The John Russell Fearn Science Fiction Megapack

by John Russell Fearn

  “It must be done with the greatest of care because a slight error might produce an excessive acromegaly. The injections will continue afterwards at three-month intervals and should, if I’m right, produce the desired effects.”

  “It’s a risk, Adison,” Kemphill said pensively. “If you go wrong, you’ll never forgive yourself.”

  “I won’t go wrong. I’ve spent too much time on preliminary experimenta­tion to do that, Besides, I hope that the enlargement of the pituitary glands will produce a tremendous brain-power and endurance beyond the normal. The only thing I am afraid of is that it will bring a cruelty and callousness, just as the opposite will bring over-sentimen­tality. We must watch that carefully…

  “The thyroid gland of course, will be treated the same way, and, we hope, will produce enormous energy, which in turn will feed the brain and produce—a genius! Linked to this will be the treatment of the supra-renal glands, and so on… Yes, I have great hopes!”

  “When do we start?” Kemphill wanted to know.

  “Tonight—now. Nurse is caring for the baby, but I think I can manage her all right. Just wait here a moment.”

  Doctor Boyd left the room, full of purpose. Professor Kemphill rose slowly to his feet and stroked his chin. He was a much older man than Boyd; had, perhaps, more matured per­ceptions of the future, and to judge from his expression his present percep­tions were none to sanguine. A troubled light rested in his kindly, gray eyes.

  “It’s All Wrong…”

  Presently Adison Boyd returned, bearing his son in his arms. The child was crying a little, hut at length its bright blue eyes alighted on Professor Kemphill’s heavy watch-chain. Im­mediately the crying ceased; an expression of intelligent curiosity settled on the infant’s cherubic face.

  “I managed it!” Boyd said delight­edly. “Come into the lab.”

  The two men passed into the ad­joining laboratory, where the baby was laid on a table-top upon a soft blanket. Kemphill fondled its head thoughtfully, then glanced at the child.

  “You’re not going to use the hypo­dermic syringe, are you?” he inquired.

  “Good heavens, no! My drug is taken in the ordinary way by the mouth, bat I could not administer the first lot—pure drug—without bringing the baby in the laboratory here. After this, at three-month intervals, small amounts of the drug in milk or food can be ad­ministered. Now, Bruce, keep him occupied and I’ll get busy.”

  The professor complied, and amused himself playing with the infant while Boyd busied himself amongst test-tubes, jars and bottles, finally holding up a long, thin phial containing a liquid resembling very pale port wine. With great care he poured this into a small feeding-bottle; then, bracing himself in the manner of a man who plunges into an icy river, be very delicately allowed his son to swallow the liquid drop by drop.

  “I’m sure it’s all wrong, Adison,” Kemphill muttered. “You’re messing in things far beyond the realm of your knowledge, man!”

  “Oh, hell!” Boyd retorted, without turning from his task. “What’s come over you tonight? Where’s your love of scientific progress?”

  Kemphill shrugged, but did not reply. Soon the feeding-bottle was empty.

  “There we are!” the doctor chuckled, lifting the cooing child in his arms. “It didn’t take more than four minutes, Bruce, but it may change the destiny of mankind… Now, back to bed you go.”

  The infant safely returned to its cot and the care of the unsuspecting nurse, the two men returned to the drawing room. They had hardly been seated ten minutes, when Ena returned, irritated arid sharp in her movements.

  “I wish when people make appoint­ments they’d keep them!” she snapped. “Would you believe it, Ad? Louisa didn’t come, and I’ve been, cool­ing my heels all this time. Next time I see her— Oh, good evening, Profes­sor. I didn’t notice you behind the high back of that chair. How are you? Some time since you’ve been over.”

  Kemphill rose courteously to his feet. “Ad and I have been discussing the progress of humanity.”

  Ena smiled cynically. “Really? That’s Ad’s pet subject He had the audacity, a few days ago, to ask me to lend him my child to the cause of science! What do you think of that?”

  “Science never accepts defeat, Mrs. Boyd,” the professor answered gravely. Ena drew off her gloves, shrugging ir­ritably.

  CHAPTER II

  The Boy Hercules

  The gland drug had been admin­istered on the night of June 21st, 1940. But it wasn’t until the night of June 21st, 1943, that distinct evidences of the strange drug that Boyd had admin­istered surreptitiously for three years began to become noticeable.

  Throughout this period, Professor Kemphill was a constant visitor to the Boyd home, much to Mrs. Boyd’s grow­ing puzzlement. She, however, gave no thought to a possible connection be­tween her son and the professor. How could she? Besides, the presence of a now one-year-old daughter occupied much of her time, deflecting her atten­tion a good deal from her first-born.

  “It’s showing!” Adison Boyd breathed in Kemphill’s ear, on the evening of June 21st, 1943, as they watched the child playing on the rag. “Notice anything?”

  “He’s big for his age—very big. He has a bright, intelligent face, too, and good cranial development. And look at those biceps of his! I wonder. Ad, if you’ve actually managed it? Beaten Nature at her own game?”

  “I’m sure of it,” Boyd answered confidently. “I measured him today and he’s two feet nine inches, which is a lot for a child of three and a half years.”

  Kemphill nodded slowly. The con­versation assumed different channels as Mrs. Boyd walked in, bearing her daughter in her arms. For quite a while she sat in a chair looking at her son, as though some feminine intuition was deeply disturbed. Abruptly she looked up to find her husband’s eyes upon her.

  “It looks as though Teddy will be big, doesn’t it?” she said with pride. “You know, there are times when he looks at me with an expression that almost scares me. His blue eyes are so wide and round and full of intent, as though he’s trying to read my mind. Somehow he never has seemed an ordinary, com­monplace child, like Mary here.”

  “He is merely a very healthy child,” Kemphill commented, with a saturnine and professional detachment. “You are both to be congratulated on so fine a son.”

  Bigger and Bigger…

  Ena nodded and studied the boy again, a puzzled frown on her face—a frown that deepened as the weeks went by and Edward began to grow with a rapidity which was nothing short of phenomenal. In the space of a month he added four more inches to his height. And three feet one inch was a remarkable height for a child of three years and seven months.

  As he grew, his appetite increased, Adison Boyd, understanding chemicals and knowing the course his experiment would take, provided his son with all the highly vitamized products he could devise, with the result that the young giant grew steadily and expansively day by day, increasing not only in stature but in mental power and endurance as time passed.

  Mary, his sister, seemed singularly microscopic beside him, pursuing a na­tural line of growth from babyhood to maturity.

  “By Jove, he is growing!” his father confided to Professor Kemphill, almost in alarm, as middle-aged scientist ar­rived on one of his visits of inspection. “I never for a moment expected such terrific growth. It’s beyond all reason!”

  “Well, I warned you,” Kemphill an­swered quietly. But even his calm was shaken when he beheld the youngster on the lawn in the early summer sun­light, spending his rime crushing small pieces of coal to powder by the sheer strength of his hands.

  “What on Earth have we precipi­tated, I wonder?” Boyd muttered. “The boy has the grip of a Hercules already, and he’s not five years old yet! The ghastly thing is, now I’ve started the trouble with the glands I can’t stop it! Yet there is a way, I suppose, to turn the balance in the opposite direc­tion, but I’ve never troubled to find it, I thought he might grow to, say, twelve feet, and be as intel
ligent again as a normal man… But this!”

  Words failed him. He stood breath­ing hard, staring blankly at the huge child.

  “Russian scientists making similar experiments have grown mice the size of donkeys,” murmured Kemphill. “On the same scale, I don’t dare to think how big a human being might become.”

  The Confession

  Thus started the beginnings of dis­comfiture. But if Adison Boyd was troubled it was nothing compared to his wife’s state of mind. She became almost distracted as her giant offspring to cultivate the habit of sitting for hours on end in utter quiet, staring at her unwinkingly, hypnotically, like a cat watching a mouse. And in those brilliant blue orbs there was such a kindled glow of intellect, such a suggestion of mental force and genius undreamed of, that her own nor­mal will-power more often than not came near to breaking under the strain.

  Hypnotized by a child of five! Only this astounding thought enabled her to overcome her son’s mental grip upon her…

  The addition of another six and a half inches was too much! And at last she went and sought out her hus­band in his small study. She found him not walking, but sitting with his head in his hands.

  “Ad, I want you to tell me some­thing,” she said curtly. “It’s about Teddy. Something is wrong with him. A few years ago you said something about a fool experiment to produce a superhuman man, and I refused to grant your request that you should ex­periment on Edward… Did you ex­periment on him secretly?”

  Adison Boyd rose slowly from his chair, took his wife’s shoulders in a firm grip.

  “Ena, my dear, I have a confession to make,” he answered quietly, “I’ve been a fool—an idiot! That night you had a ’phone call and went to meet Louise—­it was all arranged. You remember how, when you questioned her, Louise did not know anything about it? My secretary put the call through from the lab. That night I experimented on Edward, with the professor—and this is the result of it!”

  Ena recoiled. “Ad, you don’t mean you—? You mean he will be exactly what you planned?”

  “Maybe even more than that,” he muttered. “You see, he’s exceeding everything I expected. It is a well-known scientific fact that accumulation of bodily structure and the cells has no limit except that set by Nature, and when Nature is discounted, as in Ted­dy’s case, heaven knows what will happen. There must be a limit, but the varying metabolism and formation of cellular structure through which he is passing is beyond all calculation…

  “I cannot undo the wrong I’ve done except in one way. That way, my dear is—death!” He said the word almost inaudibly.

  “Oh, Ad, Ad! Why did you have to do it?” Ena’s face was suddenly wet with tears. “Why did you have to ruin him? Turn him into a caricature of a human being? Our child, a freak! You have defied Nature, Ad, and for that there must be a penalty.”

  “I know—I know. But what can we do? Let him go on like this until he’s finished when he’s twenty-one years old, or stop him before it’s too late?”

  Ena Boyd regained a grip on herself. “I can never forgive you, Ad,” she said brokenly. “All the same, as your wife, I shall stand by you, because Teddy is our child. For no other rea­son… Let him finish his course.”

  And with her face bathed in tears, she went swiftly from the room.

  CHAPTER III

  A World Endangered

  There being no need for further sec­recy now, Boyd, Ena and Professor Kemphill viewed the progress of the gigantic child with more amazement on each occasion, until they reached the state when they were beyond express­ing any words at all. To say that they were astonished, is putting it mildly.

  Another year brought tremendous transformations in Edward Boyd. A few months added to that produced even more. Until, at six years of age, he was eight feet two inches, possess­ing a proportionate strength, and the mind and face of a fully matured man; indeed, a mind far superior to that of the cleverest. Childhood had never existed for him; adolescence had passed him completely by.

  His gigantic powerful figure stalked about the fairly comfortable resi­dence of his father as though he were constantly on the prowl for intruders. His baby sister, a little over two feet high, he regarded with a growing ir­ritation each passing day. She, for her part, still half-formed in intelligence, considered him a lumbering enigma who often trod on her or lifted her play­fully through space.

  When he spoke, which was rarely, he assumed a very deep and pleasant tone, using perfect English, defying the usual restrictions of age.

  “Father,” he said, on his sixth birth­day, “for some reason I seem to have accomplishments which ordinary peo­ple haven’t. For one thing I can read people’s minds without any trouble, I have read your mind and Mother’s, and know all there is to know—and a great deal more.

  “You’ve made me a giant, superhumanly strong and endowed with a high intelligence. Your purpose was for me to improve humanity, and I shall do so. Bat it won’t be for another fifteen years yet. Not until I become mature, I’ll have fifteen more years of physical growth and expansion of knowledge, I haven’t the slightest idea how big I’ll be then and I tremble to think of it. I curse the day your warped mind made you do this to me!”

  “Why?” Boyd ‘demanded, “You have enormous advantages, Edward.”

  “And enormous disadvantages,” the six-year-old voice growled back. “It is the same with all such experiments. You forgot to provide me with a com­panion—of the opposite sex! You for­get that all my emotions now are those of a fully developed man.

  “I have read from your minds that you hope to produce a race of monsters like me; but you did not provide the wherewithal with which to do it! You are an idiot, Father! I shall correct the error myself, that’s all.”

  “How?” Boyd asked, paling slightly.

  “I will find a female baby somewhere. She will be only five years or so younger than I at my maturity, I will give her an injection of the drug… Oh, yes, I know the formula. I read it from your mind long ago.

  “Which reminds me. There is a baby girl at the house across the way—the Morgans’. I’ve seen her in her baby-carriage. She’ll do!”

  “But Edward, for the love of heaven—” Adison began, then stopped, lost for words, as the giant turned and, stooping beneath the door, walked into the hall and out of the house.

  The Giant Pair

  Such was the beginning. An angry cry was raised when the baby daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Harvey Morgan sud­denly disappeared one day from her baby-carriage. She was found again shortly afterwards, apparently quite unharmed, on the garage roof. How she got there remained an unsolved mystery to everybody, save Edward Boyd.

  From then on, despite constant pre­cautions, she was subject to mysterious disappearances at three-month intervals. Nobody guessed it was for the purpose of injections by Edward Boyd. And, though suspicion did rest on him, due to his abnormal height, there was never any proof.

  And so, after a while. Grace Morgan began to develop the same astounding characteristics as the mighty Edward Boyd.

  Within another year Edward was twelve feet seven in height—a colossal monster, likewise increased in intellect as in stature. Grace, of course, being so far behind him, was a mere four feet, but her intelligence, if anything, was even quicker than his had been. She held conversations with him on scien­tific topics over the adjoining garden wall, and Edward in tarn discoursed on subjects that were beyond the ken of normalcy.

  The years rolled on. Edward took to sleeping outdoors, being too large for interior accommodations. He covered himself only with a huge blan­ket in the thickest frost of winter, and lay almost naked in summer.

  Two sets of parents found their faces more deeply chiselled with worry as the years passed. They lived in a world where they had suddenly become mis­erable and unimportant. The Boyds, united again now by a common fear, and the quiet but speculative Professor Kemphill, were overshadowed mentally and physically by the stupendous Ed­ward.

  The Morgans tried in
vain to con­ceive what had happened to produce about their home a full thirteen feet of massive-shouldered blonde-headed girl­hood, shrewd and calculating, having claims even to beauty, and walking when outdoors with ramrod erectness. That was when she was nine, and Edward just over fifteen.

  It came as a cold, stunning shock to Adison Boyd when he realized that the two young people, now almost con­stantly In each other’s company, com­patriots in giantism, talking on topics so advanced that nobody could under­stand them, had still another nine years or so left to reach actual maturity—if maturity could be applied to such hypertrophied creatures.

  The giant Edward now had some re­gard for his sister, and listened pa­tiently on many occasions to her pleas. In some way she seemed to understand the trend of his nature toward cold­blooded, merciless achievement, and tried to divert it into more useful chan­nels. But her noble efforts to steer him right were wasted on him, on account of his wrongly balanced glands making him unable to appreciate a sentimental viewpoint.

  It was odd to see them holding these discussions. She, four feet six, he nearly twenty-one feet, squatting on the lawn with her standing by his shoulder.

  Doctor Boyd came near to weeping as he saw the sight. Ena actually did weep. They both felt their utter help­lessness, and wondered how Mary man­aged to keep in her brother’s good graces at all. Evidently she had some strain in her nature that appealed to the young monster’s ruthlessly pene­trating mind.

  The Stalking Terror

  Year succeeded year. Steadily and inevitably the young man and woman grew. Onward and onward, until a broiling June day in 1959. On the 15th of that month the leading London pa­pers were bedecked with raging head­lines.

  GIGANTIC MONSTER INVADES LONDON

  100-FOOT MAN TERRORIZES CROWDS

  Subsequent details revealed that a gi­gantic man, all of one hundred feet in height, and attired in a suit of what ap­peared to be solid steel casing, had been sighted amidst London’s buildings, A creature so vast, so huge that the tallest prehistoric monster passed into insig­nificance by comparison.