Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  For a moment I thought I had lifted my hands unconsciously to rub my eyes. Then I felt two arms constrict about my neck and vicious thumbs dug cruelly into my eye-sockets. I shrieked with the blinding agony of it. Clang-g-g—clang-g-g!

  I battled desperately in the darkness, battling not only my unknown assailant, but fighting back a mad, perverse impulse to allow him to gouge out my eyes! Within my brain a voice seemed to whisper: “Why do you need eyes? Blackness is better—light brings pain! Blackness is best . . .”

  But I fought, fiercely, silently, rolling across the swaying floor of the bell-tower, smashing against the walls, tearing those grinding thumbs away from my eyes only to feel them come fumbling back. And still within my brain that horrible, urgent whisper grew stronger: “You need no eyes! Eternal blackness is best . . .”

  I was conscious of a different note in the clamor of the bells. What was it? There were only two notes now one of the bells had been silenced. Somehow the cold was not so oppressive. And—was a grayish radiance beginning to pervade the blackness?

  Certainly the temblors were less violent, and as I strained to break away from my shadowy opponent I felt the racking shocks subside, grow gentler, die away altogether. The harsh clangor of the two bells stopped.

  My opponent suddenly shuddered and stiffened. I rolled away, sprang up in the grayness, alert for a renewal of the attack. It did not come.

  Very slowly, very gradually, the darkness lifted from San Xavier.

  Grayness first, like a pearly, opalescent dawn; then yellowish fingers of sunlight, and finally the hot blaze of a summer afternoon! From the bell-tower I could see the street below, Where men and women stared up unbelievingly at the blue sky. At my feet was the clapper from one of the bells.

  Denton was swaying drunkenly, his white face splotched with blood, his clothing torn and smeared with dust. “That did it,” he whispered. “Only one combination of sounds could summon—the Thing. When I silenced one bell—”

  He was silent, staring down. At our feet lay Todd, his clothing dishevelled, his face scratched and bleeding. As we watched, he got weakly to his feet, a look of monstrous horror growing in his eyes. Involuntarily I shrank back, my hands going up protectingly.

  HE flinched. “Ross,” he whispered through white lips. “My God, Ross—I—I couldn’t help it! I couldn’t help it, I tell you! Something kept telling me to put out your eyes—and Denton’s too—and then to gouge out my own! A voice—in my head—” And abruptly I understood, remembering that horrible whisper within my brain while I struggled with poor Todd. That malignant horror—he whom the Book of Iod called Zushakon and whom the Mutsunes knew as Zu-che-quon—had sent his evil, potent command into our brains—commanding us to blind ourselves. And we had nearly obeyed that voiceless, dreadful command!

  But all was well now. Or was it?

  I had hoped to close the doors of my memory forever on the entire horrible affair, for it is best not to dwell too closely upon such things. And, despite the storm of adverse criticism and curiosity that was aroused by the smashing of the bells the next day, with the full permission of Father Bernard of the Mission, I had fully determined never to reveal the truth of the matter.

  It was my hope that only three men—Denton, Todd, and myself—might hold the key to the horror, and that it would die with us. Yet something has occurred which forces me to break my silence and place before the world the facts of the case. Denton agrees with me that perhaps thus mystics and occultists, who have knowledge of such things, may be enabled to utilize their knowledge more effectually if what we fear ever comes to pass.

  Two months after the affair at San Xavier an eclipse of the sun occurred. At that time I was at my home in Los Angeles, Denton was at the headquarters of the Historical Society in San Francisco, and Arthur Todd was occupying his apartment in Hollywood.

  The eclipse began at 2:17 p.m., and within a few moments of the beginning of the obscuration I felt a strange sensation creeping over me. A dreadfully familiar itching manifested itself in my eyes, and I began to rub them fiercely. Then, remembering, I jerked down my hands and thrust them hastily into my pockets. But the burning sensation persisted.

  The telephone rang. Grateful for the distraction, I went to it hurriedly. It was Todd.

  He gave me no chance to speak. “Ross! Ross—it’s back!” he cried into the transmitter. “Ever since the eclipse began I’ve been fighting. Its power was strongest, over me, you know. It wants me to—help me, Ross! I can’t keep—” Then silence!

  “Todd!” I cried. “Wait—hold on, just for a few moments! I’ll be there!”

  No answer. I hesitated, then hung up and raced out to my car. It was a normal twenty-minute drive to Todd’s apartment, but I covered it in seven, with my lights glowing through the gloom of the eclipse and mad thoughts crawling horribly in my brain. A motorcycle officer overtook me at my destination, but a few hurried words brought him into the apartment house at my side. Todd’s door was locked. After a few fruitless shouts, we burst it open. The electric lights were blazing.

  What cosmic abominations may be summoned to dreadful life by age-old spells—and sounds—is a question I dare not contemplate, for I have a horrible feeling that when the lost bells of San Xavier were rung, an unearthly and terrible chain of consequences was set in motion; and I believe, too, that the summoning of those evil bells was more effective than we then realized.

  Ancient evils when roused to life may not easily return to their brooding sleep, and I have a curious horror of what may happen at the next eclipse of the sun. Somehow the words of the hellish Book of Iod keep recurring to me—“Yet can He be called to earth’s surface before His time,” “He bringeth darkness,” “All life, all sound, all movement passeth away at His coming”—and, worst of all, that horribly significant phrase, “He cometh sometimes within the eclipse.”

  Just what had happened in Todd’s apartment I do not know. The telephone receiver was dangling from the wall, and a gun was lying beside my friend’s prostrate form. But it was not the scarlet stain on the left breast of his dressing-gown that riveted my horror-blasted stare—it was the hollow, empty eye-sockets that glared up sightlessly from the contorted face—that, and the crimson-stained thumbs of Arthur Todd!

  BEYOND ANNIHILATION

  An Earthman and Earthwoman Are Hurled Through Worlds Within Worlds by a Diabolical Weapon!

  WHEN I heard the footsteps pause at my cell door, I knew that my month-long imprisonment beneath Administration House was over at last. The realization brought me no elation. I knew too well the fate of prisoners in the “guinea-pig” gallery—human specimens, reserved for Scientific experimentation.

  As the door slid noiselessly into the opaque glassite wall I saw Orsa, my jailer, flanked by two guards. His red-lidded eyes were blinking rapidly, a trick of his whenever he was inordinately pleased.

  “Come out, Falcon,” he said softly. “Degg wants to clip your wings.”

  Degg was a renegade scientist, vassal of Marlin, the overlord who had overthrown the government and seized the reins of power on that fateful day of March 4th, 2203 A.D., only a few months ago. And Marlin’s legions, armed with new and powerful weapons of destruction perfected by Degg, had scattered my fleet of air pirates and made me, Paul Dent, the Falcon, a captive.

  As I came out of the room blazing agony raced through my arm, and I swung about angrily. Orsa’s heavy-jawed face was twisted in a grin, and the muzzle of the electrogun in his hand glowed redly. This wasn’t the first time he’d tried such a trick. My body bore more than one scar attributable to Orsa.

  Orsa barked a command. The guards hustled me the length of the corridor, into an elevator, and along another passage to a bare, metal-lined chamber, obviously an experimental laboratory. The walls were splashed with rusty stains and discolorations; manacled to one of them was a girl.

  From televisor portraits I had seen I recognized her as Jan Kenworthy, daughter of President Kenworthy, whom Marlin had killed in his c
oup d’etat. There was the bronze hair, falling in soft ringlets to her leather-uniformed shoulders, the level blue gaze, the stubborn little chin. She knew me, too, I saw, but after a brief glance paid me no attention.

  TWO men were in the room: Degg and Marlin. Marlin was strongly-built, bull-throated, with an unruly thatch of stiff, red hair. Degg’s hair was silver; he was thin and hollow-cheeked and feral-eyed. In his hand was a curiously-constructed weapon with a bellshaped muzzle.

  “Good-by, Falcon,” Orsa called. “Remember me!”

  Suddenly I went limp, sagging laxly against the arms that held me. As I had expected, the grip loosened momentarily, and I wrenched free, whirling and leaping away. Fear sprang into Orsa’s red-lidded eyes, and he thrust up a warding arm. My first brushed it aside and smashed home against his heavy jaw.

  By Algol, it was good to feel the bone splintering beneath my knuckles! Smiling, I let the guards take me. As they pulled me toward the far wall I saw a curious light in Jan Kenworthy’s blue eyes.

  Marlin was bellowing laughter. “So the Falcon can still strike, eh?” he roared. “A good blow, Dent! A good blow!”

  They chained me to the wall near the girl. The guards were alert now, their electroguns in their hands.

  As the groaning Orsa went out, Marlin eyed me, rubbing his chin.

  “I’m sorry you’ve got to go, Dent,” he said in his gruff voice. “I’d like to have you on my side. But I don’t dare have anybody around that I can’t handle.”

  “Thanks for the compliment,” I said. “What about Jan Kenworthy here? Why kill her?”

  The girl turned her face toward me.

  “I need no air pirate to defend me!” she said hotly. I felt blood creeping up to my face.

  “You see, Falcon?” Marlin said, “I can’t free her. She’d rouse the country against me in a week. No, you’re both dangerous—and Degg will deal with you.”

  The lean scientist had been fumbling impatiently with his curious weapon. “Good,” he said. “This will be the final test. I’ve tried it on inanimate objects, and cats and dogs. Now I’ll use it for the purpose for which it was designed. With this in our hands there’ll be no chance of revolt.”

  I eyed the strange gun, vividly imprinting on my mind the miniature coils and oscillators clustering about its barrel.

  “I’ve not seen those experiments,” Marlin said. “You say it’s a—a vibrator?”

  Degg grunted. “Marlin, you’re no scientist, but at least you know what vibration is. You know that everything vibrates—solids, liquids, gases—at a certain fixed rate; that the atoms in your body are vibrating at this moment. You’ve seen objects vibrate rapidly, and noticed how they seem to blur—to become partially invisible. That’s unitary vibration—vibration of the whole. It’s incomplete. I’ve completed my process by developing a ray that’ll increase atomic vibration.”

  “I see.” Marlin’s brow furrowed.

  “Look here,” Degg continued. “Suppose the atomic vibration of your body is a thousand times a second—an arbitrary number, that is. I increase it, double it. What happens?”

  I FELT a little shudder crawl down my back. I knew my fate now. “You’d be annihilated,” Degg finished flatly. “I’ve proved it. You’ve not seen the preliminary experiments, Marlin, but look at this!”

  He leveled the weapon at a chromium-metal chair. There was an almost inaudible hissing and a beam of ghastly bluish radiance crawled out from the bell-shaped muzzle. It fingered out, slowly, until it touched the chair. The azure light crept over the metal’s surface. The chromium shimmered, a play of dancing radiance flickering over it. For a moment the chair was bathed in cold blue light.

  Suddenly it hurt my eyes to look at it. The chromium seemed to be shaking—not the chair, but the atoms of the metal seemed to dissolve. Even as I watched the chair vanished!

  Involuntary exclamations of fear and awe burst from the guards’ lips. Marlin’s breath came explosively.

  “God, Degg! I hadn’t realized—what a weapon that is!”

  A dry smile twitched the scientist’s colorless lips. “It isn’t perfected yet. This is the only specimen. It takes some time to manufacture them at present, but later we’ll make improvements. Shall we complete the test now?” Marlin’s face was no longer ruddy. He nodded. “All right, Degg. Get it over.”

  Still smiling, Degg lifted the weapon. The beam sprang out straight for me. Oddly I could see it creeping forward. It didn’t behave like ordinary light. The blue ray touched me.

  My muscles jerked convulsively. I saw the room through a flickering azure curtain. A strange shock went through every atom of my being, not painful, but—unexpected. The room flashed out and vanished in a curtain of darkness.

  Grinding, shaking metamorphosis, akin, perhaps, to death . . . flight through blackness . . .

  And the dark curtain seemed to shimmer, to flow back. Grey light crept in. For a moment the landscape shook and wavered unsubstantially; then it steadied. I stood silent with amazement.

  Degg’s laboratory—was gone! Gone the intent faces of Marlin and the scientist, the white face of Jan Ken worthy, the frightened faces of the two guards. My chains had vanished. I was in another world!

  Thick grey fog hemmed me in. It seemed to possess some menace. Yet there was nothing tangible. Merely the sensation of unseen eyes watching—and the abnormally dense fog.

  Crystalline rock slabs comprised the ground beneath my feet. Greyish, rounded stones lay half embedded in the crystal here and there. Surprisingly, a few feet away was a chair.

  A chromium-metal chair. And I had last seen it bathed in the blue glow of Degg’s weapon!

  Abruptly a little shimmering light sprang out in empty air beside me. Wonder flooded me as a colorless shadow leaped into existence—the slender shadow of a girl. Then, quite suddenly, I understood what had happened.

  The shadow grew thick. It became three-dimensional; real. It was Jan Kenworthy, her eyes wide, staring at me in bewilderment.

  I moved closer, took her hands in mine. The touch of warm, living flesh reassured her. She clung to me for a moment; then her glance swept around this strange world of grey mist.

  “DON’T be frightened,” I said. “We’re still alive. Degg’s guess was wrong.”

  She shivered. Then she drew away from me, eyeing the chair. I smiled.

  “Sit down. Go ahead; make sure it’s real. It was thoughtful of Degg to provide the chair for us.”

  She sank down gratefully. I didn’t know how long she had been standing chained to the wall in Degg’s laboratory.

  “Falcon,” she said, “we’re not annihilated.” As though she couldn’t believe it.

  “Degg saw his subjects vanish as their vibration was speeded up,” I told her. “And it’s quite true that they were annihilated—from Degg’s viewpoint. But what’s to prevent another world, coexistent with our earth, lying on the same space-plane but separated by a difference in vibration?”

  She frowned. “I don’t quite—”

  “Well, a world whose atoms vibrate much faster than earthly atoms—the world we’re in now, apparently. Invisible to earthly eyes, just as a tuning-fork is partially invisible when it’s vibrating. The theory isn’t new. Degg simply increased our vibration-rate, and enabled us to perceive this world.”

  “But—it’s the end, isn’t it? We can’t get back.”

  I shrugged. Abruptly there was a movement near by. Something small and dark was approaching through the fog. I reached down to pick up one of the stones that dotted the crystalline soil.

  Involuntarily a surprised oath was jerked from me. My fingers sank into the rock, sank into soft grey pulp that clung to my fingers. Camouflage! Plants or fungi masquerading as stones!

  I stood up to face the visitor. But Jan had already recognized it.

  “It’s a cat,” she said. “But how it got here—”

  “Don’t you remember Degg’s other experiments?” I asked. “He tried out his weapon on dogs and cats. Pr
obably there’ll be a lot of them around here.”

  The cat came closer. The fog above it seemed to thicken. I’d flown blind through many a fog, but never one like that. Jan got up quickly, caught her breath in a little gasp of horror.

  The fog around the cat was cottony, viscid—half solid. It writhed inward. The cat paused, looked up—and was engulfed.

  The cat’s harsh, grating scream ripped out horribly. Through whirling fog I saw the little creature lifted, and the greyness closed in—hungrily. Little crimson drops spattered.

  Jan was very white. “Falcon,” she whispered, what sort of world is this? Maybe it would have been better if Degg had had his way.”

  “Don’t say that, Jan,” I said, tonelessly. “We’re still alive—”

  “But for how long?”

  I had no answer. I picked up the metal chair. It was a light but serviceable weapon.

  “We’d better stay here till the fog lifts,” I told the girl.

  “Will it lift?” she said. “That’s not ordinary fog.”

  It wasn’t. It reminded me horribly of amoebas I’d seen under microscopes. Half-solid, capable of coalescing to capture its victims and devour them.

  “The chair and the cat were the only earthly things waiting for us,” I said, after awhile. “Degg must have used his blue ray on plenty of other things. What happened to them?”

  “This fog-thing may have—” She didn’t finish.

  “I doubt it. Living things, yes. But not indigestible objects.” I broke off, sorry I had spoken.

  WE had been in a little circle clear of the strange fog. Now it was narrowing, the greyness closing in.

  The fog seemed to rush in and overwhelm us, choking us with its thick greasiness. It was like being engulfed by a giant amoeba, feeling moist tendrils and folds pressing down with fearful force. My chair whirled through the air. But it was like battling under water; and ever the horrible thing pressed heavier and heavier upon us.