Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  Valhalla is lost to the stolid throng of the peaceful and warm and sane;

  Evil, they say, is the lonely night where it is not good to be,

  Chilled with the cold that is more than cold, paying the dreamer’s fee,

  Resting on couches of asphodel, resting and wonder-drowned,

  Ageless and lost to a humdrum world, with magic and glory crowned,

  Facing the gates of the universe, breasting the mighty stream

  That bursts from the roots of Yggdrasil, in the splendor of a dream.

  WHEN THE EARTH LIVED

  A Super-Universe Unleashes Forces that Create New, Sentient Life!

  WHEN Jim Marden discovered that the Universe had apparently gone insane, he was already on his way to the mountain home of Dr. Leon Kent, his uncle and sole living relative. An urgent, cryptic telegram from Kent had caused Marden hurriedly to pack a bag, throw it in the back of his roadster, and start the long drive to Coon Mountain, where his uncle had his home and laboratory. Snatching a hasty meal at a roadside stand, he glanced over a newspaper and saw the first warning of the disaster that was to become cosmic in its scope.

  If Marden hadn’t been somewhat of a scientist, in his amateur way, he would scarcely have realized the tremendous potentialities behind the news item on Page 6. It was brief enough, stating only that according to a dispatch received from the Mount Wilson observatory, N.G.C. 385, a nebula in the Pegasus cluster, had stopped its race away from the earth at a velocity of 2,400 miles per second; and was darting with even greater speed at right angles to its former course.

  The layman might have passed over the item unperturbed, but Harden knew that when a thing like that can happen, science loses its sanity and becomes an avocation for madmen.

  A girl sitting near him at the counter called to the waiter. She held up a spoon—or what must have been one once. Now it was only an oddly malformed bit of metal.

  “What do you call this?” she asked. The waiter, apologizing, gave her another spoon. In a moment Marden had forgotten the incident. Obviously it was ridiculous to connect a suddenly insane nebula with the curious malformation of an ordinary spoon. Yet the two incidents were related, Marden was later to realize—and so, likewise, was the remarkable incident of the coffee urn.

  Marden wasn’t looking at the big, silvery urn at the time, and his first realization of anything wrong was a sudden hiss and a splash from beyond the counter, and an astonished cry from the waiter. He glanced up, and saw a deluge of brown liquid pouring from the bottom of the urn. In a moment the floor within the U-shaped counter was flooded. The waiter bent to turn off the gas, and suddenly froze, his bulging eyes staring up at the bottom of the urn.

  “Well, I’ll be—” he exclaimed. “I never seen a thing like this before.”

  “What?” asked the girl who had wanted another spoon. Marden noticed that she was rather lovely, with greenish, glowing eyes, and a somewhat pert nose. A young man sitting beside her, blond, handsome, of the matinee idol type, added: “The place’ll be falling apart next, Lorna,” The waiter turned a puzzled face to Marden.

  “Funny,” he said. “Looks like the metal had simply curled back out of the way of the flame. There’s a ring of it—not melted, but curled back—all around the hole in the bottom.”

  “Maybe it didn’t like the fire,” the blond youth said, with unintentional accuracy. The waiter shot him an unpleasant glance.

  The girl got off the stool, and her companion threw a coin on the counter.

  “When does the bus leave?” he asked.

  A grin appeared on the waiter’s face.

  “It’s left,” he said with relish. “Won’t be none till tomorrow now.”

  “But we’ve got to get to Carr City,” the boy exclaimed. “There’s no place to stay here, even if—”

  Marden said the obvious thing.

  “I’m going almost to Carr City. I’d be very glad to give you a lift.”

  “Thanks,” the boy accepted eagerly. The girl hesitated, but nodded at last. Marden got off the stool, spinning a half dollar on the counter, and stumbled, nearly falling.

  “That’s funny,” he commented, grinning wryly. “Felt like the floor gave way beneath me.” Indeed, there had been an odd sensation of—life—in the wooden floor, almost as though it had actually moved beneath his feet. He glanced down, noting that the cracks in the wooden planks seemed awry, as though warped and twisted. They seemed to move as he watched, writhing back to their original position. Marden blinked. An optical illusion, he concluded.

  NEARLY two hours later the roadster was laboring up the slope of Coon Mountain. Half a mile ahead, across a canyon, Marden could see the bus his guests had missed. His eyes, kept returning to it, despite the dangerous curves of the mountain road. There seemed something distinctly unusual about its method of progress. It seemed to move forward jerkily, apparently leaping a few feet occasionally into the air; at any rate, Marden was sure that sometimes he could see the bus wheels clear of the road.

  He wondered what was the matter with him. Perhaps he was becoming ill, even the little roadster seemed difficult to handle today. It did not respond readily to his hand on the steering wheel, and he had a curious and inexplicable feeling of uneasiness.

  For some unknown reason, he felt glad that he was not in a closed car.

  His guests, apparently, noticed nothing unusual. The boy—Bob Harrison—had driven the girl, Lorna Newton, to Los Angeles to attend a football game, and on the way home his car had broken down.

  “The garage was swamped,” Harrison told Marden. “An epidemic of accidents, it seemed. Lorna has-to get back to work by tomorrow morning, and I’ve got to get back to the university.”

  “Well,” Marden said. “I’ll catch up with the bus and put you on it. I was supposed to turn off here—” He gestured toward a half-hidden road that branched off just ahead among the pines. “But I can come back to it. I’ll be up with the bus in a few minutes.”

  Luckily, he wasn’t. The catastrophe happened just as Marden was at the hairpin turn of a narrow canyon. A hundred yards ahead he saw the bus, a double-decker affair of blue paint and chromium. Abruptly the world went crazy.

  The road just ahead seemed to buckle, to leap up at an impossibly steep angle, so that the bus began to slide back. Automatically Marden jammed on the brake, sat staring.

  “Earthquake!” Harrison gasped.

  But it wasn’t. The asphalt road fell away from beneath the bus, and the vehicle smashed down with a metallic crash. The tires blew out with a deafening report. From within the bus came screams—agonized, terrified.

  For the bus was—collapsing! It was folding inward upon itself, as though it were being crushed in the grip of some giant hand. Glass shattered. The windows, instead of squares, became oblongs—became mere slits until they disappeared as the metal fused.

  “Good Lord!” whispered Marden. “Look at the road!”

  Beneath the bus the asphalt was curling up, and the vehicle was sinking slowly from sight. It was as though the road had suddenly turned into a sea of sucking mud, dragging the bus inexorably down. A pandemonium of shrieks came to Marden’s ears. He saw a squat, bulky figure writhing into view from a window that narrowed as he watched.

  The man squirmed frantically for a moment; then he was free, and the metal coalesced behind him. He came racing toward the roadster, his mouth open in a frenzied oval of terror.

  The bus was now nothing but a long ovoid of smooth, glistening metal. It shrank, became a sphere a fifth of its former bulk. The screams had stopped.

  It sank from view. The asphalt engulfed it.

  THE squat man was plunging desperately down a, road that swayed and buckled beneath him. Abruptly Marden sent the roadster rocketing up the slope at the side of the road, felt solid earth giving like sand beneath the car. He raced the motor and managed to pull free, got the roadster faced in the other direction. The squat man came abreast of the car, leaped to the running-board as Marden beckoned
. A grinding unearthly roar was coming from the ground beneath them.

  Marden jammed his foot down on the accelerator. He felt the little roadster sway dizzily, tilting dangerously toward the precipice on the left. But the car’s speed carried it safely down the road. He caught a glimpse of Lorna’s face, strained and white.

  The squat man shouted something, scrambled frantically for footing. He managed to pull himself up on the body of the roadster, opened the rumble seat, and tumbled in. Glancing down, Marden realized that the running-board had vanished. There was a thin strip of oddly blackened rubber running along the side of the car where it had been.

  Still the road swayed beneath them. Marden wrenched at the steering wheel, sent the car racing up the road that led to his uncle’s home. They topped the crest of a hill, and a little valley came into view, in which a ramshackle frame house was set. There was an odd flickering in the air about the house.

  “The car’s falling apart!” Harrison shouted above the grinding uproar that thundered from the earth. The door of the car at Harrison’s side was gone; white-faced, he clung to the windshield, and it seemed to melt and disappear as he clutched it. A blast of wind hit Marden’s face.

  The steering wheel came off in his hand.

  Luckily, the road was straight. He saw a tall figure come running from the frame house, pause for a moment, and then retreat quickly. The inexplicable flickering in the air about the building faded, was gone. Marden pressed the brake and eased the car to a stop. It skidded, turned half around and paused in the middle of a garden.

  Above the rumbling of the earth a high-pitched whine sounded, grew louder. The flickering in the air began again; but now it was beyond the roadster and its shaken occupants. It was as though an invisible wall of strange force enclosed the house, guarded it.

  Shakily Marden got out of the car, helped Lorna to alight. Harrison and the squat man hastily followed his example. They looked at each other silently. There didn’t seem to be much to say.

  Someone came out of the house, a gaunt, slender man, with ascetically handsome features. His age was betrayed only by the streaks of white at his temples.

  “Uncle Leon I” Marden said, and paused lamely. “I—we—well, I got here!”

  “So I see,” Dr. Kent said drily. “Come in the house, all of you, and have a drink. You need it.”

  DR. KENT explained as he worked. He talked to them while peering into a microscope and making hasty calculations on sheets of paper that littered the laboratory table. The others sat around uneasily, watching him. Harrison and Lorna sat close together on a bench, and Marden leaned against the wall, biting nervously at the bit of his pipe. The squat man was Stan Burford, a promoter on a vacation. He sat rigidly on the edge of a chair, his unintelligent face bearding a look of stupid fear. Just what he promoted he never made quite clear. Marden decided that the man was a petty gambler.

  Dr. Kent, still calculating busily, turned the screw of the microscope.

  “I did not think it would come so quickly,” he said. “I believe this is the only place on Earth where we are reasonably safe. The flickering in the air you noticed, Jim”—Marden had already mentioned this—“was due to a death ray I’ve adapted. It surrounds us, like a hollow globe of force. Or, rather, of annihilation. If I hadn’t seen you coming, and turned it off temporarily, you’d have been killed.” Lorna repressed a shudder.

  “I didn’t know death rays existed,” she said.

  The doctor stared at her.

  “My dear girl, death rays are no longer pseudo-science—they’re cold fact, as you’d know if you read the scientific journals—even the newspapers. I’ve simply adapted the ray to my own uses. It acts? a barrier to—to—” He hesitated.

  “I think I have an idea of what’s wrong,” Marden said. “That nebula in Pegasus gave me the clue. It’s something—cosmic—isn’t it?”

  “Yes. An experiment, Jim—a cosmic experiment, in which we are the subjects—the guinea pigs. You know the atomic theory, of course?”

  “That this Universe is merely an atom in a larger Universe, and so on, to infinity?” Marden asked. The doctor nodded.

  “That’s right. An old idea, of course. It’s served as the basis for innumerable pseudo-scientific stories, and, actually, it’s generally taken for granted by the world of science. But—you know what I’ve been working on for years, Jim, don’t you?”

  “Rays,” Marden said. “Yes. Especially the cosmic ray. You don’t mean—”

  “Exactly. The cosmic ray put me on the track of the truth—a truth so unbelievable, so strange; that I dared not announce my discovery. I’d have been laughed at, and worse. Perhaps put in an asylum. And I needed my freedom to complete my work. Whether it will do any good now—”

  “The closest guess scientists have made as to the nature of the cosmic ray,” Kent went on, “is—life. And that’s just what it is. For ages men have tried to create artificial life in the laboratory. All the while, they have neglected the most important factor—the cosmic ray itself, which is the source of life. All through this universe the ray has spread. And very slowly, very gradually, it has increased in power.”

  BUT the Arrhenius theory—” Marden began.

  Kent interrupted him.

  “It doesn’t conflict. Life spores can float from world to world—yes. Nevertheless, in the beginning, life was generated by the action of the cosmic ray. No one has guessed its source. That’s because it comes from beyond the universe—from the superworld in which we are merely an atom.

  “I can best make you understand by choosing familiar examples. Let us suppose that a scientist has discovered a ray which creates life. He is experimenting with the atom. He turns this ray upon an atom—an extremely complex one—under his microscope. He creates life.

  “But he is not content. He wishes to experiment further. He increases the power of the ray. And life—”

  Marden gasped. “You mean that in this super-universe—but it’s impossible!”

  “Not at all! For that’s exactly what has happened. In the super-universe, the cosmic ray has been increased in power by the Scientist—Scientists, rather—who are experimenting with the atom in which our world exists. Soon I shall show you how I know this, Jim. Do you know what life is?”

  “I know that,” the blond Harrison said. “Life is adaptability and growth.”

  Dr. Kent snorted. “These college students! Those are merely the attributes of life. A living organism can adapt itself to its surroundings—and it can grow. But what is life itself?”

  “No one knows that,” said Marden.

  “Quite right. And the common error of the world of science is that it confines life to organic matter. Rocks, they say, cannot live. Metal cannot live. Atoms cannot live. Yet you saw those things alive this morning!”

  “What?” Marden frankly stared. For a moment he had a fleeting suspicion that his uncle had gone insane. “It’s impossible!”

  “Don’t keep saying that! Ordinarily, yes. The power of the cosmic ray—the life ray—at first gave life to only those elements which could readily acquire it—organic entities, protoplasm, evolving to man. Now that the cosmic ray is stepped-up, the mysterious life force is spreading to all things throughout the Universe. Adaptability—and growth!”

  “The coffee spoon—” Lorna whispered.

  They had told Kent of the incident in the roadside restaurant.

  “Yes,” he affirmed, nodding. “The heat of the coffee made it coalesce into a form in which it would feel less warmth than in its original shape. And the coffee boiler—the metal did curl out of the way of the flame. We can’t foresee what may occur—inorganic life is so alien to ours. The weight of the bus perhaps caused the catastrophe on the road. The earth itself is growing and adapting itself. It is becoming alive.”

  “He’s crazy,” the stocky Burford whispered to Harrison. But the college boy shook his head impatiently, waiting for Dr. Kent to continue.

  “The—infection—is sp
reading slowly, of course. As yet Earth feels only the first birth pangs. Later only the Lord knows what will happen. In this one spot, protected from the accelerated cosmic ray, are we temporarily safe. But—” He shrugged.

  “Somehow I can’t really believe it,” Marden said slowly. “It seems too—incredible. I’ve always been taught that life is limited to organic matter.”

  “How can anyone know that, when no one knows what life is? Look here, Jim—and the rest of you.”

  DR. KENT arose, and went to a table nearby on which a bulky, unfamiliar apparatus rested. A metallic screen, about two feet square, surmounted the strange machine. Kent pressed a button. Flashing light played over the screen.

  “I’ll show you the super-universe,” he said. “I stumbled on this during my experiments. It is a rather simple principle; I utilize the cosmic ray itself as a carrier to a visual beam, sent in the opposite direction. Outward. The peculiar properties of the cosmic ray make this possible. Without it, naturally it would not work.” The flickering lights faded from the screen. A scene materialized into view, dim, greyish. Involuntarily Lorna cried out, clapped her hands to her eyes. A sharp twinge darted through Marden’s head as his eyes tried to follow impossible curves and angles. Unfamiliar, alien objects were visible—things that seemed to be constructed according to a fantastic, non-Euclidean geometry.

  Strange curves twisted and writhed into impossible angles. Only in the center of the screen was the image clearly defined. Yet Marden could not understand what he saw.

  A machine—yes. That he knew. But it was not akin to any machine he had ever seen. It was built of crystal, planes and spheres impinging, somehow, upon a single point where a spot of light glowed vividly—blazing light, blinding and unearthly.

  “The origin of the cosmic ray,” Kent whispered, “is in that super-universe. You are looking at our own cosmos from—Outside!”

  Something swam into focus—a slender, rodlike object, glowing with emerald brilliance. It hovered over the spot of light and retreated.