Invaders from the Infinite

by Jr. John W. Campbell

  Chapter XVII

  POWER OF MIND

  It was night. The stars visible through the laboratory windows winkedviolently in the disturbed air of the Heaviside layer, for the molecularray screen was still up.

  The laboratory was dimly lighted now, all save the front of the room.There, a mass of compact boxes were piled one on another, andinterconnected in various and indeterminate ways. And one table lay in abrilliant path of illumination. Behind it stood Arcot. He was talking tothe dim white group of faces beyond the table, the scientists of Earthassembled.

  "I have explained our power. It is the power of all the universe--CosmicPower--which is necessarily vaster than all others combined.

  "I cannot explain the control in the time I have at my disposal but themathematics of it, worked out in two months of constant effort, you canfollow from the printed work which will appear soon.

  "The second thing, which some of you have seen before, has already beenpartly explained. It is, in brief, artificially created matter. The twoimportant things to remember about it are that it _is_, that it _doesexist_, and that it exists _only where it is determined to exist by thecontrol there, and nowhere else_.

  "These are all coordinated under the new mental relay control. Some ofyou will doubt this last, but think of it under this light. Will,thought, concentration--they are efforts, they require energy. Then theycan exert energy! That is the key to the whole thing.

  "But now for the demonstration."

  Arcot looked toward Morey, who stood off to one side. There was a heavythud as Morey pushed a small button. The relay had closed. Arcot's mindwas now connected with the controls.

  A globe of cloudiness appeared. It increased in density, and was asolid, opalescent sphere.

  "There is a sphere, a foot in diameter, ten feet from me," droned Arcot.The sphere was there. "It is moving to the left." The sphere moved tothe left at Arcot's thought. "It is rising." The sphere rose. "It ischanging to a disc two feet across." The sphere seemed to flow, and wasa disc two feet across as Arcot's toneless voice of concentrationcontinued.

  "It is changing into a hand, like a human hand." The disc changed into ahuman hand, the fingers slightly bent, the soft, white fingers of awoman with the pink of the flesh and the wrinkles at the knucklesvisible. The wrist seemed to fade gradually into nothingness, the end ofthe hand was as indeterminate as are things in a dream, but the hand wasdefinite.

  "The hand is reaching for the bar of lux metal on the floor." The soft,little hand moved, and reached down and grasped the half ton bar of luxmetal, wrapped dainty fingers about it and lifted it smoothly andeffortlessly to the table, and laid it there.

  A mistiness suddenly solidified to another hand. The second hand joinedthe first, and fell to work on the bar, and pulled. The bar stretchedfinally under an enormous load. One hand let go, and the thud of thehighly elastic lux metal bar's return to its original shape echoedthrough the soundless room. These men of the twenty-second century knewwhat relux and lux metals were, and knew their enormous strength. Yet itwas putty under these hands. The hands that looked like a woman's!

  The bar was again placed on the table, and the hands disappeared. Therewas a thud, and the relay had opened.

  "I can't demonstrate the power I have. It is impossible. Thepower is so enormous that nothing short of a sun could serve as ademonstration-hall. It is utterly beyond comprehension under anyconditions. I have demonstrated artificial matter, and control by mentalaction.

  "I'm now going to show you some other things we have learned. Remember,I can control perfectly the properties of artificial matter, bydetermining the structure it shall have.

  "Watch."

  Morey closed the relay. Arcot again set to work. A heavy ingot of ironwas raised by a clamp that fastened itself upon it, coming from nowhere.The iron moved, and settled over the table. As it approached, amistiness that formed became a crucible. The crucible showed the gray ofpure iron, but it was artificial matter. The iron settled in thecrucible, and a strange process of flowing began. The crucible became aball, and colors flowed across its surface, till finally it was glowingrichly silvery. The ball opened, and a great lump of silvery stuff waswithin it. It settled to the floor, and the ball disappeared, but thesilvery metal did not.

  "Platinum," said Morey softly. A gasp came from the audience. "Onlyplatinum could exist there, and the matter had to rearrange itself asplatinum." He could rearrange it in any form he chose, either absorbingor supplying energy of existence and energy of formation.

  The mistiness again appeared in the air, and became a globe, a globe ofbrown. But it changed, and disappeared. Morey recognized the signal. "Hewill now make the artificial matter into all the elements, and manynonexistent elements, unstable, atomic figures." There followed a longseries of changes.

  The material shifted again, and again. Finally the last of the naturalelements was left behind, all 104 elements known to man were shown, andmany others.

  "We will skip now. This is element of atomic weight 7000."

  It was a lump of soft, oozy blackness. One could tell from the way thatArcot's mind handled it that it was soft. It seemed cold, terribly cold.Morey explained:

  "It is very soft, for its atom is so large that it is soft in themolecular state. It is tremendously photoelectric, losing electronsvery readily, and since its atom has so enormous a volume, its electronsare very far from the nucleus in the outer rings, and they absorb raysof very great length; even radio and some shorter audio waves seem toaffect it. That accounts for its blackness, and the softness as Arcothas truly depicted it. Also, since it absorbs heat waves and changesthem to electrical charges, it tends to become cold, as the frost Arcothas shown indicates. Remember, that that is infinitely hard as you seeit, for it is artificial matter, but Arcot has seen natural matterforced into this exceedingly explosive atomic figuration.

  "It is so heavily charged in the nucleus that its X-ray spectrum is welltoward the gamma! The inner electrons can scarcely vibrate."

  Again the substance changed--and was gone.

  "Too far--atom of weight 20,000 becomes invisible and nonexistent asspace closes in about it--perhaps the origin of our space. Atoms of thisweight, if breaking up, would form two or more atoms that would exist inour space, then these would be unstable, and break down further intonormal atoms. We don't know.

  "And one more substance," continued Morey as he opened the relay oncemore. Arcot sat down and rested his head in his hands. He was notaccustomed to this strain, and though his mind was one of the mostpowerful on Earth, it was very hard for him.

  "We have a substance of commercial and practical use now. Cosmium. Arcotwill show one method of making it."

  Arcot resumed his work, seated now. A formation reached out, and graspedthe lump of platinum still on the floor. Other bars of iron were broughtover from the stack of material laid ready, and piled on a broad sheetthat had formed in the air, tons of it, tens of tons. Finally hestopped. There was enough. The sheet wrapped itself into a sphere, andcontracted, slowly, steadily. It was rampant with energy, energy flowedfrom it, and the air about was glowing with ionization. There was afeeling of awful power that seeped into the minds of the watchers, andheld them spellbound before the glowing, opalescent sphere. The tons ofmatter were compressed now to a tiny ball! Suddenly the energy flaredout violently, a terrific burst of energy, ionizing the air in theentire room, and shooting it with tiny, burning sparks. Then it wasover. The ball split, and became two planes. Between them was a smallball of a glistening solid. The planes moved slowly together, and theball flattened, and flowed. It was a sheet.

  A clamp of artificial matter took it, and held the paper-thin sheet,many feet square, in the air. It seemed it must bend under its ownenormous weight of tons, but thin as it was it did not.

  "Cosmium," said Morey softly.

  Arcot crumpled it, and pressed it once more between artificial mattertools. It was a plate, thick as heavy cardboard, and two feet on a side.He set it in a holder of ar
tificial matter, a sort of frame, and causedthe controls to lock.

  Taking off the headpiece he had worn, he explained, "As Morey said,Cosmium. Briefly, density, 5007.89. Tensile strength, about two hundredthousand times that of good steel!" The audience gasped. That seemslittle to men who do not realize what it meant. An inch of this stuffwould be harder to penetrate than three miles of steel!

  "Our new ship," continued Arcot, "will carry six-inch armor. Six incheswould be the equivalent of eighteen miles of solid steel, with theenormous improvement that it will be concentrated, and so will have fargreater resistance than any amount of steel. Its tensile strength wouldbe the equivalent of an eighteen-mile wall of steel.

  "But its most important properties are that it reflects everything weknow of. Cosmics, light, and even moleculars! It is made of cosmic rayphotons, as lux is made of light photons, but the inexpressibly tighterbond makes the strength enormous. It cannot be handled by any means saveby artificial matter tools.

  "And now I am going to give a demonstration of the theatricalpossibilities of this new agent. Hardly scientific--but amusing."

  But it wasn't exactly amusing.

  Arcot again donned the headpiece. "I think," he continued, "that amanifestation of the super-natural will be most interesting. Rememberthat all you see is real, and all effects are produced by artificialmatter generated by the cosmic energy, as I have explained, and arecontrolled by my mind."

  Arcot had chosen to give this demonstration with definite reason.Apparently a bit of scientific playfulness, yet he knew that nothing isso impressive, nor so lastingly remembered as a theatrical demonstrationof science. The greatest scientist likes to play with his science.

  But Arcot's experiment now--it was on a level of its own!

  From behind the table, apparently crawling up the leg came a thing! Itwas a hand. A horrible, disjointed hand. It was withered and incarminedwith blood, for it was severed from its wrist, and as it hunched itselfalong, moving by a ghastly twitching of fingers and thumb, it left atrail of red behind it. The papers to be distributed rustled as itpassed, scurrying suddenly across the table, down the leg, and racingtoward the light switch! By some process of writhing jerks it reachedit, and suddenly the room was plunged into half-light as the lightswinked out. Light filtering over the transom of the door from the hallalone illuminated the hall, but the hand glowed! It glowed, and scurriedaway with an awful rustling, scuttling into some unseen hole in thewall. The quiet of the hall was the quiet of tenseness.

  From the wall, coming through it, came a mistiness that solidified as itflowed across. It was far to the right, a bent stooped figure, a figurehalf glimpsed, but fully known, for it carried in its bony, glowing handa great, nicked scythe. Its rattling tread echoed hollowly on the floor.Stooping walk, shuffling gait, the great metal scythe scraping on thefloor, half seen as the gray, luminous cloak blew open in some unfeltbreeze of its ephemeral world, revealing bone; dry, gray bone. Only thescythe seemed to know Life, and it was red with that Life. Slow running,sticky lifestuff.

  Death paused, and raised his awful head. The hood fell back from thecavernous eyesockets, and they flamed with a greenish radiance that madeevery strained face in the room assume the same deathly pallor.

  "The Scythe, the Scythe of Death," grated the rusty Voice. "The Scytheis slow, too slow. I bring new things," it cackled in its cracked voice,"new things of my tools. See!" The clutching bones dropped the rattlingScythe, and the handle broke as it fell, and rotted before their eyes."Heh, heh," the Thing cackled as it watched. "Heh--what Death touches,rots as he leaves it." The grinning, blackened skull grinned wider, inan awful, leering cavity, rotting, twisted teeth showed. But from underhis flapping robe, the skeletal hands drew something--ray pistols!

  "These--these are swifter!" The Thing turned, and with a single leeringglance behind, flowed once more through the wall.

  A gasp, a stifled, groaning gasp ran through the hall, a half sob.

  But far, far away they could hear something clanking, dragging its slowway along. Spellbound they turned to the farthest corner--and lookeddown the long, long road that twined off in distance. A lone, luminousfigure plodded slowly along it, his half human shamble bringing himrapidly nearer.

  Larger and larger he loomed, clearer and clearer became the figure, andhis burden. Broken, twisted steel, or metal of some sort, twisted andblackened.

  "It's over--it's over--and my toys are here. I win, I always win. For Iam the spawn of Mars, of War, and of Hate, the sister of War, and mytoys are the things they leave behind." It gesticulated, waving thetwisted stuff and now through the haze, they could see them--buildings.The framework of buildings and twisted liners, broken weapons.

  It loomed nearer, the cavernous, glowing eyes under low, shaggy brows,became clear, the awful brutal hate, the lust of Death, the rottingflesh of Disease--all seemed stamped on the Horror that approached.

  "Ah!" It had seen them! "Ahh!" It dropped the buildings, the brokenthings, and shuffled into a run, toward them! Its face changed, the lipsdrew back from broken, stained teeth, the curling, cruel lips, and therotting flesh of the face wrinkled into a grin of lust and hatred. Theshaggy mop of its hair seemed to writhe and twist, the long, thinfingers grasped spasmodically as it neared. The torn, broken fingernailswere visible--nearer--nearer--nearer--

  "Oh, God--stop it!" A voice shrieked out of the dark as someone leapedsuddenly to his feet.

  Simultaneously with the cry the Thing puffed into nothingness of energyfrom which it had sprung, and a great ball of clear, white glowing lightcame into being in the center of the room, flooding it with a light thatdazzled the eyes, but calmed broken nerves.