A Large Anthology of Science Fiction

by Jerry

  “But,” I argued, “how did this—this insect get through the glass into the whisky bottle? Glass has only three dimensions, like everything else in this world.”

  “Don’t call him an insect!” Nutt sharply reprimanded me. “He is a Jupiterian, and as such he is infinitely superior to you and me. He passed through the glass because he is four-dimensional, even though the glass isn’t. If you had four dimensions, you could untie any knot by merely passing through it yourself. You could turn inside out, or pass through yourself until your right hand became your left hand, and change into your own image as you see it in the looking-glass.”

  “Nom de mademoiselle!” I exclaimed, for the fourth time.

  A distant noise of barking was borne to my ears in the breeze. All the dogs in the city seemed to have gone wild.

  “They are disturbed by the talking of the Jupiterians,” explained the professor. “It is too high-pitched for clodhopper human ears to hear, unless they have an unusual range, but the dogs can hear it plainly.”

  I listened, and finally made out a very shrill humming, higher than any sound I had ever heard before in my life, and infinitely sweet and piercing.

  “Ah, I am hearing four-dimensional sounds,” I thought aloud.

  “Wrong, as usual,” exacerbated the professor, with much heat. “Sound has no dimensions. It proceeds in waves, and bends back upon itself until it meets itself at an infinite distance from the starting-point.

  There are three reasons why you can’t hear the music of the spheres: first because it is bent away from the earth by the force of gravity as it passes the sun; second, because your ears are not attuned to so shrill a sound; and third, because there is no music of the spheres. The first two reasons are really unnecessary, in the light of the third, but a scientific mind such as mine is not content with one reason when three can be adduced just as easily.”

  “Shades of Sir Oliver Lodge!” I ejaculated.

  “Sir Oliver is alive,” the professor corrected me. “A man does not become a shade until after his death.

  Then he becomes a four-dimensional creature like the Jupiterians, only different.”

  “Nom de mademoiselle!” I commented.

  “Say something sensible.” he reprimanded me.

  “For the love of Einstein, how do you know all these things about the Jupiterians?” I asked, a sudden suspicion flashing across what I am pleased to call my mind.

  “Ah, Einstein, yes,” exclaimed Nutt, greatly pleased. “My mother’s father’s name was Einstein.

  “Then you are related to—”

  “No, I am not related,” he interrupted, “but my mother’s father is.”

  “A sort of fourth-dimensional relationship, I suppose,” I remarked sarcastically.

  At that moment the air became vibrant with an invisible sound. The Jupiterians came rolling from all directions, as if they had suddenly heard the dinner bell. They bounded through the Jupiterian steel of the globe, and immediately shrank in size from three feet to one inch.

  “The Jupiterian assembly call just blew.” explained the professor. “Notice how the passengers draw into themselves. Six hundred thousand are now packed into that globe. Our elevated railroads miss a great opportunity by not having four-dimensional creatures to deal with.”

  “They pack us in just as tight,” I ventured to remark.

  The globe had begun to shoot into the air, when there came from behind me a high-pitched wail of distress—a shriller and higher sound than had ever before been heard by human ears, so the professor assured me. The chief Jupiterian had been left behind. He it was who had passed into the whisky bottle.

  Not content with getting the lion’s share of the contents, he had surrounded the bottle, in his pleasant four-dimensional way, and now he could not get rid of it.

  “Why doesn’t he turn inside out again, and drop the bottle?” I asked, watching the Jupiterian with interest.

  “Because your whisky has paralyzed him,” answered the professor. “He is quite helpless.”

  I looked at the globe, which had alighted again. Each Jupiterian suddenly resumed his full size, in a brave attempt to bound to the assistance of his chief. But the creatures could no longer pass through the four-dimensional metal of which the globe was composed. So thick a layer of Chicago dust had settled upon it, that to all intents and purposes it had become three-dimensional. The sudden impact of six hundred thousand bodies caused it to burst, with a roar as of a hundred peals of thunder exploding simultaneously. The air was filled with dead and dying Jupiterians. A dark cloud, composed of the flying dust shaken from the Jupiterian globe by the explosion, settled over the landscape. Long streamers of electric fire shot the fragments of the airship, and seemed to curve in upon themselves.

  Everything ran in curves—the darkness, the cloud, the sounds, the shafts of light—as if bent in by the force of gravity.

  I put up my hands and fought the cloud that was settling down upon me. I seemed to be covered with falling feathers, when the cloud began to lift. I found myself in my own parlor. The air was full of flying leaves, which I was madly tearing from a book and throwing toward the ceiling. The book was a treatise on the Einstein theory of space, which I had borrowed from a friend that afternoon. I had read nearly a page in it before I fell asleep.

  Only twelve men in the whole world understand the Einstein theory, it is said. If I had read the book, I should have been the thirteenth, and that would be unlucky. So it is just as well that it is destroyed. But what excuse am I to give my friend for tearing up his book?

  SOLANDER’S RADIO TOMB

  Ellis Parker Butler

  I first met Mr. Remington Solander shortly after I installed my first radio set. I was going in to New York on the 8:15 A.M. train and was sitting with my friend Murchison and, as a matter of course, we were talking radio. I had just told Murchison that he was a lunkheaded noodle and that for two cents I would poke him in the jaw, and that even a pin-headed idiot ought to know that a tube set was better than a crystal set. To this Murchison had replied that that settled it. He said he had always known I was a moron, and now he was sure of it.

  “If you had enough brains to fill a hazelnut shell,” he said, “you wouldn’t talk that way. Anybody but a half-baked lunatic would know that what a man wants in radio is clear, sharp reception and that’s what a crystal gives you. You’re one of these half-wits that think they’re classy if they can hear some two-cent station five hundred miles away utter a few faint squeaks. Shut up! I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to listen to you. Go and sit somewhere else.”

  Of course, this was what was to be expected of Murchison. And if I did let out a few laps of anger, I feel I was entirely justified. Radio fans are always disputing over the relative merits of crystal and tube sets, but I knew I was right. I was just trying to decide whether to choke Murchison with my bare hand and throw his lifeless body out of the car window, or tell him a few things I had been wanting to say ever since he began knocking my tube set, when this Remington Solander, who was sitting behind us, leaned forward and tapped me on the shoulder. I turned quickly and saw his long sheeplike face close to mine. He was chewing cardamon seed and breathing the odor into my face.

  “My friend,” he said, “come back and sit with me; I want to ask you a few questions about radio.”

  Well, I couldn’t resist that, could I? No radio fan could. I did not care much for the looks of this Remington Solander man, but for a few weeks my friends had seemed to be steering away from me when I drew near, although I am sure I never said anything to bore them. All I ever talked about was my radio set and some new hook-ups I was trying, but I had noticed that men who formerly had seemed to be fond of my company now gave startled looks when I neared them. Some even climbed over the nearest fence and ran madly across vacant lots, looking over their shoulders with frightened glances as they ran. For a week I had not been able to get any man of my acquaintance to listen to one word from me, except Murchison, an
d he is an utter idiot, as I think I have made clear. So I left Murchison and sat with Remington Solander.

  In one way I was proud to be invited to sit with Remington Solander, because he was far and away the richest man in our town. When he died, his estate proved to amount to three million dollars. I had seen him often, and I knew who he was, but he was a stand-offish old fellow and did not mix, so I had never met him. He was a tall man and thin, somewhat flabby and he was pale in an unhealthy sort of way. But, after all, he was a millionaire and a member of one of the “old families” of Westcote, so I took the seat alongside of him with considerable satisfaction.

  “I gather,” he said as soon as I was seated, “that you are interested in radio.”

  I told him I was.

  “And I’m just building a new set, using a new hook-up that I heard of a week ago,” I said. “I think it is going to be a wonder. Now, here is the idea: instead of using a grid——”

  “Yes, yes!” the old aristocrat said hastily. “But never mind that now. I know very little of such things. I have an electrician employed by the year to care for my radio set and I leave all such things to him. You are a lawyer, are you not?”

  I told him I was.

  “And you are chairman of the trustees of the Westcote Cemetery, are you not?” he asked.

  I told him I was that also. And I may say that the Westcote Cemetery Association is one of the rightest and tightest little corporations in existence. It has been in existence since 1808 and has been exceedingly profitable to those fortunate enough to hold its stock. I inherited the small block I own from my grandfather. Recently we trustees had bought sixty additional acres adjoining the old cemetery and had added them to it, and we were about ready to put the new lots on the market. At $300 apiece there promised to be a tremendous profit in the thing, for our cemetery was a fashionable place to be buried in and the demand for the lots in the new addition promised to be enormous.

  “You have not known it,” said Remington Solander in his slow drawl, which had the effect of letting his words slide out of his mouth and drip down his long chin like cold molasses, “but I have been making inquiries about you, and I have been meaning to speak to you. I am drawing up a new last will and testament, and I want you to draw up one of the clauses for me without delay.”

  “Why, certainly, Mr. Solander,” I said with increased pride. “I’ll be glad to be of service to you.”

  “I am choosing you for the work,” Remington Solander said, “because you know and love radio as I do, and because you are a trustee of the cemetery association. Are you a religious man?”

  “Well,” I said, a little uneasily, “some. Some, but not much.”

  “No matter,” said Mr. Solander, placing a hand on my arm. “I am. I have always been. From my earliest youth my mind has been on serious things. As a matter of fact, sir, I have compiled a manuscript collection of religious quotations, hymns, sermons and uplifting thoughts which now fill fourteen volumes, all in my own handwriting. Fortunately, I inherited money, and this collection is my gift to the world.”

  “And a noble one, I’m sure,” I said.

  “Most noble,” said Mr. Solander. “But, sir, I have not confined my activities to the study chair. I have kept my eye on the progress of the world. And it seems to me that radio, this new and wonderful invention, is the greatest discovery of all ages and imperishable. But, sir, it is being twisted to cheap uses. Jazz! Cheap songs! Worldly words and music! That I mean to remedy.”

  “Well,” I said, “it might be done. Of course, people like what they like.”

  “Some nobler souls like better things,” said Remington Solander solemnly. “Some more worthy men and women will welcome nobler radio broadcasting. In my will I am putting aside one million dollars to establish and maintain a broadcasting station that will broadcast only my fourteen volumes of hymns and uplifting material. Every day this matter will go forth—sermons, lectures on prohibition, noble thoughts and religious poems.”

  I assured him that some people might be glad to get that—that a lot of people might, in fact, and that I could write that into his will without any trouble at all.

  “Ah!” said Remington Solander. “But that is already in my will. What I want you to write for my will, is another clause. I mean to build, in your cemetery, a high-class and imperishable granite tomb for myself. I mean to place it on that knoll—that high knoll—the highest spot in your cemetery. What I want you to write into my will is a clause providing for the perpetual care and maintenance of my tomb. I want to set aside five hundred thousand dollars for that purpose.”

  “Well,” I said to the sheep-faced millionaire, “I can do that, too.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “And I want to give my family and relations the remaining million and a half dollars, provided,” he said, accenting the ‘provided,’ “they carry out faithfully the provisions of the clause providing for the perpetual care and maintenance of my tomb. If they don’t care and maintain,” he said, giving me a hard look, “that million and a half is to go to the Home for Flea-Bitten Dogs.”

  “They’ll care and maintain, all right!” I laughed.

  “I think so,” said Remington Solander gravely. “I do think so, indeed! And now, sir, we come to the important part. You, as I know, are a trustee of the cemetery.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I am.”

  “For drawing this clause of my will, if you can draw it,” said Remington Solander, looking me full in the eye with both his own, which were like the eyes of a salt mackerel, “I shall pay you five thousand dollars.”

  Well, I almost gasped. It was a big lot of money for drawing one clause of a will, and I began to smell a rat right there. But, I may say, the proposition Remington Solander made to me was one I was able, after quite a little talk with my fellow trustees of the cemetery, to carry out. What Remington Solander wanted was to be permitted to put a radio loud-speaking outfit in his granite tomb—a radio loud-speaking outfit permanently set at 327 meters wave-length, which was to be the wave-length of his endowed broadcasting station. I don’t know how Remington Solander first got his remarkable idea, but just about that time an undertaker in New York had rigged up a hearse with a phonograph so that the hearse would loud-speak suitable hymns on the way to the cemetery, and that may have suggested the loud-speaking tomb to Remington Solander, but it is not important where he got the idea. He had it, and he was set on having it carried out.

  “Think,” he said, “of the uplifting effect of it! On the highest spot in the cemetery will stand my noble tomb, loud-speaking in all directions the solemn and holy words and music I have collected in my fourteen volumes. All who enter the cemetery will hear; all will be ennobled and uplifted.”

  That was so, too. I saw that at once. I said so. So Remington Solander went on to explain that the income from the five hundred thousand dollars would be set aside to keep “A” batteries and “B” batteries supplied, to keep the outfit in repair, and so on. So I tackled the job rather enthusiastically. I don’t say that the five-thousand-dollar fee did not interest me, but I did think Remington Solander had a grand idea. It would make our cemetery stand out. People would come from everywhere to see and listen. The lots in the new addition would sell like hot cakes.

  But I did have a little trouble with the other trustees. They balked when I explained that Remington Solander wanted the sole radio loud-speaking rights of our cemetery, but some one finally suggested that if Remington Solander put up a new and artistic iron fence around the whole cemetery it might be all right. They made him submit his fourteen volumes so they could see what sort of matter he meant to broadcast from his high-class station, and they agreed it was solemn enough; it was all solemn and sad and gloomy, just the stuff for a cemetery. So when Remington Solander agreed to build the new iron fence they made a formal contract with him, and I drew up the clause for the will, and he bought six lots on top of the high knoll and began erecting his marble mausoleum.

  For eight months
or so Remington Solander was busier than he had ever been in his life. He superintended the building of the tomb and he had on hand the job of getting his endowed radio station going—it was given the letters WZZZ—and hiring artists to sing and play and speechify his fourteen volumes of gloom and uplift at 327 meters, and it was too much for the old codger. The very night the test of the WZZZ outfit was made he passed away and was no more on earth.

  His funeral was one of the biggest we ever had in Westcote. I should judge that five thousand people attended his remains to the cemetery, for it had become widely known that the first WZZZ program would be received and loud-spoken from Remington Solander’s tomb that afternoon, the first selection on the program—his favorite hymn—beginning as the funeral cortege left the church and the program continuing until dark.

  I’ll say it was one of the most affecting occasions I have ever witnessed. As the body was being carried into the tomb the loud speaker gave us a sermon by Rev. Peter L. Ruggus, full of sob stuff, and every one of the five thousand present wept. And when the funeral was really finished, over two thousand remained to hear the rest of the program, which consisted of hymns, missionary reports, static and recitations of religious poems. We increased the price of the lots in the new addition one hundred dollars per lot immediately, and we sold four lots that afternoon and two the next morning. The big metropolitan newspapers all gave the Westcote Cemetery full page illustrated articles the next Sunday, and we received during the next week over three hundred letters, mostly from ministers, praising what we had done.

  But that was not the best of it. Requests for lots began to come in by mail. Not only people in Westcote wrote for prices, but people away over in New Jersey and up in Westchester Country, and even from as far away as Poughkeepsie and Delaware. We had twice as many requests for lots as there were lots to sell, and we decided we would have an auction and let them go to the highest bidders. You see Remington Solander’s Talking Tomb was becoming nationally famous. We began to negotiate with the owners of six farms adjacent to our cemetery; we figured on buying them and making more new additions to the cemetery. And then we found we could not use three of the farms.