by Earl
A bleached skull on the desert, meteor-torn and lichen-rotted, it seemed to grin its ghastly oblivion to the life that had once been its soul. A corpse, congealed in a frozen semivacuum, that had never been given a decent burial. Repulsive in its ancient decay, fascinating in its suggestion of former glory.
And the canals—they were incredible waterways in truth, bridged over with a continuous transparent sheath, like the city itself. The Earthlings followed along one of them and at every intersection was a similar city—all lifeless.
“THIS Martian civilization was unique,” said Renolf, after they had spent a day wandering over the planet. “They had a great number of those spired cities, all interconnected by waterways, and everything inclosed in the air-tight dome material.”
“But why would they need waterways?” queried Dora. “Surely they could have used some means of transportation less primitive.”
“Transportation?” Renolf smiled. “What do self-contained, unit dwellings need with transportation! They made everything from the desert molecules. No, the canals had another purpose. Perhaps they were scenic avenues, like those of Venice or Holland, down which the Martians drifted in boats, in peaceful idleness. With the ultra-scientific machinery to take care of their physical necessities, they must have had much time on their hands. Perhaps they had regatta, water carnivals, parades, and races along the thousands of miles of these artificial rivers.”
Renolf maneuvered the Comet high above the ground. The canals dwindled to a network of fine-spun lines. “These artificial waterways have been seen in Earthly telescopes for some time, but so faintly that there was always controversy about it. Perhaps the main reason they were discredited was because the human mind of Earth is so unwilling to believe in extra-Terrestrial life. What a story we will have to tell when we get back! I think I shall publish a book on what we have seen, just for the one reason. Just to see what a shock it will be to our little hide-bound world!”
With quick movements, Renolf sent the Comet flaming away from Mars. “Our next and last stop will be the Moon—our own Moon. On that body we may expect to find a dead civilization dating from the time of Io and Titan. I am, of course, past hoping that there could either be a living race there, or a clue to the doom that wipes out all civilizations.”
Then, it being time, he removed his headband. “In a way,” he said, “I’m sort of glad the trip is nearly over. It’s been no less than four months that we’ve been in space.”
Dora nodded. “It will be good to step on Earth and be free once again. I’ve longed for it. That short spell on Venus was only enough to tantalize us. Oh, Vincent, don’t you see how much the super-Renolf is riding us, tyrannizing over us? And what, after all, has he accomplished? Nothing except to gather perfectly useless knowledge about dead things, and probably a headache from thinking about the mystery of the dead planets.”
Vincent chuckled. Somehow, he could laugh at the super-Renolf’s doings, even though he was a part of him. “A headache and no more is right, darling. He stretched our honeymoon to an exasperating length, but he hasn’t any more excuse to stay out in space. That is, after we’ve been to the Moon.”
“But I rather suspect,” said Dora, eying her husband accusingly, “that you have helped him more than hindered in all this. If you had will power, Vincent, you would not put on the head-band.”
“It’s like a drug,” admitted the man. “I’ll have to think of a cure.”
“No use, sweet. While I live, the super-Renolf lives.”
“You could pass on the secret. Then your conscience——”
“Horrors no! Not one man in a thousand would use the power it gave him in the right way.”
“You give your integrity a lot of credit!”
The young husband grinned—seriously. “Certainly I do. Your father knew very well to whom he was giving superthought.”
Dora looked up suddenly. “What will the super-Renolf do next?”
“Who knows? There are many things that——”
“I thought so. I am married, then, to a man whose will is free only half the time or less.”
“You can divorce me.”
“On the grounds of mental cruelty. Fine! But at present I’ll have you. Come and kiss me, lover.”
THE COMET plied its way Earthward serenely.
Yet before they came to the satellite of their home planet, a thing happened to disturb that serenity. Dora, gazing at the bright small glow which was Earth, became suddenly aware that the Comet was decelerating. Hastily grasping a wall ring for support, she shouted for Renolf. He came running from his laboratory and dashed to the controls. Puzzled, he looked at the instruments.
“What’s wrong?” queried Dora. “Why should the ship increase deceleration when the engines haven’t slowed their pulsations a bit?”
Renolf had no chance to answer. The Comet seemed to suddenly become a thing of caprice. It spun them off their feet and flung them against one wall. Then, like a ship in heavy seas, it rolled them the other way, and at the same time pressed them gaspingly against the floor, as though under the influence of many times normal gravity.
A moment later it had half catapulted them toward the fore part of the ship, and Dora’s eyes caught a fleeting glimpse of the starred sky whirling madly past the side port. She gasped in pain then as her leg was crushed against a solidly anchored table leg. Next moment a pair of strong arms infolded her, held her from being flung away again as the cabin gyrated fitfully.
Five minutes later it all ceased as suddenly as it had begun. Once more the Comet plied its way steadily with normal deceleration. The two Earthlings arose from where they had clung to the table, faced one another in bewilderment. Despite the roughness of the experience, their bruises were light. They might have been badly hurt under normal conditions of full gravity.
Dora was left to her own conjectures about the inexplicable cause of the Comet’s waywardness. Renolf had seated himself before the controls, studying the instruments in profound detachment, making no answer to her query.
Had the Menace warned again?
XI.
“I SUSPECT underground habitations,” confided Renolf. “For the simple reason that Earthly telescopes would have discovered cities on the surface.” The Comet was drifting over the harsh lunar landscape. In the zenith of the heavens floated the Earth, like a balloon. Low over the horizon was the Sun, so brilliant now that they had to wear smoked glasses to look at it. Renolf nosed the ship across enormous mountain ranges.
Finally they came to the “crater” Copernicus. And here they saw evidences of former life. The apparent bottom of the huge crater was the artificial roof of an underground city. So strongly had it been made that only in two places was the sturdy shield damaged. The size of the holes attested to the tremendous weight and bulk of the meteors that had managed to burst through.
Into one of these splintered gashes Renolf lowered the ship. Using their powerful nose searchlight, they distinguished what remained of the ancient dwelling. A series of vertical shafts gave access to the entire structure. They extended no less than ten miles down. Ten miles of intricate chambers, once the abode of a multitudinous race indeed! Renolf estimated there might have been twenty million individuals, if they took no more room for living quarters than Earth people.
And, of course, the place was absolutely devoid of life. Yet the Moon people had been somewhat exceptional metal workers, for much of their machinery was intact. Of interior cars, elevators, monuments, and such, a great deal remained yet uncorroded.
“A race of supermechanical endowments,” concluded Renolf. “For this represents an antiquity of millions of years. No other race has built such lasting machinery. And, beyond a doubt, at the time they were built, they were meant to last along with the race. The race, however—died out!”
RENOLF had come to accept more or less the inevitable. It was no less a mystery, but a mystery having no answer. The Earthlings visited several other craters. All, without except
ion, were underground habitations. “Which means,” formulated Renolf, “that the craters, contrary to Earth’s pet theories, are not natural, but artificial. The Moon people, when their air became too thin to support life, dug in to preserve themselves.
The craters could be explained in this way—that they first sunk a shaft in a level spot, hollowed out their future home, and used the rock matter above as building material, compressing it to a small bulk for strength. That left the depressions we so naively call craters. Whatever they could not use they piled up as the rim surrounding so many of them.
“But there are literally thousands of craters!” gasped Dora.
“And there must have been billions of people,” added Renolf. “Far more than the planet could have been capable of supporting as Earth now supports her population. That indicates, you see, that after the planet died, so to speak, the race rose to its greatest heights, scientifically and numerically. And on Titan, Callisto, Mars—all the rest, the same. They increased, multiplied, when Nature had failed them. What in the name of the universe could have then eliminated them? One great civilization after another!”
Then they came upon a crater whose floor was intact. Dora exclaimed in excitement, for how could they be sure there were not living people below it?
Renolf, too, became excited. Then the answer came—from above. Even as the Comet drifted down, closer and closer, a great shadow swept over them. Instinctively Renolf stopped the ship, and not an instant too soon. A titanic bulk plunged from the stars above, just missing the nose of the Comet.
The Earthlings looked at one another white-faced. Their screen would have been pitifully inadequate to shunt aside such a monstrous meteor. Suddenly Dora, looking downward, choked and pointed mutely. The meteor, missing them, had fallen into the crater. Intact a moment before, the artificial roof was now marred by a large hole.
“If there are people down there,” gasped Dora, “they have just experienced a terrible catastrophe!”
“We’ll go and see,” said Renolf, once again calm.
They descended by the way the meteor had opened up to them. A half hour later they emerged. The meteor had done no more than crumple and destroy an empty temple. Those craters with unmarred roofs held no more of living creatures than the others. They left in a curious state of relief and crushed hope. It would have been a fitting climax to their spatial jaunt to find, at last, living creatures, but it would have been heart-rending to come upon them in the midst of a frightful calamity.
“Let’s get back to Earth,” said Dora, shuddering. “I’ve had enough. This exploring of dead planets is dismally depressing.”
Vincent, with the headband off, agreed. But after they had slept with the Comet parked on the broad expanse of a flat plateau, Renolf decided that they must visit just one more crater.
“Tycho. The one with the curious radiating lines surrounding it. I must see what supermetropolis once reared there.”
Renolf followed up one of the strange white “lines,” and even before coming within sight of Tycho, knew them to be enormous conduits. Whether for water or transportation or what, could not be ascertained.
THEN Tycho itself became a spot on the horizon toward which the Comet eased itself with gentle rocket pushes, upheld by diamagnetism. Suddenly the two Earthlings were thrown off their feet from where they had been standing at the side port. The rockets thudded valiantly, but the ship did not move, as though its nose were stuck in an invisible wall of resilient putty. Then the axis of the ship, under the hammering, shifted and the nose turned upward. With a belated surge, the Comet streaked skyward.
Renolf came to his feet quickly and jabbed at the controls. The rockets died out in the rear and came to life in the front. Then they, too, were shut off. Renolf studied his instruments.
“What happened?” cried Dora, staggering to a wall chair. She winced at a sharp pain in her ankle.
“I wonder,” returned Renolf puzzled. “The jets did not fail—the diamagnetic engine is functioning. Everything is all right.”
“But we struck something!”
Renolf waved an answering hand toward the port.
“I know we can’t see anything,” said Dora. “But the ship did strike something—an invisible something!”
Renolf made no answer. Instead he carefully maneuvered the ship, pointed it toward Tycho, and sent it forward at a slow crawl. It went twenty feet, fifty, a hundred. Then abruptly, without a sound, it came to a dead stop. Dora looked around bewildered. Outside there was nothing, not a shimmer or suggestion of even a screen like that of the Comet itself.
Renolf backed the ship away, moved at right angles to their destination for a few hundred yards, and then headed for Tycho again. The Comet crawled forward slowly, then stopped. Renolf moved a lever. The rear jets burst out in a sudden thunder. Yet, though the ship trembled like a live thing, it stood still!
Renolf cut the rockets, and let the ship float on diamagnetism. “We are pushing against an electronic screen of tremendous strength. Something like our own screen, but a hundredfold more adamant. I used a jet force of over a million milli-ergs. Our own screen must have simply buckled and pressed flat under the strain.”
“What can it be?” asked Dora in a whisper. “It can’t be natural.”
“Hardly,” agreed Renolf.
“Then some—some person, some mind, must be behind that screen!”
“Logically, yes. And I’m going to find out——”
Suddenly he stopped speaking. There swept over the two Earthlings a subtle wave of prickling sensation. The air of the cabin electrified. The duralumin walls began to glow eerily. Renolf made a gesture toward the controls, alarmed at the phenomena. But he found himself curiously unable to accomplish his moves. Almost as though he were paralyzed!
Waves of indefinable energy flowed over the two Earthlings; like graven images they sat. Unable to summon any voluntary action to their muscles, they waited for—they knew not what. Renolf concentrated mightily, thoroughly alarmed now, straining to break the intangible bonds. His veins stood out purple, his muscles knotted. But something had congealed his centers of locomotion. Then he relaxed resignedly.
Dora, frightened, wanted to cry out, wanted to creep to the man’s protective arms. But the mysterious force held her enmeshed as though in chains. She was barely able to roll her eyes in Renolf’s direction. And in them she saw a strange look of expectancy. As though he were listening for something.
At the same moment she seemed herself to hear, faintly and inarticulately, a “voice.” But not a spoken voice. A disembodied voice. A voice in her brain. And for the next few minutes she continued to hear that ghostly voice, always indistinguishable. But the meaning seemed to be ever on the verge of her understanding. She caught at times snatches of meaning. She recoiled at the broken suggestions.
RENOLF, however, understood more clearly. His ten-brain contact gave him a vaster conception. The mysterious telepathic voice became rapidly understandable to him. Unable to do anything else, he concentrated on reading the message it conveyed. As he later translated it for Dora, the voice ran as follows:
“Time has passed to a certain extent since last something intelligence made bumped into my protective force wall. A long time in your conception, but not so long in mine.
“You the taller creature, have difficulty I see in understanding this message, simplified though I have made it. The other creature cannot understand at all. You must both be of a low mentality compared to the other intelligences which have at one time or another arisen here in the solar system.
“You understand quite clearly now? I see that; I will go on. You furnish me with a momentary diversion from my eternal thought. It is my whim to humor myself by explaining who I am. I am the Spawn of Eternal Thought. I have come from the void. Our race grew up on the planets of a sun so remote, and so different from this one, that to explain is impossible.
“In short, our race evolved from materialism to pure thought energy. It took a
period of time to which the life of the solar system is a mere instant. Our race, instead of growing into more and more individuals, condensed through long ages into fewer and fewer individuals, but each more powerful in thought energy. At last came the great day when our race merged completely into one mind essence.
“I am that mind essence. I am the end result of evolution on my planetary system. For long ages then, I the Spawn of Eternal Thought, lived in bliss, contemplating the greater mysteries of the universe. It is not conceivable to a material creature like you what sublime happiness there is in absolutely inactive thought. To you it would be madness. To me it is the true life.
“Now, I see the question in your mind: ‘Why am I here, if I was so happy and content in my own world?’
“I will explain. Wrestling with the cosmic secrets of the astral universe, my thought energy slowly weakened. Thought takes energy, and that energy was not being renewed. Thereupon, with my immeasurable powers, I disintegrated one of my sun’s planets and absorbed it into my being. That sufficed for another great age. Then I felt the inexorable drain again, and disintegrated another planet to feed my essence. One after another, I used up all the planets and finally the giant sun itself. Thereupon, I was sufficient unto myself for a long time, so long that there is no number in your puny tables to express it.
“Inevitably, came the time when I must search for new fodder for my eternal thought energy. I then wafted my being to another sun system and consumed it. Then another and another. Now I am here on this one.
“This one, however, is unique, in that it had developed on one of its bodies a race of thinking creatures of comparatively high order. That was on the fifth satellite of your sixth planet from the Sun. I saw immediately that by absorbing their developed mind essence into my own, I was renewed for a short time. But when that short time was over, another race had developed, this time on the first satellite of the fifth planet.
