The Collected Stories

by Earl

  Maida’s voice came over the sonic set, metallic and faint, her words distorted by cracklings. “Phil, I’m terribly frightened. It’s Greeley! He’s been acting very queerly—worse than ever before, and different somehow. He has a glassy look in his eyes and sings crazy things and mumbles. Worst of all, he’s let the charge build up to five thousand megavolts and refuses to turn it off. The place is overheated dreadfully now. That look in his eyes——”

  “Maida, for Heaven’s sake get away from there!” His voice a hoarse, anguished shout, Wacker went on, “Get into your air suit and head for the dome. You know the way alone. Can you get Greeley to talk to me? No—don’t take the time——”

  Then Greeley’s voice came, preceded by a queer cackle. “Sunlight, Phil. Yes, nice warm sunlight and moonlight. Moonlight? No, I mean moonshine. That’s better. Sunlight warms you outside and moonshine heats your blood. And I was so cold. But not now. Oh, no, I’ve fixed that. I——”

  “Greeley, you fool!” roared Wacker, so that the microphone rattled. “What have you done? Turn off the neutron gun before you blow yourself and the laboratory to atoms.”

  “Atoms? Sunshine from the atoms, of course. That’s right, m’boy, And moonshine——”

  “I knew his mind would crack some day,” moaned Wacker to the commissioner, standing helplessly at his side. “He’ll blow the place to kingdom come. He’s gone utterly crazy.”

  “Crazy, eh?” The words crackled sharply from the sonic recorder. The old scientist’s voice went on, suddenly quite lucid and firm, “Yes, Phil, I’m either utterly crazy or strangely sane. Depends on how you look at it. Is it crazy to hope that some day the sun will come to life again? Light our world and give us blessed heat? We’ve been so cold, so frozen, but perhaps the sun will blaze in its former incandescence and give us the magic of sunlight. And moonlight, too.” The voice cracked. “Moonshine, that, too.”

  “You’re mad, mad!” groaned Wacker, “Turn off the neutron gun, Greeley. You must have a spark of sanity left.”

  THERE WAS a moment of silence, but the uneven hum of the surface transmitter continued. At last Greeley’s voice modulated in once more, fading with a waning battery supply. “The dials show seven thousand five hundred megavolts absorbed, Phil. And it has not yet blown up. Let’s see, it will take you about three hours to get here. I will shut off the neutron gun in two and a half hours—if it hasn’t flung me to the stars by then. Come straight here, m’lad, and bring a gram of tantalum metal with you, which is important. Your wife has gone in her air suit.”

  Wacker breathed a silent prayer of thanks, then spoke into the sonic machine, pleadingly. “Greeley, you must be a madman to do what you’re doing. For the last time——”

  “Bring the tantalum metal,” came back Greeley’s voice in a sharp scream. “Sunlight, eh? And moonshine. Oh, yes, that, too.”

  His voice clicked out. Wacker whirled on the commissioner. “I don’t know what’s going on in that old head of his, but—well, I’ll bring him that gram of tantalum.”

  Fenwick hesitated. “I’ve been ordered not to allow you any more supplies. In three days your license——”

  “For Heaven’s sake, give me the three days then,” exclaimed Wacker, “and a gram of tantalum! Just that one thing. There’s one chance in a billion that old Greeley——”

  They eyed one another for a moment. “Come on,” said the commissioner suddenly. “Maybe I’m crazy, too, but I’m with you.”

  The gram of tantalum proved hard to find. Chemical stores were ransacked high and low before a foot length of fine wire was found. Once the commissioner had decided to give Wacker his support, he went the whole way. He had conducted the young scientist around personally. Now, since so much time had been lost, he put through an emergency call for special transportation to the surface. A trip that would have consumed over an hour in the jerky monorails and occasional elevators was accomplished in a few minutes. He left Wacker at the final elevator, which would take him up to the surface dome.

  “Good luck, Wacker,” Fenwick said. His eyes had a strange fire in them, the embers of a faint hope.

  THE ELEVATOR shot upward. Wacker stepped out under the dome, and into the arms of his wife.

  “Don’t go there, Phil!” she pleaded, when he told her of his destination. “Greeley’s been saying all sorts of impossible things. You’ll be killed. He’s mad. His tongue is thick; his eyes are glazed, and he staggers around in some strange fit——”

  But Wacker went. He stepped out under the watching stars in his air suit, and half ran along among the drifts of air snow and around tremendous pylons of ice. He kept his eyes ahead, expecting any moment to see a mighty blast spring from the direction of his laboratory, yet hoping, hoping——

  Greeley met him at the inner lock, a disheveled Greeley with an elfin grin on his gaunt, pinched face. He stood swayingly before the young scientist, mouthing broken phrases.

  Wacker shook him roughly. “The neutron gun!” he gasped.

  Greeley swung an indefinite hand. “It’s off, m’boy. But the place is warm. Ah, it’s warm for a change. Isn’t it splendid, Phil? I wanted to be warm and——”

  Wacker dashed to the small but superpowerful machine which flung neutrons through its grid-work target moistened with unstable argon-fluorine transition compounds. He read the dials with a puzzled frown. Enough power had been loosed to blast away the entire target chamber, yet it was intact. And the battery supply was strangely rejuvenated.

  Greeley swayed up, leered at the meters. “They lie, don’t they, Phil? And I’m crazy. They lie because they show more gain than loss. A lot more——”

  Wacker shook himself from a stupor. “What does it mean, Greeley?” he whispered. “What does it mean?”

  Greeley cackled and mumbled on. Wacker listened intently. At last the old scientist plumped himself wearily into his chair. “You see, Phil, it was there before us all the time. It came to me in a flash, like inspiration. Two neutron beams at a focus, to probe within the atom like a forceps and pick out its treasures. The atomic flame rises at the focus. A hot flame, one that heated this room up easily, defying the outer cold. Atomic sunshine, Phil that——”

  “The tantalum?” queried Wacker in an awed voice.

  “For the grid,” cackled Greeley. “My equations show”—he waved at the papers scattered over the floor, scrawled in large, shaky figures—“that a tantalum grid will release every last iota of energy.”

  Wacker forced himself to a scientific calm. He fastened the tantalum wire over the copper grid in the target chamber, ran a tiny droplet of compound over the plate and focused several quanta of the twin neutron beam over it. Watching the dials, he saw the power needles arc over like frightened things, to smack against their stays with loud clicks.

  “Greeley, you’re right! It works and——”

  “Yes, Phil. Atomic sunlight. Think of a ship powered by this limitless energy, forging into space, toward the dead sun. It projects two focused neutron beams, titanic ones. It lights an Olympian fire all over the sun’s surface. In a century the sun blazes forth again, to give its blessed warmth and sunlight to earth, as it did before it went out!”

  Wacker’s eyes smoldered suddenly. “And man will no longer be a worm. He will crawl out of the ground, face the stars—live again and know the meaning of everything life has——”

  Wacker stopped. Greeley was slumped in his chair, head lolling forward. In alarm the young scientist shook him, and took note for the first time of the peculiar odor about him. After a moment the old scientist looked up with bleary eyes.

  “Ah, warm, warm!” he mumbled. He took a gulp of liquid from a beaker. “We’ll have sunlight, yes. But before that I have moonshine. Y’know Phil, right after you left I remembered what it was my grandfather said was in moonshine—alcohol. It warmed me inside, like he said it would. It warmed my old brain and heart, too. Gave me inspiration, courage. Moonshine, sunlight—warm, warm——”

  A COMET PAS
SES

  For Scores of Centuries Mankind Ponders the Wonder of the Heavens as Celestial Fire Careens in Its Orbit in tike Skies!

  Prologue

  “NOW each of you,” said Professor Higgins, “can take a look through the telescope and see just how flimsy and tenuous the comet’s tail really is.”

  It was 1910. Halley’s comet, the most conspicuous and dependable of all the comets, hung in the night skies resembling a giant rocket ship speeding through space, exhaust gases jetting steadily and furiously.

  Professor Higgins’ small telescope, regulated to follow the comet in its course among the stars, magnified the tail so greatly that through its wraithlike veil could be seen clearly the celestial suns. His dozen guests of the evening peered into the eyepiece one by one and found no words to describe the majestic beauty revealed to them.

  “A comet,” Professor Higgins addressed the group, “consists of a tiny nucleus, probably solid, various envelopes of tenuous gases that distend it to giant size, and a long stream of ejected gas so rare and sensitive that even the pressure of the sun’s light is able to push it around, So that while the comet swings around the sun like a stone on a sling, the tail always points away from the sun.

  “Now, just what is the tail, why does it stream from the nucleus, and why does it shine so brightly? As I’ve mentioned before, astronomers know little about comets, and the why and wherefore of the tail is still a mystery to scientists. Of course, the spectroscope has told us that the tail gases contain cyanogen, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen, but their peculiar brilliance and their emission from the nucleus is a subject for controversy. The study of that class of phenomena takes the astronomer into the most intricate theories of higher physics and chemistry, and the tale of the tail—if you will pardon a pun—is hot yet fully told.

  “Let me say this, though, about those bodies which occasionally flare up in our night skies to the astonishment and wonder of all mankind, adding to the magnificence and thrilling mystery of the Universe. We can only surmise, my friends, what great influences comets may have had on past history when they appeared blazingly in the ancient skies, causing uneducated minds and superstitious hearts to quake and tremble.

  “Many comets in pre-scientific recordings have been coupled with plagues, earthquakes, wars, and the rise and fall of empires. It would be fascinating indeed to have a supernatural power enabling one to visit the past during each of the comet’s appearances and to see just What effect they had on credulous people who believed in nether spirits, demons, and all sorts of strange gods.”

  CHAPTER I

  Fear

  “CLUB-KILLER,” a squat and powerful figure, moved warily through the fringes of jungle. Swung over his brawny shoulder, but poised for instant use, was a short, heavy club of very hard wood. Its end was bulging and knotted. There were strands of animal hair and spots of dried blood ground permanently into the grain. Many and many a time had that crude but effective weapon sped the lives of other jungle creatures.

  Club-Killer neared the spa with extreme caution, choosing a rocky route. Saber-Tooth, whom he was hunting, did not like rocky paths. Therefore he would not catch Club-Killer’s spoor. Nearing the spa, Club-Killer lifted himself into a huge tree.

  One by one the forest beasts, timid and wary, slunk up like wraiths and drank from the spring below. Sometimes two and three at a time. Club-Killer was not aware of Saber-Tooth’s tawny presence until the animal catapulted out of the bushes like a lightning bolt’.

  Two hoofed creatures fell easy prey. Saber-Tooth, half bear and half tiger, had killed one by ripping off its head with a mighty paw, and the other with a snap of its great jaws.

  Club-Killer trembled. Now was his chance. He dropped in the shadow of the tree, balanced himself on his toes, and ran forward. The mighty club up, raised in both hands, Club-Killer swung it down at the tawny skull slobbering in fresh meat and hot blood. All the force of his great shoulders and the momentum of his run was in that blow. Saber-Tooth tumbled to the ground, his skull crushed like an eggshell.

  Panting, Club-Killer gazed down at the great animal he had killed. Then he expanded his mighty chest. From his lips rolled an ululation that bid defiance to all the world.

  He had killed Saber-Tooth. He was great and mighty. He could hunt now without fear. Who would dare to stand before the killer of Saber-Tooth? He was lord of the jungle again. Of slinking panthers, cowardly hyenas, and such he had no fear. His knotted club was more than they could match. He stepped away from the spa and made his way out of the jungle. Unconsciously, he swaggered.

  Suddenly he stopped stock still, staring into the heavens. A most awesome thing was there—a flaming ribbon of light that stretched from horizon to zenith. One end was a ball, the other flared fan wise. It hung in the pool of stars like a roseate saber.

  Club-Killer faced the light for a brave moment. Then a howl of abysmal fear tore from his lips. Dropping his club, trembling in every fiber of his being, Club-Killer the mighty, slayer of Saber-Tooth, ran precipitately back to his cave. He sneaked into a comer, trembling with fear, terrified by the awesome spectacle of fire in the heavens.

  SURROUNDED by Oriental splendor the young man with curly brown locks of hair looked moodily at the dozen men eating and drinking with the great gusto of military life. The young man alone of the assemblage was smooth shaven, and that, together with his fair skin and handsome, boyish features, made him look younger than his thirty years of age. Yet his exotic clothing was the richest of the lot, and despite his youthful appearance the men seated before him treated him only with great deference and respect.

  They were officers of the Greek army and their leader, the youth at the head of the table, was Alexander of Macedonia, later to be known as Alexander the Great.

  Alexander sat there, hardly tasting of the rich and spicy foods of Persia’s fertile tillage, staring moodily at empty air. A great problem weighed on his mind. He turned suddenly to General Polemus, who sat at his right.

  “Polemus,” he spoke at last, in a voice of commanding timbre, “shall we go on? Shall we add to the glory and greatness of Greece?”

  Polemus answered cautiously: “There is none more eager than I to add to the greatness of Greece. Yet let us remember those wise words: ‘They that lust. for too much, sometimes lose all.’ ”

  “In other words,” said Alexander, fixing his general with a compelling eye, “you intricate that if I seek new conquests, I may have dissolution of the empire at my back?”

  “Yes, Emperor,” said Polemus firmly, despite scornful glances from some of the others. “I have hinted it before, but now. I will state it openly as my opinion of what would be the outcome if we ventured past the Indus, which at this moment lies outside, ready to be crossed.”

  The company held its breath, expecting Alexander to denounce Polemus in arrogant wrath, for Alexander, vain and conceited, disliked being balked or advised. But the young world-conqueror surprised them all, Polemus included, by merely raising his eyebrows. Then he turned to General Kalijan at his left.

  “And what say you to that, my fiery Kalijan?”

  “I say piffle,” spoke Kalijan with a leer toward Polemus. Kalijan, a Persian. formerly in Darius’ great army, and who had been elevated to officer-ship in the Greek army because of his reputed military genius, was truly a son of Mars. “Beyond the Indus River which lies at our feet is a great and rich land in which there are shrines of gold, solid gold, by Zeus! Even before you, Emperor, came along to show us how to fight, my people used to cross over and in small raids carry off priceless booty. I tell you there is treasure for the taking in that land of Dravidians, and the people—poof! We could blow them away like chaff. May all the gods eat my heart out if I am wrong!”

  “Good!” applauded Alexander as the roar of Kalijan’s voice died away. “Now here we have the sagacious Polemus on my right hand—the faithful general who has been my constant shadow for a decade—bidding us turn back lest my empire fall apart, and we have the storm
y Kalijan at my left shouting that great wealth is ours if we cross the river. Now my captains and majors, what thinks each of you?”

  DOWN the line went Alexander, addressing each one in turn, asking which way their inclinations went. The final count showed five that agreed with Polemus, and five that voiced most heartily agreement with Kalijan. The rest would give no committance, and said that wherever their Emperor led them, they would follow, whether ahead or back.

  Alexander sighed, glancing from left to right perplexedly.

  “So it stands, six to six! Either I must cast my decision or—Ah, me! If only the wise Aristotle were here!”

  Alexander seemed to fall into a trance, and the officers took the opportunity to gorge, themselves with more food and wine. Alexander’s hesitancy at this time, when formerly his decisions had always been instantaneous, was a most strange thing to his officers. Having conquered practically the whole Western part of the then-known world, what secret doubt caused him to pause at the brink of the Dravidian lands (India), well knowing it was rich and unprotected?

  No one knows. . . .

  But Alexander did cross the Indus, apparently having made up his mind to conquer India. A week later his army had marched south on the futher side of the Indus to a point from which to strike out in the conquest of that vast land. It was night and the young conqueror sat alone in his tent, again moody and thoughtful. Despite his high resolve, and despite Kalijan’s blustering confidence, Alexander vacillated. On the morrow he was to give the signal to advance into the new land.

  Should he listen perhaps to staid and earnest old Polemus and turn back? If he entered India and lost himself in its conquering for a few years, might he not return to the West to find himself a throneless monarch?