Collected Tales (Jerry eBooks)

by Leslie F Stone

  “Looks like some kind of writing on it, Jerry. Funny looking stuff, hieroglyphics of some sort. And here’s a man and woman with arms about each other. But wait—what’s this . . .?” I, too, was looking. It—it looks like a drawing of the solar system, Cart.”

  “Right. Look, every planet and satellite, according to size and orbit, even the moons. But wait—no, it’s not the solar system after all—see, there’s ten planets, one beyond Mercury, and another one between what could be Mars and Jupiter, none where Pluto is. No, this can’t be the solar system after all . . .

  Let’s puzzle it out later. Look and see what’s inside.”

  To our surprise, for we had expected it locked, the chest opened to our touch, stiffly and creakingly to be sure, but it opened.

  Training our light beams within we stared in surprise at the chest’s contents, hundreds of paper-thin sheets of a copper-colored though untarnished metal—covered with the same strange hieroglyphs as on the outer surface of the casket.

  “Records . . .” I said with some disappointment, “nothing there for us.”

  “We don’t know, Jerry. Just think—if it’s a history of Pluto—what a find!”

  “Yeah—but have you thought about reading them?”

  “It’s been done before, you know—archaeologists have deciphered several dead languages—of course, we need a key . . . Say, look—here’s the same planetary system again.” As he spoke he was gingerly lifting several of the sheets out of the chest, spreading them apart.

  The one he held before me was, as he had said, a duplication of the drawings on the chest’s top. These were done in color, etched into the indestructible metal, but in addition to the drawings were word-terms, one beside each planet.

  “And look at this, Jerry. THIS IS THE SOLAR SYSTEM!”

  Excitedly Cart held up the second sheet of inscribed metal. Sure enough, there was the solar-system in life—each planet neatly done, according to size, color and orbit, nine planets in all.

  “I get it, Cart, these people, this guy’s race, came from another star system and settled on Pluto . . .”

  “Yeah . . .?” But why Pluto—nothing here to invite life—wait. Look here, Jerry. See this? I could swear that the names are the same. See this one?

  It corresponds to the first planet on one map, the second on the other. And see—it’s the same with the other planets except the fifth—and here, in the second map—why the fifth is last!”

  “JERRY. Good Lord, man do you J know what this means? Why, according to this, Pluto once occupied the orbit now held by the Planetoid Belt! Scientists have long been in a quandary concerning those fragmentry aerolites, some pro, some cons, the cons practically carrying their point.[1] This is a discovery, Jerry, and yet—gosh, it seems too immense, too impossible . . .”

  “Aw, you’re jumping to conclusions. Possibly when these guys came from their own solar system, they just duplicated the names of the planets of their own system. See, there’s ten planets in the first map, and only nine in the second . . .”

  “That may be so, but astronomers concede a possibility of an intra-Mercurian planet, you know. They’ve even given it a name, Vulcan, though no one has ever found it. Perhaps, at the time Pluto moved out of its orbit between Mars and Jupiter, Vulcan dropped into the sun.”

  “Well, if Pluto changed its orbit how d’you account for the planetoids? Sounds like a lot of hooey to me . . .” But Cart was not listening. He was running through more of the metal sheets, laying them on the floor in sequence so as not to disturb their order. I looked on uninterested. After all, what was there in those unreadable sheets for us? How could any one read them without a key? Of course, I am not a student. I have read about a dozen books in my life-time, and certainly no dry histories. Cart, on the other hand, was different.

  He was the studious kind; always had his nose in books during the long monotonous treks from planet to planet, and I knew that although he usually spoke in the vernacular, on occasion, he could put a pedant to shame. Someone once told me that he had been a language-instructor in some obscure university, and I knew he was conversant with a number of languages, and one or two dead tongues of ancient peoples.

  HIS linguistic aptitude had been the means of saving us in at least one scrape. There was that time on Ganymede, among the plant-men. We were trapped, in one of their barred cages, and it was Cart’s ability in learning a few words of their language from our guard that rescued us from their horrible flesh-eating tree-god. But that’s another story.

  Now, he startled me with a whoop. “Look, look, Jerry, a lexicon, a Rosetta stone!”

  I did not get the reference to a Rosetta stone, but I looked at what he was pointing out. He held several sheets of inscribed metal for me. I glanced over them. Unquestionably, here was a glossary of those strange word-signs, and their meanings. For instance, besides a small animal, resembling a dog was drawn a number of symbols. Another was of a building, likewise followed by a few anaglyphs. In fact, the whole sheet and many sheets thereafter were covered with such deliniations. There were likewise illustrated verbs showing running men, sleeping men, hopping men, men eating, drinking, speaking, etc., as well as descriptive adjectives and adverbs, prepositions and interjections.

  No wonder the old guy had crept to the chest in his last moments, he had, possibly, spent his entire life on this momentous work.

  “Jumping Jupiter,” exclaimed Cart jubilantly. “Give me a few months with this, and I’ll read that manuscript for you.” His last words referred to a bulky pile of metal sheets that had lain under the lexicon.

  I nodded. “A nice tall order for a long rainy day. Better pile ‘em together if you want to cart ‘em back to the ship . . .”

  “Want to? Man alive! Don’t you understand? Don’t you realize what this means?”

  I shuffled my feet. “Yes, I know, but it’s sorta out of my line. I guess the museums back home’ll go into a big rave over it.”

  “You said it. Let’s be on our way.”

  I was of a mind to explore the rest of the planet. Our cursory inspection of it from above had shown us that the spheroid was only roughly oblate, and in its sides were great crater-like depressions, similar to those on earth’s moon, but Cart was all for leaving right away, to carry home those precious metal sheets.

  He would have liked to take the old man whom he fondly called “Last Man of Pluto” back with us, but he realized it would overtax the refrigerating units of our space-ship Explorer to keep him at a temperature to insure his safe transportation. The best we could do was to leave him as we found him, sealing the heavy door of the inner room of the laboratory as securely as possible against desecration by some vandal who might come here before we could return with a proper expedition. Burying him was out of the question, owing to the granite hardness of the deeply frozen ground.

  At first, during the long journey back to earth, I tried to study the Plutonian glossary with Cart, but it was hard sledding, and, as I have said, I am not a student. I could have gone mad in the two by four quarters of the Explorer for all the companionship I got out of Cart; he scarcely took time off to eat and sleep, but in two months he was ready to tackle the manuscript beneath the pile of word-signs. Then, I got interested, for as he translated, I found the tale opening before us grow more absorbing. In fact, I could scarcely await each day’s installment.

  THE opening was sufficient to whet our appetites for more and ever more revealing, as it did, just what great secrets of the past were to be laid bare to us. We found that the first two paragraphs had been written last, after the completion of the lexicon and history, Furthermore, Cart’s hunch proved correct, after all, that both spatial maps were of the same star-system, namely our own solar system! We read:

  I Garo Mofa, last of my race salute Thee. And to Thou WHO ART COME AFTER, I, in the hundredth fardo of Valda[2], bequeath this testament of a great race that spawned, lived and died upon this world we call Pluto.[3] More and more of the Cold eats its way
to my heart; no longer can my little store of coals warm by bitter flesh. Yet, I am content. Soon, I go to join my beloved Dahya, and Tan Bora, my friend, who call to me out of the mists of yesteryear. My great work, begun ten ganul[4] since, is at end. Weep not for my poor remains, but for that which was once a mighty world.

  It be well that man know there is no beginning nor no ending . . . that what is history to-day is history to-morrow. That man is man, and Life is ever unchanging. What was yesterday can be to-morrow. Let him take warping, if it be in him.

  This is the story of the downfall of the Kar!

  From whence came the Kar, the race of man, none can know, and yet there are legends among our peoples that we came from afar, from another starry-system. Be that as it may.

  Many were the strifes of man, even among his own. Nations rose and fell upon our world, the fifth planet in the system of Gav, the great sun-star; and when the void was conquered, so into it was carried war, like a torch, among the worlds inhabited by man’s kindred. But for the nature of those creatures she spawned, Pluto would even now follow her eternal path, now filled with her broken moons, fragments of her once proud continents, circling ever in the orbit she deserted so blithefully to revenge her legions.

  Ere that ill-omened day Pluto was a pleasant world to behold, her cities sparkling gems upon the plain, vying with the pale light of Gav, her night sky filled with the glow of ten moons. Larger by twice the size of Mars, her nearest neighbor, she was dwarfed only by Jupiter and Saturn. A proud world.

  Once, when the sun was younger, Pluto had known an almost tropical warmth, but since the star had contracted upon itself through the ages, the planet had become inured to chill, her people thriving and multiplying in their roofed cities.

  Mars, like Pluto, was inhabited, and so also, Luna, earth’s moon. And when Pluto dared traverse the void in her ships of space, these peoples, not too unlike the Plutonians, welcomed them with open arms, them, and their science. True, each race differed somewhat, in complexion, in eye and hair coloring, in stature, but beyond that all were identical, all had the same lusts, the same ambitions, the same desires.

  THE Plutonians were, perhaps, an older race, owing to the fact that their world had cooled soonest. Also they had an arrogance which, at first, their neighbors saw fit to disregard, content to deal with them in commerce, mingling freely with each other. Ambassadors and treaties were exchanged, and a golden peace settled over the people of the three worlds of Luna, Mars and Pluto. Together they voyaged to the moons of Jupiter, exploring mist-clothed Venus, rock-bound Mercury and heat-shriveled Vulcan. And so they prospered and grew, side by side.

  Pluto colonized her moons, Mars Luna and Pluto each sent expeditions to mine the moons of Jupiter of their vast mineral stores. Martians built villas upon their twin moons, hanging like little lanterns above their heads, and Luna established her first colony upon earth, a new world not long raised from the tepid swamps of its beginnings, wherein roved giant beasts, browsing upon succulent jungle growths.

  But it is not befitting that man should look upon fair new land and not covet. The beast of the field desires blood. Bovine and equine ask but for grass. The flying things have need of the sweet, fresh sweep of air to fill their wings. The flowers lift their heads to the sun and worship. But man can not be satisfied with these simpler things. He above all requires possessions, and possessions mean land, the desire of the soil, the lust for wide acres. It is a force that lies outside himself, just as the rude mating of the animal is instinctive. Land is ‘man’s insatiable thirst, his ever unsatisfied want.

  Not that the race of Kar knew this. They believed their soul’s longing was filled with the conquering of Space. They did not covet their neighbor’s land, the old over-populated worlds, into whose natural stores they had each delved deeply. Nor did they want of Jupiter’s moons, chillily far from the sun. No, it was the fresh young earth that they desired. Not Vulcan with its shriveled rocks, nor yet Mercury, nor mist-hidden Venus. It was a fairer land—earth.

  Just when Mars and Pluto knew jealousy for Luna is difficult to say. It is true their own lands were over-populated, their plains disappeared beneath towers of stone and steel; but so gradual had the transition come, that the peoples scarcely noticed, scarcely knew of it. A man and his children and his children’s children could live put their lives without knowing the sight of a living green thing. They no longer depended upon crops for their food, hides for their shoes, flax for their clothing. Artificiality ruled their lives, synthetic foods replaced the old.

  What brought the Naturists into being is to be questioned. Perhaps, their precursor had dwelt upon Luna or even on earth itself, and tasted the fresh fruits, feasted eyes upon wide green plains stretching for untold miles.[5] Whoever or whatever it was, the seed of discontent was sewn, and men commenced to demand new lands. They wanted their natural heritage of living things. They wanted freedom from the roofed cities, they wanted warm winds in their face, they wanted new grown fruits. They wanted trees, the joy of knowing their mother earth once again. Man was crying for LAND.

  AND there was earth. A fresh new land not long raised from the mists of creation, cloaked in verdant forests, abounding in fruit, berries, meat. Eden, where man could once more bask in warm sunlight.

  What else but earth?

  Daily, hourly, the ranks of the Naturalists grew. So strident became their demand that their rulers perforce had to yield promises. Everywhere, were they rising, demanding, insisting. Even those on Pluto’s moons were demanding, their voices rising higher, ever higher.

  Luna heard, and Mars. Luna grew frightened for her colonies, but Mars allied herself with Pluto. Her own ancient sea-bottoms were hidden by the great city buildings, her ice-caps had been pushed back to make room for more peoples. Thus it was that two expeditions set out for earth, one from Mars, one from Pluto. And Luna prepared to defend her rightful own.

  In Space they met, three great armada, armed to the teeth. From the first, Luna’s was a losing battle. Together the Martians and Plutonians drove her back, passed on to earth. Ah, how the conquerer’s hearts beat at the sight of that beautiful land. But before possession must come battle. Not content with annihilating Luna’s great fleet, they must needs erase her colonies from the land. And almost before they knew the enemy was upon them, the settlements were swept away, a few pitiful remnants escaping northward.

  A pact between the two leaders divided earth between Mars and Pluto, Mars to the eastward, Pluto westward.

  The Martians settled a land they named Lemuria, the Plutonians called theirs. Atlantis, each across the world from the other, set like jewels in the middle of earth’s two great oceans.

  And they prospered. For a time, the system knew peace. Luna bested for the moment, lay silent, watching in ever-growing despair, the raising of new cities, the tilling of the sweet fragrant land. Truly, there should have been sufficient for all three races, yellow, black and white, but the victors jealously guarded their planet, determined to divide only among themselves, the white man of Pluto, the black man of Mars. They went so far as to track down the few yellow men of Luna that had escaped the destruction of their colonies and fled to new lands yet untouched by human hand.

  Then Luna struck! Seemingly quiescent she had been building a great machine upon her surface, a machine capable of tossing huge projectiles upon earth, only 238,857 miles distant.[6] Overnight Lemuria was battered out of existence, and over Atlantis swept the ocean. So did Luna retaliate.

  Pluto and Mars were naturally wroth. Great fleets descended upon Luna. She was given no time in which to recolonize Earth; in fact, for the next twenty ganul earth was forgotten. How monstrous became that war is told in mute witness by the condition in which one finds Luna to-day, its face pock-marked by the charges that fell upon her from Mars, for Mars, likewise, built giant projectile-throwing machines and bombarded the moon from afar, even as Luna had bombarded earth.

  True, spatial bombardment was not altogether reliable. It
took delicate mathematical plotting to establish the trajectory of the missiles, since not only the orbital path but also orbital motion had to be given proper consideration, but out of a hundred shots, forty were sure to hit their mark. And each shot brought death and ruin, Lunarians died by the hundreds of thousands, their cities flashing into nothingness as the explosive-loaded mines landed. Then, to complete the ruin, Pluto perfected a device to rob Luna of her air-blanket.

  THIS instrument was a force that speeded up the action of the air-molecules, so that they shot away from the globe in ever-increasing numbers, the moon’s small gravitational force being insufficient to restrain their initial flight. And with their going, so died the Lunarites.

  And now were Pluto and Mars in full possession of earth!

  With haste large expeditions were prepared, thousands upon thousands clamored for the right to be the first to set foot upon the new planet, from Pluto and from Mars. But neither fleet were ever to reach earth. Whether the Martians planned it so, or whether it was an outright act of either the Plutonian or the Martian commanders, none can say, but, as it was to prove, neither expedition gained their objective. Meeting each other in space, one from Mars, one from Pluto, both fleets burst into fire at the sight of each other, and so heavy was the carnage that not a single ship escaped, not one man lived to give a truthful explanation of what had taken place!

  And, overnight the allies were enemies. Earth was forgotten again. This was to be war—to annihilation, it being evident that the system could hold but one race.

  Each planet straightway assembled its forces. Pluto, during the long years of the Lunar war, had developed a new force besides her atmosphere-dispensing ray, a beam of such intensity it could sever a world in twain; while, beside her projectile thrower, Mars had now a heat-ray, capable of raising the temperature of a solid body to such a degree that its insides would boil over, would envelop the outside world in molten lava.