And crouching on a sort of table, surrounded now by a temperature and pressure that was suitable to his physical makeup, was the master. Anne didn’t recognize him as such at first—he was to her just an unspeakably hideous creature the like of which she had never seen before. His writhing tendrils, as he directed his automatons in the intricate task of repairing his human guise, made the girl shudder with revulsion.
BUT IT WAS not until several minutes later, when the repair was complete, that the full shock of realization came to her. She saw Iszt, like a great, black, horn-ridged leech of some kind, climb into the figure of Curt Shelbey. Then she knew that he was the pivot, the central personality, of—all the mysterious, abhorrent miracles around her. Her lips curled, and she wept, a little child scared out of its wits.
The manlike marionette was adjusting its clothing now. Now it came through the crystal door, which was double, forming an airlock. The figure trailed a draft of harsh, alien pungence and cold. But its lips now were smiling in a perfect imitation of boyish reassurance.
“Now, Anne!” the pseudo Curt Shelbey pleaded. “Don’t get so fussed! Please! This situation is a difficult one for me, too!”
The automaton that had clutched the girl now released its hold, opened the car door, and floated away into a shadowy corner of the cavernous room. Curt Shelbey approached.
Anne screamed. She struck at him. She barked her knuckles on the cold man-figure. Yet the disarming smile persisted.
“Don’t Anne! That can do no one any good. Please take it easy and I’ll try to explain it.”
She knew his speech must be acting that masked a hidden soul, just as the human form hid physical horror.
“I’m not of Earth, Anne,” said Curt Shelbey, who stood at the window of the car. “You know that now. I’m from the neighborhood of one of the stars—it doesn’t matter which one—”
And so the story of Iszt’s people was told.
“But what are you trying to do?” Anne asked weakly. “Conquer Earth?”
“Not exactly,” returned the disguised demigod. “You see, two stars are going to collide—head on. Considering how widely scattered the stars are, and how much room there is between them, that’s a thing that can’t happen more than once in a billion eons. Sirius is one of the fated pair, and a dark star, invisible from Earth, is the other. The collision isn’t to happen for a thousand years. That seems a long while, Anne, but isn’t, if you hope to work far enough ahead to stop the smashup. And I suppose you think that a star collision taking place at the distance of Sirius doesn’t matter, as far as Earth is concerned. But you’re wrong there—terribly wrong!
“The heat within stars is something you can’t imagine. Millions of degrees at their centers. Matter there is of a nature which your scientists have no way to determine. Much of it remains matter only because of the colossal pressure caused by thousands of miles of material bearing down on it from above. In a way, it is like the water in a super-heated boiler. That water remains liquid only because of the pressure. Relieve that pressure, and it flashes instantly into steam. Relieve the pressure on the insides of a star and—
“Much of those insides—much of the matter—is converted at once into energy. And energy, when sufficiently concentrated, is a lot more ‘solid’ than any substance you can mention!
“THAT IS what must happen if stars collide. Their substance is spattered outward, and the internal pressure is relieved. The matter of their cores—heated beyond conception—is exposed directly to space, its intolerable radiations unscreened by a deep layer of cooler material. What happens then? In an expanding sphere the energy released shoots outward in all directions, at the velocity of light! It is untold times more fearful in its force than a hurtling wall of steel. The atomic blast behind our car, after the farmer shot at me, is a tiny sample of what happens. And though, of course, the fury of the results of the collision diminishes with the square of the distance, things in the path of that expanding hell of energy are swept into chaos. Planets are broken up, and other stars are spattered like raindrops against a windowpane, multiplying the fury of the cataclysm with their own store of internal atomic power!
“Untold billions of years would be required for the galaxy to regain its balance, for the fragments of the catastrophe to unite once more, forming normal suns and worlds. Perhaps this sort of thing has happened before in our galaxy. But the probability of a direct stellar smash is remote indeed, considering how thinly the stars are distributed through space. The fact that the body which is now aimed at Sirius gives no light, diminishes by nothing its potentialities. It is dark because it is surrounded only by a vast, whirling mask of dust. Inside, it is as hot as Sirius itself.
“And now for Earth’s part: we—my people and other peoples similarly advanced—have made arrangements to deflect the invisible star of doom enough to prevent the collision. The dark star’s course will have to be changed by only a tiny fraction of a degree, and the velocity of its flight reduced by only a very little, to produce the desired effect. For, when there is a thousand years of time, and when the speeds involved are measured in miles per second, it does not take much change to produce a wide deflection. Nevertheless, the task of altering the path of a mass of so many myriad trillions of tons of matter is an enormous one by any standard. But Earth is just the right sort of thing from which to apply an important part of the required power. Unfortunately, though, the crust will be burned from the planet to a considerable depth. I am sorry, Anne, but it is the end of your people.”
Anne Winters glared at Curt Shelbey’s solicitously solemn face.
“You fake!” she hissed. “You’re trying to use us as pawns to build those machines which you’ve talked about. And the—reward for our toil—we’ll just be wiped out! Why don’t you devils build your own machines at least!”
SOMEHOW ANNE was managing to be coldly antagonistic when she was sure, herself, that she should be hysterical with fright and horror instead.
“I’m sorry,” said Curt Shelbey. “There are other worlds, Anne. Thousands of inhabited worlds with living, intelligent beings on them. Many of those peoples are less advanced scientifically than the people of Earth. But all are capable of feeling pain, sorrow, and love in their own way. They’d be wiped out if it weren’t for the martyrdom of your kind. And humanity would be wiped out, too—in a thousand years. As for my race building its own machines—”
The voice of Curt Shelbey broke off there, and his face suddenly lost its animation, as though Iszt who ruled this robot was, for the moment, too busy with regrets and unrestive thoughts of his own to continue to play a human part.
Anne had heard his perfectly human words. She had seen his perfectly human benignance and manner. His logic, too, was perfectly human—up to a point. But it was all a sham—the mask of a personality that no man or woman could ever know or understand! Or so she thought. And then, somehow, through the veil of fury and revulsion, Anne Winters glimpsed a bit of a broader view. Other worlds, other peoples destroyed, but for Iszt’s—Curt Shelbey’s—secret and colossal activities. Unquestionably there was something big and genuine and courageous here. And she saw Iszt, Earthman, in a less malefic role. Yet, considering her position, Anne Winters could not be expected to accept, without cold bitterness, the fate of her kind.
“Why have you told me all this?” she demanded resentfully.
Curt Shelbey’s shoulders shrugged. “I do not quite know,” he said. “You saved my life when you drove the car for me.”
And in these words Anne thought she glimpsed the evidences of a vast loneliness—the loneliness of an entity far, far from home, an entity needing at least some slight touch of friendship.
She noticed that Curt Shelbey’s face was raw and blistered, even as her own must be, from the radiations of the atom blast. Here was something almost funny. A robot with a blistered face! Just a bit of simple trickery, effected during the time of the thing’s repair! She could remember now the spherical automatons working aroun
d its head, though she hadn’t been able to see just what they’d been doing. Make-up—that was all. And in this imitation man’s daily existence, she knew now that there certainly were many other curious deceptions.
“What happens next?” she asked. “I know the story. Are you going to kill me, or are you going to keep me captive? You know, if I go free, I’m not likely to keep quiet. And that might be very inconvenient!”
Shelbey chuckled a little then, and looked very youthful.
“You’ll see, Anne,” he responded. “But first I want to show you something.”
HE HELPED HER out of the car, and she followed him without protest. He led her to a crystal casket, which had been shielded from view before by a massive buttress. Within the casket, immersed in a milky fluid, was the body of a young man.
“The real Curtiss Shelbey," said the thing beside Anne Winters. “He is the pattern of my Earthly form. I captured him on a lonely road one night long ago, as he was driving along. Now he is neither alive nor dead. His flesh knows no decay.”
Anne could see only the youth’s face, vague and peaceful through the cloudy wisps of the fluid around it. His suit—all his clothes—were strangely outdated. But she could recognize the exact similarity between this calm, lifeless face and the visage of the wondrous animated robot which she had once known to be the man she loved.
“Loved?” She said the word out loud, in an odd tone of puzzled reminiscence. And then at first with what seemed bright humor: “The girl who fell for a clothing store dummy had nothing on me!”
Her poise broke at last, under long continued strain. She began to chuckle. The chuckle became laughter, and the laughter changed to a humorless, choking cackle of hysteria. Her fingers clutched at the front of her now bedraggled dress, expressing a vague incoherence of thought.
Just then it happened. An invisible beam shot out from an intricate apparatus on the wall. It struck Anne Winters. And she felt weak and relaxed and happy, as a Lethean sleep rushed into her brain.
Dimly she heard Curt Shelbey—the Curt Shelbey she had known for so long—speaking to her.
“You will forget everything, Anne,” he said. “It is best.”
She could not have known anything of the strange gentleness with which Iszt caused his man-guise to lift her limp form into the car.
Nor did she see the return of his robot spaceships. Settling slowly from out of the sky, their positions marked by only the faintest of phosphorescent glows, they were admitted to the subterranean cavern.
When Anne awakened, the car was being driven along the road toward the Winters laboratory. She found herself relaxed in the seat beside the wheel. Since the atom blast she remembered nothing. It was as though that blast had stunned her.
The car radio was blaring hideous history of wreckage and destruction, brought about by the merciless hammering of huge meteors.
Fearfully, as if seeking protection, Anne groped out, putting her hand on Curt Shelbey’s arm.
DAWN, made red by the light-absorptive effect of suspended meteoric dust. The great isolated Winters laboratory had remained untouched by the avalanche of hurtling, extraterrestrial matter.
Curt Shelbey had apparently slept well. But actually, Iszt, who required little rest, had thought with a fierce, unsettled tension all through the four hours of supposed slumber.
Now Curt Shelbey arose. His room, located in the living quarters of the lab, was quite like that of any young man, even to its evidences of disorder. Curt went through the motions of doctoring and gently shaving his blistered face, meanwhile whistling gayly.
Then breakfast, with Anne and Dr. Winters. Curt ate his food and drank his coffee quite as naturally as any one, though these acts served no purpose other than that of completing, to the last detail, a minutely marvelous masquerade.
The substances thus taken into the mechanical body were lodged in an artificial stomach. Iszt could use no Earthly food; at long intervals he must eat quantities of super-chilled, highly complex compounds prepared in his own workshop.
The benignant old scientist, Dr. Winters, tall and slender, with iron-gray hair and beard, looked unusually haggard and weary this morning.
“The United States has yielded to your proposition, Curt,” he said. “I received a phone call a little while ago. Didn’t want to awaken you, on account of the evidently harrowing experiences you two were up against last night—the meteor shower, that strange explosion and all. But I find you cool, Curt. I might have known you’d always be cool—and self-assured.”
Curt nodded seriously. “They realize,” he said. “The Chicago catastrophe convinced them. This destruction can’t be allowed to go on, while there is any hope of its being stopped. The other nations will come through presently. By the way, there’s going to be a meteor shower in East Prussia at eight-fifteen to-night—their time. My spatial balance formulae predict it perfectly.”
Dr. Winters had gotten over most of his outward revelations of awe at this strange youth. But now he frowned in a way that expressed perpetual and hopeless puzzlement. Those spatial balance formulae, capable though he was, constituted an enigma that he could never understand.
After breakfast, in one of the workrooms of the laboratory, Curt Shelbey tried again—or seemed to try—with every show of earnestness to explain his formulae to Anne and the Doctor, using intricate charts and symbols for the purpose. But the task was hopeless, as of course it was really meant to be. The formulae had little real meaning, and were designed merely to confuse.
“You might as well attempt to teach Einstein to a worm,” Dr. Winters admitted at last, with a sorry shake of his head and a forced laugh.
AND ISZT, Earthman, detected in this admission of defeat, the attitude his practical purpose required. He could not tell humanity the truth; he could not tell them about the black juggernaut hurtling straight toward Sirius. For it would not be till a thousand years that the galactic catastrophe was scheduled to mature, and a thousand years is many lifetimes to mankind. They would be awed and fearful if they knew. But they would not be prompted to act on the gigantic scale that was necessary. Certainly, if their informer went further with truth and told them that they were doomed, no matter what they did, they would merely denounce him.
And so Iszt was forced to use his robots to create fear by means of artificially induced tragedy. It was cruel, brutal action—but it got results.
That day the British Government, confronted by the London catastrophe, duplicating and coincident with that of Chicago, fell in with the Curtiss Shelbey scheme. Germany, on the following day—having submitted to the smashing effect of a swarm of meteors pulled from the path of Minor Planets by Iszt’s re-sallying spaceships—bowed its arrogant, capable head. Italy and Japan, victims of fearful quakes and volcanic eruptions, induced by two of Iszt’s mole robots long afield, were next to submit. Russia and France remained aloof for a longer time. Tremendous atom blasts in the vicinities of Moscow and Paris, respectively, won them over at last. Singly and in groups, the less important nations fell in line.
And so a kind of world-dictatorship was born, with Curt Shelbey, the young miracle man, the masquerader, the inscrutable Iszt from across the desert of the stars, in the role of master.
Iszt had no difficulty in directing his mechanical agents of destruction while playing his human part. The remote control apparatus was inside his man-guise, and could be used without a hint of suspicion.
Presently his gigantic project was under way, rolling slowly at first, then with a vast, roaring, swelling momentum. Iszt's plans of construction had long ago been drawn up.
Inspired by fear, sustained by regularly occurring calamities, people everywhere placed their loyalty and trust with the scientist who seemed like a young god to them. They believed in his predictions of those calamities now, and so the danger areas could be evacuated. There were a few dissenters, of course—individuals who doubted Curt Shelbey—but they were carried along by the limitless power of mass faith. It was blind fait
h, that accepted without question. And so mankind began its mighty march toward swift extinction.
Great factories were made over to produce strange, new parts, which, when assembled, turned out to be huge, half sentient robots, each of which could do the work of a thousand men. A horde of these colossi were built, and as soon as each individual was put together, it climbed ponderously onto a flatcar, to be carried by train to some destination, near or far, where one of Curt Shelbey’s “readjustment stations” was being built.
These huge creations were scattered everywhere, one for approximately every ten thousand square miles of land area. They might loom like great, burnished, simple-appearing bosses, half a mile across, and two thousand feet high, from the midst of land devoted once to the raising of cotton or corn or grain, but now scarred with railroad sidings, and trampled by millions of feet, both living and mechanical. Or they might glitter in the blazing sun of the Sahara desert, to which the parts that composed them had been laboriously borne by an army of metal giants. Or they might bulge, gleaming and bizarre, from the dank heart of a Brazilian jungle, or from the frozen desolation of the Antarctic. But all were joined by the vital connections of huge cables, plumbing seas, spanning continents—forming a world-wide network.
ISZT USED the primitive trains and the primitive ships of Earth for transportation purposes because of the need for haste, and because he was without outside resources—alone and isolated from his great, inert people.
Curt Shelbey, the man-shape, was everywhere, flying from place to place openly now, in a marvelous vehicle which every one thought was the product of his own wizardry. No Alexander or Napoleon had ever possessed such vitality, such indominable energy as he. And no hero had ever received such tremendous—or such unmerited—adulation!
Godson of Almarlu: A Collection of Science Fiction Novellas Page 23
