by Earl
Manmade instruments recorded these things for the wide eyes of bewildered meteorologists, but told them little of the ultimate cause.
But the men who had created these weird miracles knew nothing at first hand of the effects throughout the world. Fenstrom, in fact, was a little disappointed at the unspectacular results of their manipulations. Beyond the slight nausea he had felt and the hum and drone of their apparatus, nothing told him that the predicted result had occurred.
Yet he knew, by the worried satisfaction in Professor Manning’s face, that his instruments had informed him of complete success.
“We’ve done it!” the scientist chortled. “We now have full control!” It was the first time Fenstrom had seen him so jubilant.
Then he leaped to the radio. “John,” he said excitedly, “my premonitions were wrong after all. And you were right! What a great day for science—unlimited power for mankind. How could I have been so pessimistic? John, it was you that did this—you should get all the credit—”
“Never mind,” boomed the obese scientist from the south pole. “Listen to me, Howard. Now that we have full control of earth’s magnetic field, we’ll increase the tower-coil’s speed to a hundred per minute. They are mechanically capable of withstanding that rate.”
“W-WHAT?” stammered the little scientist. “But why? It would be senseless. Besides, the effects would be terrible, out in the world. Speeding up the field’s rotation to that rate would bring catastrophe—”
“Would it?” said Dr. John Manning, with a smirk. The voice suddenly became a hiss. “Oh, what a poor little fool you are, Howard! Here we are, you and I, at the North and South Magnetic Poles, with the world between us. And it’s ours! I’ve thought this over since we started this, many times. We can give the world power—at our price! And that price will be—dictatorship!”
“John, what are you saying?” wailed the little scientist. Fenstrom listened with cold fear clutching his heart.
The face in the television screen became fanatically arrogant. The thick lips writhed in cold ruthlessness. “I was meant for such things—rule and power,” the voice said sonorously. “Not to be a sniveling philanthropist. I put my brains and life into this project and I want the reward I deserve.”
His overweening egotism had discounted his brother’s efforts entirely. “I will give them this wealth of power, but first, so they will be less prone to resist my demands, I will demonstrate its destructiveness. At a hundred turns a minute, the world will get a nice, proper scare.”
“It’s madness!” shrieked Howard Manning. “Thousands of people would be killed—property damaged—there would be holocaust all over earth! John, John! You can’t do this mad thing!”
“Never mind moralizing!” snapped the radio voice. “Get ready for the greatest demonstration of man-made power in the history of this planet! Increase rotation ten revolutions in the next minute!”
Professor Manning sprang to the panel board, manipulating the necessary controls. While his hands moved, he whispered hoarsely to Fenstrom.
“You must leave here at once, Fenstrom. My brother has gone insane with the thought of power. I must stop him, regardless of the danger.”
“I’ll stay here with you, Professor—” began Fenstrom gallantly.
“No, you fool!” hissed the little scientist. He forked a throw switch as the voice of his brother roared “ten more revolutions!” Howard Manning continued.
“You must go. First, take out the packet of papers in the top drawer of my desk. They are the complete plans for the tower-coils. Take them with you. Deliver them to the Society for the Advancement of Science. Go now, and for God’s sake, hurry!”
“What will happen to you—here?” asked Fenstrom.
“Go!” shrieked Manning, with an agonized pleading in his eyes as he pulled down another gleaming switch.
Fenstrom hesitated no longer and ran to the desk at which the professor kept all his notes and papers. He found the fat packet, waved at the scientist’s vigorous nod, and dashed out into the bitter coldness outside the laboratory.
A stinging wind made his teeth chatter before he reached his igloo-home. Impelled by a strange haste, he struggled into his parka, grabbed up his thick fur gloves and emerged to stumble through the snow at a lope.
As he passed within a hundred feet of the tower-coil, the men at the oil-pumps stared at him curiously. They little knew that they were under the commands of a ruthless being who would cause the machine they tended to disrupt the peace of the world.
FENSTROM saw the blurring wire-struts of the revolving drum increase their speed even as he watched. Overhead, the most amazing Auroral display he had ever seen filled the dome of night. The streamers and curtains writhed, luridly painted, as though being twisted by some cosmic force.
Somehow, the pilot knew he must hurry more than ever, though he did not know why.
Reaching the ship, he threw himself into the cabin, placing the packet in a wall container. Panting, he pulled the starting switch. With a hollow cough, the powerful motor turned over several times, then burst out into a rumbling roar. He let it warm up only five minutes and taxied into the wind. Soon he was in the air. On sudden impulse he circled the encampment, a vague remorse for deserting the professor stirring his pulses.
He had always liked the little scientist, as much as he had hated his brother. What a contrast, the small, melancholy Howard with a heart of gold and a true humanitarian—and the obese, overbearing, cold-hearted mental machine who by some quirk of fate was his blood brother. They were at cross purposes down below there. What would result?
With a puzzled shake of his head Fenstrom swung the ship southward by his compass and climbed to escape the ground currents. On sudden thought he snapped on his radio and twisted the tuning dial. A voice came out of the crackling of static. The little scientist’s high-pitched voice it was, vibrant with emotion.
“—stop you, if it’s the last thing I do. In fact, it will be the last thing I do! But what does my life matter—or yours? You’re a power-mad egomaniac, John. Earth in your hands would become a shambles. I am going to save you for yourself. You will go down in history as an honored savant, as the co-discoverer of one of science’s greatest secrets, for the world will only know of you as a martyr to our experiments.”
There was a pause. Fenstrom’s small radio did not pick up the radio voice of the man at the other side of earth. Then Professor Manning’s shrill tones once more.
“How will I do it? John, you’ve forgotten one thing. As you say, if I simply stopped my tower-coil, you would still be able to rotate yours and twist the magnetic field and play hell all over earth. But suppose I reversed my tower-coil? As, you see! Think of two unlike polar forces rotating in opposite directions. Earth will not be harmed. The effects will be neutralized. But the final result—to us—”
Another pause. Then a few broken words from the little scientist. “Goodbye, John! I’ve always loved you as a brother, and still do, though God knows why—”
The radio went dead. Fenstrom shook his head in nervous wonderment and bent over his instruments. He was following the compass needle as its unmarked end pointed south. Something told him to get away, and fast.
Three things happened at once, a minute later. The compass needle suddenly became a blur of swift, revolving motion. Then, out of the corner of his eye he saw a blinding beam dart from the horizon, seemingly from all directions, and spear to the north.
LAST, the most intense pain he had ever experienced ripped through his body as though a thousand needles pierced him from end to end. It was only for an instant but it wrung a sharp cry from his lips, and the ship dipped suddenly from the spasmodic jerk of his hands on the stick.
Pouring perspiration, Fenstrom righted the ship and relaxed with a gasping sigh. Then he jerked up again; realization had come with an icy grip squeezing his heart. That had been a titanic lightning bolt that he had seen before, and it had struck to the north, where a little sad-fac
ed scientist—
Fenstrom spun the ship about crazily, raced back from where he had come. Five minutes later he circled over a jagged, smoking pit that occupied the spot that had once been the encampment. No sign of debris. Some terrific force had ripped everything to atoms.
With an odd ache in his heart, Fenstrom once again turned south with his eye on the compass.
Then he thought he had gone mad. The compass needle’s marked end, which should have pointed back the way he had come, pointed the way he was going!
An hour later, when there was no change in this phenomenon, Fenstrom admitted to himself that it had happened. The titanic struggle between the two brothers, with reversed magnetic fields, had switched earth’s magnetic poles!
Earth would marvel, and acclaim the martyrdom of the two who had perished in this destructive reversal of tremendous powers. Fenstrom smiled bitterly to himself, looking at the packet of papers he was to deliver.
He alone knew that only one was a martyr.
THE SECRET OF ANTON YORK
All humanity thought Anton York dead, but the immortal scientist hurtled through the cosmos to the last world—so that Earth might live!
Prologue
AT the top of Mount Everest stand two gigantic statues of enduring diamond, a hundred feet tall. Gleaming in the stratosphere, they rear higher than any other man-made object on Earth’s surface, as the two after whom they had been modeled rear higher than any others in human history.
Those were the statues modeled after the immortal Anton York and his mate.
In the year of their commemoration, 4050 A.D., the President of the Solar System Council spoke to a gathered crowd of ten million, and to a television audience of ten billion on nine planets. His voice was emotion-filled and awed, as though he spoke of gods.
“Anton York and his wife are dead. But Anton York’s name will live, alongside those of Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon and other empire builders. And Confucius, Christ, Mohammed and other spiritual leaders. And Adam, Jove, Robin Hood and other mythological names. For Anton York was like all these in one respect or more.
“He was born in the twentieth century. Preserved by his father’s life-elixir, he lived on, immortally. These great exploits will ring down the hall of history: His defeat of the fifty Immortals who wished to subjugate Earth, in the twenty-first century. His legacy of space-travel to mankind, soon after. His defeat of Mason Chard, the last of the ruthless Immortals, in the thirty-first century. His astro-engineering in the Solar System, giving Jupiter rings, moons to Mercury and Venus, and ridding all the planets of harsh obstacles to colonization.
“But the greatest of all was his return from the deeps of space, in our present time, to wage some titanic battle against the mysterious Three Eternals, who wished to destroy contemporary civilization. We do not even know the true story of it, save in snatches. We know only that the Three Eternals, survivors from some forgotten time—perhaps Atlantis—pursued Anton York’s space ship out beyond Pluto, a year ago.
“An astronomer’s plates, on that dark outpost, caught something of the event. The space ship of the Three Eternals hurled some destructive force at York’s ship. The latter seemed loaded with mighty energies. Both ships vanished in an explosion that must have rocked the Universe from one end to another. Pluto was shoved a million miles out of its orbit by etheric concussion!”
He paused to let the worlds imagine the incredible fury of that scene.
“We can only surmise at what mighty, unknown forces were released. And we can only wonder why York, to destroy the Three Eternals, sacrificed himself. Evidently he could defeat the Eternals only in that way, in a battle of gods.
“Of one thing we are sure. The incredible career of Anton York is over. We are gathered here to commemorate his memory, in the most lasting material we know, on this highest peak of Earth’s entire surface.”
The speaker looked over the solemn, hushed multitude packed at the base of the towering mountain. He delivered his funereal text.
“Anton York, benefactor of humanity, is dead!”
CHAPTER I
Another Universe
THOSE words, if they could have rolled by some magic throughout the greater cosmos, would eventually have impinged on the ears of the person in question, and made him smile.
For Anton York was alive.
Yet he had not been sure of that himself, at first. With a shock his brain had awakened. His staring eyes focused on the cabin wall of his ship. It looked as it had always been. But queerly, he saw two walls. It was a doubling effect, as if two superimposed images lay on one another. And he could not move. He was in the grip of some paralysis that locked every muscle in his body, including his lungs and heart. He was not breathing and his blood, chilled and viscous, lay stagnant in his veins.
Yet he was alive, for his thoughts were free. Or was this death?
His thoughts probed out in mental telepathy, which he had used so often with his wife. He could not turn to look.
“Vera!” his mind called. “Vera, are you near?”
Her mental voice came back, confused, dim.
“Yes, Tony. I hear you. You must be near. I feel as though we are mental wraiths. Is this the life-after-death? How wonderful, Tony, not to be separated after all—” Her psychic tone became startled. “But look! This is the cabin of our ship, even if it appears double somehow. It was destroyed in that frightful explosion caused by the Three Eternals. How can a material ship pass into the life-after-death?”
It was a grimly ridiculous thought.
“No, Vera.” York’s thoughts were reflective. “The ship wasn’t destroyed. Nor were we. It’s sheer speculation, but perhaps the explosion acted so suddenly and so powerfully that it blew the ship away intact. Like tornado winds that blow straws right through oak boards without knocking off one grain. Vera, we’re alive!”
“But this paralysis—”
“Suspension of life, through the shock of super-fast motion. Germs, in centrifuges whirled at high speed, pass into a dormant state, as Earth scientists know. All our cells have gone as a unit into suspended animation.”
“You mean that we’ll stay helpless like this? For ages, thinking, thinking . . .” Vera’s psychic voice was alarmed, half hysterical.
“No,” York answered quickly. “Don’t forget we have twice the normal number of life-giving radiogens in our cells. Cosmic rays are constantly pouring into them. The energy stored will sooner or later break the dead-lock. We just have to wait.”
COSMIC radiation fed itself into their immortality radiogens. Electrical energy, the warmth of life in the last analysis, gradually built up as in a storage battery. The stunned cells, knocked out by the force of the super-explosion, slowly returned to normal.
It took a year.
During that time, happy at escaping the death that had seemed inexorable, they conversed mentally. They spoke of things past, wondering of things present, and looked forward to things future, once they were free. Well inured to the dragging of time in their 2000 years of life, the short year passed quickly to them, where it might have driven an ordinary mortal mad.
Anton York felt the twitch of some buried muscle one day. Others came alive quickly, as if it were a signal. The involuntary muscles instantly took up their given tasks. The heart beat and the diaphragm pumped up and down, sucking air into the lungs.
York leaped up suddenly, only to collapse again with a groan. The atrophied muscles refused to take up their burden that quickly.
A few minutes later he arose again, stronger, and turned to help Vera up. He supported her while her body went through the same phases. Finally they embraced each other, knowing the supreme joy of life, when death had seemed inevitable.
“Tony, dearest, are we truly immortal?” Vera spoke, using her vocal chords instead of the tiring telepathy. They noticed immediately that the sound echoed, in the same queer doubling effect of their vision. She went on. “Disease and old age can’t touch us. Now even that terrib
le explosion, violent death, failed! We’re like the legendary gods.”
“Don’t think that way!” York returned almost sharply. “We must never lose our perspective. We’re immortals through science. And some principle of science accounts for our escape. I had our energy coils loaded to capacity with power enough to shatter a sun. When the Three Eternals shoved a dis-beam at us and released it, the explosion acted on every atom simultaneously, blowing ship and all away as a unit. Probably at the speed of light and out into remote space.’ ”
“The Three Eternals!” Vera burst in suddenly. “If they survived the explosion too, they may be near now, ready to blast us again—”
YORK, reminded of their deadly enemies, was already leaping toward the visi-screen, for an all-around view of surrounding space. Like their eyes, the view-plate seemed afflicted with the singular doubling effect. Th firmament of stars around them contained all pairs. But no alien ship blocked out any part of the sky.
“The Eternals aren’t here,” York announced, his nerves easing. “They must have been destroyed then—no, wait! I see their ship now. Just a speck far away, where they were blown in a different direction.” Vera bent close to the view-plate suddenly. “And look. Another ship is approaching theirs! A queer ship—”
“Hsst!” York warned. A totally alien ship Plight be friend or enemy. “Tune in mentally, if you make contact with the Three Eternals.
Opening their minds full range, they waited to hear any telepathic radiations from the distant scene. At last they heard a voice, in the universal language of telepathy. Yet they recognized it for an alien, non-human voice, by its mental overtones.
“What ship is this?” challenged the voice, as though it were a patrol ship on the high seas. “Answer immediately!”
