Slaves of Ijax

by John Russell Fearn

  “So that’s why space travel was discontinued!” Peter mused. “The radiations out there are too dangerous.”

  “I believe that is the reason,” Alza agreed. “Something happened out in space that caused a sudden and tremendous increase. Some suggested that a nearby neutron star or black hole might have been responsible.... Whatever the reason, tests have shown that, apart from cosmic rays, there are also gamma and other hard radiations, all fatal in one way or other to a human being, and so far no shield has been devised which can block all of them—and until they are blocked space can never be crossed in safety. That is why criminals are fired off in rockets. Presumably that is why they fired Anton Shaw into space. And I suppose...he must have died.” The girl finished, thinking.

  “I wonder?” Peter stared hard in front of him. “He was no ordinary man, Alza. Any idea how far these rockets go?”

  “Beyond Earth’s gravitational pull, I know that, otherwise they would form into satellites by settling into an orbit round the Earth.”

  “Then if they go beyond Earth’s gravitational field, the next logical step is the Moon.”

  Alza nodded her blonde head. “Upon which they must smash to bits.”

  “Mmmm...,” Peter said. “I repeat: Anton Shaw was no ordinary man. Judging from this record, he understands—or understood—the laws of elemental force inside out and backwards.... However, let’s move to another important issue. Ijax spoke last night—and he spoke four weeks ago—and four weeks before that. Right?”

  “Correct,” Alza assented. “Approximately every four weeks. It varies a little. He tells us each time when next we must come and hear him.”

  “Good! Hand me a calendar for this year, complete with the usual astronomical notes, will you?”

  Looking surprised she went to the wall and took down a chart-like device of fine metal. Peter took it, puzzled over its intricacies for a moment or two then nodded.

  “Here we are! On what dates, including last night, did Ijax speak for the last few months?”

  “Er—thirty-first July, last night; and the preceding dates were First July, Second June, and Third May.”

  “It may be coincidence,” Peter said slowly, “but on this calendar those dates are also full moon dates!”

  Alza stood and thought it out for a moment.

  “Why, yes!” she answered at last. “Now I come to think of it there always has been a full moon when I’ve gone to the Temple. Yes—always! With our perfect climate it is never obscured, of course. Do you suppose it—means something?”

  “I don’t know. Just a process of natural reasoning. I remembered seeing the full moon last night and that tied up with moondust in my mind. Then it occurred to me that every four weeks, or thereabouts, would surely coincide with full moon. And it does! To the very day! Incidentally, did Ijax say last night when he’d speak next?”

  “Yes. August Twenty-Ninth.”

  Peter glanced at the Calendar again and grinned. “Full moon once again! It’s becoming a bit too obvious to be chance, Alza!”

  Baffled silence dropped on the girl. She picked up the calendar and frowned over it. Peter got out of his chair and took a turn round the great room, hands deep in the pockets of his robe.

  “You see,” he said, as he prowled, “I keep thinking about that damned moondust. It said in the encyclopedia that it is photogenic to moonlight. Naturally it will be more so at full moon than at any other time...only, I don’t see how it could fit in with hypnotism. Maybe it doesn’t fit in the puzzle at all yet,” he said, stopping and thinking. “But something else might. In my day, Alza, we had a theory about the full moon, though it emerged mostly from legend. We believed that the full moon reacted oddly on certain types of people, causing them to lose control of themselves and behave in a way quite contrary to normal. Murders too were found to be more numerous at full moon than at any other time. Some cases of lycanthropy—the supposed changing of man into wolf—were also attributed to it. Hence the term ‘lunatic.’ Most scientists dismissed that as superstitious fantasy, but there were also a number of other puzzling instances they couldn’t explain—such as the fact that women with a longer twenty-nine-day period coinciding with new moon were more fertile....”

  “I’ve read about such things,” Alza said. “You are suggesting there is something about the full moon which affects certain human minds?”

  “Well, I don’t think all the cases I’ve heard of have been pure coincidence, and in view of what happens here at full moon—yet apparently at no other time!—I begin to think there is something about the full moon which we haven’t yet begun to understand.”

  Alza was silent for a long time. When Peter at length faced her again he found her grey eyes upon him inquiringly.

  “Be frank, Peter. What do you really think is the meaning of Ijax?”

  “I think—though I may be crazy—that Anton Shaw got to the Moon somehow, manoeuvring his coffin-rocket in such a way that he landed without harm, somehow dodging those deadly space radiations. Don’t ask me how: I’m no scientist. I further think that furious at being exiled, for his purpose—world domination—was a mighty one and not any ordinary crime, he decided to seek revenge. I think he is still seeking it. Ijax is his idea, and by some means not at all clear yet he uses hypnosis across space, probably utilizing something at full moon, a something that has always been there since it has affected certain people from the earliest times. Swanson said that everybody was heading towards doom, and that smells like revenge to me. Do you think that makes any sense?”

  “I’ll say it does!” the girl exclaimed. “You’ve a wonderfully clear grasp of the mystery. By logic alone you’ve worked out a possible reason for the Task!”

  “The onlooker sees most of the game,” Peter smiled, “as we said at home. And we know, Alza. that the Task is dangerous! Swanson knew that and died before he could give any facts.”

  The girl gave a little shiver.

  “It’s Mark Lanning I’m afraid of,” she muttered. “He’s so cold—so bitterly opposed to anybody discovering what is really behind the Task. I’m afraid for you, Peter, if you probe too far.”

  “Would you prefer me to sit down and let things slide?” he asked, gripping her arms and forcing her to look at him. “You don’t want that, Alza! You’d have no respect for me if I did.”

  “No—I suppose I wouldn’t.”

  “In that case—Hell!” Peter broke off, his eyes widening.

  “What? What’s wrong, Peter?”

  “About Lanning,” he went on hurriedly. “That operation he had—which Anton Shaw performed! You told me that Lanning changed from then on, and at present he is the prime mover in this game of Ijax-hypnosis. I wonder if Shaw did do something to him?”

  Alza smiled hopelessly. “How do you propose to find out?”

  “There’s a problem, but I’m no good at improvising. Anyway I’m putting it on my ‘Things to be Done’ list, and if Lanning is listening in at the moment, he’ll know what’s coming to him! Well, so far so good. The next thing I want to find out is what the channels from the Grand Tower are for and what is being put into them.”

  “We can go tonight and look for ourselves.”

  “Good enough!” Peter agreed. “Right, that’s all for now. You had better go and catch up on whatever secretarial work it is you do and leave me to brood.... See you later.”

  The girl nodded, picked up the file, and departed....

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE METAMORPHOSIS OF LANNING

  Peter had hardly been settled ten minutes on the softly sprung divan near the centre window before the door opened and shut silently as Mark Lanning came in. Peter turned his head and watched that spare, cadaverous figure cross the room until he had come close.

  “I think, Excellence, it is time we brought things to a head!”

  There was cold malignancy in the pale eyes.

  “You mean you’ve been listening in again as an additional accomplishment to murdering Swa
nson?” Peter suggested, rising into a sitting position.

  “Swanson was in no position to talk as he did! He had to be silenced. His crazed fancies could have set the Task at naught.”

  “And probably have saved humanity a hell of a lot of grief!” Peter snapped. “All right, you want things brought to a head. You shoot first.”

  “That is precisely my intention,” Lanning said, and his right hand emerged from his wide left sleeve holding a queerly designed weapon. “I have decided to risk the wrath of the populace and put an end to your spying! From the very first I was never in agreement with your being the figurehead, but I had to bow to the will of the majority.”

  Peter looked at the weapon and clenched his big fists. “I’ve found out too much to suit you, eh?” he asked, getting to his feet casually. “Is that it?”

  “Exactly,” Lanning assented, tight-lipped—and Peter saw a lean finger tighten on the queer switch of the weapon. He did not wait a second longer.

  He dived, springing forward with all the power of his muscles. His right hand clamped down on the scientist’s wrist just as the gun ejected a stream of searing energy that ripped a smoking gash in the metal roof—then it had been flung far across the expanse. Lanning twisted lithely, squirmed, then gasped as a smashing uppercut took him under the jaw. Staggering backwards he collided with the table and fell half across it.

  Peter glanced at the gun, decided he did not understand it anyway, and lunged forward again with his fists. His right took the scientist on the chin just as he straightened up. His left followed with a blow to the middle. Lanning groaned and doubled up in anguish—then he had to straighten again at a bone-splintering impact under his jaw. It knocked him clean across the table to the floor on the other side. He collapsed weakly, knocked out.

  Breathing hard, Peter came round the table and stood looking down at him. He thought for a moment, then turned and pressed the button for Alza. She came in a moment or two later, dragging to a standstill at the sight of the sprawling figure on the floor.

  “Peter!” Her voice was horrified. “What happened?”

  “He pulled a gun on me and I had to put him to sleep for a bit....” Peter shook a tingling fist. “But I’ve got an idea. While he’s like this it might be a good time to see if Anton Shaw did do anything to his brain when he operated. Have you any instruments which can discover if the brain if normal or not?”

  “There’s the X-ray and its complementary Z-ray,” the girl replied. “The two together will give a perfect internal colour picture of his body—”

  “That’s what we want. Fetch it quickly.”

  Instead of doing that Alza sent a robot to the surgery in other parts of the great building and then came across and helped to haul the inert scientist on to the table.

  “Funny,” Peter muttered, sighing. “I still don’t really dislike him, not even though he tried to kill me.”

  “Once he was a fine man,” the girl said, her voice quiet. “I told you that, didn’t I?”

  They both turned as the robot reappeared wheeling before it an electrical device of massive dimensions upon a four-legged stand. It pushed the instrument to the girl’s side, then went with the trailing power cable to a socket in the wall and plugged it in. The pilot lamps on the apparatus glowed into life.

  With obvious accustomed familiarity the girl set up a screen on the table behind the scientist’s head, Peter saw a switch move and though there was only the faintest suggestion of a beam a perfect coloured image of the skull’s interior came into view on the screen.

  Amongst the coiled convolutions he recognized the frontal lobe, the cerebrum, the medulla oblongata, and—he gave a start. Something oval, showing a coppery red and perhaps three inches in length by one and half in width lay imbedded in the cerebrum, so perfectly placed that half of it lay in one hemisphere of the brain and half in the other!

  “What do you make of it?” Peter asked quickly, as he saw the girl looking at the screen intently. “Shouldn’t be there, should it?”

  “Of course not! And right in the centre of the cerebral hemispheres, too—the main seat of reason. It doesn’t take much brilliance to realize that Anton Shaw must have put it there, Peter.”

  Peter nodded and thought swiftly. Then he asked a question,

  “Who’s the Chief Surgeon in this city?”

  “Stanley Parke—and very clever at the job, too.”

  “Good! Press the appropriate button on that panel, Alza, and let’s have him in here.”

  She hesitated, doubtfully. “Do you think we should? He might ask questions—”

  “Let him! I’m the figurehead, am I not? Especially now that Lanning’s out of the picture for the moment. Hurry up, will you? I don’t want Lanning to recover consciousness.”

  Alza moved to the panel and pressed a button. She returned to a pensive study of the X-Z-ray screen beside Peter; then after a while a thickset man with grey hair came in. His white smock identified his profession. His smile and craggy chin made him immediately likeable.

  “Good afternoon, Excellence,” he greeted. “You want me—? Why, what’s happened?” he asked in surprise, looking at the unconscious scientist.

  “Mr. Lanning collapsed,” Peter said glibly. “You are a surgeon, Dr. Parke. What do you make of that object imbedded in the brain there?”

  The surgeon bent close to the screen and frowned.

  “Extraordinary! I never saw anything quite like it. Imbedded like that across the two hemispheres it must have a definite reaction on Mr. Lanning’s brain....” He straightened up, musing “Of course, he did have an accident some years ago and was operated upon by the late Anton Shaw. I expect he put that plate there—if plate it is.”

  “I want it taken out,” Peter said quietly, but firmly.

  Stanley Parke turned to him in amazement. “But, Excellence, I can’t do that! Not without Mr. Lanning’s own consent.”

  “With that in his brain I doubt if Mr. Lanning is capable of knowing what he is saying or doing, anyway. I don’t want to sound high-handed, Doctor, but I order you to remove that plate. Now!”

  Parke shrugged. “Very well, Excellence, if you will take the responsibility. I’ll operate immediately.”

  He turned to the robot and apparently issued brief instructions. They went out of the room and returned presently pushing a wheeled stretcher. With gentle metal arms they put the unconscious scientist upon it and wheeled him from the room.

  “We’ll watch the operation—my secretary and I,” Peter said, catching the surgeon’s eye. “Come on, Alza.”

  They followed Parke down the corridor outside and at length into the great, brilliantly lighted space of the operating theatre. Lanning was laid on the operating table beneath the glare of shadowless cold-light arcs, then while Parke went through the preliminaries with his assistants the anaesthetist got to work on Lanning. Peter and the girl, both wearing surgical masks, sat well to one side to watch.

  Altogether the operation took twenty minutes, and it was packed with such high-pressured medical skill and uncanny instruments that Peter blinked once or twice in sheer amazement. Lanning’s head was shaved bald, the skull bone trepanned, and finally the brain itself was laid bare.

  Electrical magnetizers guided by Parke’s steady hands went into action and gradually removed the glittering oval plate from its strange resting place, laying naked the cerebrum nerve endings beneath. This done, the remainder of the operation was simply the same performance in reverse. The skull bone was moulded back into place, the fracture fused across, and then the scars miraculously healed under the influence of a blue beam. More than this, the blue beam caused hair follicles to re-sprout so that at the end of another half hour there was nothing to show that Mark Lanning had ever been touched.

  “Incredible!” Peter whispered; then glancing at Parke as he wiped his hands on a towel. “How long will it be before he recovers consciousness?”

  “Any moment,” answered the anaesthetist, consulting his i
nstruments.

  “This plate is a most extraordinary thing,” Parke said, tossing the towel down and picking the metallic oval up. “It looks like copper, yet it can’t be that because of metallic impurities. I never saw anything quite like it before, and it’s as light as air.”

  “If anybody can explain it, it will be Mr. Lanning himself when he recovers,” Alza remarked.

  The surgeon nodded and then gave orders to the robots. They put the inert scientist back on the wheeled stretcher and returned through the corridors to Peter’s suite, placing him full length on the divan under the centre window. Peter and Alza watched the proceedings, Parke standing near them with the metal plate still in his hand.

  Several minutes passed, then at last Lanning stirred. His pale grey eyes opened slowly and settled on the serious faces regarding him. Parke stepped forward, took the scientist’s pulse-rate, then nodded.

  “Everything normal,” he announced. “How do you feel, Mr. Lanning?”

  Lanning looked at Peter steadily, then back to the surgeon.

  “Well enough,” he replied, sitting up slowly. “Though I must admit I am a trifle puzzled. What happened, exactly?”

  “You had a collapse, sir,” Parke explained, and at this observation Lanning’s eyes strayed to Peter again. “His Excellence insisted that I operate on your brain, The X-Z-ray showed that this was imbedded in it.”

  Lanning took the metal oval and examined it curiously. No trace of expression came to his lean face.

  “So this was in my brain,” he said slowly, at length. “Most interesting! I’ll subject it to laboratory analysis later on.”

  “I hope I did the right thing?” Parke asked uneasily. “I understand His Excellence takes full responsibility.”

  “You did entirely the right thing, Doctor,” Lanning replied. “And thank you.”