by Ed Earl Repp
“Exactly! Mankind would butcher one another, the strong would prey upon the weak. They would gut their civilization within a year. And their very sterility would take care of the rest.”
Saran’s head went back a little. “I will not do it! Perhaps I have enough of my weak and savage ancestors in me that your greed and ruthlessness disgust me. And by the way—you have always taught me that my father and I were exiled as martyrs. Hartley says Lawrence Saunders left Earth voluntarily!”
“Hartley!” Ryg sneered. “You put this lying moron’s word before Ryg’s? I have told you the truth, Saran. What reason had I to lie?”
The Earthman frowned. What Ryg said was logical enough. Ryg had no reason to bring him up as his own son, to teach him the intellectual treasures of Korja.
Ryg’s eyes went crafty. He struck at the psychological moment.
“I will forgive you your faithlessness, Saran, if you follow my commands from now on. Do not try to betray me again. The Other is always in touch with me. Nor will I be far away at any time. Tomorrow night I will expect your work to be finished, and you will rejoin us here.”
Saran seemed to feel the fingers of a giant hand closing about him.
“You are the Leader,” he murmured. “I—I will not fail you.”
Exultation stirred the Korjans behind the glass. Ryg said, as he had said on another night long since:
“What is your supreme duty, Saran?”
And Saran made the answer that strangely galled him now.
“My duty is to Korja. I owe allegiance to Ryg, unto death.”
But later that night, as he tossed on his bed, he asked himself if any oath of allegiance could stand the test of such unreasoning cruelty.
* * *
In the laboratory next morning Saran was strangely sullen. Work had gone on for weeks on the ever present problem—the cause of the fatal radiations. As he watched Smedley, Rutters and Hartley laboring over abstruse formulas near the window, he realized how close they were coming to the truth. Slowly he walked toward them.
Hartley glanced up, as the younger man’s shadow patterned the table. His brows drew into a querulous V-shape.
“We’ve got to make a change in the domes,” Saran announced curtly.
“But why?” Rutters shrugged. “Aren’t they working satisfactorily?”
“So far. But winter is coming, and I don’t know how they’ll stand the weight of snow in the colder countries. We’ve got to vary the impulsor frequency and double the output. That should give enough heat to melt the snow as fast as it falls.”
Hartley’s eyes roved over his face intently. He didn’t appear quite satisfied with the explanation.
But: “As you say, my boy,” he gave in. “I’ll give the order and have it sent everywhere, all over the world. Have you decided on the procedure?”
“Give me an hour,” Saran growled. Jamming his hands in his pockets, he left the room.
He had not been at work more than twenty minutes when Enid came quietly into the small laboratory. Though she spoke, Saran did not look up; only answered gruffly and continued his work. For a while he was conscious of her moving about, straightening things up, occupying herself in a hundred inconsequential actions that betrayed her inner turbulence.
Finally she was stopping by his chair and turning his face up to hers with a fingertip under his chin.
“There’s something wrong,” she said. “What is it, Saran?”
“Nothing! Why should something be wrong, merely because I have to work?”
“It’s more than that. You’re troubled.”
He pushed her hand away, failed to meet her gaze.Then she was saying sadly,
“There are times when you seem strange, Saran. We know so little of you, really. Once you said you aren’t John Saunders. But—tell me the truth: are you Lawrence Saunders’ son, or not?”
Saran went rigid. Suspicion again! His fingers locked on the pencil in his hand so hard that the wood cracked. In the next instant, Helen Wade entered with a mass of data.
“Telephone, Miss Hartley,” she announced cheerfully.
Enid bit her lip. “Thanks,” she murmured. She went out with the question still unanswered.
Before long she was back. “It’s strange,” she said. “The party was gone when I got there.
“Who was it, Miss Wade?”
“I couldn’t say,” Helen told her. “It was a man’s voice.”
Saran knew a vagrant gratitude for her interruption. Enid didn’t pursue her inquisition, with the secretary listening.
It was shortly after Enid had departed that Saran got the brilliant idea. He came straight up on the edge of his chair.
“Miss Wade!” he jerked. “Do they keep old newspapers on file in the library?”
“Why, certainly,” the girl told him. “Is there something I can look up for you?”
“No, it— I’ll take care of it myself.”
He drove recklessly from the Beverly Hills mansion into the metropolis, conscious that the answer to all his problems lay in a twenty-year-old newspaper in the library’s files. In it he could find the truth regarding Lawrence Saunders’ death.
Had he actually been exiled by Earthmen? Or—had Ryg scuttled the space ship and kidnaped the scientist’s boy?
* * *
In an ancient, yellowed copy of the Post, he found the story. The boldfaced words served to set his blood on fire:
SAUNDERS FAMILY MURDERED
OFF PLANET JUPITER AFTER
ATTACK BY SPACE PIRATES
Lawrence Saunders, brilliant scientist, died yesterday, as brave in death as he had been in life.
While weird pirates from the void, who needed no space armor to withstand the rigors of the pressureless vacuum surrounding the ships, worked with drills to break into the Valiant II, Saunders radioed terse accounts of the efforts to save himself and his wife and boy. He described the attackers as octopus-like beings, as transparent as molten glass.
His loss to the world is one that will not soon be forgotten…
The paper fell from Saran’s listless fingers. Suddenly there were tears in his eyes. Then, with terrible fear clutching at his heart, he darted from the building.
He found Hartley and the others gathered in the main laboratory waiting for his arrival.
Wild-eyed, panting, he clutched Hartley by the shoulder.
“Have you put in that call yet?” he demanded.
Hartley indicated the telephone with its receiver off the hook.
“Ferguson and the others are waiting.”
Saran picked up the instrument, cut the connection by replacing the receiver in the prongs. At the scientists’ astonished exclamations, he squared off before them.
“Listen—all of you,” he snapped. “This is going to be more than a confession. It’s a command as well. I’ve led you into a trap that was meant to blot all life from the face of the Earth. Now I’m ready to tell you how to avoid that trap!”
Tension leaped through the room. Saran’s dark eyes glittered. He was watching for the one man or woman—for even Enid and Helen weren’t above his suspicions—whose expression did not betray surprise. And he found that only Moss Hartley failed to look shocked.
He told his story with such force that it seemed no one breathed during the recital. He told it with so much sincerity that there was no cry of “Traitor!” from a single throat. Only amazement—and eagerness to hear him out.
Hartley was the first to stir. He got to his feet and extended an acid-stained hand.
“Thank God for men like you!” he breathed. “You had the intelligence to question your orders and the courage to act. But don’t think I haven’t known who you were, John Saunders. I was only biding my time, waiting for you to tell us all.
“You slipped too often. You never explained the ‘Sjorn Theorem’ to my satisfaction. Once you referred to a ‘dargol’; later, I learned you meant ‘day’. Now that you have helped get us into this predicament, how are you goi
ng to get us out?”
“There is only one way to do that,” Saran said incisively. “It will mean the utmost care at every step. One of us here may be The Other I mentioned. If so, Ryg will know of our plans before we are well started. He expects me tonight. I can lie to him and make him think his orders have been followed. That will give us two or three days in which to work.”
“What can be done? Evacuate the glass globes?” Rutters queried.
“Every one of them must be destroyed,” Saran nodded. “We will insulate all hospitals with the glass, but other than that, it will be far less harmful to remain in the direct path of the rays. We must enlist thousands of aviators and equip them with electroscopes, which will detect the energy stations fifty miles away. Every one that is found must be bombed. Since there are hundreds spread over the Earth, it may take weeks.”
“What do we do now?” Smedley growled. “Just sit here?”
“Nothing, until I’ve talked with Ryg. He may have other cards up his sleeve; I don’t know. But I do know this: unless the six of us remain here, all together, until time for me to visit Ryg again, the Korjans will know what has happened. We’re going to sit tight for two hours, and wonder which of you is the traitor!”
* * *
The strain of waiting rasped brutally at the nerves of them all, as the minutes tolled off. Dusk wore on, and Hartley had dinner brought in. But few touched their food; they were too occupied with watching each other like hawks.
With darkness spreading across the sky, Saran stood up.
“Eight o’clock,” he grunted. “I’ll just have time to make it. As a special precaution, suppose no one leaves the room before midnight. Good night!”
His hand palming the knob, he froze. Someone was speaking, softly.
“Not so fast, my friend. We are all going to meet Ryg tonight. Put your hands up!”
He whirled around, to see Helen Wade standing at the head of the table with a gun in her small fist. A tight little smile had frozen her lips.
Enid whispered: “You! We—we should have realized. All of the others we’ve known for years.”
The brunette’s eyes looked hard as steel. She let the gun slant down at the other girl.
“Of course you should have known. But that is where Earthly stupidity held you back. Saran, I could kill you right now and enjoy it. But Ryg’s plans must not be crossed. I was told to let you live, whatever happened. He has ways of using the brains of even traitors like you. And these others—he may desire them, too.”
Enid came to her feet, eyes blazing. “How you, a woman, can be a party to such brutality is incredible! Can you still believe the lies this Ryg has fed you on, when you see the lengths to which he will go to gain his ends?”
“Lies!” sneered the girl. “There are more liars right in this room than on all the planets of the Dark Star. Like Saran himself, I was rescued from death by the Korjans. And I intend to repay that debt. Open the door, Saran.”
Saran advanced a step toward her.
“Think, Helen!” he said sharply. “Ryg told me he was my benefactor, and I have proof he actually murdered my parents. Why he saved me is obvious: he was planning for this invasion even then, needed go-betweens like you and me to do work the Korjans couldn’t accomplish. Are you going to let yourself—”
Fanatical hatred was in the brunette’s pale features. The hammer of the little revolver inched back.
“Open that door and walk out in single file,” she breathed. “We are leaving the back way. Make a single false motion, and I’ll kill every one of you! I have enough bullets in here to accommodate you all. And then where will your precious Earth be?”
It was that thought, rather than the menace of cold steel, that made Saran obey her orders. Within ten seconds, the group was filing somberly out the back door. Helen Wade took no chances. She motioned Hartley, Enid and Saran into the front seat of Saran’s car, forced Smedley and Rutters to lie down on the floor of the back seat. Then she perched on the rear cushions with the gun ever vigilant.
“Now—drive!” she commanded.
Saran’s nerves tingled like live wires all the way to the rendezvous. Bitterly he realized he had plunged them all into this predicament. Yet no opportunity developed to disarm their fanatical captor.
There was something different about the space ship this time, when they clambered toward it up the rough terrain. Saran’s heart leaped when he realized what it was.
Ryg and the others were outside, in bulky space suits! Saran tried to keep his emotions out of his face. For this was their first break—and a slim chance it was.
With queer, octopus-like waddling motions, the four Korjans scuttled toward them. Ryg’s thoughts lashed across the intervening distance.
“Again you have failed me, Saran. For the last time! You did well to bring him, Urna. Who are the others?”
Helen Wade said bitterly: “This is the man Hartley, and his cohorts. They are intelligent but misguided. I thought, perhaps—”
“My brain museum?” Ryg trembled all over with eagerness. “Welcome additions! When I have subjugated their minds, they will be useful to us.”
* * *
Hartley recoiled as the master of Korja approached him.
“You damned, gelatinous monster!” the physicist spat. “Do you think you’re god of the universe, to plan such a thing?” He aimed a kick at the wrathful Leader.
Two of the other three rushed at him with waving tentacles—and that was the chance Saran had prayed for.
In a flat, swift dive, he sprang squarely into Ryg’s middle. Turmoil reigned. Helen Wade screamed at him, but held her fire for fear of striking the Leader.
Then for a moment Saran and Ryg were tumbling down the slope in a mass of writhing tentacles and kicking legs. Ryg’s power was that of a boa constrictor, But his bulky space suit hampered him, and it gave Saran a chance to get behind him and force him to the ground.
His superior weight bore the smaller creature down. Seizing a rock, he began to batter at the man’s helmet. The thick, resilient glass bent a little. Ryg screamed curses, struggled like a bundle of lashing snakes.
“Kill him, Urna!” he shrieked. “My helmet is breaking!”
The girl began edging around them, striving for a shot at Saran. But he was quick and vigilant enough to keep Ryg between them constantly. It came powerfully to him that here in this spot, the fate of Earth was being decided. That was spur enough to drive him to the utmost of his strength.
Again and again the rock crashed against Ryg’s armor. The other Korjans were all occupied with the remaining Earthmen. Rutters had found himself a rock and begun to hammer at the face of one of the Korjan ministers. Enid shrank back against the ship.
Then Saran heard the sound that lighted hope within him. A thin, high hiss. The sound of air leaking into the monster’s helmet!
Ryg screamed horribly. “Kill him! Get him off me! I’ve got to get in the ship. My armor—”
Helen discarded caution. Her gun spoke twice. Saran felt Death pluck at his shoulder. But in the next moment a deafening whistle burst from Ryg’s helmet. Before the Earthman’s horrified eyes, the Leader’s body seemed to dissolve into a mass of tiny green globules. His eyes shrank in size, then burst. And suddenly his brain ceased to shriek imprecations and pleas for mercy.
Hartley, too, had acted in that instant. Helen Wade saw him too late. Hartley’s lanky body crashed into hers. While she was reeling back from the impact, he tore the gun from her fingers. Quickly he pivoted, leveled the revolver at one of the monsters.
The thunder of his shot was echoed by a shrill whistle from another Korjan’s space suit. Hartley swung the pistol on the creature struggling with Rutters. With its faceplate shot away, the Korjan dissolved into harmless protoplasm.
There was only one of the invaders left, and Moss Hartley coldly blasted it into eternity. But even as the echo of the shot ceased to roll back from the hills, a new sound reached their ears. The clang of a door closing.
With one impulse, the four men sprang forward. Helen Wade had gained the rocket ship and locked herself in. Now, with a broken sputtering, the jets came to life.
Saran shouted: “Back! The blast will burn us alive. Let her go!”
Barely in time, they reached a little grove of trees and watched the ship flame into the dark sky. Enid’s hand groped for Saran’s clenched fist. His fingers locked on hers with sudden buoyancy.
“We’ve won!” he breathed. “Beaten the greedy little monsters at their own game.”
“But Helen—” Hartley was voicing the question in all their minds. “Will she be back with other Korjans?”
“If she is, we’ll be ready for them next time. She’s doomed herself to the hell of living among the Korjans in their dying universe.”
“Does that sound so terrible to you now, Saran?” Enid was smiling up at him.
* * *
He shook his head. “This is where I belong, among my own people.”
His face turned toward the city. “But there is not time to talk of these things now. I have a debt to Earth that must be paid. After the last energy dome is destroyed, there will be time for—other things.”
Enid smiled happily, knowing what was in his heart.
The End
*******************************
The World in the Atom,
by Ed Earl Repp
Fantastic Adventures June 1940
Novelette - 8908 words
Gary Horne knew only a vast flare of light,
then he found himself in a strange world in
an atom of the element Thorium
Chapter I
Dr. Gary Horne’s first thought was that he had got himself projected to the ceiling of the lecture auditorium.
From where he was standing, his incredulous eyes looked down at the distinguished audience of scientists and physicists.
