by Earl
Benton shook the half hysterical man by the shoulders.
“Snap out of it and talk sense!” he demanded.
The little scientist took hold of himself.
“I published an article on my time-theory a year ago, but withheld the final formulae, realizing the danger—” He stopped and began again, frowning thoughtfully. “No. Now I remember! I wanted to build a wave-projector. A great plan had struck me. I could prevent the coming world war that festered in Europe! By wiping out memory, the warlords would be confused. Each time a so-called crisis arose, I would use the wave-projector, scattering the danger. Such was the great, blinding mission that I set my soul upon, with my discovery!”
Benton gasped. The little scientist had indeed conceived a stupendous thing, altruistic to the core. But, as with all such idealistic men, he had not foreseen the impracticable side of it. He had staved off the latest European crisis, all right, but what more? How did the crime-wave tie in?
“This von Steeden,” Benton asked. “What of him?”
Dr. Balstine’s pinched face was a sickly grey.
“I’m trying to think it out,” he cried nervously. “Von Steeden read my article, and looked me up. We developed the wave-projector together. We finished it a month ago. It’s out there in my back yard, screened by trees!” He moaned. “I’d forgotten—forgotten it all!”
“Then let’s turn it off!”
Benton jumped up, with this idea in mind.
CHAPTER V
The Amnesia Machine
“WAIT! Be seated, gentlemen!”
It was a new voice, from the doorway behind them.
A tall, grim-faced, hook-nosed man stood there, smiling mirthlessly. Larry Benton recognized him instantly as “Doctor” Mike Larnin, international underworld master-mind—clever, cunning, ruthless.
“Dr. von Steeden!” gasped the scientist. “We must turn off our wave-projector! We’ve made a mistake—”
“Sit down!” repeated the newcomer.
Benton sat down and pulled the scientist down with him. Two men had appeared silently, one in the doorway opposite, the other at the window of the sun-porch. They were armed thugs.
“Now let me explain,” continued Mike Larnin. He added softly, “You’ll both be—as we say—rubbed out, when I’m through. You know too much already.”
His accents were polished, in keeping with his groomed, respectable appearance. More than any other underworld character, Mike Larnin was the closest approach to the scientific, brainy crime leader. He was, in effect, Benton’s “master-mind” criminal.
He went on:
“Briefly, I saw the possibilities of your new discovery, Dr. Balstine, a year ago. I came to you as a fellow scientist—I’ve done considerable laboratory work in my unique career—to work out a projector. I pretended interest in your altruistic scheme of stopping war. But my real idea was this greatest of all crime coups!”
“I was so blind—blind!” groaned Dr. Balstine.
“When the wave-projector was completed,” continued the master criminal, “we waited for the next European crisis. But in the meantime I had sent my signal around, through the vast organization I had formed. The Crime Wave was launched. When government agencies were about to stamp down, I started the projector secretly, one night, while you slept.”
He waved a hand.
“That was yesterday, August 10th, 1940. I set the dial back a year, to August 10th, 1939. It robbed you, Dr. Balstine, of all memory of our connection. You didn’t even know of the projector in your back yard. Nor of the metal headband shield we devised. Now, unfortunately, through the meddling of this reporter, you’ve found out, and will have to go with him. I don’t need you any more, since the projector works perfectly.”
Lamin leered at them both, as though enjoying his cat-and-mouse role. Benton felt more sick than when the amnesia had first struck. They were trapped—doomed!
“The wave, as I foresaw,” resumed the criminal leader, “made our coup an instant success. Like radio waves, this wave pulses over the whole earth—into every mind. The physiological Time-sense in the mind is overthrown, set back a year. It doesn’t take much power, since the mind-fields are very delicate. Less power, in fact, than any radio station. You’ll remember we set up a radio-like aerial, Dr. Balstine. It looks no more than an amateur radiosending outfit. No one will suspect it. I have diesel generators, and a supply of oil on hand, in case electricity fails, from the powerhouses.”
“How long,” asked Benton hoarsely, “are you going to keep the wave up?”
“About a month. In that time, my criminal organization will have just about all the ready cash, gold, jewels, and lives we planned to take.” The man’s cold eyes flashed fire. “The plunder of the world! I’ll be the richest man alive when it’s done! I’ll get a portion of every haul, throughout the world. And”—grating laughter came from his lips—“this grand-scale emptying of the world’s coffers will always be an ‘unsolved’ crime. For I’ve stolen time and memory with it!”
Benton bit his lip. He was right. When the time-wave was turned off, a month later, there would be no way of tracking down the criminals. There wouldn’t be a single recorded clue!
Dr. Balstine’s face was tortured. He had placed the blame on his own soul. He had made it possible for the lawless to empty the money-bap of earth.
THE master criminal straightened up. Stepping to the radio, he turned it on. “I think you know what comes next!” he said suavely. He tuned organ music, and turned up the volume. His two men became alert, fingering their guns. Lamin held up his hand for the signal of death. . . .
Benton’s hand had been creeping toward his pocket. He could feel the gun there, that he had brought along on a dim hunch, from Woodley’s office. It was a hopeless chance, but he might plug one of them. He would try to get Lamin.
He flung himself forward, clutching for his gun.
A shot rang out—
Benton wondered why he wasn’t hit. Good God—how long would it take him to get his hand out of his pocket? Ages seemed to pass, as in a nightmare.
More shots rang out. Still he wasn’t hit!
He prayed for another second of this miracle as he brought up the gun he had finally jerked from his pocket. He leveled it for Larnin’s chest.
He fired.
And then, suddenly, he realized he had shot a dead man!
Lamin had begun to fall a split second before, with a hole in his forehead! Benton sat up, dazed. Someone else had killed Lamin!
He looked around. Blue was a wonderful color, he thought, especially when it was the blue uniform of the police! Two of them were coming in from the sun-porch, stepping over the body of the thug they had shot. Two more came in from the front door, followed by rumple-haired Jim Woodley of the Times-Star. Benton never knew when he had been so glad to see his sourfaced chief.
“Just in time, it seems,” the latter commented dryly. His eyes lighted up as he recognized the slain ringleader of crime on the floor.
“How did you happen to come here, with the cops, chief?” Benton asked the question that bewildered both himself and Dr. Balstine. The latter had sat through the shooting fray like a wooden image, too frightened to move.
“She did it,” returned Woodley. “Called me on the phone right after you left. When I told her you’d gone looking for a criminal master-mind—which I thought was funny—she started in on me I What a tongue-lashing I got! Before I knew it I had called up the Chief of Police and requisitioned a squad. And here we are.”
“She?” yelled Benton. “She who? You mean—”
A flying form came in the door and Benton stopped with his breath squeezed out, as she hugged him. The blue of Alicia Deane’s eyes was even nicer than the police blue, he reflected.
He looked at her a moment. There was something he should remember about her. He had known it while wearing the shielding hat. But now he could only remember that he should remember something, not the thing itself!
“You love me!” he accused. “Let’s get—”
He broke off and whirled, grasping Dr. Balstine’s arm. “Go out and turn off that damned wave-projector,” he said. “Take a couple of cops along in case any of Larnin’s men are around.”
He turned back to the girl. “—married!” he finished.
“No!” she said.
She drew three things out of her bag. “This key is the one for the new apartment you couldn’t get in. This ring was at the jeweler’s, to have another stone added after your pay-raise from the Times-Star. And this document is a marriage-license. I have all the proof. You can’t get out of it, Larry Benton!”
“Out of what?” he gasped.
She looked up at him, smiling tenderly.
“We were married two months ago!”
A subtle hum that had existed in the air flicked out suddenly. A policeman had turned off the wave-projector, in back. Larry Benton remembered now. He bent to kiss his wife. He’d never forget again. He didn’t want to.
THE THREE ETERNALS
Immortal wizards, armed with scientific lore of two hundred centuries, dare to raise the lost world—Atlantis!
CHAPTER I
Wandering Space Ship
ON Mount Olympus, as all know who have read Greek mythology, live the gods. Jove, Mercury, Apollo, Bacchhus, Neptune—their names are legion.
But there are not many gods, in a riotous confusion. There are but three. Immortal, and wise with the passing of time, these Three Eternals have looked over Earth and its folk at times, sometimes amused, sometimes angered, most often unconcerned.
They looked out upon the world of the Forty-first Century and were again unconcerned, though its inhabitants were doomed, unknown to themselves.
“Ah, these mortals and their absurd little civilization!” said one. “It is about time they and all they represent go into limbo—at our hand.”
“It is dull waiting,” yawned the second. “I wish—I actually wish—they knew of it, and challenged us. I would even wish a champion to appear for them. Anton York, for instance, who was greatest of them all.”
“Anton York!” The third laughed. “He is far out in space. And if he were here, what could he do against us? Nothing!”
They smiled at one another, secure in that knowledge, and went back to their intricate game of four-dimensional chess developed to help pass the slow crawl of time in their immortal lives. . . .
Out in the vast, uncharted depths of interstellar space, a small globular ship plunged Earthward at a speed greater than light.
Within it, Anton York and his immortal mate grew hourly more eager. They were returning for a visit to the world of their birth, after a long absence. Like gods they had gone where they willed, viewing strange worlds, queer civilizations, taking deep pleasure in watching part of the majestic sweep of cosmic history.
EARTH’S individual history had faded in their minds, overlaid by countless other events, but now nostalgia tingled through their veins. Near-gods they might be, but even gods must have a place called “home.”
“I can hardly wait to get back!” said Vera York, with all the enthusiasm of an American waiting to see the Statue of Liberty after a year in Europe. “Why have we stayed away so long, Tony?”
“How long has it been?” Anton York asked, vaguely.
“A thousand years!” Vera had checked the time-charts, amazed herself.
“That long?” York shook his head. “Time does fly, as an old proverb says. Yet, what is time to us? We will live, Vera, till half the Universe has run down into cosmic rays. Millions of years, at the least!”
It was bare truth. They were both thirty years old—in appearance. In their bloodstreams flowed an elixir of self-renewing enzymes that constantly rebuilt radiogens, the tiny batteries of cell life. The boundless energy of all-pervading cosmic rays fed these radiogens, supplying the undying fires of youth to their bodies. Old age and disease could not touch them. The finger of Death could only mark them by violent means, if Fate so willed.
Vera shivered slightly.
“Millions of years!” she echoed. “Sometimes it isn’t good to think of that.” Her eyes, a little haunted, sparkled suddenly. “The first thing I’m going to do, when we arrive on Earth, is to take a swim in some cool mountain lake, surrounded by green trees. There will be birds singing, and soft warm breezes whispering through the leaves; and white clouds sailing on high—” She choked a little. “Oh, Tony, I’m just beginning to realize how much I miss those simple things!”
York nodded. In all their galactic roaming, there had been no world quite like Earth. No spot in the Universe quite so dear in their memories.
“We’ll undoubtedly find a great civilization there-on Earth,” mused York, more practical-minded. “When we left, in the Thirty-first Century, mankind was already beginning to make the most of its nine-world empire. We’ll find humanity in its happiest and mightiest phase since the first dawnman built the first fire and found that Nature could be his ally. Mankind deserves it too, Vera, for all of its previous bickerings, maladjustments, and crimes against itself. Civilization went through its adolescence in the Twentieth Century, when we were born. Now it must be approaching maturity.”
His eyes shone as he went on.
“And fully matured, mankind will one day inherit the stars! It will be destined to replace so many of the worn-out, decadent civilizations that fell by the wayside throughout the cosmos. But only when they are ready for it. As we have done in advance, the ships of Earthmen will seek far worlds and—”
“Tony, look! The bolide chart!”
STARTLED at his wife’s sharp interruption, York turned to look.
The bolide chart was a luminous screen whose milky surface showed any and all material bodies within range. Nothing larger than a grain of sand could escape the supersensitive instrument which recorded every tiniest ripple in the ubiquitous ether. With its train of mechanisms, the chart instantly recorded distance, speed, direction, size, shape, color and electrical charge of any passing object within the relatively close radius of a billion miles.
It was one of the precautions York had taken, with his scientific genius, to avoid accidents in treacherous space, so that their immortality was further safeguarded.
He watched the little black dot streaking across the lighted screen. At their tremendous speed, the passing object would be gone in seconds.
“No danger of collision with it,” he said, integrating the data in his head. “It has a speed, relative to space, of a hundred thousand miles a second. Size, twice as large as our ship. Shape, quite uniform, elongated. Color, silvery. Direction, toward Alpha Centauri, from about Sol’s position. Electrical charge—”
The dot slipped off the edge of the screen, beyond range.
“It’s gone,” said Vera. “First bit of matter we’ve passed in empty space, in days. Data sounded like a space ship, but of course it was only a lonely, wandering meteor of space. Maybe the next record will be that of the planet Pluto, within the Solar System. We’re close now!”
York was strangely reflective.
“Yes, we’re close—within a few trillions of miles. And therefore, it could be Vera, I think it was a space ship! I barely caught its electrical charge record, and it seemed to be inordinately high—like that of a power-plant of some sort. Meteors don’t have power-plants. If it was a space ship, does it mean that Earthmen have already achieved interstellar engines? And were they heading for Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to Sol? And what for?”
“We’ll find out when we arrive at Earth,” began Vera, but her immortal husband interrupted.
“We’ll find out now!”
York snapped on his radio, twirling the dials of his transmitter. Underneath the cabin floor a great generator hummed to life. A million kilowatts of electrical power, drawn from the eternal shower of cosmic rays, surged through the radio’s diamond-walled tubes.
The stentorian radio voice that burst from the antennae of his ship was
borne by sufficient energy to be heard with the weakest of receptors within a light year. On Earth, that amount of power would have heated all metals within a mile ten degrees above their surroundings.
“Anton York calling the space ship heading for Alpha Centauri!”
After he had called over and over, without an answer, he frowned in perplexity and reached for the engine controls.
“I’ve got to find out about that ship,” he muttered. “The fact that it doesn’t answer is—ominous!”
With his inertia-suspension field on full power, York slowed his ship from its translight speed to zero in short hours, and shot back along the course of the mysterious ship. It was odd to find a ship out here in the deeps between stars. He overhauled it in another few hours, They stared as it bulked huge against the backdrop of flaming stars.
IT was unlighted, dark, but York’s detectors showed that its power-plant was warping space and accelerating constantly. He tried his radio again, with no result. Then he sent a rocket signal over its bow, and when that failed, gave a baffled grunt.
“One of two things,” he conjectured. “Its occupants are up to no good, or it’s a derelict. We’ll find out quick enough.”
“Careful, Tony,” warned his wife.
In a space suit, presently, York cautiously maneuvered himself toward the strange ship with his reaction pistols. Vera was covering him with their guns. But no sign of hostility came from the accelerating ship; no sign of life at all.
Finding a hatch with the usual outside emergency lever, York entered the ship. A hand flash lighted the way as he went down a darkened companionway into the main cabin. He gasped as his cone of light revealed the figures of two men lying unconscious against the backfall, as though they had been thrown there violently.
Unconscious? York had only to notice their utter stillness to realize they were dead!
