A Large Anthology of Science Fiction

by Jerry

  “They must have gone off the road,” O’Shaughnessy says tautly. His hands fall from before his eyes, and Nova’s cloak is closed again. How close to death she must be, he thinks, to drive the living to their own deaths in wild flight just from the look of her.

  A gun, dropped there on the laboratory floor, is all that’s left of them.

  O’Shaughnessy toes it aside and it skitters across the room. Painfully, inch by inch, he hauls himself over beside Denholt, lifts the scientist’s head and shoulders in his arms. Denholt’s eyes, still alive, turn toward him.

  O’Shaughnessy’s voice rasps like a file. “You’ve got to save her. Got to! Kill me if I’ve wronged you—but I’ve brought her back to you—you’re the only one who can do anything . . . Denholt, can you hear me?”

  The dying man nods, points helplessly to the shattered retort, the evaporating stain on the floor.

  “Was that it—?” O’Shaughnessy shakes him wildly in his fright. “There must be more. That can’t be all! Can’t you tell me how to make more?” A sigh filters through the parted lips. “No time.”

  “Haven’t you got it written down?”

  A feeble shake of the head. “Afraid to—Jealous someone else would steal it from me—”

  O’Shaughnessy’s bony hands claw at Denholt’s shoulders. “But you can’t mean—that she’s got to die. That there isn’t anything you with your knowledge or I with my love can do for her—anything at all—?” Something, like a cold hand, closes his throat. Something else, like little needles, pricks his eyes until the lashes are moistened. Nova, standing there motionless, slowly droops her head.

  A thin tensile hand grips O’Shaughnessy’s arm to arrest his attention. A hand that must have been very strong once. “Wait. Lean down closer, so you can hear me—I was filling a hypo—for one of the rabbits—when they broke in. I don’t remember what became—Look around, see if you can find it—Enough for one injection, if it’s intact—hurry, it’s getting dark, I’m going fast.”

  But before he does look for it, before he makes a move, he remembers to touch that mascot in his pocket, the rabbit’s foot. “Help me,” he says to her then, “you know what it looks like, you used to see enough of them—” She raises her head, steps aside—and there it is behind her, lying on the operating table. A precious liquid glinting within its transparent barrel.

  Then he’s down again beside the dying man, holding it before his dimming eyes.

  “Yes, that’s it. All there is left now. It’ll be lost forever in a few more minutes when I go. I’m taking it with me—after what I’ve seen tonight of human nature, too much power for evil in it—it’s better, for our own sakes, the way Nature ordered it—”

  “Shall I lift you up, do you think you can stand long enough to—”

  “No time.” He motions to Nova, weakly. She draws near. “Recline on the floor here, where I can reach you—” Then to O’Shaughnessy, “Sweep the hair from the base of her head. Hold my arm at the elbow, steady it—”

  The needle falls, emptied.

  O’Shaughnessy murmurs, staring dully at the floor: “A month more—this’ll give her. Maybe I’m a fool to have done it. What torture that month is going to be—knowing now our only chance is gone. Well, maybe that French doctor was right . . .

  Again that hand on his arm. “Listen—She will be ill, very ill, for twenty-four hours. The reaction. Keep ice packed around her until the temperature goes down. Then—after that—the injection will arrest it for a while. It can’t mend what’s already happened—but it will give you that one month. Maybe a little—longer. I am sorry that I can’t give you more—or any real hope at all.”

  Then whatever was human and compassionate in Denholt dies out, and the scientist replaces the man. “I want you to know why I failed. I must tell someone. I brought everything in her to life—but the blood. That was dead, stayed dead. As it circulated in her veins it carried death through her body. The injections I gave her held that flowing decay at bay—no more.

  “I didn’t realize that—I do now. The chemical composition of the blood changed in death—nothing I have done restored it. It would always defeat the serum—eventually. She was not really alive in her own right; she was being kept alive by a sort of artificial combustion introduced into her system at periodic intervals.”

  O’Shaughnessy’s eyes glare dully. “You had no right,” he says. “You had no right to do it. It wasn’t fair to her or to me—or”—and he smiles ruefully—“even to those fear-crazy gunmen who are smeared all over your mountainside right now. You tried to bring life, Denholt—and you’ve got nothing but death on your hands.”

  The pale, almost lifeless lips flicker in a ghastly smile. “My death, too,” he whispers. He struggles to rise in O’Shaughnessy’s arms. And there is a pitiful attempt at self-justification. “If you hadn’t come along, O’Shaughnessy—who can say? None of this—would have been. And yet, you rep resented the human element—the thing I didn’t reckon on. Yes. It was the blood that defeated me—the passionate warm blood of men and women, hungry and greedy and alive—the blood I couldn’t put into Jane Brown’s body . . .

  O’Shaughnessy’s shoulder still throbs with pain and there is blood trickling down the arm inside the sleeve, coming out below the cuff, oozing over his wrist and his hands. O’Shaughnessy stares at it dully and remembers Denholt’s last words; and then suddenly strength comes to him to do the thing he must do. There is a car outside and down below a plane waiting. And there is Nova, her pale face flushed and hectic with the fever, her eyes flickering closed, her breathing labored. And here—here, you crazy gods of Fate, is O’Shaughnessy, the man who hasn’t been afraid, not for himself anyway, since he was eighteen. Yes, all the pieces of the mosaic are here to hand, and the pattern has just fallen into place in O’Shaughnessy’s mind.

  He is a little light-headed, and giddy, but there is a hard core of will in his brain. He can stand now, where before he could only crawl like a snake with its spine crushed. He scoops Nova up in his arms, totters for one step with her, before his walk is firm and steady.

  Nova’s head stirs against his shoulder. Her eyes are open. “What are we to do now?” she murmurs, with the fever-heat thickening her tones.

  “What does it matter?” O’Shaughnessy says. He doesn’t want to tell her, doesn’t want her to know. “I’m with you, Jane.”

  He says that to show her that he can call her by her right name without feeling, that he doesn’t hold Jane Brown against her. But she won’t let him. That name isn’t hers.

  “My name,” she says, childlike, “is Nova. Nova—O’Shaughnessy.”

  She doesn’t speak again all the time he is putting her into the car, where she slumps against the cushions like a rag doll, no more than half conscious, or while they are driving down the mountainside, or even while he carries her to the plane that is still standing there.

  He goes, a little more unsteadily now, to kneel beside the wounded pilot.

  “How you feeling?” O’Shaughnessy’s words are jerky.

  The pilot nods. “I’m okay, I guess. Feels like just a nick.”

  “That’s all right, then,” O’Shaughnessy say s. He pushes a wad of bills into Frazier’s hand, helps the man to sit up. “I’m going to take your plane. I’m glad you’re feeling okay, because I’d have to take the plane anyway—only it’s nice that I don’t have to leave you here dying. You can use the car there.”

  Wrinkles of worry blossom at the corners of the relief pilot’s eyes. “You sound kinda crazy to me—what happened up there? What’s this money for?”

  “That’s to square you for the plane—in case . . . Well, just in case.”

  Then he is gone, weaving across the uneven ground. Frazier gets up and wobbles after him. “Hi, wait a minute. The propeller—”

  In a few minutes, his hands are on the blades and from inside the plane-cabin O’Shaughnessy’s voice is calling, “Contact,” and Frazier yanks, the propeller spins. Frazier falls b
ack and the plane taxis jerkily with a sputtering roar of the engine.

  O’Shaughnessy somehow negotiates a take-off from an impossibly tip-tilted angle, and Frazier stands there watching, jaw dropped, until the black of the sky and the distance have inked out the tiny plane-lights. “Screwball/’ he mutters and paws the sweat from his face. O’Shaughnessy’s hard-knuckled hands grasp the stick hard. Thunder rumbles above the roar of the motor; lightning stabs the darkness. Rain begins to slash down around the plane.

  O’Shaughnessy remembers another storm, another plane, another night; and he glances at the girl beside him. She seems to sense his gaze upon her, her eyes open; her lips would speak but the fever that is burning through her won’t let the words come. They are in her eyes, though, as plain as any words could be, and her whole heart is with them. No question there at all, just courage and confidence.

  “I brought you into this,” he says—to those eyes. “Now I’m taking you out of it. There’s no place in it for us any longer.”

  Her fingers inside the glove tighten on his hand convulsively as if to say: “Alone, O’Shaughnessy? Must I go alone?”

  At least that’s the way he figures it, for he says quickly: “With me, honey. Together.”

  The pressure of the fingers relaxes, then tightens, but more steadily this time, reassured and reassuring. That’s her way of saying:

  “All right, O’Shaughnessy. It’s all right with me.”

  Her face blurs in O’Shaughnessy’s eyes; he begins to whistle a silly tune that even he can’t hear, and somehow it is comforting. Lightning again and a louder crash of thunder. A gust of wind rocks the plane. The black bulk of a granite ridge that looks like a giant comber whipped up by a typhoon and frozen by the hands of God shows up ahead and a little below.

  O’Shaughnessy’s hand blunders out to take Nova’s gloved one in his own. She whimpers a little, and stirs. O’Shaughnessy slides the stick forward, the plane tilts sharply down; the mountainside, rocky and desolate, seems to be reaching up for them, but in these seconds they are alone, the two of them, with the sky and the storm.

  It takes will power and nerve to hold the stick that way, to keep his eyes open and watch the rocky face of the cliff, pine-bearded, rush up at them. O’Shaughnessy’s mouth flattens, his face goes white. And then in that final fraction of a moment, he laughs, a little crazily—a laugh of defiance, of mocking farewell, and, somehow, of conquest.

  “Here we go, baby!” he shouts, teeth bared. “Now I’m going to find out what it really feels like to fly into the side of a mountain! . . .”

  There is only the storm to hear the smash of the plane as it splinters itself against the rock—and the storm drowns the sound out with thunder, just as the lightning turns pale the flame that rises, like a hungry tongue, from the wreckage.

  VIBRATORY

  Warner Van Lorne

  PROFESSOR Robert Ernest smiled as the door closed behind him. He stood at the threshold of his dreams. Twenty years of experimenting had resulted in the machine he faced; every dream and every endeavor had been toward this moment.

  When his wife died before he was thirty, he lost interest in the world. His mind turned completely to his professorship in engineering, and his hobby of experimenting with the unknown.

  His colleagues would have considered him impractical if they had known of his theories, but he kept them to himself. In his broad list of acquaintances and friends there was no confidant, no one he could trust with the dreams closest to his heart.

  The room he stood in was barren and cold, yet to him it was beautiful. Even the dusty cement walls and rusty steel beams were attractive. His face glowed with the luster of youth. His shoulders were square and his chest thrown out. He was a new man!

  It was worth all the effort and heartbreak of the past years, the many times he had thrown away all equipment and started again at the beginning. This time he knew there was no mistake. For months he had checked and rechecked the apparatus, until each minute part was perfection.

  When he was satisfied there could be no further improvement, it was ready to be tested.

  Every spare minute was spent searching for a building that could be rented reasonably. There were many which might have answered the purpose, but they never quite met the requirements set up in his mind.

  He was playing with vibration—such as he had never known before—and it required a solid structure to withstand the strain.

  When he discovered an old factory that hadn’t been occupied for the past ten years, his hopes mounted. It had exceptionally heavy beaming and foundation, built for the machinery that formerly filled the three floors. It was much larger than he required, but that made no difference.

  The roof was in bad repair and some of the glass was broken, but it seemed to be in fairly solid condition. It was the type of structure that would stand forever unless it was torn down.

  It was far enough from any habitation to guarantee safety beyond the grounds. He didn’t know that there would be danger, but the possibility must always be considered. There was no inkling of the results that might be obtained by putting the forces to work. Everything beyond a certain point was pure speculation.

  The more he examined the heavy construction, the happier he became. He wandered through the empty rooms as if they belonged to him. In his eyes even the dingy neglect disappeared and everything appeared as it might have when the building was new.

  When he sought the owner, to rent a portion of the place for the summer months, the man laughed.

  “I don’t know what you want the building for, but as long as you don’t run off with it you’re welcome to use it. I’ll never occupy it again, anyway. Blow it up, if you want to; it’s simply junk now.”

  When the sedate professor was humming a popular air, as he entered his apartment house, the doorman forgot to speak. He had been employed by the house for over five years, and knew Professor Ernest well—or thought he did. But it was the first time in his experience that the man had shown any common, human feeling. He had always been the stiff, proper man who said “good evening” with just the same inflection in his voice.

  AS HE appeared the next morning wearing a necktie with two colors in it, the man looked at him closely. There could only be one answer, the professor must be in love.

  The doorman was again astounded at the bundles of heavy material that came from the professor’s apartment. It seemed impossible that there was room to store it all. Several times he dropped hints about the contents of the carefully wrapped packages, but received no response. At times they were so heavy that he could hardly handle them, and the professor had to help him load them into the car.

  Slowly the equipment was sorted and assembled in the empty building. The machine that was taking form was peculiar in that there were no large sections. Every unit was so constructed that it could be handled and transported easily. There were parts as fine as the works of a small watch, while others were sectional beaming. Each part was marked, and fitted the one adjoining to perfection.

  Nine years of effort had gone into the manufacture and assembling of the sections of the machine, and each had been tested to perform its individual task. Only the completed unit remained to be tested.

  For eleven years before that parts had been tested and tried, to discard the failures. Twenty years of effort would be culminated in a few minutes of operation. But after working out the only possible way to obtain results through vibration, Robert Ernest was satisfied to invest his life savings in one grand stroke.

  As he stood in the room, facing the completed apparatus, there was no question in his mind about its successful operation. He had taken no chances. Every part that had shown a possibility of failure had been replaced by one without weakness. He knew it was far superior in construction to anything of the type that had been attempted before. For the first time in his life he was satisfied with his own individual effort.

  The dream of his school days had been followed carefully. He still rem
embered the day he had listened to the lecture on vibration and had decided to find out whether the theories on the subject were correct. The same theme had remained the driving force of his life, although it was over thirty years since the seed of an idea was planted in his mind.

  With his machine it was possible to create vibration on such a scale as had never been known. It would not be heavy vibration that would shake a structure, but it could be tuned to any key of the scale. It could be changed one hundredth of a tone to search out the key of any chosen subject. For the first time in history it would be possible to duplicate the vibrational cord of any object by mechanical means.

  If necessary, the tone could be sliced into one hundred more changes—the original tone of one key becoming the total range of the board. After striking a note that brought response from the selected object, it could be varied in almost infinitesimal amounts, to search out the utmost vibration of the cord. It could be divided and divided again, until the change of tone, obtained within the machine, would be beyond detection by the human ear.

  Then it could be amplified to almost unlimited volume—to shake the ground, or tear the surface of an eardrum without distortion. Men could be driven insane in a few minutes by amplifying a tone that grated on their nerve system.

  Professor Ernest knew that the human race had been given protection by nature. It avoided accidents with vibration that might otherwise have taken place. The most dangerous notes were those which were considered discords, and man naturally did not use them.

  IF any man approached while he was testing the machine, he would think a thousand demons had been turned loose to create as much discord as possible at the same time. In the scale of discords there had never been many experiments; it was the one remaining field that might have amazing results.