The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  Now the impossible had happened. In defiance of all the established predictions, the Earth had become involved in the machinations of some other universe far stronger than that of its own galaxy. Not only had the Earth been captured within a solid spherical shell. It was also being pulled out of its orbit.

  How could this be?

  Scientists by the hundreds flew to the icebound villages of Little America to catch what evidence they could, for the pull upon the Earth’s shell made contact near the South Pole. It was the actual physical tug of a tremendous beam, dark and shadowy. No one knew just when it had appeared, but the geologists had recorded seismographic records of the jolting of the Earth. This had occurred, they believed, at the moment that the shell first went into motion.

  Now the dark shadowy beam was drawing the shell slowly through space. And that was what brought a physical upheaval to the Earth’s continents and seas, unmatched by any phenomena since the Earth’s cooling.

  The shadowy arm through space must have been very flexible. Either that, the astronomers reasoned, or its action must have been guided by some wonderful intelligence. For the change in the Earth’s direction of motion was not abrupt. The drawing away from the orbit was so gradual that it seemed to be performed by a skilled hand.

  “To illustrate what is happening,” one of the astronomers explained over the radios, “if you tie a ball to a string and swing it in a circle, you have the Earth in its normal orbit. The string is the gravitational attraction which holds the ball a certain distance from the Sun. In this relationship the Earth has been coasting round and round for countless ages.

  “The new force which has attacked it may be illustrated by the pull of a second string. If you imagine the ball to be whirling in a horizontal plane, the new force is applied vertically, as from above. And so the ball continues to swing round and round in its annual orbit, except that it is being drawn upward. The effect is spiral. But how far this will go, no one can tell. None of the other planets is undergoing such a process. Mercury and Venus are believed to have swung out a little. The other planets, too, may be making readjustments.

  “But the great question is: Are we to be drawn out of the solar system? At present, it would seem that we are. This may mean that we are the chance victim of some astronomical force as unpredictable as meteors but billions of times as large. If this be true, we are in the hands of the gods. Sooner or later we are likely to crash into a star, and the Earth and all its creatures will perish.”

  So spoke the astronomer, and the civilized world trembled.

  June Allison spent the most frantic hours of her life trying to make contact with Lester.

  The wireless just would not reach through to Mercury nor to any of the other planets. Every few minutes June received a call from the Rocky Mountain Observatory, within a few hours after the lateral movement of the Earth had begun. The telephone calls and wires were coming in from all over the country.

  Where was Lester Allison? How could they get in touch with him? What did he know about these strange happenings?

  Some of June’s friends, who had come in to ask the same questions, stayed to help her take care of the onslaught of messages.

  Outside the lodge of the Allison ranch high winds were blowing. Black clouds boiled down from the mountaintops. The valleys roared with echoes of hard dashing rains. Streaks of purplish lightning stabbed down at the whipping treetops.

  “I’ve got to be off in the space flivver,” June Allison declared. “Don’t know what’s going to happen, but my one job is to find Lester.”

  The radios were crackling with static now. Emergency warnings were coming in every few minutes. The high winds were ripping the whole North American continent. Across Canada blizzards were raging.

  June’s friends agreed to stay and care for incoming calls. They didn’t know what else to do. June thought she had never seen such terrorized faces as those of the friends she was leaving.

  Alone, she went out to the clearing and checked the motors of the space flivver. As the rain streamed off her goggles, she gazed up into the black sky. It was a fearful prospect, trying to take off in weather like that. The space flivver was sturdy enough, once out of the Earth’s thickest atmosphere, but accidents of the past had proved that high winds could queer a take-off.

  Suddenly June was aware that an airplane was thundering along unsteadily, flying low beneath the clouds.

  The plane swerved down and circled the clearing, as if in search of a place to land.

  A blaze of lightning gave June a vivid glimpse of a face at the window of the plane—the face of a young girl. She was calling to June, beckoning, and her expression was one of pitiful beseeching.

  The plane circled a second time and came down in a rush of wind.

  “The fool!” said June. “She can’t possibly land—”

  The plane touched on one wheel, ricocheting along crazily, and ripped off a wing. There was a sullen grinding and crunching of metal, then the blast of an explosion and a spurt of flame and smoke.

  Instantly June was running toward the wreck.

  Through the smoke a figure came stumbling toward her. And again she saw the white, frightened face of the young girl.

  “Is there no one with you?” June caught the girl by the hand and led her back through the rain.

  “There’s no one but me,” the girl said. She glanced back at the burning plane. “Whew! That was a close one. But I had to get here. I have tried for hours to reach you—”

  The girl collapsed in June’s arms. June looked toward the lodge, then to the space ship. She felt that she could not take the time to help this girl. The storm was getting worse. Allison was lost, and the world was calling for him.

  June slapped the girl’s cheeks. “Come out of it. Who are you? What did you come here for?”

  “My boy friend Kirk,” the girl said weakly. “He went with Lester Allison. He’s been gone for days.”

  The girl closed her eyes again. June got the girl up and carried her to the space flivver. This youngster had nerve, all right. Together they pushed their way through the air locks.

  Two minutes later they shot up through the clouds like a giddy skyrocket, outward bound.

  CHAPTER XVII

  Combing the Glass Walls

  The space flivver sought the highest elevation possible within the transparent shell. To June Allison and her sandy-haired companion, Diana Scott, it was a strange contrast to be soaring through this peaceful, cloudless realm.

  Colored sunlight filtered through the crystal shell. The Earth was far above them now. At least, it seemed above, for June had inverted the flivver and set the instruments for automatic flying at a safe elevation, as measured from the inner surface of the shell.

  In effect, they were skimming along a mile or so above the transparent floor, through which they could catch glimpses of the Sun, the Moon, and the neighboring planets. By looking through the upper windows, they saw the Earth cloaked in cottony clouds that appeared harmless here from the Sun’s side.

  Diana Scott understood why they were following the surface of the shell. It was a foregone conclusion that Lester Allison and Kirk Riley were not on the Earth.

  “The natural thing for them to do,” June reasoned, “was to get word through to the other planets. They probably went to Mercury, and now they have been left behind. Do you know where the astronomers say we are? We have already passed the range of Mars and Jupiter and Saturn.”

  Diana Scott’s eyes were wide. She said nothing. She was a nervy little thing. If Lester and Kirk had been left behind, there was nothing she could do about it, other than put her faith in June Allison.

  “The one thing we can do,” said June, “is to comb these surfaces. If Lester is still in the neighborhood of the Earth, he must be up here some place, observing everything he can.”

  Hours and hours of search ensued.

  Every few minutes the radio brought in new and startling announcements.

  Never i
n the annals of science had there been so many predictions of man’s fate in so short a time.

  “If the world is coming to an end,” one astronomer observed, “it is certainly a far more spectacular end than any of us dared imagine. It seems obvious now that we are actually being lifted out of the solar system. Whether we shall be taken to a new galaxy is already a matter of conjecture.”

  June thought there was a certain eagerness in that astronomer’s voice. These terrifying wonders were probably a fool’s paradise for him and his ilk.

  That the world was coming to an end was the prevalent note. Reports from far off societies in Africa told of great mass meetings that were being held. Huge sacrifices were being made to appease the wrath of the gods.

  From great cathedrals in Europe religious services were being broadcast. Long prayers were being delivered, and there was nothing artificial about their fervor. In the presence of terror, millions of people were renewing old devotions. Any doctrine which offered hope to man in times like these was seized upon. It might never be known how much the world believed that man’s own sins had brought about this cataclysm.

  But from the reports of observers on the streets, it would seem that many forgotten emotions within the common man had swiftly risen to the surface.

  “Do not lose hope,” one announcer kept saying. “Stay at home. Prepare yourselves for more severe storms. This world is not lost yet. Unless the Earth strikes the outer shell, mankind has a chance to survive.”

  Gradually the storm warnings became more pronounced. The scientists declared that the pull had thrown the Earth toward one side of the enclosure. Consequently, as the Earth continued to spin on its axis, each hemisphere would be subjected to terrific storms every twenty-four hours. However, the Earth might not crash against the wall of the shell, owing to the fact that the air acted as a cushion.

  The air, as well as the Earth itself, was being hurled to one side of the shell. This increased the violence of the storms. The friction of the Earth’s turning was said to be rising with each passing hour. Soon it was known that buildings could not withstand the terrific blasts. Already some cities had been leveled.

  The last hopeful bulletin was that appeal from the Rocky Mountain Observatory. It declared that the Earth had already moved farther out from the Sun than the orbit of Neptune, and that the rate of moving was rapidly accelerating. But there was no reason to give up hope of life. After all, half of every twenty-four hour period at least was safe. And the Rocky Mountain scientists thought it worth while to keep on gathering data.

  “During the night hours,” the announcer said, “we urge all amateur photographers and astronomers to make the most of these strange phenomena. We urge you to take pictures of the sky. Only by a series of moving pictures which catch the entire panorama will we be able to piece together the whole story, especially the concomitant actions of other heavenly bodies.”

  “Amusing, isn’t it?” Diana Scott gave a mirthless laugh. “He thinks we will live to figure it out.”

  A little later the radios began to come through with a single ominous theme song.

  “Go underground . . . take to the caves . . . no buildings on the surface are safe . . . every city on Earth is doomed to destruction . . . go underground . . . go underground.”

  And June Allison and Diana Scott, a few thousand miles above the agonized Earth, kept flying.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  Enter the Battering Ram

  June suddenly cut her speed. She had seen something unusual—a black blotch against the amber surfaces that were streaking along beneath the flivver.

  Diana looked back. Her eyes were watery from watching, and she was holding a damp cloth against her aching head.

  “Whatever it was,” said June, “we are going to investigate.”

  She turned the space ship through a wide circle. There it was again—just a tiny dot on the crystal floor a mile beneath her. Retarding to atmosphere speed, she spiraled downward. Diana brushed her eyes and gazed.

  “Careful, June, it’s some sort of an explosion. There’s smoke flying.”

  “I will be careful,” said June, and she brought the ship down to easy landing a full hundred yards from the fan of smoke. The flivver wheeled up cautiously.

  Until now June had had no guess as to the thickness of the crystal shell. But here it was before her eyes, a long line which represented a cross-section.

  It was a tunnel coming through vertically from the outside. Perhaps there was a mile or more of it. It was not quite complete.

  The thing which interested June most, however, was the mechanism which was cutting the tunnel. It was a long, red. cigar-shaped space ship, and she recognized it at once as a Battering Ram.

  “It isn’t smoke, after all,” Diana Scott observed. “It’s just a lot of waves through that funny glass stuff. Vibrations, I guess you would say. What’s happening? It looks as if that thing is a big borer, coming right up through.”

  June was so happy she could hardly answer. “It’s good news; that’s what it is.”

  Twenty minutes later the Battering Ram nosed up through the surface and came down with a bouncing motion upon the smooth amber floor. The great boring mechanism on its nose idled to a stop.

  June wheeled the space flivver around until it was within fifteen yards of the mammoth Battering Ram. Then at last the radio brought her something besides the bad news from the Earth.

  “June Allison! As I live and breathe! Greetings from Mercury!”

  June could almost feel Lester’s arms around her, the way he was chuckling into the microphone.

  “We’ve been chasing the Earth ever since the day before yesterday. Twice we thought it was a losing race. But after we finally caught up, it didn’t take us long to get a solid hitch. Did you see how we cut our way through? Say, what are you doing up here anyway?”

  “Looking for you,” said June. “We have been combing the skies. We just got away in time. The storms are furious. They say that cities are being blown down.”

  June and Diana could hear the two men mumbling to each other.

  “We are not surprised, exactly,” said Allison. “We could see that the Earth was off center inside this shell. The shell is turning, too, only not very fast. When we first hitched on, this side was nearest the Sun, and the Earth was already leaning that way. We had better get together on our planes—”

  “Aren’t you going to let me talk?” Diana Scott suddenly exploded. “Is that dark man with all the whiskers by any chance Kirk Riley?”

  “Diana, darling! Is that you?” came Kirk’s voice.

  “Gee, honey, I was so afraid—but you are really alive! Put your face up to the window so I can see you.”

  A somewhat bewhiskered Kirk could be seen grinning from the side window of the Battering Ram, waving and making comic motions. Then there was more rapid-fire chatter from the radio, with such heart-warming sentiments that Lester said he would have to put a stop to it before someone burned out the wires.

  It was not advisable to transfer from one ship to the other, partly because of the rarity of the atmosphere, partly because the gravitational forces at this point were almost perfectly balanced. The ships barely clung to the surface. It was reasonable to guess that they would have descended to the Earth if that planet had been more nearly centered within the shell.

  “I have just one wisp of a plan at present,” said Allison. “If we are doomed, we are doomed. But I have a hunch that before the Earth checks in I may learn something from Professor Haycox. Have you kept in touch with him, June?”

  “He kept calling. He wanted to see you again. But he didn’t give me any message.”

  “Are you game for a flight to his laboratory? It has probably been blown to smithereens. But he had a queer biological specimen laid out on the basement floor when I was there last. I want to see it again. We may have to dig through snow to find him, but if you are willing to take a chance—”

  “We are on our way,” said June.r />
  CHAPTER XIX

  The Professor Has the Blues

  In the blinding blizzards, nothing but mountain landmarks could have shown Allison the way. But at last he and his party fought their way through the makeshift storm barriers which had been erected out of the ruins of some of the Institute buildings. Like burrowing animals they padded along through the icy tunnels, and at last they were within the basement rooms of what had once been the Institute.

  Professor Haycox and his staff, such of them as remained, were a silent and dreary lot. They were stupefied by the swift destruction that had come upon them. Most of their projects had been ruined completely. A few experiments which had been located in the lower rooms were still being tended by halfhearted laboratory workers. No one could see the use of going ahead with such things. Every radio report indicated that the Earth was being accelerated in its movement away from the solar system. The end might come any time.

  Allison and his wife and Kirk and Diana could readily appreciate the tragic spirit that had settled upon this place. They joined the others listening at the radios. They all but lost track of time as the new astronomical developments came to them.

  Now and then the story of tragedy was brought home by some pitiful account of rescue workers. For the most part, the cities had been obliterated. The sturdiest of buildings had not been constructed to cope with such windstorms as these. People were said to be swarming into the tornado-proof tunnels that had once been subways or underground freight lines or water mains.

  For a time Lester Allison did not have the courage to approach the despondent professor. Whatever mysteries there might be waiting to be answered by evidences stored here, Professor Haycox seemed likely to let go the way of all his ruined experiments.

  But the monster brain was still intact, and Allison and his companions spent many hours gazing at it.