Inevitably there were times, as the months spread into years and Merva still waited her chance, when the children were old enough to ask questions concerning their strange environment. This was the very thing that Randos had predicted, but Rigilus was well ready for it. Still keeping to the promise he had made and securing beforehand Merva’s assent, he told the children the story of a vast exploration into the far deeps of space from the Mother World and said nothing whatever about the banishment which was the cause of it, or the plan of vengeance which must one day be brought to maturity….
And still the years passed on and the children grew. They were all brightly intelligent offspring, carefully educated in the arts of science by their doting parents and indeed having lavished upon them a great deal more attention than any normal children because there was nothing much else for their parents to do.
Rigilus and Merva’s own child grew up alongside them, showing signs early of becoming tall and massive like his father, with a great deal of his majestic bearing, but having also the coldly individual indifference which was his mother’s outstanding characteristic. Rigilus had little chance to converse or direct the mind of his own son: Merva always took the issues straight out of his hands, spending many hours inculcating into that pliable young mind the urgency and the need for revenge upon the successors of those who had brought about this banishment into the deeps of space.
As yet the boy, who had been given the unusual name of Exodus, was hardly able to take in the invective and venom which his mother poured into his mind, but she knew quite well what she was doing and she knew too, that as the mind gradually developed it would absorb and mature itself upon the facts which she had given. She hoped that when Exodus reached manhood he would be the living symbol of vengeance and would bring to bear all the scientific knowledge that had been given him upon the problem of revenge....
And still the years passed and the machine flew onwards with the same resistless, unchanging velocity.
Then at last came the day when Merva acted. She had by this time so satisfied the other members of the spaceship’s community that she was entirely sympathetic towards their children that she had no difficulty in gathering them all about her with the apparent intention of taking them into the solarium to unfold to them one of those wildly imaginative stories for which she was remarkable.
Rigilus knew exactly what she intended doing but had no power whatever to stop her—or if he had he did not choose to use it. He had by this time come to realise only too clearly that his wife was entirely the dominant factor in their union. All he could do was to go to the laboratory at her summons and there he found her with the three boys and the three girls grouped around her and the throbbing energy of the life-energy machine already in operation.
“You intend then to carry it through?” he asked her briefly.
“Certainly I do, and shut and lock the door,” she commanded.
He obeyed and came over to her, surveying the six innocent-eyed children with a certain air of resignation.
“Somehow,” he said, heavily, “it seems a difficult thing now to use the young and hopeful lives in the furtherance of a scheme of vengeance. We are mature and full of hates and bitterness: these children are young and have the virtue of absolute innocence. Can you find it in your heart Merva, to still carry out the plan which you devised so many years ago?”
“Can I find it in my heart?” she repeated, gazing at him blankly with her green eyes. “What do you think I’ve been doing these past five years? I have been waiting, waiting, waiting! Longing for the day when I could ay last use the energy of these children to restore to me the energy and mental power, which is already beginning to show signs of waning.
“Do you know, Rigilus, I looked at myself in the mirror this morning and, just for a moment I could see the lines of time beginning to appear clearly upon my face and that was what prompted me to get the experiment under way before the chisel has the chance to dig any deeper. I cannot understand why you should even question the moves we are about to make. You seem to have forgotten that the idea was originally yours—”
“The idea of vengeance, yes,” Rigilus interrupted. “But this ghastly scheme of trying to absorb the life energy of children was yours. I did not agree with it then and I do not agree with it now and if I could think of any way of stopping you short of murder. I would. In the years that have passed I have come to realise that nursing a grievance is nothing but slow destruction of the mind. It becomes even more pointless when one is most unlikely to see the result of one’s planning.”
Merva sighed. “From that I gather that you still do not realise that if we can get enough life-energy from these children you and I can go on through the years and see the plan come to a successful conclusion.”
Rigilus sighed. “Space travelling so consistently has changed all that for me. The plan of revenge no longer interests me.”
“In which case it is left for me to deal with,” Merva said harshly, “and deal with it I shall!”
Turning aside she quickly ushered the wondering children forward until they were within range of the life-energy apparatus. Rigilus stood watching them in sad silence, trying meanwhile to make up his mind what he ought to do.
Merva ignored his deep meditation, switched on the apparatus, and then busied herself with the various control knobs. From long experience and numerous tests, which of course had not been made on any living beings, she knew the exact area of the machine’s influence, which meant that the six children now standing before it would come directly within its baleful radius.
There was no time for Rigilus to decide what he must do for within a matter of moments the children had been absorbed in the instrument’s strange power. The effect was exactly as Rigilus had once foreseen and which he felt sure Merva herself must have known would happen. The children simply dropped as though struck down with an invisible ray. They themselves had the experience of finding every vestige of their strength drained from them, the result of which was to stop the action of their hearts completely.
Not that this interested Merva: her eyes were fixed on the input dials of the instrument and at length she turned sharply towards where Rigilus was gazing in aghast silence at the six small bodies sprawled upon the metal floor.
“Look, Rigilus. A hundred per cent intake of energy,” Merva exclaimed gripping his arm. “Every detail that we worked out has proved itself to be correct. There is enough energy stored here if used gradually over the years to give us life as prolonged as we can possibly wish.” Merva looked at Rigilus intently as he hardly seemed to note what she was saying. Then suddenly her voice rose almost to an hysterical shout. “Don’t you realise what I am saying, Rigilus? We have enough power here to—”
“Yes, yes, I heard you,” Rigilus said, irritably, looking up at her. “And what of these children who have been destroyed in order that this destruction of old age might be accomplished? How are you going to explain that to their parents?”
She smiled bitterly. “You are going to explain that, Rigilus. I have every bit of it worked out, and in case you wonder what I mean it as simple as this….”
Before Rigilus could grasp what she had meant she suddenly swung to the instrument next to the life-energy machine and snapped on the control button. Rigilus had split seconds to understand what the second machine was. He had seen Merva constructing it at intervals through the years but had assumed, quite naturally, that it was intended as a protective mechanism, if the other members of the ship’s colony showed signs of becoming dangerous. Certainly he had never suspected that it would be used against himself.
It was fashioned after the shape of a projector and emanated atomic vibration to the extent that it was capable of destroying the molecular structure of the flesh and bone. It could also destroy inorganic matter completely as Rigilus had already seen during past experiments. These were the only things he had time to remember then, her cruel face the picture of venom, Merva swung the lensed front of the in
strument straight at him and pressed the button. Rigilus never knew what hit him. He was conscious of a brief and thundering pain that cascaded into total whirling darkness and his immense body crashed heavily to the floor.
Merva looked down at him but she did not switch the machine off; instead she raced to the door of the laboratory, yanked it open and called hoarsely down the long corridor.
“Come quickly, all of you! Quickly! Something terrible has happened!”
It was only a matter of moments before the men and women of the community came hurrying down the narrow vista in response to her cry, to finally come upon her in the laboratory to find her staring in horror at the fallen figure of Rigilus and the six children lying around him.
“What happened, Merva?” one of the men demanded, gripping her arm and shaking her.
Merva was the complete actress when she wanted. She merely looked at the man dazedly as though she were too horror-stricken to find words to express herself. Then she pointed to the fallen figures upon the floor. By this time the parents of the children were gathering up their respective offspring in their arms and there arose in the still quiet of the enormous space the grief-stricken cries of the womenfolk and the bitter murmurings of the men.
“What happened?” demanded the man again, who was holding Merva.
At this she pulled herself free from his grip and moved to the atomic machine and switched it off. Then she turned and faced the men and women, looking at them fixedly.
“It was Rigilus,” she said, in her low voice. “He must have been planning this moment for a long time. I brought the children in here intending to tell them a story as I have done for so many years when Rigilus suddenly came in and said he had an electrical experiment which he thought would entertain them. Before I could grasp what had happened he had projected this instrument at the children and it instantly killed them. I think that it was an accident for realising what he had done, he raced forward to examine them and himself came within range of the instrument and was stricken down even as they had been. Then I called for you....”
The men and women said nothing. With their various children in their arms they stood looking at Merva and she gazed back at them. She was still maintaining her act, her heavy bosom rising and falling emotionally as though she were struggling to get a grip of herself.
“I notice,” one of the men remarked, glancing about him, “that your son Exodus is not here, Merva. Why was he not to be included in the telling of the story? As far as I can remember he has always been present when the other children have been. What was the merciful providence that saved him on this particular occasion?”
“He is busy studying,” Merva replied. “It was just chance that he happened to be away, and needless to say I thank the Cosmos that he was. You must realise that the whole thing was an accident,” she insisted. “What possible reason could Rigilus have had for wanting to kill these children of yours? Even more important, what possible reason could he have had for wanting to kill himself? The very nature of the tragedy shows that it was nothing else but mischance.”
“I would like to believe that,” one of the women said, holding her dead child close to her, “but for some reason I cannot. I have never felt particularly sanguine about you Merva. I have always felt that it was not Rigilus who ruled you but you who ruled Rigilus, and most certainly I cannot overlook the most extraordinary coincidence that saved your son Exodus from destruction when our children have perished.”
The artificial look of terror suddenly vanished from Merva’s face and she stood erect, coldly challenging.
“Do you dare to accuse me of having arranged this?” she demanded. “Have you the effrontery to accuse me?”
“I am not accusing anybody.” the woman retorted, “I am merely remarking the coincidence. At the moment there is nothing that we can do but accept your word for it but I am sure you will not mind if we question Exodus as to why he was not among these children of ours when the disaster happened?”
“I’ll permit you to do no such thing,” Merva snapped. “I have given you my word and it is for you to accept it. I do not intend to stand here and be accused as the perpetrator of the tragedy that was brought about entirely by an unhappy accident. Naturally my condolences are with you—and don’t forget that there is a considerable amount of bereavement attached to me also. Observe my husband lying there as dead as your children.”
One of the other women, the limp form of her child in her arms, smiled bitterly. “I do not observe Merva, that your bereavement has touched you very deeply,” she commented. “At first I was inclined to believe that your grief was genuine: now I have my doubts.”
Merva waited for the next, her face set in hard lines, but none of the men and women in the assembly said anything further. Instead they looked at each other and then with a silent exchange of nods they went silently from the laboratory bearing their young dead with them.
Merva watched the door close silently behind them and afterwards stood for several moments in deep thought. Finally she looked down at the sprawled body of Rigilus and then she came to her decision. Certainly there was no room for a corpse aboard the space liner so inevitably the body of Rigilus would have to be treated to the same fate as had the body of Randos—but on this occasion Merva would have to do the task herself. Accordingly she crossed quickly to the laboratory door, opened it, then returned to where Rigilus was lying and began to drag him across the floor, a task which required considerable effort, for he was a big, heavy man. Knowing she could not call on any help from the others she continued with her task by easy stages until at last she had brought Rigilus’ corpse to the every edge of the emergency trap which lay in the floor of the central corridor.
After that the rest was comparatively simple. Pressure on a button shot the trap in the floor to one side and a little manoeuvring dropped Rigilus’ body into the cavity beneath. The moving of a second button closed the upper trap and opened the lower one, dropping the corpse into the frigid deeps of interstellar space.
Inevitably the corpse would constantly trail in the wake of the ship, chained by its mass gravity, nor was there any guarantee as to which exact position it would take up. Merva did not know, or care, whether the corpse would follow in the rear of the vessel, a constant accusing ghost, or whether it would follow beneath the machine and thereby be out of sight unless specially looked for. Whatever the possibilities, Rigilus was out of the way and she had gained all the potential energy she needed to produce an approach to near eternal life. Certainly enough energy to last a thousand years.
Smiling tautly to herself she continued along the corridor until she reached the chamber where she had left Exodus. She half expected to find him being questioned by other members of the party but this did not prove to be the case. He was seated on the ledge beneath the big porthole gazing out with a child’s wonder on to the everlasting deeps.
In a moment or two his mother had crossed the room and seated herself at his side. She caught his hands possessively.
“Now you listen to me, Exodus,” she said deliberately fixing her eyes upon him, “no matter what anybody else in the ship may say to you, no matter what questions they may ask you, you are to say that I told you to remain in here and study your books—until I returned to you. You understand me?”
“Yes, mother,” Exodus answered simply. A child already well ahead of normal development, thanks to the high-pressure education which had been given to him almost since the first moment he had been able to comprehend his surroundings.
“If you do not do exactly as I have told you, you will make me very angry,” Merva added, “and you know already, Exodus, what I am like when my anger is aroused.”
“Yes mother,” the child answered, again in the same voice, then turned his somewhat sad green eyes back to the void and contemplated the stars.
Merva looked at him searchingly for a moment, and then finally, satisfied that he would do exactly as she had ordered, she turned and left him, going b
ack to the laboratory. Once here she made a careful examination of the life-energy apparatus and her original high hopes were more than confirmed as she came to study the input meters. There was no doubt that the absorption of energy from the six young children had produced a one hundred per cent current upon which she could draw as and when she wished, thereby giving unto herself a tide of almost ever-lasting life.
“And,” she mused, surveying the instrument, “there is no better time to start than now. Fortunately for me none of these other fools are clever enough to understand the meaning of this apparatus, otherwise they would begin to realise as the years pass and I grow no older, the real purpose of this machine and the cause of the death of their children.”
Wasting no more time she connected the wrist electrodes to herself and then switched on the output meter at its lowest current. She could feel her body throbbing and trembling in every nerve and fibre as the stored up energy passed into her. It produced almost instantly a feeling of extreme elation, of exhilaration, and of vast well being.
It was like a heady wine yet possessing none of the after effects. The current she was absorbing now would mingle with her own energy and restore to her much of the vigour and freshness of youth of which the years had inevitably robbed her. In no way could this energy make her appear again as a girl in her teens—but it did mean that she would apparently remain at her present age for as many years as she chose.
At length she was satisfied with the amount of current that she had given herself and switched the machine off.
Before leaving it, however, she removed from it one of the most vital connecting bars so that by no possible means could any of the other members of the ship, if their suspicions carried them that far, cause the energy to be lost.
1,000-Year Voyage Page 5
