I shall not go into detail as to what this request brought about in the two years that followed, but it took all of that time to convince America that it was for her own good to let us in. The President and the Patriarch had many conferences on the question in Cuba where they both met, and it is needless to say that the President was fired with the thought of what it would one day mean to the United States were she to allow this strange race to become citizens of her country.
When the people of the United States were told of the decision that had been made they rose up in arms and declared they would have nothing to do with the measure and demanded that it should be given no consideration. They still recalled the number of women who had been sacrificed in Mentor, and had become angered when Mentor had refused to give them up when she had been accepted in the World Court. However, many of the women and men had been given the right to return to their own people since, and most of them had refused although they often visited their home land. Too, many of the women had given their lives in bringing into the world the winged babies.
Still the President and Congress still played with the idea of admitting the Mentorites into the country. Doctor Morris had been closeted with several renowned heads of the medical profession and had convinced them that it would be possible to breed wings on all those who expressed a wish to go through with the experiment, and already several such experiments had been made and proved successful. In Mentor there were hardly any Earth-bound left, for after the birth of Jimmy Jr. they had realized that by carefully breeding, the half-developed wings of the Earthbound could be done away with and children of mixed bloods were now born with true wings.
It was a memorial day when the first band of winged people came into America. There were many skirmishes in which the state militia had to be called forth. It was in one of such demonstrations that the President was killed. The murderers were discovered and punished, and henceforth the name of the Martyred President will be known to all future generations as a great fore-sighted American.
Conclusion
MENTOR of South America is still a powerful nation, but she is now undistinguishable from the winged people of the rest of the world. It would be a long story to tell how gradually the antagonism of the world against us vanished and we were admitted everywhere. And as the desire to fly spread among the people thousands upon thousands submitted themselves to the operation. So to day the whole world is winged.
In the meantime the Patriarch grows aged and weary. He is at present drawing up an outline of a type of government which he hopes his people will accept for the future. He wishes Mentor to become a republic and suggests that James Kennedy, Jr. be elected by the people as their president!
Lois, now a comely matron, has not lost any of her youthful charm, for the women of Mentor do not age easily. Their lives spent in the air, in full glare of the warm sun and with the far horizon to remind them that life is as great as they wish to make it, are not given to sitting on their front porches and allowing the rest of the world to fly by.
Too, she has her daughters to keep her young and on her toes, for after Jimmy Jr. had come two more sons and two girls that are almost as pretty as their mother.
* * *
So ended the story as written by my ancestor. In contemporary history, I find, that not shortly after this tale was finished the secret formula of the solutions et cetera that had been evolved by the original Howard Mentor had been placed in the vaults of the Federal government. The obtaining of the secretions no longer necessitated the killing of birds, for chemists discovered that the ingredients could be produced synthetically.
It took several hundreds of years to bring about the complete change, and we can safely say that the world’s five billion people are all the wings except perhaps a few isolated groups living in the jungles and mountains, who are now considered savages.
And it is to that Triumvirate composed of Howard Mentor of Scotland, the Patriarch of Mentor and the Martyred President that the world can send her prayer of thanks for the power that is now hers.
THE END
Out of the Void
New Interplanetary Serial in Two Parts—Part I
WHAT can be more stimulating to the imagination than a trip through unexplored space? Man has been going higher and higher in the air and there seems little doubt about his ability to reach the outer atmosphere some time and perhaps even venture into the vacuum. Many lives will probably be lost in the attempt—but the realization is hardly beyond the pale of possibility. This seems particularly feasible since the discovery by the Westinghouse people of permalloy, that new metal which tends to neutralize gravitation.
And perhaps this talk about the impossibility of crossing the vacuum is only a legend—more or less like the talk that was rampant in the days of Columbus about crossing the ocean. It seems ridiculous to us now, but the same may some day hold true of interstellar travel.
In the first instalment of this story, the author gives us excellent description not only of the sphere which makes the trip, but of the great void through which it travels, too. “Out of the Void” easily justifies the favoritism which is showered on interplanetary stories.
The Narrator Starts on a Fishing Trip
THE possibility that life is sustained upon a number of our sister planets has changed to probability, but we on Earth have as yet had no conclusive proof that such life is to be found on other orbs. There has been talk of sending a man to the Moon by a rocket, and we hear much about radio-telegraphing to Mars. Yet, up to the time of these events of which I am writing, none of our scientists had taken seriously the possibility of a visitor reaching Earth from another planet.
Neither had I!
I am not a scientific man. In fact, I am not even a radio fan. To me, the moon is an appendage—an interesting appendage, to be sure, of this good old world, and the stars are there to relieve the monotony of the night sky. It doesn’t matter to me whether the Earth is round, whether it moves around the sun, or whether there is life on our sister planets or not. I offer these introductory remarks because I want it understood that this is being told from a layman’s viewpoint—from a disinterested layman’s viewpoint. I have no theory or explanations. I have only cold, bare facts.
I am one of those beings usually designated as the T.B.M. I go to the shows whose patronage depends largely on that class of man. And like a great many brethren, I am a devotee of the art of fishing. This is not a fish story, however, though it has its beginnings in a fishing trip!
It was on one of those rare occasions when I slipped away from the turmoil of Wall Street to my own particular fishing lodge, a ramshackle little hut on the bank of one of the finest trout streams in the east, bar none, that I had my adventure.
That afternoon I had telephoned the wife that I would not be home for dinner for three or four nights. Catching the last train out, I was soon disembarking at my wayside station. I carried nothing but a small grip containing my necessities and my beautiful fishing-rod. Walking briskly I left the confines of the tiny New Jersey village, and plunged into the dense woods that hedged in my shack.
It was already night, and I hurried, for I had the city man’s fear of the dark. I met no one, though once or twice I had the sensation that the woods were full of spying men. Once through the trees I saw the gleam of what appeared to be the eyes of a cat, or a wolf, but I laughed that off, realizing it could be no more than two fireflies.
I hurried on my way whistling. Then my furtive eye caught the gleam of glass. Ah, thought I, a new neighbor! I resolved that I would pay him a visit the next day. The shack was reached at last, and with hands trembling with joyful excitement, I pushed open the door. I lit the oil lamp, filling it from a tin I kept for that purpose. The night was warm and I needed no fire. I busied myself in making the place habitable.
It was about five minutes later that I discovered the theft, and the jewel. I had always kept an old suit of clothing hanging on a nail against an emergency, such as a wetting,
for instance, although I always brought an extra suit of khaki with me. Now the suit was gone! The suit wasn’t worth anything; an old-clothes man wouldn’t have given me a cent for it, but I did not like the idea of a thief around my hut. What could anyone have wanted with that suit? Then I saw the jewel!
There, on a small shelf, where I usually kept my toothbrush, hairbrush, razor, et cetera, quite close to the rack on which I had hung the old suit, was the most perfect ruby I have ever seen. At least I thought it was a ruby. It flashed and glowed like a thing alive. For several moments I stood there, too enraptured to touch it. I knew immediately that the jewel had been left in lieu of payment for the old suit! But what sort of person would do such a thing? To whom could that suit have been worth a ruby? A thief, an escaped convict? No. A thief or an escaped convict would hardly have considered payment at all.
I went to sleep with that ruby under my pillow. And for the first time the door and windows were locked. The next morning I was up early with a tingle in my blood. Just outside my window I could hear the song of the stream as it bubbled and swirled among its rocks and pools. Dressing, I stopped only for a cup of coffee.
All morning I fished, completely oblivious of any mystery. It was not until after three o’clock in the afternoon, when I finally went to the shack for some food, that I recalled the ruby. That jolt knocked all spirit out of me. I lost every desire to resume my sport. I sat brooding over the jewel. It was too strange. I recalled the curses that some notorious jewels had cast over their possessors. This might be such a gem. Or again, what if the thief had not intentionally left it and should return?
Hurriedly I left the hut. I needed air, but the stream and its trout did not lure me. The gleam of glass that I had seen the night before, appeared again. The owner of that glass might know something about this mystery. Anyway, I needed to talk to someone.
Half running, I quickly came to the spot where I had glimpsed the glass. There was no mistaking it; right there was the converging of two paths. At first I saw nothing; the trees and vegetation hid it, until looking upward, I saw the gleam again. I thought it was the roof of a greenhouse. Wondering who in the world would build such a structure in this part of the country, I walked toward it.
A Strange Visitor
THE country was clearing, and I came to the edge of a large natural open glade, where I stopped short. Astonishment halted me in my tracks. There in the center, or rather almost taking up the entire clearing from one side to the other, reposed a giant construction. It was cylindrical in section, and of the same general design as a torpedo, except that it had two conical ends. It was fully a thousand feet long and perhaps fifty feet in diameter.
I did not stop to conjecture about the whys and wherefores of this strange thing. After my first surprise I walked up to examine it. It was glossy white, and seemed to have a glass-like finish, and it was opaque. I discovered later that it was constructed of glass, but I would not have believed it then. I walked all around trying to fathom its secret, its purpose. There was not a single opening anywhere. It seemed to have been made of some highly polished stone, and picking up a sharp pebble, I tried to scratch the smooth surface. I pressed with all my might, but the white surface withstood me. I could make no mark upon it and the stone’s tip was blunted. It was then that I perceived that the thing was of a clear transparent material, and the whiteness behind it might be a blind drawn over it!
Since a stone could not scratch it, I tried the edge of the diamond in my finger ring. It made not the slightest impression. Determined to discover some way of breaking it, I backed away several yards, and picking up a stone, hurled it with all my strength. The stone bounced off like a rubber ball.
For all of an hour I dallied around the cylinder, trying to discover what it might be, or its purpose in that spot. Half a dozen times I encircled it, running my hands over it as low as possible and as high as I could reach, endeavoring to find some weak place on its wide expanse. With much difficulty, for I was not as slender then as I was once, nor as spry, I climbed to the top of a young tree to see what lay atop. There was nothing but a smooth, unbroken surface. My curiosity was now very much aroused, but I could find no plausible explanation. At last I decided to inquire about it in the village.
With the chagrin of a baffled man I picked up a rather large rock, as I turned to go, and flung it with all my strength against the thing, exactly as a peeved boy might have done. I was startled to hear a deep hollow boom. At least the thing was hollow. But the stone left no blemish. In disgust I headed for the village. And then I was frightened by the most inhuman shriek.
It was beginning to get dark. It was that time of evening when the dusk is settling and nothing seems real in the half light. This is particularly true of the woods. It came bearing down upon me, a thing of white, that in the twilight appeared to tower over me many feet. A ghost! I had no time to think. I saw that it was clothed in flowing draperies that streamed behind it. And in those flying things I saw a face—if it could be called that. It seemed more like a mask of many colors and distorted features. I saw all this, as it descended upon me, screaming. And in the growing darkness I saw a pair of eyes that gleamed like the eyes of a cat!
It closed down upon me—flesh and blood, strong and wiry! I could get no hold on it. Something fell on my unprotected head, and there came a painful blackness. I recall a hazy awareness of other beings and I was being borne off toward the white cylinder, and through the walls!
When I regained my senses I was comfortably spread out upon a wide soft couch. A blinding light filled my eyes, and I quickly closed them again. I lay there, wondering what had happened to me. Then like a flood the memory of it all returned! The stolen suit, the strange ruby, the white cylinder, the attack—it all came back to me.
I opened my eyes again; this time the light did not bother me. I saw that I was in a room—the strangest room I had ever seen. Close at hand, just below my couch, lay a pool filled with water, that lapped gently at the sides. Strange flowers, of forms and colors I had never seen before, grew in pots around the pool. The flooring was of tiles, and the ceiling was of glass. A light seemed to flow from the entire surface of the ceiling, and lit the room with a diffused glow that was like sunlight. The walls of the chamber held my attention.
They were of mosaic tiling, depicting a pretty piece of scenery. It was as if I were lying in a valley surrounded on all sides by low tree-covered hills with a bit of sky above. On one wall was a meandering river with a pretty waterfall, and above it was the sun, only it was shown as being relatively about as large as an apple and half covered by clouds. Another wall showed a city of tiny white houses built on a terraced hill. The other walls carried out the hill scene. It was above the city that there was one bit of incongruity that spoiled the entire landscape. It appeared like a second sun, yet almost three times as large as a sun should be, and its color was a pinkish lavender, that contrasted strangely with the greens, browns, blues, and whites of the scene.
After looking about me, I sat up, and was immediately overcome with a dizziness and a shoulder that pained. I now looked wildly about for a doorway, but nothing seemed to break the continuity of the tiled walls. I tried to get to my feet. Finally I succeeded in standing up. I swayed and reeled, fell into a dead faint a second time.
WHEN I regained consciousness I was back on the couch. A man was bending over me. Beyond him I saw that a section of the wall had opened, sliding into grooves on either side the opening.
“Do not attempt to rise,” I heard him say, “your collar bone has been fractured, so you must move about as little as possible.”
I think I cursed; for the blood rushed to my head. A pretty predicament I was in.
The speaker continued. “I regret exceedingly that you have been put to this discomfort, sir; my servant was over-zealous in performing his duty!”
“His duty!” I exploded. “Do you think it was his duty to attack an innocent . . .” here I fumbled for a word.
“Medd
ler?” supplied my host.
I bristled at that and was about to say something caustic, but the surprise I experienced on looking up at my host—or captor—made me forget my anger.
He was a large fellow, standing a good six inches over six feet, with a body perfectly proportioned. I thought of the statue I had seen in the Vatican of the Apollo Belvedere. His feet were small and his hands were almost as fine as a woman’s. His clothing was cut to show the body to advantage, fitting the legs as tightly as a glove, with a smock cut close to the shoulders and low at the neck, and girdled tightly at the waist.
Still it was not his form that struck me so forcibly. It was his skin! Picture a statue of fine well-polished silver—silver generations old—radiating an inner lustre. The man was truly a silver man. Face, arms, hands, and even hair, fine as silk falling to his shoulders, were silvery. Only the inner flush that glowed under the skin gave proof of red blood behind that strange complexion. And he had lavender eyes!
I was speechless! My eyes strayed about the strange room, to the man’s stranger garments, and back to those peculiar eyes. At last my tongue came free. “My God!” I cried, “What kind of man are you?” A hundred questions raced through my mind.
“We come,” said the strange man, “from a most distant planet, of which you on Earth are not aware, a planet quite on the edge of your Solar system. We have no name for it but Abrui, which translated means ‘Home.’ However, we are concerned chiefly about the present, and must consider this untoward situation.”
His words left me oddly chilly. A cold sweat broke all over me. I could not think, but somewhere something was repeating over and over again, “Men from another planet, men from another planet!” I closed my eyes to arrange my thoughts once more. I knew that I was not dreaming, and that this was reality. There was a pain in my shoulder. I turned once more to the man. “But I don’t understand? How did you come here? How?”
Collected Tales (Jerry eBooks) Page 10
