by Don Wilcox
By the time the third form—that of Rat-face—dashed for the entrance, I knew enough to leap back.
Swish-swish-swish-swipp! The airlocks stopped.
“Esther!” came Charlie’s tense whisper.
“I’m too late!” I cried.
“I know it. I was watching you.” Charlie was coming toward me. The faint streaks of sunlight sprinkled against the front porthole to reveal his silhouette. He had something in his hand—some sort of club. He stopped to listen at the airlocks, heard nothing, and put the club aside.
“Charlie!” I cried, “Don’t leave the controls! We might crash—”
Involuntarily I glanced through the porthole on my right and for the space of two or three seconds I saw the other ship pull away from us, then weave back toward us as if to crash. It paralleled us with deadly accuracy. It slashed into our side! I screamed.
“What’s the matter, Esther?” Charlie called. I couldn’t answer. I was all choked up with terror. I thought we had crashed and yet we hadn’t crashed! Not audibly, at least!
“You’re right, Esther,” said Charlie calmly. “I’d better pull out of this narrow corkscrew and cut the speed down.”
In a moment he came back to me. The motor hums were dying away now, one by one, in a plaintive song of retarding speed. Gradually the monster of Jupiter deflated, for we were ambling back toward Earth at a leisurely gait. Suddenly our lights came on.
“Now,” said Charlie, picking up his club, which consisted of a steel pipe, “I’ll make sure we didn’t leave any dirt or dust around our doorways.”
He started the airlocks to rotating, kept a firm grip on his weapon until he made sure that none of the three stowaways were still lurking within the airlocks.
He tossed the club aside with a chuckle. “No dirt, no dust. We made a clean sweep. And you did splendidly, little sister, splendidly!”
“What did I do?” I asked blankly. “Pretended you were going to cross to the other ship.”
“That was no pretense,” I answered. “I was going to cross, and I would have if that Frobanna hadn’t been so quick with his chivalry—”
“No. You wouldn’t have crossed. You couldn’t have. There wasn’t any other ship there!”
“Wait a minute! I’m all dizzy. Say that again—slowly.”
Charley repeated his statement, and I grew dizzier. He decided he had our ship retarding too rapidly; but I assured him it wasn’t the retarding, it was the talk that was going too fast. I made him start over.
“Well, as soon as Frobanna’s cockeyed theory—that our speed might take us straight through Jupiter unscathed—leaked out, I saw that physics wasn’t his long suit. He was brilliant, but I knew there was a chance to outwit him if I could stumble onto the right trick.
“When the lights went out, I thought I knew why. And when the flashlight and the matches didn’t seem to work, I was sure I knew why.”
“Why?”
“Because we were running away from their light—our own, too. The light that our ship gave forth was traveling outward in all directions at the rate of one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles a second. Wherever a ray of light started, we pulled away from it, because we were traveling at a much higher rate of speed.”
I groaned slightly and reminded Charlie that I had once flunked a course in Einstein.
“But if you can tell me how all this caused me to see a space ship that wasn’t there, go ahead.”
“Okay,” said Charlie, looking pleased. “Right away I got the idea. You see, we were traveling in spirals, just as we are now. All the time we seemed to be traveling in the dark, I knew that the lamps at the portholes must be throwing out rays of light into space. Consequently, if we could do a cycle of our spiral swiftly enough—and at a wide enough interval from a given point—we could intercept our own light. Do you see?”
“I think so.”
“Do you want me to draw a picture of it?” He sketched an elaborate corkscrew that wound down to finer and finer loops. “There’s our path—only you’ve got to multiply those loops by millions. After we got tuned in, so to speak, we kept catching our light from the previous round. Sometimes I would pull in too closely and the light would have already flown past us. Then the men would shout that the ship had disappeared. But I soon learned to stick to a safe path.
“I kept accelerating, and the faster we went, naturally, the closer we could come to the path of the previous round and still catch our own light. Moreover, I kept drawing the diameter of my loops down smaller until they were as short as the ship would stand.
“By that time the two boats seemed to be almost side by side, and the psychology was right for a transfer.”
“Gee!” I gasped. “Do you mean to tell me that when Frobanna and the others stepped out of our airlocks they saw something solid to step on—that wasn’t really there?”
“Certainly. They saw our left airlocks rotating very invitingly—the same as you saw them from the porthole—almost exactly where those airlocks had been only an umptillionth of a second before.”
“Then all three of them just naturally walked off the plank—”
“Definitely. As definitely as they had walked off a plank when they first tried to plant their feet on anarchy—”
“Take me home, Charlie,” I groaned. “My head’s spiralling faster than the speed of light!”
[*] The sun, as used here, is a unit of distance employed in space navigation, derived from the approximate distance of the Sun from Earth. For mathematical convenience the sun has come to mean roughly 100,000,000 miles.
SECRET LEAGUE OF SIX
First published in Fantastic Adventures, August 1941
Who were the five members of the telepathy league, and why had Frank Hammond, who could really read minds, been invited as the sixth?
With a half day train ride ahead of me I had the good luck to run into Frank Hammond, just returned from Egypt. The war had stopped his work at Cairo temporarily. He was now on the last leg of his return to a mid-western museum, of which he is assistant curator.
“Sit down,” said Hammond. “Have a cigar. How’s the story-writing business?”
“Picking up,” I said, dropping into the seat beside him.
“Picking up, huh?” The squint of his eye showed that he knew what I meant. I had picked up a couple of stories from him a year or so before. My talons were always sharp for a lift.
The rails clicked along under us and we wasted some precious minutes talking about the difficulties of travel in wartime and other commonplace things. But I soon steered him around to Cairo and held him there with some blunt questions.
“Did you locate the treasure the museum sent you to find?”
“Located it—yes. That’s all I managed on this trip. It’ll take another year or so of work to excavate it intact. We’ll have to wait till after the war.”
“What’ll it be worth?”
“No way of estimating. Probably millions. There’s a wealth of gold filigree that I predict will surpass anything ever unearthed.”
“Buried under one of the caliph’s tombs, as you thought?”
“Yes.”
The clack of rails bridged over a short silence.
“Too bad you had to come away and leave it there,” I commented. “You sure it’s safe?”
“No one but myself knows where it’s located—and I don’t talk in my sleep,” Hammond laughed. “It’s perfectly safe. The entrance to my work tunnel is so well disguised and guarded that wars and weather can come and go. It’ll be there waiting.”
Hammond gave a deep satisfied puff at his cigar, then turned to me with a gentle chuckle. “If you’re after a treasure-digging story, you’ll have to wait a few years. Until I get a chance to go back, I’m not even going to think about the thing. That way I’ll be sure it stays put.”
For the next half mile of telegraph poles I turned his words over. The extra boom of his voice on that word “think” reminded me of something about Fran
k Hammond from his college days—a certain quirk of his; or, as he would say, a hobby.
“How’s the mental telepathy?” I asked abruptly. “Ever try any more practical experiments?”
Hammond removed the cigar from his mouth and gave four or five thoughtful blinks. The corners of his eyes gathered into a curious far-away expression that was part twinkle and part mystery. “Now you are on the trail of a story,” he said. “Got time to hear it?”
“Always!”
Well, I needn’t remind you, (Hammond began) that I’ve toyed with theories of thought transfer and extra sensory perception and so on ever since college days. Just as a matter of diversion, you understand. The scientific principles of mental telepathy haven’t been brought out into the open yet, so you don’t expect most people to go around using it the way they do a flashlight or a radio.
But on the way down the Nile from Alexandria to Cairo I passed some time talking about it with a few passengers who chanced to be on deck. They appeared skeptical of everything I had to say. Apparently, the only person I convinced was myself, though I’ll admit there was one listener who followed closely—a one-armed nondescript fellow who might have been part Arab. Name was Lamar.
Anyway, that conversation refreshed my own interest in the subject, and may have had something to do with what followed.
Owing to the secret nature of my mission in Cairo, I could only work a few hours of each night. Daytimes I played tourist in the style of the typical leisurely American traveler. I acted bored. In fact, I was bored, waiting for the daytimes to pass so I could get back to my night work.
One day an ad in a Cairo newspaper caught my eye. It fairly jumped at me. It was only a three-line announcement in the ad section, but it contained the words “mental telepathy.”
It read: “Exclusive mental telepathy league. Membership limited to six. Only accomplished need apply. Address K-5.”
I answered the ad at once, stating that I was interested to know the nature of the club, entrance requirements, membership fees and activities. I needed a daytime hobby.
In three days I received a mimeographed reply. In jerky English that might have been written by an Arabian translator, the letter explained that “Member Number One” desired to secure a few new members to complete the quorum for “The Secret League of Six,” devoted exclusively to mental communion on a plane vastly beyond that of ordinary man’s comprehension
The Secret League of Six, the writer stated, had been established centuries ago by a Muslim prince, “Al-Samir-Reval.” It was the wish of this prince that his highly developed arts of mental transfer be perpetuated by the gifted, jew of each generation who were capable of entering this esoteric realm. Would I care to apply for membership? If so, I should come to the address indicated, on any Saturday at break of dawn.
My identity, the letter guaranteed, would be kept a secret. I might come in any disguise I desired, though the form which Prince Al-Samir-Reval had preferred was simply a white robe or sheet worn over the ordinary clothes.
“However, if you are so fortunate as to become a member,” the explanation went on, “your identity will be merged in the general sharing of all thoughts on that highest plane of mental and spiritual communication to which our sacred Prince Al-Samir-Reval devoted his life.”
The only signature was the mimeographed name: “Meifiber Number One.”
That letter gave me a tremendous wallop. I reread it six times. I counted the days until Saturday.
Then I caught a breath of caution that cooled me off. There could be some hidden implications. It might be a money-making trap set for bored English and American tourists. But if that was the case, I said to myself, someone would already know what the catch was. I sent my own ad to the paper.
My ad read: “American desires acquaintances with any past or present members or applicants to Exclusive Mental Telepathy League. Address: H-15.”
The ad ran for a week and in due time was rewarded with a single answer. After an exchange of letters I found myself looking into the eyes of a very lovely English girl.
As her letter had promised, I found her on a Friday afternoon sitting in the tiffin room of a hotel in the Place Ezbekieh.
“This is a pleasure, Miss Winthrop!” I exclaimed with a trifle more enthusiasm than good manners called for. At once I felt the chill of her English reserve. My efforts to be jovial or casual failed to strike a responsive chord. Her shy eyes constantly shifted to other tables. Perhaps she was afraid of being overheard.
“I was formerly a candidate for membership at the Secret League of Six,” she said, and her words had evidently been rehearsed. “What do you wish to know?”
“Well, is the thing on the level?”
“On a very high level. I found myself unable to qualify.”
“No catches, then?”
The girl moved the spoon in her tea cup with tight nervous fingers.
“It was a year ago that a call for members appeared in the paper. I attended a meeting. There were several others present, all of us in disguise. But none of us could pass the tests which member number one . . .”
I ceased to hear her words. I had become completely absorbed in watching the spoon that stirred her tea. She was drawing letters!
Yes, she was reciting her words automatically, and at the same time making deliberate motions with the tea spoon that she meant for me to watch.
R. . . E . . . F . . . U . . . L.
She rose abruptly. “I must go now. I wish you luck in your attempt to join the Secret League. Perhaps you have more finesse at mind-reading than I.”
She drove away in a taxi.
I took a second look at the various persons who occupied the tiffin room. All of them were strangers to me. None was paying the slightest attention to me, so far as I could tell. But I was sure that someone in that room had forced Miss Winthrop to say exactly what she said.
And she had been clever enough to give me a message, in spite of it.
“R-E-F-U-L.”
It didn’t take me long to make something of that. I knew I had missed some letters at the start, so I began filling in at the front of the word, trying each letter of the alphabet. Before I got back to my hotel I had it.
“CAREFUL.”
That was her command to me!
From that moment on you couldn’t have kept me away from the Secret League meeting place with a gun—not as long as I had a gun of my own with six ready bullets in it.
An hour before Saturday’s dawn the sleepy taxi driver carted me across to Cairo’s east side. We passed through the walls of the old Arab quarter and threaded our way along the narrow streets. The early morning light sifted among the tall old stone houses with their black wrought-iron lattices.
The taxi stopped, the driver took a second look at the address and nodded to me. This was the place.
To my surprise it was not an Arab but an English butler who met me at the door. He gave me an impersonal “Good morning, sir. This way in, sir.”
The corridor curved sharply, and I glanced back at the windowed entrance with the comforting thought that I was in good time. The sun had not yet lifted over the tombs of the caliphs on the hills to our east.
“This way, sir,” the butler repeated. “The members of the league will assemble in a few minutes, sir.”
My second surprise came when the butler led me into an elevator. An elevator was by no means standard equipment in these old Arab houses, tall though they were. But we were not to ascend. As soon as the cage door closed, the walls began to flow upward past us. It was like a drop into a mine. It was a reasonable guess that we descended fifty or sixty feet into the earth.
We stopped, and the elevator door opened.
“You’ll find another elevator farther on, sir,” said the butler, and he disappeared back of his cage door.
What slick, gleaming, mysteriously curved corridors! And what grotesque murals! The glow from those pictures that lined the walls and ceiling was the only source of li
ght. Old Prince Al-Samir-Reval would have been proud if he could have seen how some modern artist had done him in invisible light.
Under the momentary distraction I lost my way. There were too many curves, too many paths branching off.
“Going down, sir.”
I turned sharply at the sound of the voice. It was another butler, dressed like the first one. He was similiar in build, perhaps a little shorter and a trifle more snobbish in manners. He gestured me into his elevator, a cage identical to the first.
Again the walls were flying upward past me for what seemed another fifty or sixty foot descent.
Once again I was confronted by mazes of curved corridors, baffling to my sense of direction.
And for a third time a very English butler, this time a sharp-nosed one that reminded one of an impertinent blue-jay, called me into an elevator for a third descent!
At last, dizzy from rapid elevator rides and tortuous dimly-lighted tunnels, I stood before an ordinary office door marked “SECRET LEAGUE OF SIX.”
A mimeographed instruction sheet posted beside the door reminded me that I would enter at my own risk, and that I was privileged to remain in disguise. I drew the white sheet close around my face, opened the door, and went in.
My boy, this was the big moment! I was here at last, and maybe you think I wasn’t glad.
And suspicious?
Well, what would you think if you’d just been dunked a hundred and fifty feet down under a city that was only half that much above sea level? Not by one continuous elevator, but three! And all those mazes—
It made just one kind of sense—it was a high-powered job of confusing you out of your wits.
Which was pretty near my state when the other league members began to dribble in.
By this time I had followed the signs and had closed myself in one of the six iron-lung affairs that stood up around the table.
