Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume One

by Short Story Anthology

  Vague and indistinct, yet cast in stereoscopic outline, a gigantic city was lined against the darkling sky. It was a city fantastic with cubed domes, spires, and aerial bridges and flying buttresses. Tunnel-like streets, flanked on either side by shining metallic ramps and runways, stretched endlessly to the vanishing point. Great shafts of multicolored light probed huge streamers and ellipses above the higher levels.

  And beyond, like a final backdrop, rose a titanic wall. It was from that wall ... from its crenelated parapets and battlements that Mr. Chambers felt the eyes peering at him.

  Thousands of eyes glaring down with but a single purpose.

  And as he continued to look, something else seemed to take form above that wall. A design this time, that swirled and writhed in the ribbons of radiance and rapidly coalesced into strange geometric features, without definite line or detail. A colossal face, a face of indescribable power and evil, it was, staring down with malevolent composure.

  * * * * *

  Then the city and the face slid out of focus; the vision faded like a darkened magic-lantern, and the grayness moved in again.

  Mr. Chambers pushed open the door of his house. But he did not lock it. There was no need of locks ... not any more.

  A few coals of fire still smouldered in the grate and going there, he stirred them up, raked away the ash, piled on more wood. The flames leaped merrily, dancing in the chimney's throat.

  Without removing his hat and coat, he sank exhausted in his favorite chair, closed his eyes then opened them again.

  He sighed with relief as he saw the room was unchanged. Everything in its accustomed place: the clock, the lamp, the elephant ash tray, the marine print on the wall.

  Everything was as it should be. The clock measured the silence with its measured ticking; it chimed abruptly and the vase sent up its usual sympathetic vibration.

  This was his room, he thought. Rooms acquire the personality of the person who lives in them, become a part of him. This was his world, his own private world, and as such it would be the last to go.

  But how long could he ... his brain ... maintain its existence?

  Mr. Chambers stared at the marine print and for a moment a little breath of reassurance returned to him. They couldn't take this away. The rest of the world might dissolve because there was insufficient power of thought to retain its outward form.

  But this room was his. He alone had furnished it. He alone, since he had first planned the house's building, had lived here.

  This room would stay. It must stay on ... it must....

  He rose from his chair and walked across the room to the book case, stood staring at the second shelf with its single volume. His eyes shifted to the top shelf and swift terror gripped him.

  For all the books weren't there. A lot of books weren't there! Only the most beloved, the most familiar ones.

  So the change already had started here! The unfamiliar books were gone and that fitted in the pattern ... for it would be the least familiar things that would go first.

  Wheeling, he stared across the room. Was it his imagination, or did the lamp on the table blur and begin to fade away?

  But as he stared at it, it became clear again, a solid, substantial thing.

  For a moment real fear reached out and touched him with chilly fingers. For he knew that this room no longer was proof against the thing that had happened out there on the street.

  Or had it really happened? Might not all this exist within his own mind? Might not the street be as it always was, with laughing children and barking dogs? Might not the Red Star confectionery still exist, splashing the street with the red of its neon sign?

  Could it be that he was going mad? He had heard whispers when he had passed, whispers the gossiping housewives had not intended him to hear. And he had heard the shouting of boys when he walked by. They thought him mad. Could he be really mad?

  But he knew he wasn't mad. He knew that he perhaps was the sanest of all men who walked the earth. For he, and he alone, had foreseen this very thing. And the others had scoffed at him for it.

  Somewhere else the children might be playing on a street. But it would be a different street. And the children undoubtedly would be different too.

  For the matter of which the street and everything upon it had been formed would now be cast in a different mold, stolen by different minds in a different dimension.

  Perhaps we shall come upon a day, far distant, when our plane, our world will dissolve beneath our feet and before our eyes as some stronger intelligence reaches out from the dimensional shadows of the very space we live in and wrests from us the matter which we know to be our own.

  But there had been no need to wait for that distant day. Scant years after he had written those prophetic words the thing was happening. Man had played unwittingly into the hands of those other minds in the other dimension. Man had waged a war and war had bred a pestilence. And the whole vast cycle of events was but a detail of a cyclopean plan.

  He could see it all now. By an insidious mass hypnosis minions from that other dimension ... or was it one supreme intelligence ... had deliberately sown the seeds of dissension. The reduction of the world's mental power had been carefully planned with diabolic premeditation.

  On impulse he suddenly turned, crossed the room and opened the connecting door to the bedroom. He stopped on the threshold and a sob forced its way to his lips.

  There was no bedroom. Where his stolid four poster and dresser had been there was greyish nothingness.

  Like an automaton he turned again and paced to the hall door. Here, too, he found what he had expected. There was no hall, no familiar hat rack and umbrella stand.

  Nothing....

  Weakly Mr. Chambers moved back to his chair in the corner.

  "So here I am," he said, half aloud.

  So there he was. Embattled in the last corner of the world that was left to him.

  Perhaps there were other men like him, he thought. Men who stood at bay against the emptiness that marked the transition from one dimension to another. Men who had lived close to the things they loved, who had endowed those things with such substantial form by power of mind alone that they now stood out alone against the power of some greater mind.

  The street was gone. The rest of his house was gone. This room still retained its form.

  This room, he knew, would stay the longest. And when the rest of the room was gone, this corner with his favorite chair would remain. For this was the spot where he had lived for twenty years. The bedroom was for sleeping, the kitchen for eating. This room was for living. This was his last stand.

  These were the walls and floors and prints and lamps that had soaked up his will to make them walls and prints and lamps.

  He looked out the window into a blank world. His neighbors' houses already were gone. They had not lived with them as he had lived with this room. Their interests had been divided, thinly spread; their thoughts had not been concentrated as his upon an area four blocks by three, or a room fourteen by twelve.

  * * * * *

  Staring through the window, he saw it again. The same vision he had looked upon before and yet different in an indescribable way. There was the city illumined in the sky. There were the elliptical towers and turrets, the cube-shaped domes and battlements. He could see with stereoscopic clarity the aerial bridges, the gleaming avenues sweeping on into infinitude. The vision was nearer this time, but the depth and proportion had changed ... as if he were viewing it from two concentric angles at the same time.

  And the face ... the face of magnitude ... of power of cosmic craft and evil....

  Mr. Chambers turned his eyes back into the room. The clock was ticking slowly, steadily. The greyness was stealing into the room.

  The table and radio were the first to go. They simply faded away and with them went one corner of the room.

  And then the elephant ash tray.

  "Oh, well," said Mr. Chambers, "I never did like that very well."
/>   Now as he sat there it didn't seem queer to be without the table or the radio. It was as if it were something quite normal. Something one could expect to happen.

  Perhaps, if he thought hard enough, he could bring them back.

  But, after all, what was the use? One man, alone, could not stand off the irresistible march of nothingness. One man, all alone, simply couldn't do it.

  He wondered what the elephant ash tray looked like in that other dimension. It certainly wouldn't be an elephant ash tray nor would the radio be a radio, for perhaps they didn't have ash trays or radios or elephants in the invading dimension.

  He wondered, as a matter of fact, what he himself would look like when he finally slipped into the unknown. For he was matter, too, just as the ash tray and radio were matter.

  He wondered if he would retain his individuality ... if he still would be a person. Or would he merely be a thing?

  There was one answer to all of that. He simply didn't know.

  Nothingness advanced upon him, ate its way across the room, stalking him as he sat in the chair underneath the lamp. And he waited for it.

  The room, or what was left of it, plunged into dreadful silence.

  Mr. Chambers started. The clock had stopped. Funny ... the first time in twenty years.

  He leaped from his chair and then sat down again.

  The clock hadn't stopped.

  It wasn't there.

  There was a tingling sensation in his feet.

  ERIC FRANK RUSSELL

  Eric Frank Russell (January 6, 1905 - February 28, 1978) was a British author best known for his science fiction novels and short stories. Much of his work was first published in the United States, in John W. Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction and other pulp magazines. Russell also wrote horror fiction for Weird Tales and non-fiction articles on Fortean topics. To 1955 several of his stories were published under pseudonyms, at least Duncan H. Munro and Niall(e) Wilde.

  And Then There Were None, by Eric Frank Russell

  Chapter 1

  [The ambassador] went silent as the ship closed in and the planet’s day-side face rapidly expanded. Then followed the usual circling and photographing. A lot of villages and small towns were to be seen, also cultivated areas of large extent. It was obvious that this planet—while by no means fully exploited—was in the hands of colonists who were energetic and numerically strong.

  Relieved that life was full, abundant and apparently free from alien disease. Grayder brought the ship down onto the first hard-standing he saw. Its enormous mass landed feather-like on a long, low hump amid well-tended fields. Again all the ports became filled with faces as everyone had a look at the new world.

  The midway airlock opened, the gangway went down. As before, exit was made in strict order of precedence starting with the Ambassador and finishing with Sergeant Major Bidworthy. Grouping near the bottom of the gangway they spent the first few moments absorbing sunshine and fresh air.

  His Excellency scuffled the thick turf under his feet, plucked a blade of it grunting as he stooped. He was so constructed that the effort came close to an athletic feat and gave him a crick in the belly.

  ‘Earth-type grass. See that, Captain? Is it just a coincidence or did they bring seed with them?’

  ‘Could be either. Several grassy worlds are known. And almost all colonists went away loaded with seeds.’

  ‘It’s another touch of home, anyway. I think I’m going to like this place.’ The Ambassador gazed into the distance, doing it with pride of ownership. ‘Looks like there’s someone working over there. He’s using a little motor-cultivator with a pair of fat wheels. They can’t be very backward, it seems.

  ‘H’m-m-m !’ He rubbed a couple of chins. ‘Bring him here. We’ll have a talk and find out where it’s best to make a start.’

  ‘Very well.’ Captain Grayder turned to Colonel Shelton. ‘His Excellency wishes to speak to that farmer.’ He pointed to the faraway figure.

  ‘That farmer,’said Shelton to Major Hame. ‘His Excellency wants him at once.’

  ‘Bring that farmer here,’ Hame ordered Lieutenant Deacon. ‘Quickly.’

  ‘Go get that farmer,’ Deacon told Sergeant Major Bid-worthy. ‘And hurry—His Excellency is waiting.’

  Bidworthy sought around for a lesser rank, remembered that they were all inside, cleaning ship and not smoking, by his order. He, it seemed, was elected.

  Tramping across four fields and coming within hailing distance of his objective, he performed a precise military halt, released a barracks square bellow of, ‘Hi, you!’ and waved urgently.

  The farmer stopped his steady trudging behind the tiny cultivator, wiped his forehead, glanced casually around. His indifferent manner suggested that the mountainous bulk of the ship was a mirage such as are five a penny around these parts. Bidworthy waved again, making it an authoritative summons. Now suddenly aware of the sergeant major’s existence, the farmer calmly waved back, resumed his work.

  Bidworthy employed a brief but pungent expletive which—when its flames had died out—meant, ‘Dear me!’ and marched fifty paces nearer. He could now see that the other was bushy-browed, leather-faced, tall and lean.

  ‘Hi!’ he bawled.

  Stopping the cultivator again, the farmer leaned on one of of its shafts and idly picked his teeth.

  Smitten by the ingenious thought that perhaps during the last few centuries the old Terran language had been abandoned in favour of some other lingo, Bidworthy approached to within normal talking distance and asked, ‘Can you understand me?’

  Can any person understand another?’ inquired the farmer with clear diction.

  Bidworthy found himself afflicted with a moment of confusion. Recovering, he informed hurriedly, ‘His Excellency the Earth Ambassador wishes to speak with you at once.’

  ‘Is that so?’ The other eyed him speculatively, had another pick at his teeth. ‘And what makes him excellent?’

  ‘He is a person of considerable importance,’ said Bidworthy, unable to decide whether the other was trying to be funny at this expense or alternatively was what is known as a character. A lot of these long-isolated pioneering types liked to think of themselves as characters.

  ‘Of considerable importance,’ echoed the farmer, narrowing his eyes at the horizon. He appeared to be trying to grasp a completely alien concept. After a while, he inquired, ‘What will happen to your home world when this person dies?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Bidworthy admitted.

  ‘It will roll on as before?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Round and round the sun?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then,’ declared the farmer flatly, ‘if his existence or nonexistence makes no difference he cannot be important.’ with that, his little engine went chuff-chuff and the cultivator rolled forward.

  Digging his nails into the palms of his hands, Bidworthy spent half a minute gathering oxygen before he said in hoarse tones, ‘Are you going to speak to the Ambassador or not?’

  ‘Not.’

  ‘I cannot return without at least a message for His Excellency.’

  ‘Indeed?’ The other was incredulous. ‘What is to stop you?’ Then, noticing the alarming increase in Bidworthy’s colour, he added with compassion, ‘Oh, well. you may tell him that I said’—he paused while he thought it over—‘God bless you and good-bye.’

  Sergeant Major Bidworthy was a powerful man who weighed more than two hundred pounds, had roamed the cosmos for twenty-five years and feared nothing. He had neverhttp://www.abelard.org/e-f-russell.php - index

  been known to permit the shiver of one hair—but he was trembling all over by the time he got back to the base of the gangway.

  His Excellency fastened a cold eye upon him and demanded, ‘Well?’

  ‘He refuses to come.’ Bidworthy’s veins stood out on his forehead. ‘And, sir, if only I could have him in the space troops for a few months I’d straighten him up and teach him to move at the double.’


  ‘I don’t doubt that, Sergeant Major,’ the Ambassador soothed. He continued in a whispered aside to Colonel Shelton. ‘He’s a good fellow but no diplomat. Too abrupt and harsh-voiced. Better go yourself and fetch that farmer. We can’t loaf around forever waiting to learn where to begin.’

  ‘Very well, Your Excellency.’ Trudging across the field, Shelton caught up with the farmer, smiled pleasantly and said, ‘Good morning, my man.’

  Stopping his machine, the farmer sighed as if it were one of those days one has sometimes. His eyes were dark brown, almost black as they regarded the newcomer.

  ‘What makes you think I’m your man.’

  ‘It is a figure of speech,’ explained Shelton. He could see what was wrong now. Bidworthy had fallen foul of an irascible type. They’d been like two dogs snarling at one another. Oh, well, as a high- ranking officer he was competent to handle anybody, the good and the bad, the sweet and the sour, the jovial and the liverish. Shelton went on oilily, ‘I was only trying to be courteous.’

  ‘It must be said,’ meditated the farmer, ‘that that is something worth trying for—if you can make it.’

  Pinking a little, Shelton continued with determination, ‘I am commanded to request the pleasure of your company at the ship.’

  ‘Commanded?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Really and truly commanded?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The other appeared to wander into a momentary daydream before he came back and asked blandly, ‘Think they’ll get any pleasure out of my company?’

  ‘I’m sure of it,’ said Shelton.

  ‘You’re a liar,’ said the farmer.

  His colour deepening, Colonel Shelton snapped, ‘I do not permit people to call me a liar.’

  ‘You’ve just permitted it,’ the farmer pointed out. Letting it pass, Shelton insisted, ‘Are you coming to the ship?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Myob!’ said the farmer.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Myob!’ he repeated. It sounded like some sort of insult. Shelton went back, told the Ambassador, ‘That fellow is one of those too-clever types. At the finish all I could get out of him was ‘Myob’ whatever that means.’