Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume One

by Short Story Anthology

  And now Professor Eddinger was weary--weary and old, he told himself--as he closed his eyes to shut out the sight of the interminable papers and the stubby wrist that had ended forever his experiments and the delicate manipulations which only he could do.

  He reached slowly for a buzzing phone, but his eyes brightened at the voice that came to him.

  "I've got it--I've got it!" The words were almost incoherent. "This is Avery, Professor--Avery! You must come at once. You will share in it; I owe it all to you ... you will be the first to see ... I am sending a taxi for you--"

  Professor Eddinger's tired eyes crinkled to a smile. Enthusiasm like this was rare among his youngsters. But Avery--with the face of a poet, a dreamer's eyes and the mind of a scientist--good boy, Avery!--a long time since he had seen him--had him in his own laboratory for two years....

  "What's this all about?" he asked.

  "No--no!" said a voice; "I can't tell you--it is too big--greater than the induction motor--greater than the electric light--it is the greatest thing in the world. The taxi should be there now--you must come--"

  A knock at the office door where a voice said, "Car for Professor Eddinger," confirmed the excited words.

  "I'll come," said the Professor, "right away."

  * * * * *

  He pondered, as the car whirled him across the city, on what this greatest thing in the world might be. And he hoped with gentle skepticism that the enthusiasm was warranted. A young man opened the car door as they stopped. His face was flushed, Eddinger noted, hair pushed back in disarray, his shirt torn open at the throat.

  "Wait here," he told the driver and took the Professor by the arm to hurry him into a dilapidated building.

  "Not much of a laboratory," he said, "but we'll have better, you and I; we'll have better--"

  The room seemed bare with its meager equipment, but it was neat, as became the best student of Professor Eddinger. Rows of reagent bottles stood on the shelves, but the tables were a litter of misplaced instruments and broken glassware where trembling hands had fumbled in heedless excitement.

  "Glad to see you again, Avery." The gentle voice of Professor Eddinger had lost its tired tone. "It's been two years you've been working, I judge. Now what is this great discovery, boy? What have you found?"

  The younger man, in whose face the color came and went, and whose eyes were shining from dark hollows that marked long days and sleepless nights, still clung to the other's arm.

  "It's real," he said; "it's great! It means fortune and fame, and you're in on that, Professor. The old master," he said and clapped a hand affectionately upon a thin shoulder; "I owe it all to you. And now I have--I have learned.... No, you shall see for yourself. Wait--"

  * * * * *

  He crossed quickly to a table. On it was an apparatus; the eyes of the older man widened as he saw it. It was intricate--a maze of tubing. There was a glass bulb above--the generator of a cathode ray, obviously--and electro-magnets below and on each side. Beneath was a crude sphere of heavy lead--a retort, it might be--and from this there passed two massive, insulated cables. The understanding eyes of the Professor followed them, one to a terminal on a great insulating block upon the floor, the other to a similarly protected terminal of carbon some feet above it in the air.

  The trembling fingers of the young man made some few adjustments, then he left the instrument to take his place by an electric switch. "Stand back," he warned, and closed the switch.

  There was a gentle hissing from within glass tubes, the faint glow of a blue-green light. And that was all, until--with a crash like the ripping crackle of lightning, a white flame arced between the terminals of the heavy cables. It hissed ceaselessly through the air where now the tang of ozone was apparent. The carbon blocks glowed with a brilliant incandescence when the flame ceased with the motion of a hand where Avery pulled a switch.

  The man's voice was quiet now. "You do not know, yet, what you have seen, but there was a tremendous potential there--an amperage I can't measure with my limited facilities." He waved a deprecating hand about the ill-furnished laboratory. "But you have seen--" His voice trembled and failed at the forming of the words.

  "--The disintegration of the atom," said Professor Eddinger quietly, "and the release of power unlimited. Did you use thorium?" he inquired.

  The other looked at him in amazement. Then: "I should have known you would understand," he said humbly. "And you know what it means"--again his voice rose--"power without end to do the work of the world--great vessels driven a lifetime on a mere ounce of matter--a revolution in transportation--in living...." He paused. "The liberation of mankind," he added, and his voice was reverent. "This will do the work of the world: it will make a new heaven and a new earth! Oh, I have dreamed dreams," he exclaimed, "I have seen visions. And it has been given to me--me!--to liberate man from the curse of Adam ... the sweat of his brow.... I can't realize it even yet. I--I am not worthy...."

  * * * * *

  He raised his eyes slowly in the silence to gaze in wondering astonishment at the older man. There was no answering light, no exaltation on the lined face. Only sadness in the tired eyes that looked at him and through him as if focused upon something in a dim future--or past.

  "Don't you see?" asked the wondering man. "The freedom of men--the liberation of a race. No more poverty, no endless, grinding labor." His young eyes, too, were looking into the future, a future of blinding light. "Culture," he said, "instead of heart-breaking toil, a chance to grow mentally, spiritually; it is another world, a new life--" And again he asked: "Surely, you see?"

  "I see," said the other; "I see--plainly."

  "The new world," said Avery. "It--it dazzles me; it rings like music in my ears."

  "I see no new world," was the slow response.

  The young face was plainly perplexed. "Don't you believe?" he stammered. "After you have seen ... I thought you would have the vision, would help me emancipate the world, save it--" His voice failed.

  "Men have a way of crucifying their saviors," said the tired voice.

  The inventor was suddenly indignant. "You are blind," he said harshly; "it is too big for you. And I would have had you stand beside me in the great work.... I shall announce it alone.... There will be laboratories--enormous!--and factories. My invention will be perfected, simplified, compressed. A generator will be made--thousands of horsepower to do the work of a city, free thousands of men--made so small you can hold it in one hand."

  The sensitive face was proudly alight, proud and a trifle arrogant. The exaltation of his coming power was strong upon him.

  "Yes," said Professor Eddinger, "in one hand." And he raised his right arm that he might see where the end of a sleeve was empty.

  "I am sorry," said the inventor abruptly; "I didn't mean ... but you will excuse me now; there is so much to be done--" But the thin figure of Professor Eddinger had crossed to the far table to examine the apparatus there.

  "Crude," he said beneath his breath, "crude--but efficient!"

  * * * * *

  In the silence a rat had appeared in the distant corner. The Professor nodded as he saw it. The animal stopped as the man's eyes came upon it; then sat squirrellike on one of the shelves as it ate a crumb of food. Some morsel from a hurried lunch of Avery's, the Professor reflected--poor Avery! Yes, there was much to be done.

  He spoke as much to himself as to the man who was now beside him. "It enters here," he said and peered downward toward the lead bulb. He placed a finger on the side of the metal. "About here, I should think.... Have you a drill? And a bit of quartz?"

  The inventor's eyes were puzzled, but the assurance of his old instructor claimed obedience. He produced a small drill and a fragment like broken glass. And he started visibly as the one hand worked awkwardly to make a small hole in the side of the lead. But he withdrew his own restraining hand, and he watched in mystified silence while the quartz was fitted to make a tiny window and the thin figure stooped to sight as if aiming the open
ing toward a far corner where a brown rat sat upright in earnest munching of a dry crust.

  The Professor drew Avery with him as he retreated noiselessly from the instrument. "Will you close the switch," he whispered.

  The young man hesitated, bewildered, at this unexpected demonstration, and the Professor himself reached with his one hand for the black lever. Again the arc crashed into life, to hold for a brief instant until Professor Eddinger opened the switch.

  "Well," demanded Avery, "what's all the show? Do you think you are teaching me anything--about my own instrument?" There was hurt pride and jealous resentment in his voice.

  "See," said Professor Eddinger quietly. And his one thin hand pointed to a far shelf, where, in the shadow, was a huddle of brown fur and a bit of crust. It fell as they watched, and the "plop" of the soft body upon the floor sounded loud in the silent room.

  "The law of compensation," said Professor Eddinger. "Two sides to the medal! Darkness and light--good and evil--life ... and death!"

  * * * * *

  The young man was stammering. "What do you mean?--a death ray evolved?" And: "What of it?" he demanded; "what of it? What's that got to do with it?"

  "A death ray," the other agreed. "You have dreamed, Avery--one must in order to create--but it is only a dream. You dreamed of life--a fuller life--for the world, but you would have given them, as you have just seen, death."

  The face of Avery was white as wax; his eyes glared savagely from dark hollows.

  "A rat!" he protested. "You have killed a rat ... and you say--you say--" He raised one trembling hand to his lips to hold them from forming the unspeakable words.

  "A rat," said the Professor--"or a man ... or a million men."

  "We will control it."

  "All men will have it--the best and the worst ... and there is no defence."

  "It will free the world--"

  "It will destroy it."

  "No!"--and the white-faced man was shouting now--"you don't understand--you can't see--"

  The lean figure of the scientist straightened to its full height. His eyes met those of the younger man, silent now before him, but Avery knew the eyes never saw him; they were looking far off, following the wings of thought. In the stillness the man's words came harsh and commanding--

  "Do you see the cities," he said, "crumbling to ruins under the cold stars? The fields? They are rank with wild growth, torn and gullied by the waters; a desolate land where animals prowl. And the people--the people!--wandering bands, lower, as the years drag on, than the beasts themselves; the children dying, forgotten, in the forgotten lands; a people to whom the progress of our civilization is one with the ages past, for whom there is again the slow, toiling road toward the light.

  "And somewhere, perhaps, a conquering race, the most brutal and callous of mankind, rioting in their sense of power and dragging themselves down to oblivion...."

  * * * * *

  His gaze came slowly back to the room and the figure of the man still fighting for his dream.

  "They would not," said Avery hoarsely; "they'd use it for good."

  "Would they?" asked Professor Eddinger. He spoke simply as one stating simple facts. "I love my fellow men," he said, "and I killed them in thousands in the last war--I, and my science, and my poison gas."

  The figure of Avery slumped suddenly upon a chair; his face was buried in his hands. "And I would have been," he groaned, "the greatest man in the world."

  "You shall be greater," said the Professor, "though only we shall know it--you and I.... You will save the world--from itself."

  The figure, bowed and sunken in the chair, made no move; the man was heedless of the kindly hand upon his shoulder. His voice, when he spoke, was that of one afar off, speaking out of a great loneliness. "You don't understand," he said dully; "you can't--"

  But Professor Eddinger, a cog in the wheels of a great educational machine, glanced at the watch on his wrist. Again his thin shoulders were stooped, his voice tired. "My classes," he said. "I must be going...."

  * * * * *

  In the gathering dusk Professor Eddinger locked carefully the door of his office. He crossed beyond his desk and fumbled with his one hand for his keys.

  There was a cabinet to be opened, and he stared long in the dim light at the object he withdrew. He looked approvingly at the exquisite workmanship of an instrument where a generator of the cathode ray and an intricate maze of tubing surmounted electro-magnets and a round lead bulb. There were terminals for attaching heavy cables; it was a beautiful thing.... His useless arm moved to bring an imaginary hand before the window of quartz in the lead sphere.

  "Power," he whispered and repeated Avery's words; "power, to build a city--or destroy a civilization ... and I hold it in one hand."

  He replaced the apparatus in the safety of its case. "The saviors of mankind!" he said, and his tone was harsh and bitter.

  But a smile, whimsical, kindly, crinkled his tired eyes as he turned to his desk and its usual litter of examination papers.

  "It is something, Avery," he whispered to that distant man, "to belong in so distinguished a group."

  RAY CUMMINGS

  Ray Cummings (byname of Raymond King Cummings; August 30, 1887 – January 23, 1957) was an American author of science fiction, rated one of the "founding fathers of the science fiction pulp genre". He was born in New York and died in Mount Vernon, New York.

  Cummings worked with Thomas Edison as a personal assistant and technical writer from 1914 to 1919. His most highly regarded work was the novel The Girl in the Golden Atom published in 1922, which was a consolidation of a short story by the same name published in 1919 (where Cummings combined the idea of Fitz James O'Brien's The Diamond Lens with H. G. Wells's The Time Machine) and a sequel, The People of the Golden Atom, published in 1920. His career resulted in some 750 novels and short stories, using also the pen names Ray King, Gabrielle Cummings, and Gabriel Wilson.

  During the 1940s, with his fiction career in eclipse, Cummings anonymously scripted comic book stories for Timely Comics, the predecessor to Marvel Comics. He recycled the plot of "The Girl in the Golden Atom," for a two-part Captain America tale, "Princess of the Atom." (Captain America #25 & 26) He also contributed to the Human Torch and Sub-Mariner, which his daughter Betty Cummings also wrote.

  Ray Cummings wrote in 1922, "Time... is what keeps everything from happening at once", a sentence repeated by scientists such as C. J. Overbeck, and John Archibald Wheeler.

  The World Beyond, by Raymond King Cummings

  The old woman was dying. There could be no doubt of it now. Surely she would not last through the night. In the dim quiet bedroom he sat watching her, his young face grim and awed. Pathetic business, this ending of earthly life, this passing on. In the silence, from the living room downstairs the gay laughter of the young people at the birthday party came floating up. His birthday--Lee Anthony, twenty-one years old today. He had thought he would feel very different, becoming--legally--a man. But the only difference now, was that old Anna Green who had been always so good to him, who had taken care of him almost all his life, now was dying.

  Terrible business. But old age is queer. Anna knew what was happening. The doctor, who had given Lee the medicines and said he would be back in the morning, hadn't fooled her. And she had only smiled.

  Lee tensed as he saw that she was smiling now; and she opened her eyes. His hand went to hers where it lay, so white, blue-veined on the white bedspread.

  "I'm here, Anna. Feel better?"

  "Oh, yes. I'm all right." Her faint voice, gently tired, mingled with the sounds from the party downstairs. She heard the laughter. "You should be down there, Lee. I'm all right."

  "I should have postponed it," he said. "And what you did, preparing for it--"

  She interrupted him, raising her thin arm, which must have seemed so heavy that at once she let it fall again. "Lee--I guess I am glad you're here--want to talk to you--and I guess it better be now."

  "Tomo
rrow--you're too tired now--"

  "For me," she said with her gentle smile, "there may not be any tomorrow--not here. Your grandfather, Lee--you really don't remember him?"

  "I was only four or five."

  "Yes. That was when your father and mother died in the aero accident and your grandfather brought you to me."

  Very vaguely he could remember it. He had always understood that Anna Green had loved his grandfather, who had died that same year.

  "What I want to tell you, Lee--" She seemed summoning all her last remaining strength. "Your grandfather didn't die. He just went away. What you've never known--he was a scientist. But he was a lot more than that. He had--dreams. Dreams of what we mortals might be--what we ought to be--but are not. And so he--went away."

  This dying old woman; her mind was wandering?...

  "Oh--yes," Lee said. "But you're much too tired now, Anna dear--"

  "Please let me tell you. He had--some scientific apparatus. I didn't see it--I don't know where he went. I think he didn't know either, where he was going. But he was a very good man, Lee. I think he had an intuition--an inspiration. Yes, it must have been that. A man--inspired. And so he went. I've never seen or heard from him since. Yet--what he promised me--if he could accomplish it--tonight--almost now, Lee, would be the time--"

  * * * * *

  Just a desperately sick old woman whose blurred mind was seeing visions. The thin wrinkled face, like crumpled white parchment, was transfigured as though by a vision. Her sunken eyes were bright with it. A wonderment stirred within Lee Anthony. Why was his heart pounding? It seemed suddenly as though he must be sharing this unknown thing of science--and mysticism. As though something within him--his grandfather's blood perhaps--was responding.... He felt suddenly wildly excited.

  "Tonight?" he murmured.

  "Your grandfather was a very good man, Lee--"

  "And you, Anna--all my life I have known how good you are. Not like most women--you're just all gentleness--just kindness--"