the journey. I fear that the lifetime of human men and women upon this strange ‘Earth’ is all too short. Why, they would grow old and die even before one half our return journey will have been completed.
“You are indeed observing, Mord Zy- garth !”
“Thank you, Aanth. It is true. I have — a very odd feeling about them! They suffer much more than our kind. Especially in the woman’s face I dis- tinguished intense grief. The man’s too was sad — as though the woman’s sor- row were more bitter to him than his own fears. Truly, I am convinced that life in the tenuous matter of this world is necessarily short, and exquisitely emo- tional.”
“Splendid attention to details, Mord,” Aanth arose upon his thick legs in a gesture of respect for his fellow scientist and explorer. “And I thought you said your period of study had been in vain? You will record all that in scroll for the museum.”
“Indeed, sir.”
“Is there anything further from any of you?” Aanth inquired. “If not, I suggest we prepare to chart the remain- der of this solar system quickly, and then be on our way. Let me see. Of the nine planets about this sun we have discovered intelligent life upon but this
one. There remains only the calcula- tions of the planetary orbits to be done.”
Mord Zygarth stepped forward. “Then I may return the two prisoners to the surface of this world?”
Aanth seemed almost to sigh. “If that be your wish, Mord. You are sure we can learn no more by observing them ?”
“I am sure of it, Aanth. I have made strict account of every movement. And their fear is not good to see.”
A gentle sound as of good natured laughter came from another of the offi- cers. “Poor Mord’s feeling is shared, of course. Yet I wonder if these living, mountain-high man and woman would be so kind to one of us in his labora- tory?”
“Perhaps not,” Mord Zygarth re- sponded quickly. “But we are to re- member that these creatures are of a race which has evolved infinitely slower than our own. Doubtlessly that is be- cause they must live for only a tenth of a normal life span, according to our standards.”
“And as to science,” Aanth joined the discussion. “I wonder whether or not these monstrous, weightless humans know even the meaning of pure science. They may, of course, in view of their clever mechanical devices, but I ”
Aanth’s voicelike vibration halted ab- ruptly. A strange, almost fearful ten- sion thrilled the assembly of explorer- scientists from afar.
“It is from your own laboratory, Aanth,” two of the officers exclaimed simultaneously.
“A contact!” Mord Zygarth exulted. “The beings of this planet have chanced upon a vibration which is known to us.”
“Quick!” Aanth led the way, his ponderous globular body swaying heav- ily upon the short, stout legs. “Into the laboratory.”
DR. HENRY DEBRULER turned pleadingly toward the five, grim-faced
THE INCREDIBLE VISITOR
39
men who were regarding both him and his remarkable make-shift apparatus in- tently.
“We have no right to adopt such an attitude, gentlemen. After all, the gray oval has not been actually belligerent. It isn’t war. I’m sure of that.”
“Nonsense, Debruler,” Colonel La- vielle’s voice reverberated throughout the laboratory. “I’ve never heard such utter rot. That oval thing is a mechan- ical spy contrived by certain powers to destroy us. Why, stop to think. What would fifty or a hundred such weapons — obviously operated by remote control — do to this country? Within twenty- four hours every munition plant, food center, aviation field and battleship owned by the United States would be wiped out ”
“I agree with you, Colonel Lavielle,” Meehan, the great chemist, interrupted heartily. “We must destroy that oval at all costs, and immediately impress every scientist into over-time shifts in order to devise means of countering the devilishly ingenious attack.”
“No, no,” Dr. Debruler gasped. “Will you gentlemen of the Investigation Com- mittee hear me ? I tell you I have stud- ied it. According to the attraction in the platinum-foil gauge, the weight of that small oval is in excess of twelve tons! By that alone we know it must necessarily have originated far outside our solar system. But listen now. They’re sending again. That clicking comes from the sound relay on the photon vibrator. I can signal them and get a response !”
Colonel Lavielle gestured in impa- tience. “A moment now, Debruler. Do you, a man famed as scientist and hon- ored by our government, dare to stand there and say that this thing is a space- ship? That some microscopic life-form, hundreds of times heavier than lead, is actually inside that shell?”
“I certainly do. Furthermore I ”
“I have heard enough.” The colonel turned to the other members of the com- mittee. “My suggestion is that Debruler has overworked. We should take over this contact of his, and follow Meehan’s idea for bombarding the gray oval with the neutron death beam.”
“To be sure,” Meehan spoke up. “The first thought must be to safeguard the nation. I can burn that thing to a cin- der in thirty seconds."
Slightly less determined, the other members of the committee assented.
Dr. Debruler, white faced, regarded them grimly.
“That is your decision?” he inquired softly.
“I am afraid it is, Debruler,” Colonel Lavielle responded curtly. “The Presi- dent has delegated us power to act as we see fit, in order to preserve life and property in the face of a grave, interna- tional emergency. Of course, your fan- ciful theory — the spaceship idea — will not go beyond this committee in respect
to the services you have already ”
Dr. Debruler’s voice rose sharply. “You will be able to do nothing. Listen to me. The beings in that oval are see- ing Earth as you and I would view their world if we were intelligent enough to
build a spaceship ”
“Spaceship!” Colonel Lavielle ex- claimed. “You talk of spaceships when we can’t even build a rocket to reach the
moon ! Debruler, you ”
“Please !” Dr. Debruler raised a hand for silence. Hastening to his appara- tus he touched certain controls with trembling hands. “That's a message,” he uttered in a hushed, awed tone as if oblivious to the hostile audience. “Ever since I contacted them, they’ve been try- ing to communicate. That code — it sounds like ”
At a signal from Colonel Lavielle a squadron of soldiers marched into the room. The other members of the In- vestigation Committee stepped back as
40
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION
Colonel Lavielle motioned that Debruler was to be removed by force.
“All right, Meehan,” the colonel or- dered. “Get your gun in order. De- bruler’s done us some good, in spite of his crack-brained dreams about a space- ship. The signals, or whatever they are, seem to be getting much stronger. We’ll lure the device here — and then — — ”
BEYOND the glasslike walls of the imprisoning sphere, the frigid, star- studded maw of space seemed to press in upon them. Lewis Tanberry shud- dered, unconsciously tightening his arms about the sleeping young woman. Now and then, as the invisible craft shifted, he would have to turn his face away from the vicious glare of the sun. And always, far below them, the great globe of Earth reflected softened, scattered hues of light from sun, moon and stars, so that it was much like peering down into some infinite pool of murky, slowly churning water.
Ann Martin stirred restlessly. Tan- berry looked down into her face anx- iously. Her eyes opened, staring only at his face, as if she feared to look again into the awful vastness of space.
“Still the same,” Tanberry answered her unspoken question. “We do not seem to be. moving outward again.”
Ann Martin attempted a smile. “At least we’ve seen the moon. We were even on it, Lewis. We can say we were, even if this shell was still around us.”
Tanberry laughed softly. “That’s be- ing brave, Ann. Yet we can be thank- ful for this shell. Our lives would go out quicker than any candle otherwise. But then, on second thought, maybe it isn’t such a cause for thanks after all.”
“Please, Lewis.” The girl released herself from Tanberry’s arms. “It — it’s our world. If it hadn’t been, then you and I ”
Tanberry clasped her hands impul- sively. “Forgive me, Ann. I didn’t
mean it that way. I'm not complaining for myself. Knowing you — having this world for even this long — has been worth whatever it could cost me.”
“That’s nice.” Ann Mqrtin smiled. “But now, what do you think might hap- pen? The gray oval ”
Tanberry pointed up. “We’re still connected to it. Like an ant dragging a balloon, isn’t it?”
“Lewis, I’m sure they — whatever in- telligence is in that oval ”
“Or spaceship?” Tanberry suggested. “Yes, I do mean spaceship,” the girl’s voice became more firm. “And I believe that tiny speck of light we saw was a signal from the intelligent life inside. They must have been trying to communicate with us. Somehow I could almost feel as if a force from some speck up there was trying to contact my mind.” “I felt the same thing.” Tanberry agreed. Even now he was staring up at the pin-point contact between the gray oval and their strange, mist-filled invisible cage. “You said that, Dr. De- bruler thought the oval might have come from Sirius B? But listen, Ann, if I remember correctly the two suns of Sirius are over eight lightyears away.” The girl nodded thoughtfully. “If they go back — and take us with them! Oh, Lewis, we couldn’t live on a planet as dense as theirs must be. Think of a cupful of ordinary matter weighing as much as a modern locomotive !”
Tanberry’s gaze traveled slowly about the fearful vista of black empty space. “Yes, but before we think of it, we should remember that before these mas- sive mites could return to their home planet, we would long since have died of old age. Why, even if they could
equal the speed of light ”
“Lewis!” Ann Martin’s whisper came tremolously sharp. “That spark — up there where the oval touches this transparent shell. I see it again.”
Ann Martin clutched Tanberry’s arm.
THE INCREDIBLE VISITOR
41
“Lewis, I have a feeling that they’re trying to tell us we are going to be re- turned safely.”
Tanberry merely nodded as he stared down upon the city below them. His voice broke into a sharp cry: “Ann,
look! Isn’t that the American Univer- sity ?”
“Yes! Oh, we’re coming right back to Dr. Debruler’s laboratory. The oval people are — Lewis !”
Tanberry clutched the girl’s rigid body as if to shield her from the sud- den lash of flame which shot from the laboratory to envelop the transparent sphere. For an instant, his senses were bared to the thunderous discharge as wave upon wave of burning light swept through their cringing bodies.
FOR MANY HOURS, even accord- ing to the slow measurements of his kind, Mord Zygarth labored over the two vats of electrically activated solu- tions. Abruptly conscious of another’s approach Mord Zygarth pivoted around to meet the anxiously staring eye of Aanth.
“Then they’ll live?” Aanth inquired softly.
Mord Zygarth gestured affirmatively with his two ropelike appendages. “The neutron blast from their own people served only to remove the orbital elec- trons composing the body-forming atoms
of the human man and woman. It was fortunate, however, that I chanced to be observing them at the time, so that I was able to control and condense vir- tually all the nuclear matter of their bodies. Come see them, Aanth. Their bodies are no larger than our own, but I am sure that every detail of their pre- vious formation has been preserved.”
Eagerly Aanth peered into the two tanks. “They seem to sleep normally,” he mused.
“Yes,” Mord Zygarth responded. “I have succeeded in maintaining their pe- culiar metabolism even in our compara- tively condensed structure of matter. But I shall not awaken them until our journey is over. And then ”
Aanth turned toward the second offi- cer of the expedition. “It is a beauti- ful experiment, Mord ! The man and woman of Earth shall be one of us. We shall learn of human life and Earth, even as they will learn of ours.”
“Yes,” Mord Zygarth replied with the gentleness of his kind. “And do you know, Aanth? For just a moment be- fore the neutron blast, I fancied I had contacted their minds again. The thought came, that this man and woman wished to journey together with us. I am sure of it, Aanth. And greater than the mere scientific achievement, is the knowledge that I have been a means to- ward a glorious fulfillment of their dreams.”
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42
43
Island of the Individualists
Another of
NAT SCHACHNER’S
excellent “Past, Present and Future” stories.
Sam Ward — man of the twentieth century — ducked his lean head toward the fuel tank, read the gauge for the hundredth time.
Beltan, Olgarch of Hispan, refused to turn his proud, aristocratic head. His sensitive fingers seemed engrossed with the controls. “Well, Sam,” he asked quietly, “how much is there left ?”
THE stolen rocket ship winged swiftly over the shoreless sea. Within its slender hull three men peered down upon the moveless waters, faces haggard with hope de- ferred, eyes tense with a similar despair.
A hundred thousand warriors of Harg were blasting through the gap!
44
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION
Kleon — the Greek who once had marched with Alexander the Great — did not even inquire. His Macedonian armor was tarnished from many suns and many rains, yet he clutched with still-fierce grip his keen-tipped javelin and battered shield. His sun-bright locks framed features clean-chiselled as on a medallion, his blue eyes swept the interminable wastes beneath.
Sam forced a grin to his cracked lips. “Less than there was ten minutes ago, Beltan,” he replied, “and more than there will be ten minutes from now.”
“Which means,” remarked the Ol- garch without a tremor, “that in ten min- utes the fuel tank will be empty, and this rocket ship in which we fled from Harg will plunge headlong into the Pacific.”
“Yes,” said Sam.
Again there was a long silence, punc- tuated only by the soft roaring of the jets.
Kleon shaded his eyes, stared out at the dappled haze that seemed to stretdi as far as the eye could see. “This is what comes of new-fangled inventions,” he groaned. “At least when my trireme was driven from Nearchus’ fleet by fierce storms, we hoisted sail and found our way to a land where the Cimmerians hailed me as Quetzal. But now we cleave the air, bound helplessly to a lit- tle tank of fiery liquid. It evaporates — and behold, we are no longer birds ; in- stead, we emulate the fish of the sea. But — ” he glanced sadly at his shield, at his rusted armor, “it is too long a way to swim.”
“How far is it to land ?” asked Beltan.
“As near as I can calculate,” said Sam, “almost a thousand miles. Too far to swim, as friend Kleon has justly remarked.”
The Greek shrugged. “I never did like the sea,” he declared. “I prefer solid ground underfoot, where I can brace myself and charge the enemy with
my good sword flashing. It is my fault. Had I not remarked about the sleeping Gymnosophists in the mountains of Tibet, this would never have happened.”
“No more your fault than mine,” Sam Ward told him warmly. “They were our last chance. We ranged over most of North America seeking evi- dences of other cities, other civilizations. Aside from Hispan we could find noth- ing. And always behind us, hemming us in, hunting us like rabbits, were the rocket hordes of Harg, headed by Vardu. Our only chance lay in escape across the Pacific, to find the sleepers who had given you the life-immobilizing formula.”
“It is a pity that there was a leak in the tank,” observed the Olgarch with calm indifference. “Otherwise we could have made it. As it is, I regret nothing. I have lived more completely this past six months with you two as comrades, than in all the prior years of purpose- less luxury within the neutron walls of Hispan.” He smiled reflectively. “A strange thing, our association. A Greek from the time of Alexander — an Amer- ican from the twentieth century — and I, an Olgarch of Hispan, who once thought myself the proud apex of the ninety-eighth century. Nevertheless
KLEON LIFTED his head; his straight, classic nose quivered. “Look !” he cried, and his voice sounded slightly cracked. “Look, my friends — yonder, to the left. There is a thicker haze upon
the waters that ”
Sam jerked erect. His lean face tightened, his gray eyes stared unbeliev- ingly. “Land!” he shouted. “An island where there should be no island. But of course ! Eight thousand years is a long time in the Pacific. A volcanic
eruption; a rising of the sea floor ”
He swung feverishly on the Olgarch. “Point the rocket’s nose straight for it,” he cried. "We are saved ! Do you un-
ISLAND OF THE INDIVIDUALISTS
45
derstand what I am saying, Beltan? We are saved!”
‘‘Temporarily at least,” Beltan amended quietly. Nothing ever ruffled his proud, aristocratic calm. “It seems like uninhabited land, and we have neither food nor means to leave again, once we come down. And remember, Vardu will hunt us relentlessly. His advance horde saw us wing out upon the ocean. They will follow.”
Sam experienced a sudden sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. The Olgarch was right. Already the steady roar of the rocket jets had given way to irregular sputterings. The tanks of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen were practically empty.
They were close enough now to view their alien haven with an attempt at de- tail. But a shimmering haze hid its sur- face from the view — a haze such as none of them had ever seen before.
The vast reaches of the ocean had cleared with the magical suddenness familiar to those who in all ages had sailed its magnificent bosom. The sun beat down with unobstructed glory, daz- zled the blue surface into a burnished shield. Not the tiniest wisp of cloud fouled the expanse of sky and water.
But over the island — or what had seemed to be an island — an impalpable vagueness shimmered and danced. Its edges were confused and indeterminable, its domed obscurance a strange in- definiteness. Slight as gossamer, yet quenching the fierce heat of the sun — pulsing and vibrating with an inner life, yet neither refracting nor reflecting the beating blaze. The eye tried in vain to grasp its form and nature. It eluded the sight, it slid away in protean mani- festations. Yet what lay underneath was as starkly invisible as though it were clad in many thicknesses of lead.
Kleon was a Greek of the Enlighten- ment, yet as he stared, ancient supersti- tions arose to trouble him. “By Zeus and Poseidon!” he cried in amaze,
“these are but enchantments similar to those that the sorceress, Circe, employed. Let us not land, my comrades; let us rather go on.”
“Easier said than done,” Sam re- marked dryly. “Listen to those rocket blasts. They’re coughing their lungs out." Yet even Sam Ward, practical, coldly scientific, matter-of-fact, felt a queer tightening of his scalp at the sight of that shifting totality.
“What do you make of it, Beltan ?” he asked anxiously as the slender craft hurled downward.
The Olgarch shook his tawny head. His eyes were troubled. “I had thought,” he murmured, “that we of Hispan knew all things that were to be known. Even the fanatic science of Harg was no mys- tery to me. But this is something new — something beyond my knowledge. It is no mist, or novel refractions of layers of air. It seems impalpable, yet there is a sense of strength beyond that of stellene and neutron walls themselves. More, there comes up at me a strange impact — as if it held a queer sentience of its own. A withheld life that examines and weighs us in the balance even as we drop.”
“I’ve had the same feeling,” husked Kleon. “That is why I say ”
IT WAS too late. With a final gasp- ing cough the rocket motors died. Bel- tan wrestled with the controls. Down, always down, in great, swinging circles, the ship sank like a wounded bird. The sea rushed up to meet them.
And the shimmering mist beneath !
Sam forced back a cry as they struck. There was nothing beneath — nothing that could be seen, that could be evalu- ated. In the distance, the moveless waves of the Pacific were hundreds of feet below.
There was nothing — yet the rocket ship shook in every stellene strut, swerved sideways, and slid along im-
46
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION
penetrable nothingness. Down, down
Beltan worked feverishly at the con- trols. Great globules of moisture beaded his brow. Kleon thrust vainly with heavy javelin at that along which they tumbled. Sam clung to the side as the craft tumbled and. fell.
Waves of force seemed to pluck at his brain. Mighty sluices of energy poured into his being, drained his veins of all volition, of all movement. The glittering mist swarmed over him, en- gulfed him. Keen lances probed his mind, sucked out his energy, flung him limp to the bottom of the hull. As in a daze he saw Kleon stagger from the rim, pitch moveless to his side. Dimly he heard the Olgarch’s cry, saw the proud aristocrat struggle with the un- seen influence, saw him stand upright, away from the controls, pitting his will against the immaterial shimmer that en- gulfed them all.
A moment Beltan stood, erect, battling with clenched teeth and white-drawn features, holding his own. Then, slowly but surely, he gave way. His tawny head bowed, his tall body arced away like a taut-strung bow, his eyes clouded and went blank.
Triumphantly the irresistible waves beat upon them, within the very fiber of their beings. Dimly, Sam felt keen sentience behind it all, probing, prying, searching
Suddenly the rocket ship of Harg ac- celerated along the downward-curving mist, slid smoothly to a shuddering halt. The sheen of force-waves lifted, van- ished. The plucking fingers within their brains ceased their restless prying. Strength surged back into their limbs. Astonished faces lifted from the hull. The three adventurers rose lithely to their feet. Once more they were mas- ters of their wills, assured of the pri- vacy of their brains.
“In the name of Castor and Pollux,” swore the Greek, “what happened?”
“We are,” said the Olgarch with tense calm, “in the presence of forces beyond any conceived of in Hispan.”
But Sam Ward, the practical, darted keen eyes around. “I see a man — a human being!” he said softly, and gripped his Colt hard.
THE MAN was seated on a cush- ioned mound, cross-legged, like the an- cient fakirs of India. His body and limbs were shrunken and puny, and seemed unable to support the structure of his enormous head. From a spindle neck it rose, swelling upward like a top, from thin, small lips, a flattened nose, to colorless eyes turned introspectively in- ward, and a bulging, hairless forehead. Only a tiny tuft of hair — a scalplock — relieved the aridity of the ballooning skull.
He sat with great head resting on emaciated fingers. He seemed not to have seen his visitors, the differently modelled humans and their strange craft that had dropped upon him from the sky. He seemed unaware of all else in the universe but the ingrowing of his own contemplation.
“Bah!” snorted Kleon with a vast scorn. “Is he then the enchanter who inhabits this fantastic island? Why, I could break him in two with but a twist of my wrist.”
“Don’t try it, friend Kleon,” warned Beltan. His gaze smoldered upon the oblivious creature. A strange respect crept unwillingly into his eyes. “Phys- ical prowess is but an early stage of evolution. You typify that quite well. Sam Ward here represents the com- mingling of the mind and the brute. I had believed myself to be advanced in mental force. But here, before us — : — ”
“You mean that this puny creature, who does not even know that we have intruded upon him, is superior to you ?”
The Olgarch nodded his head. “He made me yield the very secrets of my ex- istence,” he answered simply, “of every-
ISLAND OF THE INDIVIDUALISTS
47
thing I had ever known or dreamt. Therefore ”
“Hey, there!” called Sam. “Who are you and what is this land ?”
The seated man lifted his head slowly. He seemed to have awakened from a dream. His colorless eyes stared at his visitors. Sam reeled back. A wall of invisible force had struck him full in the face. It was like a physical blow.
“Sssh!” said the puny creature. His voice was rusty, halting, as though he had few occasions to use it. “You have disturbed my contemplation. I have lost the thread of my inner discourse.”
Kleon, magnificently animal, looked down with open scorn at this defenseless, 'wretched apology for a human being. He had regained his usual composure, lost the first fright that had assailed him.
“Listen, old man,” he said con- temptuously, “we are strangers cast upon your desert island, in need of food and drink and shelter. Instead of mum- bling nonsense at us, bestir yourself to hospitality.”
■ The bulging head lifted slowly. The eyes veiled themselves. “Strangers?” he queried reflectively. “Not at all. You are Kleon, an Athenian, who dwelt in an unbelievably primitive world ten thou- sand years ago. With queer slavishness you followed a barbarous leader, hewing and slaying, into countries peopled with diverse races.”
Kleon gasped. His particular god, the great Alexander, a barbarous leader ? In his anger he forgot to be amazed. “How dare you ?” he started furi-
ously.
The man ignored him, turned his veiled eyes to Beltan. “You,” he said in halting phrases, “believe you are con- temporaneous with me. But time is a function of thought, not of space and di- rective motion. Therefore I, Ens, who seemingly exist in the same time flow, actually am separated by many ages from you, Beltan, man of the ninety-eighth
century, and denizen of the enclosed city of Hispan. It is true that you show evi- dences of an inner fumbling after the truth, but as yet it is but a blind grop- ing.”
The proud Olgarch said nothing. His handsome face betrayed no sign of his emotions.
CALMLY the large head twisted on its stemlike neck. “As for you, Sam Ward,” he spoke, “you are a puzzle. You come from the twentieth century, a strange mixture of the unbelievably primitive and of dim aspirations. Kleon and Beltan are simple — pellucid — like their times. The mold was fixed — de- termined. But your age was a shifting complex. It was a fearsome stew in which the animal and the mental fought for mastery.” His bulbous head swayed on its stem like an overgrown pod. “A bastard age, which even I, observing you, cannot wholly fathom.”
“How in blazes do you know all this?” Sam exploded involuntarily.
Ens was no longer looking at them. His gaze was withdrawn, turned inward upon himself. He did not answer. He seemed to have forgotten their very ex- istence. His shrunken body stiffened, his thin lips were closed.
Then slowly, even as the three ad- venturers stared, a queer shimmering haze moved outward in concentric waves, coalesced, deepened into a sur- rounding shell, cutting off the cross- legged man from their view.
Once more they were alone, next to their fuelless plane, on a barren, vol- canic soil.
“Well, I’ll be damned !” breathed Sam.
Kleon flung up his shield as if to guard himself, called on Pallas Athene for protection.
But Beltan said in a strange voice, “He explored our minds, our ages, found them valueless. Wherefore we no longer exist to him. He has returned to the contemplation of his own thoughts as
48
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION
the most important thing in all the uni- verse.”
“And that wall of force?” Sam de- manded.
“The emanations of his thought.” “But,” Kleon protested, “how can thought have physical being — texture?” “Why not? Long ago it was deter- mined that there was an electrical basis for thought. Some even went so far as to venture that it had an independent being of its own — that the universe it- self was but the outer manifestation of the inner thought-structure. Here, on this barren island, there has been a curi- ous evolution through the centuries. Ens and his predecessors, cut off even as Hispan and Harg from all contact with the rest of Earth, had disregarded the physical, the well-being of the body. In- stead, they concentrated on the mind — upon the abstract contemplativeness of themselves and the inner universe. They developed powers of which even we in Hispan had no conception.
“Evidently Ens has discovered a method of projecting his thought waves, of interlacing them around himself in a web of force. Invisible — but without doubt more impenetrable than any ma- terial substance of which we have any knowledge. Within that shell, he is withdrawn from all outer distraction and interference, and able to pursue his ab- sorbing abstractions in utter peace.” Sam whistled. “At Harg I com- plained that their science was too prac- tical, too immediate in its purposes. Here this strange being who calls himself Ens has gone to the opposite extreme. He just sits and sits and contemplates his own navel in complete satisfaction.”
The Olgarch smiled. “Evolution plays queer tricks. This is one of them. Yet I have no doubt that if aroused, Ens and his immaterial thought could prove more powerful than all the legions of Harg.”
Sam started. “Say, that’s an idea,” he exclaimed. “I wonder ”
BUT KLEON was growing impa- tient. “Are we going to starve in fruit- less discussion,” he complained, “or are we going to find some way of getting off this meaningless island?”
The American stopped. “As always, you are right, friend Kleon,” he grinned. “I’m getting hungry myself, and there isn’t a morsel of food in the plane.” They looked around them for the first time, then. The island was of volcanic origin, and about ten miles across. There was not a tree, not a blade of .grass, not a human habitation or sign of animal life. A more desolate, wasted surface could not be found outside the bleak- nesses of the moon. Overhead, the sky was wholly obscured, secreted from view by the strange, shifting patterns of im- palpable waves.
“Does this Ens, who so most discour- teously withdrew himself from our sight, inhabit this desert by himself?” the Greek demanded. “If so, then we are indeed in parlous straits.”
Sam squinted upward at the doming interlacements of thought. “It looks that way,” he murmured. “Yet he’s a wiz- ard to have made all those emanations alone.”
“By Ares, God of War,” exploded Kleon. “I shall make him come out of his shell and help us. I do not believe in this metaphysical nonsense that stems from Plato. I myself am rather a di- sciple of the great Aristotle.”
“Here, don’t do that,” Beltan cried. But already the Greek had run full tilt against the shining haze. His short broadsword was in his hand. His shield was before him in warlike pose. His javelin, slung by a thong over his back, rattled against the heavy armor. A mag- nificent fighting machine, unsurpassed in the history of the world ! Racing ir- resistibly against an immaterial shim- mer, a mere projection from the mind of a puny, shrunken man with overlarge head.
The blade flashecbin the air, descended
ISLAND OF THE INDIVIDUALISTS
49
with powerful, hacking stroke. It hewed against the pale web of thought. The keen steel stopped in midstroke as though it had hit a neutron wall. Sparks flamed outward in a dazzling spray. The weapon wrenched violently from his hand, flew ten paces away. Kleon cata- pulted backward in a sprawling heap.
Sam swore furiously, tugged at his Colt revolver. Without quite knowing what he did, his finger contracted on the trigger. His friend, comrade of incredi- ble adventures, had been hurt — killed perhaps.
The steel-jacketed bullet crashed from the orifice, sped true to its mark. Sam gaped foolishly. The missile mush- roomed against the invisible surface in a flare of blinding light, clunked solidly to the ground in a flattened disk.
Before he could shoot again, Beltan had him by the arm. The Olgarch’s face was serious, concerned. “You are as bad as the Greek,” he groaned. “A creature of impulses — of disastrous emo- tions. Our puny weapons are no match for the mighty thought of Ens. He could kill us with the merest flicker of his mind.”
Kleon stumbled slowly to his feet. He stared incredulously at his still-tingling hand, picked up his stricken sword. A shadow of dawning awe overspread his haughty features. “By Zeus,” he husked, “I had never dreamt my sword could be thus turned.”
Sam looked down at his still-smoking Colt with a sheepish grin. “It seems,” he observed, “that Ens does not wish to be disturbed.”
“There are others on this island,” Bel- tan said suddenly.
“Where?” chorused his friends.
The Olgarch pointed. “A goodly number. See those faint iridescent glows scattered over the ground — so faint they are hardly discernible ? Mem- bers of the same race as Ens, perhaps, each enclosed in his own sphere of thought.”
AST— 4
“The ultimate in privacy,” Sam re- marked. “I hope they’re not all as standoffish as Ens. Let’s get started. Now that Kleon brought up the subject, I’m very hungry.”
THEIR FEET crunched over hard lava and crumbly pumice. They were tired and hungry and in desperate straits. Somewhere over the Pacific, even now, were the hordes of Harg. Each fanatic soldier enclosed in an individual stellene rocket tube, bearing the stellene-tipped rod that flamed blasting disintegration, was searching for his prey, for new cities, new peoples to conquer on this Earth heretofore thought entirely des- olate. A Totalitarian State, aflame with the lust for conquest, had poured out its men from their underground city after the escape of the three men from alien times. Under their new leader, Vardu, they were ruthless, vengeful.
“Here we are,” said Kleon gloomily, halting before a swirl of interlocked vi- brations. “Another one, secreted within his cocoon. How do we get him out?”
They called, they waved their hands, they shouted, they gesticulated. They even danced in frantic effort to pierce the swirling maze. But the shimmer did not change its tints, or open up to reveal who or what lay within.
At length Sam called a halt, ex- hausted. His lean face etched with angry bitterness. “Nice people, these intel- lectualized beings of the future,” he panted heavily. “The very essence of hospitality. Me, I’d prefer a little less brain power and a little more of warm, human emotion.”
“Evolution has its price, it seems,” Beltan said calmly. “We of Hispan have found that out. So, too, have the hordes of Harg. A single faculty or group of faculties expands — but only at the expense of others. The latter — lag- gard in the race, or found to be useless — tend to atrophy.”
“I’m still hungry,” Kleon interposed.
so
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION
“Beware the Greeks whose stomachs are empty,” murmured Sam. “Let’s try another of these birds."
The third and fourth and fifth of the enswathed denizens of the island paid no heed to their cries and entreaties. Even when Kleon, in an access of desperation, daringly flung his javelin at the exasperating shimmer and the weapon jerked back in a huge shower of flaming sparks, there came no re- sponse from the interior.
“It’s curious,” frowned the Olgarch. “No one since Ens has even taken the trouble to invade the privacy of our minds, to pluck out the secret of our presence on their island.”
“We obviously are beneath their con- tempt," Sam snarled. “No fit subjects for their lofty contemplation, damn them!” He walked hastily over to the next dome of iridescence, fists clenched, jaw ridged with hard little muscles. “By God, I’m going to make this fellow open
up if I have to ”
He stopped short. “Well, what do you know about that?” he exclaimed.
As he had approached, the interlace- ment had suddenly burst into a lively glow. Inquiring feelers seemed to thrust outward. Then, as if satisfied, the light faded, the impalpable surge of waves grew thinner and thinner until, suddenly, it was gone.
EXPOSED to their astonished view was another being. He was like Ens, yet somehow dissimilar. By the stand- ards of the three comrades, he was but a puny thing, yet his body was not quite so shrunken, his head not so huge as that of Ens. He balanced himself precari- ously on his tiny feet, his eyes alert.
“Welcome, men of alien ages,” he piped in a thin, shrill voice. “Welcome to the Island of Asto. My name is Kar.” “Praise be to Zeus, the Provider!” ejaculated the Greek. “At last we find a trace of hospitality on this accursed island. My own name, stranger, is ”
“Kleon,” completed Kar with the ghost of a smile on his sallow face. “My own vibrations are interlocked into the overhead dome. I know your names, your, histories, your rather feeble thoughts. But you are a novelty on Asto, where nothing physical ever hap- pens. I was waiting impatiently for your arrival before my thought-seclu- sion.”
“But we almost missed you,” Sam ejaculated. “There are hundreds of your kind, each wrapped up in the selfish garment of his thoughts. We tried in vain to attract the attention of half a dozen. Suppose we had given up be- fore we came this way?”
“That would have been too bad,” squeaked Kar. “For, to tell the truth, I am becoming tired of my solitary con- templation. You see,” he smiled pal- lidly, “I am not as far advanced as the others of my race. I have not been able to subjugate the last traces of my lower animal emotions, of which you possess such an overabundance.”
“Then why,” inquired the Olgarch, “did you not beckon to us, or come over to greet us ? Surely you possess the fac- ulty of locomotion, even on those legs.”
Kar glanced down at his feeble limbs with certain shame. “They are grossly animal, are they not?” he said with an apologetic air. “Capable even of a crude form of locomotion. I told you that I have lagged behind the status of the others, like Ens, who could not even rise as I do from seated contemplation. But we do not use limbs for locomotion. They belong to primitive times, even as your ships and rocket planes. We could, if we wished, transfer ourselves even to the farthest stars by the mere power of thought. But I would never have intruded on the privacy of Ens, or of any of the others. That is not done on Asto. It is, in fact, inconceivable. Each one of us is entitled to his privacy, to the solitary contemplation of his own excellencies, of his own ratiocinations.”
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“Individualists,” Sam murmured. “Cold intellectualism of the worst kind.” “Naturally,” Kar assented. “What else can the intellect be ? Thought is es- sentially a solitary process, not a com- munity affair. Long ago this island was delimited into prescribed areas, exclusive to the individual. We do not trespass on each other’s privacy.”
“This is all very well,” Kleon inter- posed with a certain asperity. “I, my- self, used to love philosophical dis- cussions. I walked with Aristotle and I conversed at length with the Gym- nosophists. But just now I confess that they are profitless in the presence of an empty belly.”
Sam grinned faintly. “Now that you
bring it up again ”
“You mean you are hungry?” de- manded the bulbous-headed man with a show of surprise. “A grossly animal de- sire from which even we are not wholly exempt. Wait a moment.”
Puzzled, the three comrades watched.
KAR HAD corrugated the damp skin of his great forehead. It wrinkled into frowning concentration. He stared with pulsing eyes at a round, smooth ball of crystal clearness that seemed suspended over the void of a pit that sank bottom- lessly into the dark gray lava. They had not noticed it before.
Even as they followed his glance,' the ball clouded under the impact of his will. Slowly it began to spin. Round and round and round, faster and faster, while the cloudiness deepened and be- came a lambent cherry-red.
As it spun, deep within the cylindrical pit there came a hum, the whir of strange machinery. The hum deepened to a full- throated drone. The ground vibrated.
Then, suddenly, a tiny platform rose swiftly into view. On it, forlorn on the metal expanse, were three small pills. “Aspirin,” thought Sam incredulously. Kar relaxed, waved his long, slender neck toward them invitingly. “One for
each of you,” he piped. “Food for your bodies.”
Kleon’s classic features darkened. In- voluntarily his fingers tightened around the hilt of his sword. “That little pellet food?” he flared angrily. “You are pleased to jest with hungry men, friend Kar, and I am in no mood for jesting.”
“Synthetic pellets,” the Olgarch ex- plained quickly to the hot-headed Greek. “Concentrated essence of food. Hispan has done the same. But this is a differ- ent process.”
“A very simple one,” the man of Asto said indifferently. “Within the pit that delves into the earth is a complex of machinery. That little ball you see is the governor. Its special substance is attuned to the varying vibrations of my thought. I but will the requisite wave lengths, and the ball spins obediently. Beneath, the proper machinery is acti- vated, and in the space of seconds the finished product is thrust up for my use. All my simple physical needs are thus provided for. Each one on this island does the same.”
“I can understand the principle,” the Olgarch replied with interest. “Grant- ing, of course, your special faculty of projecting thought at a distance. But surely on this barren land you have not the necessary organic elements for food and clothing. Hydrogen, oxygen, sul- phur and phosphorus, perhaps ; but how about carbon, nitrogen, iron and man- ganese ?”
Kar stared at him. “Even your His- pan is obviously of a retarted culture,” he retorted. “Here we do not worry about the elements. Our machines use only the primal stuff of matter — elec- trons and protons — and weave them into the requisite atoms by compelling them into the proper orbit-states of energy. But eat !”
Gingerly Sam picked up his pill. It seemed small enough within the blunt- ness of his fingers. He thrust it, never-
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Under the impulse of his thoughts the ball spun more and more swiftly.
theless, into his mouth, swallowed it. So did the others.
Sam Ward gulped, bewildered. He had hardly felt the pellet slide down his throat, yet a sense of fullness, or reple- tion, had already spread through his system. Strange tastes, subtle, fragrant, luxuriously different, salivated his glands, breathed epicurean delights. He turned in time to see the broad grin of delight on Kleon’s face. The Greek smacked his lips resoundingly. “It is magic,” he said with a satisfied air, “but it is a good magic.”
“We have eaten and drunk, in a way,” Beltan said quietly. “Now there are other matters to be considered. The rocket hordes of Harg, for instance.”
SAM STARTED. He had almost forgotten about them in the immediacies of this Island of Asto. He thrust a quick glance upward. The doming web of thought vibrations was still in place, shifting, swirling with inherent power. The sky was not visible. Surely they were safe. Then he frowned. If the three of them, in a single rocket craft, had managed to detect the island, surely Vardu with his rocketing soldiers would have no difficulty.
“Harg?” queried Kar in some sur- prise. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you see,” Kleon began, and stopped abruptly.
A man had materialized in their midst !
He w'as taller than either Ens or Kar ; his body was lean, but fairly well formed. Even his head, though larger than nor- mal, did not bulge as much with pro- truding thought. Sam Ward took an in- stant dislike to his coldiy calculating eyes, the thin sneer that warped his col- orless lips.
ISLAND OF THE INDIVIDUALISTS
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One moment the ground next to Kar - had been vacant ; now he was there, com- fortably standing, his will beating like heavy wings against the minds of the three alien comrades.
“I know that I have done violence to the inviolable traditions of Asto in in- truding upon your privacy, oh Kar,” he declared with a negligent air, “but you and I are the only ones of all our race who retain to some extent the primitive instinct of curiosity. I noted these strange visitants of yours, and desired to know more of their purpose and of these strangers from Harg of whom they speak.”
Kar looked astounded. More, he seemed positively aghast. There was a new asperity in his tone that dulled its squeakiness. “Your invasion of my do- main is an incredible act, Ras. In all my thousand years of contemplation, in all the former memories of my father, no man of Asto has done the like.”
“Then it is time we break loose from a silly tradition,” Ras said contemptu- ously. “I confess I am getting a bit tired with the company of my own mind.
I have nothing more to explore therein. It begins to bore me. I require new stimuli, fresh outlooks.” He turned his inscrutable eyes on the aston- ished trio. “Such as the presence of these men of alien times, for example — such as knowledge of these hordes of Harg of whom they speak with such obvious fear.”
The Greek had given ground before this sudden apparition. Involuntarily his shield came up; his lips moved in si- lent appeals to his gods.
But Beltan’s proud features displayed no outer perturbation. “I take it, friend Ras,” he said, “that you transported your bodily frame along the thrust of your concentrated will ?”
The tall Astonian turned with a thin- lipped smile. “Naturally,” he assented. “The secret of thought-transportation was discovered three millenia ago by our
fathers. Our minds, through long prac- tice and concentration, have become storage batteries of extremely high po- tential. We thrust out a steady stream of beam-thoughtwaves to the point in space desired. The potential, at the re- ceiving end is considerably lower. Our bodies, polarized in the direction of the beam, and infused with electro-magnetic vibrations, descend from the higher to the lower potential. The speed is of the order of light.”
“Then you could travel anywhere, and as far as you like?” Sam asked quickly.
“Of course.”
“But why should we?” squeaked Kar. His perturbation at this unheard-of in- vasion of his privacy had passed. “Could we contemplate the problems of the uni- verse any better amid other and stranger surroundings? If anything, the out- ward show would distract our ideas, dis- sipate our energies.”
RAS FAVORED him with a sar- donic glance. “I told you, Kar, that I for one have reached the end of my inner cogitations. I can go no further. With- out doubt I have not sloughed off the physical as much as the rest erf you.”
Kar was properly shocked. He wagged his bulbous head. “There is no end to the exploration of one’s own mind,” he piped. “Perhaps I, too, have lagged a bit behind the others. But look at Ens, look at a hundred others. In ten thousand years they still will not have reached the end.”
Ras disregarded him. His penetrat- ing eyes impacted on Sam. Desperately Sam blanked his mind against the pry- ing waves that seemed to suck him dry. “Tell me more of this race of Harg,” the Astonian demanded softly.
The twentieth-century man complied unwillingly. In any event, he reflected, he could not withhold secrets from these islanders. He told of their stumbling upon the hydraulic, stellene-enclosed city, of its fascist totalitarianism, its sci-
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etice, its incredible army of rocket sol- diers. He described how they had man- aged to escape, with the aid of the Hetera Alanie; how Vardu had wrested control from Hanso and had sworn to subjugate the Earth. How they had ever fled before his pursuing hordes in the stolen rocket ship and found no other civilization but this Island of Asto.
“Except for the neutron city of His- pan,” Ras said with a side glance at the Olgarch.
“Which is impregnable to all attack,” declared Beltan with proud dignity.
“But you must take warning,” as- serted Sam. “When we sped out over the Pacific in last desperate flight, Vardu was close on our trail. His hordes will soon arrive. They have numbers, weap- ons of tremendous destruction. Even your thought-enclosures are insufficient. But if you will get to work, fashion counter-weapons as no doubt you can, you may rid all Earth of this threat to its safety.”
“The mesh of all our thoughts is im- penetrable to the combined superforces of the universe,” piped Kar positively. “It is the fundamental substratum of matter as welt as of space. It is eternal, indestructible. Even if the universe should flame in ruining destruction, the projection of our thoughts would nev- ertheless remain intact.”
“I can well believe it,” Kleon cried ruefully. He stared at his futile sword and javelin. Since they had been turned aside by an immaterial shimmer his childlike faith in himself had sagged. In spite of his adventures in Hispan, at Harg, and now on Asto, his mind was still too steeped in the habits of the old Greek world to grasp entire the mighty forces that ensuing centuries had un- leashed.
“That is true,” Ras said absently. He seemed to be absorbed in his own thoughts.
“But at least,” insisted Beltan, “even if you are safe, think of the rest of Earth.
There may be other cities not nearly as advanced as you, whose defenses may not be proof against the might of Harg.”
“They are no concern of ours,” Ras answered brusquely. His eyes were speculative; a tiny smile thinned his lips.
“A thoroughly selfish attitude,” cried Sam indignantly. But he was talking to thin air. A moment before Ras had stood there, close to Kar. Now, a wind stirred and rustled as air rushed in to fill the void of his form.
Kleon ’s blue eyes popped. “Aie!” he gasped. “Where did he go?”
“No doubt he went back to the pri- vacy of his own meditations,” Kar said indifferently. “He was bored with ex- cess talk. It is a drain on our vitality to speak.”
THE OLGARCH shook his tawny head. There was rarely disapproval in his level eyes, but now a shadow had passed over them. “If this Island of Asto represents truly the intellectual ad- vance of the future, then the outlook is dark indeed. Thought that has ingrown, rather than expanded — thought that seeks the inner seeds of specialized de- cay, that grows narrower as it waxes mighty. It seemingly brings in its train the exaltation of the individual and the total obliteration of the race. I’m begin- ning to think that evolution has taken the wrong path, that friend Kleon with his emphasis of the physical represents a more natural, wholesome course.”
“Know you,” Kleon flared angrily, “that I am a philosopher and a man of letters as well as a fighting man. I have witnessed the passage of ten thousand years and have seen nothing to compare with the flame of intellect that played over Athens and Corinth and Thebe3 and the cities of the Ionian coast.”
“He is right,” Sam affirmed. “A lit- tle more of the old Greek ideal of a sound mind in a sound body — a happy balancing — would have worked wonders for these overemphasized States of the
ISLAND OF THE INDIVIDUALISTS
55
future. Oligarchy in Hispan, Fascism in Harg — and Anarchic Individualism here in Asto.”
“I chose my words badly,” Beltan apologized. ‘‘That was in fact what I meant.” He broke off abruptly, frowned. He turned slowly to Kar, whose eyes were already sinking within their sock- ets; as if he, too, were wearied with mdch talk.
“Where is the domain of Ras ?”
The Astonian’s eyes opened a trifle. His voice was a thin whisper. “To the left of Ens,” he answered. “Now go. I am already wearied of your finite in- tellects. I wish to probe deeper into myself.”
“But there are certain matters that must be settled,” the Olgarch protested.
It was too late. The sound of his voice beat in vain against a blanketing screen of thought. Kar had faded from sight, was already hidden within the mesh of his vibratory intellect.
“That’s that,” declared Sam with a wry smile. “Nice people, these Astoni- ans. Even Kar, who seemed the most human of them all.”
“I say we leave them to their fate,” Kleon declared angrily. “Let us go on to seek other cities.”
“You forget,” Sam reminded him, “we’ve run out of rocket fuel. I had wanted Kar to make us some, but he didn’t give us a chance.” He cupped his hands. “Hey, there, you within ! Come out for a moment. We need a little help !”
But there came no answer from the enveloping shimmer.
The three stranded adventurers turned and stared at each other. Their plight was desperate. With Kar’s with- drawal, the last chance of aid had van- ished. As far as these self-centered in- tellects of Asto were concerned, they could starve without a helping hand be- ing raised in their behalf. And ever present in their consciousness was the knowledge that the fanatic hordes of
Harg were on the way. Each knew that little mercy might be expected from Vardu, their Leader.
“Let us seek Ras again,” Beltan de- cided suddenly.
Sam shrugged. There had been some- thing about that thin-lipped Astonian that had repelled. But anything was better than standing vacantly before a shimmer of impalpable thought.
They trudged through the crunching pumice in silence. The rocket ship loomed in front of them, disconsolate, futile-looking without the precious fuel.
They passed the hazy iridescence of many concealing curtains. Behind each a being roosted, oblivious to all but him- self and the exploration of his own mind. Before each one they paused and tried to penetrate the silences, to rouse the creature within. They failed each time.
EVEN BELTAN’S proud calm took on sharp-edged tones at repeated fail- ure. He fingered his electro-blaster as if tempted to try its power against the arrogant withdrawals. But he smiled weariedly and thrust it back into his belt.
Ens was passed without even a hail. Then Sam stopped, looked about with a bewildered air. “That’s funny,” he re- marked. “I could have sworn this was the spot to which Kar alluded as the seated domicile of Ras.”
“It is,” Beltan responded with a quiet frown. He pointed. “Look! There is a fresh-smoothed surface where a cylin- drical pit once existed. Ras has oblit- erated it — filled it in !”
“But why?” Kleon demanded. “Where could he have gone?”
The Olgarch’s eyes were steady. “I was afraid of this,” he said. “He seemed restless, bored with his thousand years of contemplation. He has left the Island of Asto.”
“Left it?” echoed the others.
“Yes. Our unexpected arrival gave him the idea. That, and the story he derived from our minds and our tongues.
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He has gone to meet the oncoming hordes of Harg.”
“To fight them alone!’’ exclaimed Kleon, his eyes kindling. “Aie! I had not expected such noble courage from a puny thing like him.” He struck his javelin against his shield with a resound- ing clash. “I wish he had taken me along.”
Sam said softly and with a certain tenderness : “You still possess the child- like faith of your day, my Kleon. You cannot understand the twisted corridors of these minds of the future. Ras has not gone to fight Vardu. He has gone forth to make an alliance with him, to propose that they join forces and thereby become irresistible. A mighty intellect joined to a mighty fanaticism. Nothing on Earth will be able to withstand that combination.”
Beltan nodded somberly. “That was also in my mind, Sam,” he said.
“But — but — ” the Greek sputtered, “that would make him a traitor against his own kind. No man is so base ”
“Are they not?” Sam retorted grimly. “History is strewn with such examples. Your own Greek world had plenty. Be- sides, on this Island of Individualists there are no binding ties. Supreme self- ishness is the approved rule.”
Beltan said quietly and with em- phasis, “Here they come now. Vardu was closer on our trail titan I had thought.”
Startled, they stared upward at the sky.
They beheld a sight thrilling, awe- inspiring— yet deathly ominous in its implications.
There was a rift in the weaving dome of thought-projections — the single community effort of the anarchic in- dividuals of Asto. A neat round patch where, earlier, the emanations of Ras had fused the shield to a completed whole.
The blue sky beyond was aflame with hurtling projectiles. A hundred thou-
sand Hargian soldiers, each enclosed in his stellene cylinder, grasping his stel- lene-tipped disintegration rod, face blaz- ing with the inner fires of fanaticism.
Behind them blasted long streamers of fire, catapulting them straight for the Island of Asto at terrific speeds. The Pacific rocked and roared with the thun- der of their coming. In the van, a huge rocket ship slammed along with all jets open.
“Run for it !” Sam yelled.
“Where to?” the Greek ejaculated.
“Back to Kar. If we can only make him understand!”
THEY RACED over the furrowed lava, hearts pounding, ears deafened with the mighty vibrations. Already the hordes were pouring through the gap in the intangible haze.
Straight for the thought-enwrapped Ens they lanced. A thousand rods jerked forward; a thousand blasts of atomic destruction crashed through re- sistant air.
Horrified, the three fugitives stum- bled blindly on, heads twisted backward to view the awesome sight.
An unequal battle! A lone puny be- ing, wrapped only in the projections of his own thought, against a hundred thousand warriors, armed with weapons that crashed the atoms in their courses !
A dome of fiery red blazed with insup- portable brilliance. The pumice ground flared and shattered into primal elec- trons. Billowing gases spattered into coruscating dust. Again and again the bolts crashed forth ; again the meshed enlacement of Ens glowed and hissed.
“It’s impossible for him to exist within that molten shell,” Sam groaned. “They’ll break through in another sec- ond.”
“I’m not so sure,” answered Beltan as he ran. “Thought is more primal than matter. Look!”
Kleon gasped, had stopped in mid- stride. Astounded, they stared back at
ISLAND OF THE INDIVIDUALISTS
57
the holocaust, forgetful of their own danger.
The beleaguered shell of Ens was expanding. Slowly at first, then more and more rapidly. The red tints shifted to a blinding white, then to an almost invisible, furious blue. The rocket-war- riors clustered round it like a thousand stinging wasps ; the pointed rods flamed with red destruction.
But the immaterial dome rushed out- ward with increasing speed. Its blazing surface caught the crowding vanguard of the Hargians. There was a series of tremendous detonations, a spray of com- etary sparks. A hundred Hargians van- ished into nothingness.
The assault redoubled. A thousand more hurtled forward, belching bolts of searing fire. The thought-shell flared anew under the tremendous impacts.
But steadily, remorselessly, the flam- ing traceries expanded, engulfed more and more of the rocekt-warriors, whiffed them to extinction.
Sam was rooted in his tracks. “Good God!” he yelled. “No wonder the Astonians were not disturbed at our warnings. Why, he’s wiping out the . entire horde, singlehanded.”
The Greek’s eyes glowed with the lust of battle. He brandished his javelin joyously. “By Castor and Pollux, I take everything back I ever said. This puts Thermopylae into the shade.”
But Beltan said: “It’s simple enough. Thought is obviously the substratum of the universe. Its waves — more funda- mental than electron trains — are unaf- fected by material weapons. But its own vibrations, when concentrated, set up a dissonance in the orbits of the atoms and burst them asunder.”
• “The point is,” cried Sam, “that Harg is defeated, and whatever cities of Earth that may exist are saved.”
Pain shadowed the Olgarch’s eyes. "I am not so certain of that. Here comes the rocket ship.”
The silvery craft plunged down into
the melee with a thunder of jets. An amplifier ripped a fierce command through the turmoil and crash of battle.
“Back, men of Harg!”
WITHIN the shining hull two men stood erect. One was tall and dark of face ; a tiny mustache rode his snarling lip.
“Vardu !” screamed Kleon, and lifted his javelin.
Sam caught his hand in time. “You fool,” he cried. “You wouldn’t last a moment if they knew you’re here. Be- sides, Vardu’s not the dangerous one now. It’s Ras !”
The renegade Astonian stood at the side of the Hargian Leader. He was slighter, punier, with bulging, ungainly head. An unpleasant smile played over his thin lips.
Swiftly a haze enveloped them both, a screen behind which their features grew vague and shifting. The screen expanded to meet the onrushing shield of Ens. There was impact.
The very Island reeled on its founda- tions. A blast of hellish fire ran like a flaming sword deep into the earth, up to the very heavens. The overlay- ing, feebler curtain of vibrations ripped asunder like smoke puffs in a hurricane. The blue Pacific reared in mountain- high breakers. Sound screamed and battered at paralyzed eardrums. The stellene-enclosed men of Harg tossed vi- olently in the gale. Sam was flattened to the ground.
Two mighty intellects opposed each other with weapons such as the world had never seen before ! Projected thoughts, meeting in head-on collision like runaway stars, thrusting and heav- ing at each other with forces huger than those implicit in the bowels of the Sun.
The dazzled trio picked themselves up, crouched aghast at the titanic con- flict. For once their reckless daring, their sense of self-confident arrogance deserted them. They felt like tiny in-
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sects in the presence of the elemental. Even the fanatics of Harg, trained to unthinking immolation, pressed back against the still-oncoming rush of their fellows. The stage was set for the soli- tary struggle!
For what seemed eons the conflict ebbed and flowed. The two spheres of thought crashed and flared and crashed again. The universe seemed to be split asunder.
Then, suddenly, it was over!
The blinding light flickered, grew pale. The thought-shells shimmered, thinned. The roar and thunder muttered away. The shells vanished.
Two antagonists, Astonians both, faced each other, naked, defenceless, their mighty thought-screens cancelled and made null and void by the mutually opposing forces.
Ras had a triumphant smile on his evil countenance. Vardu, next to him, looked scared, frightened out of his wits.
Ens, still seated on his cushioned mound, his futile shanks crossed beneath his spindly body, stared calmly upward at the threatening hordes. Ras said something sharply. Vardu jerked erect, crashed out an order through the am- plifier.
“Slay!”
A hundred stellene rods uplifted, blasted forth screaming disintegration. Ens, still calmly staring, flashed to ex- tinction.
WITH a huge shout of Harg! Harg! the countless hordes flung themselves upon the next Astonian, toward the other end of the island. Again the solid land shook and rumbled with the noise of battle.
“The blind, unutterable fools,” panted Sam as he stumbled along. “If they’d only unite their thought screens, they could blast Ras and Vardu and all their men to hell and gone in an instant. This way they’ll be butchered one by one.”
“They are individualists,” groaned
the Olgarch. “In the course of thou- sands of years they have lost the fac- ulty of community effort. Each is a law unto himself.”
“They are weaklings, not men.” coun- tered Kleon fiercely, “in spite of their intellects. They deserve to be wiped out.”
“Except that we go with them," Sam said with grim emphasis. “Our sole hope is to convince Kar before the mop- ping-up process reaches us. Ah. there he is!”
The domelike evanescence was opaque, quiescent. Beltan raised his voice, shouted above the roar of farther battle. “Kar, oh Kar! Show yourself and hear us. Your own fate, the fate of all your comrades, depends upon your listening.”
Slowly the shield grew transparent, fell away. Kar stared out at them with calm, untroubled glance. “Why do you disturb my meditations?” he piped. “You have broken the train of a deep problem involving the ultimate fate of the universe.”
“In another few minutes it wouldn’t matter anyway,” Sam told him bitterly. “Ras has turned traitor, is leading the forces of Harg against his fellows. One by one they are easy prey. But if you can arouse them, get them to unite ”
Kar looked at him with queer sur- prise. “Unite?” he echoed. “That is a word we do not know. It would mean the end of all our privacy — the end of all secluded thought. The fine balance of our intellects would be destroyed for- ever."
“So you’d rather die, like rats in a trap!” Kleon cried.
Kar turned his bulging head toward the Greek. “Even death,” he declared, “is better than sinking one’s individu- ality in the common will — than losing one’s identity.”
They argued, they pleaded, they screamed insults and objurgations. But the Astonian was calm, immovable, im-
ISLAND OF THE INDIVIDUALISTS
59
pervious to all argument. And mean- while, one by one, each by each, after gi- gantic conflicts, the farther island was being cleared. The din was terrific, the flashes of lightning blasts insupportable. The tide of war was swinging around, creeping toward them.
“All right, man of the future,” Kleon ended angrily. “Die if you wish, with- out a struggle. I have seen enough of the future. I’m only sorry I did not fall in the fight with Porus. At least that would have been a glorious death, among my comrades and under the very eyes of great Alexander.”
Kar meditated, shook his huge head on its spindly stalk. “I shall not die,” he decided finally. “There are still certain problems to be solved.”
“You mean,” demanded Beltan, “that you will rouse your fellows, present a united front to the enemy ?”
KAR LOOKED at him with pitying condescension. “I do not mean that, stranger. That would be impossible. But I shall withdraw myself from Asto where I have meditated for more than a thousand years, and pursue my solitary thoughts in peaceful surroundings.” “Good!” exclaimed Sam. “You will take us with you?”
“Not at all,” declared the Astonian. “You are intruders upon my privacy. You have disturbed me enough. Good- bye !”
Sam jerked forward, cursing — but he was stumbling over nothingness. A mo- ment ago Kar had stood before them. Now he was gone — vanished with a whoosh of inrushing air.
“By Heracles,” muttered Kleon, shak- ing his javelin savagely, “I wish I had run him through on the spot.”
Beltan’s aristocratic face was pale, yet unmoved. “We have lost our last chance,” he said quietly. He unloosed the electro-blaster from his belt. “Come, my friends, at least we shall go down fighting, as befits brave men.”
But Sam’s brows were furrowed on the cylindrical pit before him — the pit which held deep within its bowels the machinery whereby Kar had manufac- tured all the wants of his former ex- istence. The crystal ball still hung suspended over the void.
“I wonder !” he spoke half to him-
self. He swung around, peered through the billowing smoke of disintegration, the appalling sheets of flame, against which the shrieking, hurtling rocket hordes of Harg seemed like so many demons. “Good!” he cried, “our craft is still intact.” He whirled back on Bel- tan, eyes burning with a new luster. “Do you think you would know how to handle Kar’s machinery?”
The Olgarch looked doubtful. “It is hard to say. From Kar’s description I detected certain resemblances to what the Technicians of Hispan have evolved. But, of course, I couldn’t manipulate his crystal ball by the power of thought. I’d have to work with the machinery direct. Why do you ask ?”
“Our rocket craft, by some freak of good fortune, is still intact,” Sam ex- plained rapidly. “Now if we only had some rocket fuel — a few gallons of liquid
hydrogen, a tank of liquid oxygen ”
“Say no more,” declared the Olgarch decisively. “I understand. How long do you think it will be before the horde sweeps over to this end of the island ?” “About fifteen minutes.”
Kleon groaned. “Little time enough.” But already the Olgarch had un- buckled his electro-blaster, handed it to Sam, and had swung himself lithely over the edge of the pit. Anxiously, his two comrades peered down into the smooth- walled cylinder. Beltan was standing on a ledge that ran spirally down, moving sensitive fingers over the shiny surfaces of intricate machines whose very de- sign were wholly foreign to Sam, not to speak of Kleon.
“What do you think?” Sam shouted. Beltan did not look up. His whole
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being was absorbed in a frantic effort to understand, to find a clue toward op- eration. “I don’t know,” his voice echoed up. “There are certain elements of familiarity, that is all as yet.”
Kleon jerked suddenly erect, whirled, jabbed with his javelin in a single mo- tion. Air screamed around them. Like a plummet, a Hargian soldier, his blond face cruel, hate-distorted, swooped out of the clouds of soot. A rocket jet blasted behind him. His hand held a lethal rod, its narrow muzzle snouted down through the monodirectional stel- lene envelope.
The javelin drove straight through the tiny opening. With a mighty thrust Kleon twisted. Then he was flung back- ward, the weapon jerked from his hand, borne down by the fierce momentum of that earthward drive.
L’.ut the Hargian’s aim had been di- verted. The blast of disintegration seared a great gap in the lava soil yards away. Sam levelled the electro-blaster. Blue bolts crashed forth. The soldier within his stellene tube crisped and flamed in death-agony.
“Whew!” Sam wiped his brow. “If it hadn’t been for your quick wit, Kleon, our adventures would have been over.”
“There will be more.” The Greek picked himself up, breathing hard. “The flashes are moving our way now.”
IT HAD BEEN sheer luck that the hordes were still concentrated on the last few individualists at the farther end. And luckier still that billowing clouds of soot and dust made a thick pall over every- thing. Kleon was right. Where one had stumbled by accident upon them, there would be hundreds and thousands all too soon.
“Hurry, Beltan!” Sam yelled into the depths.
“I’m doing my best,” the Olgarch an- swered. “I’ve already got an under- standing of the funamental principle of these machines, but how to get them
started is another matter. Hold them off as long as possible.”
“We’ll do it,” snapped Sam grimly. “Keep going!”
To Kleon he said: “Did you hear that?”
The Greek nodded joyously. His nos- trils were wide, eager with the snuff of battle. He slung his javelin behind him, hefted his sword lovingly. His shield protected his breast. “Let them come, friend Sam. We’ll show these creatures of the future that there were men in the olden days — men who knew how to fight and how to die.”
Sam grinned affectionately. A tag of an old book ran in his mind. Three musketeers, three dauntless men sep- arated by eons of time, yet as one against a hostile world. It was good to be of their company.
His fingers tightened on the electro- blaster. His own gun was useless against the stellene envelopes. Even Kleon’s ancient sword was better. Shoul- der to shoulder they stood, eyes alert, peering vainly into the hell of sound and flame and blanketing soot that en- veloped them.
“Here comes one,” shouted Kleon suddenly.
A red rocket trail ripped through the murk, blasted toward them. Sam saw the startled look in the Hargian’s eyes as he zoomed unwittingly upon the crouched figures on the edge of the pit. He jerked frantically on his stellene rod. Sam loosed a stream of crackling elec- tric charges. The man died with a jarring thud upon the hard, lava floor.
Even as he fell, Kleon lashed forward with a tremendous stroke. Another blundering soldier had hurtled out of the enshrouding gloom. The fierce thrust swung the hard stellene shell to one side. Its nose buried itself un- harmed within the stony ground. But the figure within catapulted forward against the metal. His neck snapped to one side, broken.
ISLAND OF THE INDIVIDUALISTS
61
“Good work !” Sam approved. “They’re coming fast now.”
Kleon grinned. This was life ; this was exaltation. Death no longer mat- tered. His sword had held its own against the magical weapons of the fu- ture.
The surrounding fog began to belch forth Hargians. The brilliant sears of flame where Ras and his former com- rades locked in tremendous struggle drew closer and closer. Soon they would be upon the embattled three in over- whelming mass.
“How’s it going, Beltan?” Sam yelled anxiously.
The Olgarch’s voice rose muffled, ex- cited. “Give me another five minutes.”
Sam set his teeth hard. “Ten, if necessary,” he shouted back with false optimism. And as he shouted, he shot down another Hargian. How many charges were left within the mechanism he had no way of telling — but they must be few indeed.
They came fast and thick now. Kleon cut and thrust like some terrible god. By sheer weight of arm and power of shoulder he parried the hurtling — but unstable — rockets, sent them crashing to the ground. Sam’s fingers ached with the searing heat of rapid fire. Around them, in a flaming circle, were dead men, each within his shell of stellene.
THEN* with a click, the electro- blaster was empty. “That’s the end,” whispered Sam with a wry smile. “It was a good fight while it lasted.”
Far beneath they heard a whoop. “I’ve got it,” cried the Olgarch. “I’ve found
the key. Within a minute ” Never
had they heard him so excited.
“A minute,” groaned Sam. “He might as well ask for eternity. Here they come.”
To one side the hordes were massing, moving with relentless deliberation to- ward them. The other end of the island was bare of Astonians. Now they were
coming to clean up the few who still re- mained within their shells of thought, too absorbed, too indifferent to flee to save their lives.
“Sam Ward !” Kleon cried out in a great voice. “How about the weapons of Harg ? Surely you must know how to manipulate their secrets.”
“Kleon, you old son !” Sam yelled joy- fully. “Of course!”
He raced to those tubes where the rods had been thrust through the trans- parent covering in vain attempt to bring them into action. He ripped hard, jerked two free. One for Kleon and one for himself.
There was a tiny knob near the handle. A single pressure, and a beam of force sped to its mark.
Again they were armed!
Beltan’s tawny head emerged sud- denly from the