Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume One

by Short Story Anthology

  "That was maybe--just an inspiration from him." Her face was bright with it. "I've tried to bring you up--the way he told me. And what I must tell you now--about tonight, I mean--because I may not live to see it--"

  Her breath gave out so that her faint tired voice trailed away.

  "What?" he urged. "What is it, Anna? About tonight--"

  What a tumult of weird excitement was within him! Surely this was something momentous. His twenty-first birthday. Different, surely, for Lee Anthony than any similar event had ever been for anyone else.

  "He promised me--when you were twenty-one--just then--at this time, if he could manage it--that he would come back--"

  "Come back, Anna? Here?"

  "Yes. To you and me. Because you would be a man--brought up, the best I could do to make you be--like him--because you would be a man who would know the value of love--and kindness--those things that ought to rule this world--but really do not."

  This wild, unreasoning excitement within him...! "You think he will come--tonight, Anna?"

  "I really do. I want to live to see him. But now--I don't know--"

  He could only sit in silence, gripping her hand. And again the gay voices of his guests downstairs came up like a roar of intrusion. They didn't know that she was more than indisposed. She had made him promise not to tell them.

  Her eyes had closed, and now she opened them again. "They're having a good time, aren't they, Lee? That's what I wanted--for you and them both. You see, I've had to be careful--not to isolate you from life--life as it is. Because your grandfather wanted you to be normal--a healthy, happy--regular young man. Not queer--even though I've tried to show you--"

  "If he--he's coming tonight, Anna--we shouldn't have guests here."

  "When they have had their fun--"

  "They have. We're about finished down there. I'll get rid of them--tell them you're not very well--"

  She nodded. "Perhaps that's best--now--"

  He was hardly aware of how he broke up the party and sent them away. Then in the sudden heavy silence of the little cottage, here in the grove of trees near the edge of the town, he went quietly back upstairs.

  * * * * *

  Her eyes were closed. Her white face was placid. Her faint breath was barely discernible. Failing fast now. Quietly he sat beside her. There was nothing that he could do. The doctor had said that very probably she could not live through the night. Poor old Anna. His mind rehearsed the life that she had given him. Always she had been so gentle, so wise, ruling him with kindness.

  He remembered some of the things she had reiterated so often that his childish mind had come to realize their inevitable truth. The greatest instinctive desire of every living creature is happiness. And the way to get it was not by depriving others of it. It seemed now as though this old woman had had something of goodness inherent to her--as though she were inspired? And tonight she had said, with her gentle smile as she lay dying, that if that were so--it had been an inspiration from his grandfather.

  Something of science which his grandfather had devised, and which had enabled him to--go away. What could that mean? Go where? And why had he gone? To seek an ideal? Because he was dissatisfied with life here? Her half incoherent words had seemed to imply that. And now, because Lee was twenty-one--a man--his grandfather was coming back. Because he had thought that Lee would be able to help him?... Help him to do--what?

  He stirred in his chair. It was nearly midnight now. The little cottage--this little second floor bedroom where death was hovering--was heavy with brooding silence. It was awesome; almost frightening. He bent closer to the bed. Was she dead? No, there was still a faint fluttering breath, but it seemed now that there would be no strength for her to speak to him again.

  Mysterious business, this passing on. Her eyelids were closed, a symbol of drawn blinds of the crumbling old house in which she had lived for so long. It was almost a tenantless house now. And yet she was somewhere down there behind those drawn blinds. Reluctant perhaps to leave, still she lingered, with the fires going out so that it must be cold ... cold and silent where she huddled. Or was she hearing now the great organ of the Beyond with its sweep of harmonies summoning her to come--welcoming her....

  A shiver ran through young Lee Anthony as he saw that the pallid bloodless lips of the white wrinkled face had stirred into a smile. Down there somewhere her spirit--awed and a little frightened doubtless--had opened some door to let the sound of the organ in--and to let in the great riot of color which must have been outside.... And then she had not been frightened, but eager....

  He realized suddenly that he was staring at an empty shell and that old Anna Green had gone....

  * * * * *

  A sound abruptly brought Lee out of his awed thoughts. It was outside the house--the crunching of wheels in the gravel of the driveway--the squeal of grinding brakes. A car had stopped. He sat erect in his chair, stiffened, listening, with his heart pounding so that the beat of it seemed to shake his tense body. His grandfather--returning?

  An automobile horn honked. Footsteps sounded on the verandah. The front doorbell rang.

  There were voices outside as he crossed the living room--a man's voice, and then a girl's laugh. He flung open the door. It was a young man in dinner clothes and a tall blonde girl. Tom Franklin, and a vivid, theatrical-looking girl, whom Lee had never seen before. She was inches taller than her companion. She stood clinging to his arm; her beautiful face, with beaded lashes and heavily rouged lips, was laughing. She was swaying; her companion steadied her, but he was swaying himself.

  "Easy, Viv," he warned. "We made it--tol' you we would.... Hello there, Lee ol' man--your birthday--think I'd forget a thing like that, not on your life. So we come t'celebrate--meet Vivian Lamotte--frien' o' mine. Nice kid, Viv--you'll like her."

  "Hello," the girl said. She stared up at Lee. He towered above her, and beside him the undersized and stoop-shouldered Franklin was swaying happily. Admiration leaped into the girl's eyes.

  "Say," she murmured, "you sure are a swell looker for a fact. He said you were--but my Gawd--"

  "And his birthday too," Frank agreed, "so we're gonna celebrate--" His slack-jawed, weak-chinned face radiated happiness and triumph. "Came fas' to get here in time. I tol' Viv I could make it--we never hit a thing--"

  "Why, yes--come in," Lee agreed awkwardly. He had only met young Tom Franklin once or twice, a year ago now, and Lee had completely forgotten it. The son of a rich man, with more money than was good for him.... With old Anna lying there upstairs--surely he did not want these happy inebriated guests here now....

  He stood with them just inside the threshold. "I--I'm awfully sorry," he began. "My birthday--yes, but you see--old Mrs. Green--my guardian--just all the family I've got--she died, just a few minutes ago--upstairs here--I've been here alone with her--"

  It sobered them. They stared blankly. "Say, my Gawd, that's tough," the girl murmured. "Your birthday too. Tommy listen, we gotta get goin'--can't celebrate--"

  It seemed that there was just a shadow out on the dark verandah. A tall figure in a dark cloak.

  "Why--what the hell," Franklin muttered.

  A group of gliding soundless figures were out there in the darkness. And across the living room the window sash went up with a thump. A black shape was there, huddled in a great loose cloak which was over the head so that the thing inside was shapeless.

  For an instant Lee and his two companions stood stricken. The shapes seemed babbling with weird unintelligible words. Then from the window came words of English:

  "We--want--" Slow words, strangely intoned. Young Tom Franklin broke in on them.

  "Say--what the devil--who do you people think you are, comin' in here--" He took a swaying step over the threshold. There was a sudden sharp command from one of the shapes. Lee jumped in front of the girl. On the verandah the gliding figures were engulfing Franklin; he had fallen.

  Lee went through the door with a leap, his fist driving at the cowled head of
one of the figures--a solid shape that staggered backward from his blow. But the others were on him, dropping down before his rush, gripping his legs and ankles. He went down, fighting. And then something struck his face--something that was like a hand, or a paw with claws that scratched him. His head suddenly was reeling; his senses fading....

  * * * * *

  How long he fought Lee did not know. He was aware that the girl was screaming--and that he was hurling clutching figures away--figures that came pouncing back. Then the roaring in his head was a vast uproar. The fighting, scrambling dark shapes all seemed dwindling until they were tiny points of white light--like stars in the great abyss of nothingness....

  He knew--as though it were a blurred dream--that he was lying inert on the verandah, with Franklin and the girl lying beside him.... The house was being searched.... Then the muttering shapes were standing here. Lee felt himself being picked up. And then he was carried silently out into the darkness. The motion seemed to waft him off so that he knew nothing more.

  CHAPTER II

  The Flight Into Size and Space

  Lee came back to consciousness with the feeling that some great length of time must have elapsed. He was on a couch in a small, weird-looking metal room--metal of a dull, grey-white substance like nothing he had ever seen before. With his head still swimming he got up dizzily on one elbow, trying to remember what had happened to him. That fingernail, or claw, had scratched his face. He had been drugged. It seemed obvious. He could remember his roaring senses as he had tried to fight, with the drug gradually overcoming him....

  The room had a small door, and a single round window, like a bullseye pane of thick lens. Outside there was darkness, with points of stars. His head was still humming from the remaining effect of the drug. Or was the humming an outside noise? He was aware as he got to his feet and staggered to the door, that the humming was distantly outside the room. The door was locked; its lever resisted his efforts to turn it.

  There he saw the inert figures of the girl, and Tom Franklin. They were lying uninjured on two other small couches against the room's metal wall. The girl stirred a little as he touched her dank forehead. Her dyed blonde hair had fallen disheveled to her shoulders. Franklin lay sprawled, his stiff white shirt bosom dirty and rumpled, his thin sandy hair dangling over his flushed face. His slack mouth was open. He was breathing heavily.

  At the lens-window Lee stood gasping, his mind still confused and blurred, trying to encompass what was out there. This was a spaceship! A small globular thing of white metal. He could see a rim of it, like a flat ring some ten feet beneath him. A spaceship, and obviously it had left the Earth! There was a black firmament--dead-black monstrous abyss with white blazing points of stars. And then, down below and to one side there was just an edge of a great globe visible. The Earth, with the sunlight edging its sweeping crescent limb--the Earth, down there with a familiar coastline and a huge spread of ocean like a giant map in monochrome.

  Back on the couch Lee sat numbed. There was the sound of scraping metal; a doorslide in the wall opened. A face was there--a man with a blur of opalescent light behind him.

  "You are all right now?" a voice said.

  "Yes. I guess so. Let me out of here--"

  Let him out of here? To do what? To make them head this thing back to Earth.... To Lee Anthony as he sat confused, the very thoughts were a fantasy.... Off the Earth! Out in Space! So often he had read of it, as a future scientific possibility--but with this actuality now his mind seemed hardly to grasp it....

  The man's voice said gently, "We cannot trust you. There must be no fighting--"

  "I won't fight. What good could it do me?"

  "You did fight. That was bad--that was frightening. We must not harm you--"

  "Where are we going?" Lee murmured. "Why in the devil are you--"

  "We think now it is best to say nothing. We will give you food through here. And over there--behind you--a little doorslide to another room. You and these other two can be comfortable--"

  "For how long?" Lee demanded.

  "It should not seem many days. Soon we shall go fast. Please watch it at the window--he would want that. You have been taught some science?"

  "Yes. I guess so."

  To Lee it was a weird, unnatural exchange between captor and captive. The voice, intoning the English words so slowly, so carefully, seemed gentle, concerned with his welfare ... and afraid of him.

  Abruptly the doorslide closed again, and then at once it reopened.

  "He would want you to understand what you see," the man said. "You will find it very wonderful--we did, coming down here. This was his room--so long ago when he used it. His dials are there--you can watch them and try to understand. Dials to mark our distance and our size. The size-change will start soon."

  Size-change? Lee's numbed mind turned over the words and found them almost meaningless.

  "From the window there--what you can see will be very wonderful," the man said again. "He would want you to study it. Please do that."

  The doorslide closed....

  What you can see from the window will be very wonderful. No one, during the days that followed could adequately describe what Lee Anthony and Thomas Franklin and Vivian saw through that lens-window. A vast panorama in monochrome ... a soundless drama of the stars, so immense, so awesome that the human mind could grasp only an infinitesimal fragment of its wonders....

  They found the little door which led into another apartment. There were tables and chairs of earth-style, quaintly old-fashioned. Food and drink were shoved through the doorslide; the necessities of life and a fair comfort of living were provided. But their questions, even as the time passed and lengthened into what on Earth might have been a week or more, remained unanswered. There was only that gentle but firm negation:

  "We have decided that he would want us to say nothing. We do not know about this girl and this smaller man. We brought them so that they could not remain on Earth to talk of having seen us. We are sorry about that. He probably won't like it."

  "He? Who the devil are you talking about?" Franklin demanded. "See here, if I had you fellows back on Earth now I'd slam you into jail. Damned brigands. You can't do this to me! My--my father's one of the most important men in New York--"

  But now the doorslide quietly closed.

  A week? It could have been that, or more. In a wall recess of the room Lee found a line of tiny dials with moving pointers. Miles--thousands of miles. A million; ten millions; a hundred million. A light-year; tens, thousands. And, for the size-change, a normal diameter, Unit 1--and then up into thousands.

  For hours at a time, silent, awed beyond what he had ever conceived the emotion of awe could mean, he sat at the lens-window, staring out and trying to understand.

  * * * * *

  The globe-ship was some five-hundred thousand miles out from Earth when the size-change of the weird little vehicle began. It came to Lee with a sudden shock to his senses, his head reeling, and a tingling within him as though every fibre of his being were suddenly stimulated into a new activity.

  "Well, my Gawd," Vivian gasped. "What're they doin' to us now?"

  The three of them had been warned by a voice through the doorslide, so that they sat together on one of the couches, waiting for what would happen.

  "This--I wish they wouldn't do it," Franklin muttered. "Damn them--I want to get out of here."

  Fear seemed to be Franklin's chief emotion now--fear and a petty sense of personal outrage that all this could be done to him against his will. Often, when Lee and the girl were at the window, Franklin had sat brooding, staring at his feet.

  "Easy," Lee said. "It evidently won't hurt us. We're started in size-change. The globe, and everything in it, is getting larger."

  Weird. The grey metal walls of the room were glowing now with some strange current which suffused them. The starlight from the window-lens mingled with an opalescent sheen from the glowing walls. It was like an aura, bathing the room--an aura w
hich seemed to penetrate every smallest cell-particle of Lee's body--stimulating it....

  Size-change! Vaguely, Lee could fathom how it was accomplished; his mind went back to many scientific articles he had read on the theory of it--only theory, those imaginative scientific pedants had considered it; and now it was a reality upon him! He recalled the learned phrases the writers had used.... The state of matter. In all the Universe, the inherent factors which govern the state of matter yield most readily to a change. An electronic charge--a current perhaps akin to, but certainly not identical with electricity, would change the state of all organic and inorganic substances ... a rapid duplication of the fundamental entities within the electrons--and electrons themselves, so unsubstantial--mere whirlpools of nothingness!

  A rapid duplication of the fundamental whirlpools--that would add size. The complete substance--with shape unaltered--would grow larger.

  All just theory, but here, now, it was brought to an accomplished fact. Within himself, Lee could feel it. But as yet, he could not see it. The glowing room and everything in it was so weirdly luminous, there was no alteration in shape. These objects, the figure of Vivian beside him, and the pallid frightened Franklin, relative to each other they were no different from before. And the vast panorama of starry Universe beyond the lens-window, the immense distances out there, made any size-change as yet unperceivable.

  * * * * *

  But the size-change had begun, there was no question of it. With his senses steadying, Lee crossed the room. A weird feeling of lightness was upon him; he swayed as he stood before the little line of dials in the wall-recess. Five hundred thousand miles from Earth. More than twice the distance of the Moon. The globe had gone that far with accelerating velocity so that now the pointers marked a hundred thousand miles an hour--out beyond the Moon, heading for the orbit-line of Mars. Now the size-change pointers were stirring. Unit One, the size this globe had been as it rested on Earth, fifty feet in height, and some thirty feet at its mid-section bulge. Already that unit was two, a globe--which, if it were on Earth, would be a hundred feet high. And Lee himself? He would be a giant more than twelve feet tall now.... He stood staring at the dials for a moment or two. That little pointer of the first of the size-change dials was creeping around. An acceleration! Another moment and it had touched Unit four. A two hundred foot globe. And Lee, if he had been on Earth, would already be a towering human nearly twenty-five feet in height!