by Earl
Professor Hal! thought silently for a while. When he spoke, the tone of his psychic-voice was grave.
“Kard, we are possessors of great power, though we are not fully aware of it yet. Think once. We are globes of electrons—quintillions upon quintillions of them, poured into us by the most powerful electrical current ever produced by man. We represent a force capable of smashing atoms apart, if we weren’t definitely bound into a patterned arrangement exactly similar to that of the human mind. This arrangement only allows the forces to be vented in the usual tiny amounts necessary for our thinking processes, except—”
He paused, thinking his way along.
“Except when we wish to see, move, telepathize and other things. For instance, when we will ourselves to see, a certain number of our outer surface-electrons disintegrate themselves into photons of light-radiation which mirror the outside world. When we move, electrons again change to photons—on the appropriate side of our globes—and push us along by the well-known principle of radiation-pressure. We are so ineffably light, in physical mass, that the back-kick of this radiation is enough to waft us along. When we telepathize, again surface-electrons disintegrate and convey the message along beams of radiation.”
“And in the case of my brother’s death,” interposed Kard, “my surface-electrons simply jumped over to him—electrocuting him?”
“It is all mind control, most of it purely reflexive,” summarized the professor. “Your brother was killed only because you were angry with him. You willed to kill him. The rest was purely reflexive. The surface-electrons, so remarkably responsive to our mental commands, did their part without hesitation. Of course, you didn’t know that your very thought would be the act itself.”
HIS voice became graver. “We will have to be careful in the future, Kard. We are as potentially dangerous as a million intelligent lightning flashes. Or, to put it another way, we are intelligent power!”
“Power!” repeated Kard. In life, he had always dreamed of having fame and money, the latter because money was power. But here he had no need of money. He had power without that. And as for fame, recognition, that too, perhaps, was within his grasp!
“What are you thinking, Kard?” asked the professor sharply.
Kard countered with another question. “How long do you think we’ll—live?”
“Probably a long time. We aren’t bound by mortal rules of life and death, that’s a sure thing.”
“Maybe we’re—immortal!”
Hall gasped, mentally. “I hadn’t thought of that. Lord, if that were so—well, we’d have to make the best of it.”
“And now, professor, we come to the most important thing of all—just what are we going to do in this new life!”
Kard asked the question with mental reservations. Certain decisions were already forming in his mind, secretly. But he waited curiously to hear his companion’s answer.
“Yes, that’s a poser,” confessed Hall. “I’ve been subconsciously wrestling with that problem from the first. As I’ve said before, we can’t break entirely the ties of our former life. We will have to find some way to make contact with the living world. Naturally, it will be for the purpose of benefiting it. Perhaps we can carry on our work as scientists. We might establish ourselves as mental advisers to some scientist.”
Kard smiled within himself and thought, “Just as I expected. The man has power within his grasp, and he talks of helping some stoop-shouldered wretch fiddling with his gadgets!” Then he transmitted, “Sort of ghost-scientists, eh?”
“However, we must not rush into it,” continued Hall thoughtfully. “We must take time to become thoroughly adjusted to our new state, and also think out our plans carefully. I suggest we see our funeral first, day after tomorrow. I think we’ll get some sort of esoteric thrill out of seeing our mortal flesh laid away!”
They agreed on that, and for the rest of that afternoon wandered aimlessly over the city and surrounding countryside.
It became a little amusing to them to see automobiles crawling over roads, transporting humans with such elaborate expenditure of apparatus and energy. All they had to do was wish or think themselves some place! And those bodies they had been without now for over a day—how clumsy they had been, how trying and full of pains, appetites, and biological handicaps. How free their minds were now! How splendid it felt to just drift along in the breeze like a bird, unknowing of the cares and woes of mortal existence!
“It’s a blessing, after all, to be like this!” caroled Dr. Kard as his globe-shape pirouetted in the air with avian grace.
“I think I’ll be satisfied!” agreed Professor Hall. “The care of the body was such a nuisance. No more overcoats to wear in winter, when it’s cold, nor galoshes when it rains. No more indigestion, headaches, or rheumatism!”
When dusk came, they shot themselves to the stratosphere with its Arcadian peacefulness, and went to sleep. The clouds below were their blankets, the star-strewn sky above their roof.
Up at dawn the next day, they decided to make some experiments with their new range of locomotion. They soared higher and higher, from the stratosphere to the ionosphere, till the stars began to appear in the sky with the sun. Earth below began to assume its true spherical shape. Professor Hall called a halt at what he estimated was a height of a hundred miles.
“Here we are, higher than man has ever gone before!”
Both of them were thinking the same thing. Kard phrased it as a question. “What could stop us from going on—through space to other planets?”
“Nothing,” Hall replied readily. “Our method of propulsion would work in space as well as in air. It’s Newton’s Third Law of reactive forces, like rockets, and would work anywhere in the universe. In fact, out in space, with no air resistance to bother us, we could undoubtedly achieve tremendous speeds. But—”
Somehow, they were not prepared for it yet. They drew back from the edge of the void, strangely appalled. They were still humans, with humans’ feelings and misgivings, and could not just suddenly think of leaving the world of their birth to soar into interplanetary depths.
For the rest of the day they gamboled in the stratosphere, strangely exhilarated by their new freedom. They found that they could achieve miraculous speeds and acceleration by the mere effort of wishing it, even in air. They began to feel at one with the universe. They went to sleep that night bathed in clear, silvery moonlight, two sentient electron-globes with an unknown future before them.
CHAPTER THREE
BATTLE OF THE SPHERES
THE day of the funeral dawned hot and humid—but it meant nothing to the two disembodied entities hovering over the chapel, though they could see the perspiration rolling from people’s faces.
They slipped in, poised over the biers, viewing for the last time what had once been their bodies. The embalmer had skilfully painted the charred skin white and remolded the crushed faces to a semblance of their former appearance.
The two invisible scientists gazed down with a curiously impersonal feeling. In the past three days, they had become so used to their bodiless existence that it would probably have felt strange to once again be clothed in flesh.
Then they went out again. Professor Hall resolutely avoided going into the chapel for the last services, knowing that his widow would break down, and he didn’t want to see that. Later, they followed the winding procession of funeral cars to the cemetery, saw their coffins laid away, and a last prayer said for their souls.
“That’s that!” sighed Professor Hall, as he followed the limousine carrying his sobbing wife and children back toward their home.
“That breaks the last physical tie to our former lives,” said Kard. “Now we can plan new careers for ourselves. Let’s get away from these depressing things.” He seemed impatient to be away.
But Hall insisted on seeing his former home once more. After he had watched the sad scene of his family entering the home which was no longer his, he said, “All right, Kard. We’ll go no
w.”
They started up, but Hall, hearing the telepathic cry of a newsboy, stopped suddenly. He went to the corner stand and read the headlines and subtitles.
“President of Universal Alloys, Inc., and Two Other Men Found Dead in Their Homes, Apparently by Electrocution! Investigation begun by electric utility company—”
Dumbfounded, the professor wafted up to his waiting companion.
“Kard, what have you done?” he accused angrily. “Why did you kill those men?”
“I hated them,” retorted Kard calmly. “Old Prexy never did give me the proper promotions or remunerations. The other two were old enemies of mine. Purely personal matters, Hall. No business of yours!”
“You sneaked away last night while I was asleep to do this cowardly thing. You’re a deliberate—murderer!”
“Am I?” mocked Kard. “Why don’t you turn me over to the police, so they can electrocute me?”
“But you can’t go on like this!” raged the professor. “You’re toying with a new-found power and it’ll lead you to ruin. What devilish plans have you in your mind, Kard?”
Kard veiled his true thoughts.
“Oh, don’t take it so seriously, Hall.
I’m still human. I hated them and evened a score of long standing.”
Professor Hall, with his first towering anger and horror over, realized it would do no good to lecture or appeal to Kard’s conscience. Kard’s character was of the type that considered nothing a crime for which there was no punishment. And he could not be punished by Earthly authorities.
“Listen, Kard,” said the professor slowly and forcefully, “I’ll give you a chance to think it over and realize your mistake. There must be no repetition of such things. They can’t punish you down on Earth, no. But one more slip and you’ll answer to me!”
Within himself Kard sneered. But he did not have courage enough yet to openly defy the professor, who was the only one he had to fear now, in the whole world. And to what extent he had to fear his companion, Kard did not know.
The rest of that day they did not speak much to each other. They hovered in the stratosphere aimlessly, pondering individually the strange new life before them.
“Tomorrow,” said Professor Hall, “we will make plans.”
“Yes-tomorrow!” returned Kard, with cryptic meaning.
From their perch could be seen, far below, the toy-like structures of the Niagara power plant, with its millions of watts of electrical output.
“Power!” Kard thought to himself. “It is there!”
THE next morning, after sleeping in the stratosphere, Professor Hall woke to find Kard gone!
At first hardly caring, Hall then thought of the killings Kard had done with so little compunction, and became alarmed. Without anyone to check him, what might not the ruthless scientist do?
Hall began thinking deeply. What would Kard do first? What were his plans? Of these Hall knew nothing. Kard had cleverly concealed the workings of his mind. Hall debated the best course and finally made up his mind.
He perched himself high in the stratosphere and waited.
Once a day he descended to the world of men, to look over newspapers. If Kard had made any diabolical plans, they would manifest themselves sooner or later in the world’s news. Thus he waited for five days.
While he waited, he thought. The results of his deep, scientific introspection amazed him. For the first time, he realized his mind could reason with a new clarity. All the scientific lore he had amassed in the past years, a good deal of it contradictory, came to the fore and neatly fitted itself together, like a jig-saw puzzle completed. He began to make new deductions and conclusions. More and more of the true pattern of the universe became revealed in his mind. Important scientific principles that mankind didn’t know of trembled at the verge of his thoughts. If he could make use of a laboratory and carry on experimental work, to confirm theories that were welling in his mind. . . .
But first he must take care of the matter of Dr. Kard. On the sixth descent to Earth, headlines struck him like a blow in the face:
“Mysterious Menace Strikes Washington! Twelve prominent business and government leaders dead! In each case, the victim was killed while among a group of friends. A lightning flash struck, seemingly from nowhere, causing instant electrocution, Eyewitnesses swear that a mysterious ‘silent’ voice announced, after each killing, that it would not be the last by the ‘Power King’. Officials fear it may be the act of some foreign power which has discovered a new weapon—”
“He’s gone berserk!” moaned Professor Hall to himself.
He went to Washington, where all the deaths had occurred and raced over that city in a frenzy, searching for Kard, calling him in a long-range telepathic voice. At last Kard answered, and Hall shot in his direction.
“Kard, you had “your chance and threw it away,” radiated the professor’s powerful telepathic voice. “I said you’d answer to me. Pm coming after you now!”
“I’ll meet you half way, Hall!” came back Kard’s psychic-voice defiantly. “I’m ready for you!”
A few minutes later they had come within sight of each other, high in the stratosphere. Hall immediately noticed that the globe of Dr. Kard was nearly twice as big in diameter as formerly. They halted ten feet apart.
“How I’ve missed you, professor!” greeted Kard mockingly.
“Come to the point!” snapped Hall. “What is your campaign of murder all about?”
“It’s obvious. Pm instituting a reign of terror in this country. A long series of deaths will finally convince them that they are dealing with a great power!”
“Just as I thought,” sighed the professor. “In your former life, you were always greedily reaching for all you could get. You would have ousted me as chief of research if you could have. But old Prexy prevented it, and for that he died. Now, because you feel the world never gave you your just deserts, you are going to try to tyrannize over it. Well, I’m here to stop you!”
“Indeed!” laughed Kard. “Have you noticed that I’m twice my former diameter?—that means eight times my former volume. I went to the Niagara power plant and for one full day absorbed most of its output of current—just let it run into me like water into a jar. I have eight times as many surface-electrons as you have, Hall, eight times as much power! You are the only thing on earth that could possibly disrupt my plans, so I’ll destroy you—now!”
TWO things happened almost simultaneously.
The biggest and brightest lightning flash ever seen in earth’s skies flamed from the globe of Dr. Kard. The globe of Professor Hall began instantaneously to rotate at a stupendous rate. Countless quintillions of electrons, at the blasting pressure of one billion volts, leaped jaggedly across the intervening space, a force that would have toppled a mountain.
The rapidly spinning globe of Professor Hall reeled back at the impact of the ravening bolt. It stunned him completely for a moment. He felt as though he had collided with a stone wall at the speed of light. Then he recovered.
“You see, Kard,” he said quietly, “a spinning group of electrons creates a powerful magnetic field, which can turn other electrons “aside. Your discharge, which would otherwise have blasted into my interior, simply took up a circular path around me. Now that discharged group of electrons is mine!”
Dumbfounded at his failure, Kard spat icily: “I’ll get you yet. Stop this one!”
Again the air was rent by the passage of super-lightning, twice as powerful as the first bolt. But again Professor Hall’s globe was spinning, like an ectoplasmic top, and again the titanic discharge simply distributed itself around his globe, harmlessly.
Now driven by a desperate fear and rage, Kard released bolt after bolt, each mightier than the last. Each time he did so, his globe became smaller, and Hall’s larger.
Down below on Earth, the people of the surrounding region heard the most frightful thunders the world had ever known, and grew afraid at this sudden storm that had arisen. Their ey
es were blinded by the brilliant flashes of light that stabbed down from the sky. Blast after blast of ground-shaking thunder deafened human ears, and flash after flash of supernal radiance bathed the countryside in a ghastly blue light. Seismographs half way around the world recorded the disturbance. What inconceivable forces were being unleashed up in the sky? No one knew.
Up above, the furious eruption of electron bolts from Dr. Kard’s globe finally ceased. Professor Hall’s globe, adding to itself, was now as large as Kard’s diminished one.
“You’ve failed, Kard!” the professor announced ominously.
Kard smothered his incoherent rage. “I see that. But anyway, I can go on with my plans. If I can’t destroy you, you can’t destroy me!”
“You forget one thing,” returned Hall in a deadly tone. “It is will that rules you and me—our own wills. It is the only thing that holds our globes together. And that is the only way to finish this battle that must be finished. You wish to rule mankind, I to benefit it. Whichever of us has the stronger will can blast the other’s will out of its electron-shell into the true death. Dr. Kard, I will you to die!”
A new force sprang between the two globes hovering in the air, a subtle force that warped and strained the ether around them as though it were pliant rubber. Down below, manmade instruments went awry, unable to record properly a phenomenon that sent mighty ripples through the ether.
A great fear jabbed into Dr. Kard. He seemed to feel himself shrinking and withering, though he resisted with all the power of his mentality. He felt as though his interior were being slowly disintegrated by some strange poison. An inexorable will-voice chanted a deadly refrain of: “Die! Die! Die!” It probed within his vitals and began to rip apart the pattern that was the soul and mind of Dr. Kard.
At last a wild cry burst from his innermost being, and with a terrific effort, Kard broke from the spell and fled. Up and up he went, higher in the stratosphere. Panic gripped him with icy fingers as he saw the globe of Professor Hall following relentlessly, like a self-appointed Nemesis.
