This was a matter again calling for a considerable amount of concentration and over a year of work, but finally Exodus mastered it and was reasonably sure that once he placed himself within the deep sleep he would be aroused within a few hours of the electronic brain releasing its hold upon the control switchboard. By this manner, then, he could skip the hundreds of years that still intervened before the end of the journey and still be sure of awakening in time.
With methodical calm he went to work to make his final arrangements, locking everything up in all directions, though for what reason he did not really know, unless it was that he was taking precautions against the possibility of the ship again colliding with something, which would mean that if the various articles were locked up they would not be scattered in all directions.
Whether or not he himself would be awakened if such an alarm arose he did not know: that was the unknown risk he had to take. Perhaps in putting himself to sleep he might also be putting himself to death—he just had to accept this as one of the unpredictable elements.
So finally he settled down on the airbed and switched on the thermostatic controls, afterwards composing himself for the gradual descent into the deep sleep that would inevitably follow. Everything worked exactly as he had planned it would, and there was no painful sensation in his gradual descent into drowsiness, and finally sleep.
Indeed it was no more unusual in its development than the normal transition from the waking to the sleeping world. It seemed to him distinctly strange that at one moment he could feel himself sliding into unconsciousness and the next he seemed to be awakening again.
In between there appeared to be no gap, no consciousness of dreaming. No sensation, no anything. It even made him wonder if the apparatus had failed in any way and if he had come back to consciousness. Then when he glanced up at the subsidiary time clock on the wall and saw that the liquid crystal display showed that the thousand-year deadline had been reached, he knew that he had indeed slept over the hundreds of years and that this was the awakening as he had planned it
The moment had arrived evidently when the electronic brain was at last going to release the switchboard and make the vessel governable.
Exodus struggled up from the bed and by degrees managed to get enough strength together to open the clamped door and stumble outside into the long passageway. Still extremely dazed, and remarking to himself on the incredible amount of dust that had collected upon everything in the interval, he made his way into the control room. There, before doing anything else, he gave himself a good meal and then gazed at himself in the mirror upon the magnificent wealth of beard he had grown in the interval.
Since his energy expenditure had been so low his beard was not commensurate with having slept for hundreds of years, but nevertheless it was a magnificent crop. In the space of ten minutes, he had entirely rid himself of it and freshened up. Mentally alert, he turned to the switchboard and studied it.
Upon the top of the electronic brain control a red lamp was now glowing, showing that its influence was beginning to wane. Exodus pondered it for a while and then turned to the main porthole giving a start as he beheld the now quite near Alpha Centauri.
It loomed as a titanic blinding star whilst close beside it was the smaller Proxima so close to the main giant that it appeared to be almost part of it. The stupendous journey across the light years was nearly at an end and the moment was not far distant when Exodus could at last put his plans into action.
There was nothing that he could do now except wait for the electronic brain to give up its control of the switchboard, so he sat down and prepared as best he could to compose himself for that supreme moment.
Silently he reviewed the position to himself, thinking back over the years to the plans he had made before putting himself in the deep sleep.
Yet here was the strange thing. When it came to the time when he ought to remember what it was he ought to do, and in what order he ought to do them, he found himself mentally stumbling. As far as he could recall he must wait for the electronic brain to release the switchboard, then he must switch on the power plant, and then after that he must adjust the controls of the space machine so that.... So that, what?
He put finger and thumb to his eyes and frowned, endeavouring to try and recall the exact scheme that he had in mind, and the trouble was that he had not made any notes, so supremely confident had he been about having everything perfectly clear in his mind.
The cosmic ray generators? Had there been something that he was going to do with them? No, it couldn’t have been the generators which came next on the list for he would be able to absorb the necessary cosmic radiation at any time on the journey back to Earth. It did not need to be done now.
What then was it that he had been going to do? He sat scowling, pondering and thinking, until a sudden sharp click and a whirring note made him glance up quickly. The red light on the electronic brain was now glowing with full vigour. At the same moment he beheld the controls on the switchboard jumping and leaping as though controlled by invisible hands.
With a cry of delight he hurried across to them and found each one entirely manageable under his grasp. The machine was free at last for him to do with exactly as he wished.
“This is the moment!” he breathed, his eyes bright. “For a thousand years I have waited for this second. What would you not do now, mother, were you here?”
He reached out his right hand for the main switch of the power plant and drove it home. Immediately the long silent power plant took up the load and then with automatic easy stages began to increase the power with every second. Exodus waited, his eyes on the meters, holding back until the moment when the voltage would be at absolute maximum and he could transfer it to the firing jets of the spaceship.
In between times he glanced out of the window at the colossal blazing bulk of Alpha Centauri and began to wonder anxiously if the voltage would build up quickly enough to enable him to turn the vessel aside in its still hurtling onrush.
If only he could remember what it was he was going to do before starting back on his journey to Earth. He knew that something in the plan had referred to the forward jets of the machine instead of the rear ones and yet….
Yes, of course, that was it! He must use the forward jets before the rear ones so that the recoiling power would thrust him away from Alpha Centauri instead of towards it. If he left the rear ones in full commission his sudden onward surge would force the vessel straight towards that mighty field of gravitation being generated by colossal Alpha.
In that case then it meant a quick reversal in the matter of the switches he was just about to operate. He reached out towards the maze of controls then hesitated again.
For the second time his memory was a complete blank upon which controls he ought to move. This business of memory-slipping was troubling him considerably. He had noticed it quite a deal before descending into the deep sleep and now that he had recovered from it the fault seemed to be even more apparent. Which was the switch that he ought to pull? For the life of him he could not remember!
If it came to that why did he need to return to Earth at all? Looking dazedly out of the window he could see that there were quite a few planets revolving around Alpha at respectable distances, and since many of them had cloud belts he assumed that they had an atmosphere. Whether it was of the type that would suit his form of life he did not know.
Yes, why was he returning to Earth? Here again was the insidious, baffling problem! He had completely forgotten why all this immense expenditure of energy was to be used. The scheme of vengeance upon which he had been engaged for so many years, towards which every one of his energies and mental capabilities had been directed, had vanished from his mind like mist.
He was a man alone in the void and did not know why, was even finding it difficult to realise why he was in the void alone at all.
And being in this condition, with his memory slipping he could not possibly conceive the reason for his peculiar ment
al blackout. It was in truth the effect of the incessant saturations of cosmic rays that he had absorbed while building his mighty generators for the cause of vengeance.
Far too often had he ignored the immense danger of the position in which he had stood, and instead of mortifying his flesh the cosmic radiations had affected his brain insofar that the powers of memory and remembrance were being totally destroyed.
So Exodus sat at the switchboard, his lower lip beginning to form an imbecilic droop, and his eyes dark pools of wonder as he strove frantically to piece together the missing places in his memory.
He was little more than a scientific god with amnesia. He no longer knew the why or the wherefore. Then a subconscious stirring gave him a brief instant of clarity and he remembered that he had a lever to pull.
He pulled it just at the moment that the atomic power plant reached absolute peak voltage—and that was where he made his mistake. Instead of giving the power to the frontal rockets he had given it to the rear rockets, and with a mighty jolt the space machine suddenly darted off in a direction diagonal to that in which he had been travelling.
This diagonal thrust immediately carried it in the direction of Alpha Centauri and the incredible effulgence of that mighty star blazed through the front window as Exodus turned in horror and closed his eyes against the fiendish glare.
He closed them only for a moment and then jumped to his feet beating his massive fist against the edge of the control board.
“What is it that I have to remember? What am I doing here? I am here for a purpose but I cannot remember what it is! I have been flung out into this mighty void and I do not know why! What kind of a fool am I that I cannot recall a single iota of the plan which I had in mind...?”
He waited, feeling that perhaps some miracle would grant him sufficient clarity of mind, if only for a moment, to understand the portent of the situation in which he stood. But no such miracle was granted: if anything the obfuscation of his mind deepened even more and became a dark sombre pool in which not a single recollection stirred.
The great control room of the space machine was still filled with that great drowning tide of brilliance. He could feel himself being dragged down to the floor under the incessantly accelerating force of the space machine and the stupendous drag of Alpha itself.
He was forced to his knees. He could only see the mighty bulk of Alpha ahead of him. He had not even the wit nor the sense to realise that the space machine was now irresistibly chained by that stupendous gravitation and no power in the universe could save that great liner from being devoured forever in that liquid hell of flame and fire....
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
British writer John Russell Fearn was born near Manchester, England, in 1908. As a child he devoured the science fiction of Wells and Verne, and was a voracious reader of the Boys’ Story Papers. He was also fascinated by the cinema, and first broke into print in 1931 with a series of articles in Film Weekly.
He then quickly sold his first novel, The Intelligence Gigantic, to the American magazine, Amazing Stories. Over the next 15 years, writing under several pseudonyms, Fearn became one of the most prolific contributors to all of the leading US science fiction pulps, including such legendary publications as Astounding Stories, Startling Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, and Weird Tales.
During the late 1940s he diversified into writing novels for the UK market, and also created his famous superwoman character, The Golden Amazon, for the prestigious Canadian magazine, the Toronto Star Weekly. In the early 1950s in the UK, his 52 novels as “Vargo Statten” were bestsellers, most notably his novelization of the film, Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Apart from science fiction, he had equal success with westerns, romances, and detective fiction, writing an amazing total of 180 novels—most of them in a period of just 10 years—before his early death in 1960. His work has been translated into nine languages, and continues to be reprinted and read worldwide.
ALSO BY JOHN RUSSELL FEARN
1,000-Year Voyage: A Science Fiction Novel
Here and Now: A Science Fiction Novel
1,000-Year Voyage Page 13
