The Murray Leinster Megapack

by Murray Leinster

  At the end of a week he found the vault slowly settling back into place. When its return to the normal was complete he dared begin boring a hole to reach the hollow tube in the concrete pile.

  As he suspected, he found water in the pile—water whose sulfurous and mineral nature confirmed his belief that a geyser reaching deep into the bosom of the earth, as well as far back in the realms of time, was at the bottom of the extraordinary jaunt of the tower.

  Geysers were still far from satisfactory things to explain. There are many of their vagaries which we cannot understand at all. We do know a few things which affect them, and one thing is that “soaping” them will stimulate their flow in an extraordinary manner.

  Arthur proposed to “soap” this mysterious geyser when the renewal of its flow should lift the runaway sky-scraper back to the epoch from which the failure of the flow had caused it to fall.

  He made his preparations with great care. He confidently expected his plan to work, and to see the sky-scraper once more towering over mid-town New York as was its wont, but he did not allow the fishermen and hunters to relax their efforts on that account. They labored as before, while deep down in the sub-basement of the colossal building Arthur and his volunteers toiled mightily.

  They had to bore through the concrete pile until they reached the hollow within it. Then, when the evidence gained from the water in the pipe had confirmed his surmises, they had to prepare their “charge” of soapy liquids by which the geyser was to be stirred to renewed activity.

  Great quantities of the soap used by the scrubwomen in scrubbing down the floors was boiled with water until a sirupy mess was evolved. Means had then to be provided by which this could be quickly introduced into the hollow pile, the hole then closed, and then braced to withstand a pressure unparalleled in hydraulic science. Arthur believed that from the hollow pile the soapy liquid would find its way to the geyser proper, where it would take effect in stimulating the lessened flow to its former proportions. When that took place he believed that the building would return as swiftly and as surely as it had left them to normal, modern times.

  The telephone rang in his office, and Estelle answered it. Arthur was on the wire. A signal was being hung out for all the castaway to return to the building from their several occupations. They were about to soap the geyser.

  Did Estelle want to come down and watch? She did! She stood in the main hallway as the excited and hopeful people trooped in. When the last was inside the doors were firmly closed. The few friendly Indians outside stared perplexedly at the mysterious white strangers.

  The whites, laughing excitedly, began to wave to the Indians. Their leave-taking was premature.

  Estelle took her way down into the cellar. Arthur was awaiting her arrival. Van Deventer stood near, with the grinning, grimy members of Arthur’s volunteer work gang. The massive concrete pile stood in the center of the cellar. A big steam-boiler was coupled to a tiny pipe that led into the heart of the mass of concrete. Arthur was going to force the soapy liquid into the hollow pile by steam.

  At a signal steam began to hiss in the boiler. Live steam from the fire-room forced the soapy sirup out of the boiler, through the small iron pipe, into the hollow that led to the geyser far underground. Six thousand gallons in all were forced into the opening in a space of three minutes.

  Arthur’s grimy gang began to work with desperate haste. Quickly they withdrew the iron pipe and inserted a long steel plug, painfully beaten from a bar of solid metal. Then, girding the colossal concrete pile, ring after ring of metal was slipped on, to hold the plug in place.

  The last of the safeguards was hardly fastened firmly when Estelle listened intently.

  “I hear a rumbling!” she said quietly.

  Arthur reached forward and put his hand on the mass of concrete.

  “It is quivering!” he reported as quietly. “I think we’ll be on our way in a very little while.”

  The group broke for the stairs, to watch the panorama as the runaway sky-scraper made its way back through the thousands of years to the times that had built it for a monument to modern commerce.

  Arthur and Estelle went high up in the tower. From the window of Arthur’s office they looked eagerly, and felt the slight quiver as the tower got under way. Estelle looked up at the sun, and saw it mend its pace toward the west.

  Night fell. The evening sounds became high-pitched and shrill, then seemed to cease altogether.

  In a very little while there was light again, and the sun was speeding across the sky. It sank hastily, and returned almost immediately, via the east. Its pace became a breakneck rush. Down behind the hills and up in the east. Down in the west, up in the east. Down and up—The flickering began. The race back toward modern times had started.

  Arthur and Estelle stood at the window and looked out as the sun rushed more and more rapidly across the sky until it became but a streak of light, shifting first to the right and then to the left as the seasons passed in their turn.

  With Arthur’s arms about her shoulders, Estelle stared out across the unbelievable landscape, while the nights and days, the winters and summers, and the storms and calms of a thousand years swept past them into the irrevocable past.

  Presently Arthur drew her to him and kissed her. While he kissed her, so swiftly did the days and years flee by, three generations were born, grew and begot children, and died again!

  Estelle, held fast in Arthur’s arms, thought nothing of such trivial things. She put her arms about his neck and kissed him, while the years passed them unheeded.

  * * * *

  Of course you know that the building landed safely, in the exact hour, minute, and second from which it started, so that when the frightened and excited people poured out of it to stand in Madison Square and feel that the world was once more right side up, their hilarious and incomprehensible conduct made such of the world as was passing by think a contagious madness had broken out.

  Days passed before the story of the two thousand was believed, but at last it was accepted as truth, and eminent scientists studied the matter exhaustively.

  There has been one rather queer result of the journey of the runaway sky-scraper. A certain Isidore Eckstein, a dealer in jewelry novelties, whose office was in the tower when it disappeared into the past, has entered suit in the courts of the United States against all the holders of land on Manhattan Island. It seems that during the two weeks in which the tower rested in the wilderness he traded independently with one of the Indian chiefs, and in exchange for two near-pearl necklaces, sixteen finger-rings, and one dollar in money, received a title-deed to the entire island.—He claims that his deed is a conveyance made previous to all other sales whatever.

  Strictly speaking, he is undoubtedly right, as his deed was signed before the discovery of America. The courts, however, are deliberating the question with a great deal of perplexity.

  Eckstein is quite confident that in the end his claim will be allowed and he will be admitted as the sole owner of real-estate on Manhattan Island, with all occupiers of buildings and territory paying him ground rent at a rate he will fix himself. In the mean time, though the foundations are being reinforced so the catastrophe cannot occur again, his entire office is packed full of articles suitable for trading with the Indians. If the tower makes another trip back through time, Eckstein hopes to become a landholder of some importance.

  No less than eighty-seven books have been written by members of the memorable two thousand in description of their trip to the hinterland of time, but Arthur, who could write more intelligently about the matter than any one else, is so extremely busy that he cannot bother with such things. He has two very important matters to look after. One is, of course, the reenforcement of the foundations of the building so that a repetition of the catastrophe cannot occur, and the other is to convince his wife—who is Estelle, naturally—that she is the most adorable person in the universe. He finds the latter task the more difficult, because she insists that he is t
he most adorable person—

  A THOUSAND DEGREES BELOW ZERO (1919)

  CHAPTER I.

  From some point far overhead a musical humming became audible. It was not the rasping roar of an aeroplane motor, but a deep, truly melo­dious note that seemed to grow rapidly in volume. The soft-voiced conversa­tions on the upper deck were hushed. Everyone listened to the strange sound from above. It grew and became clear and distinct. The source seemed to come nearer. At last the sound came from a spot directly overhead, then passed over and toward the Narrows.

  A cold breeze beat down suddenly. It was not a cool sea breeze, but a cur­rent of air coming down from directly above the Coney Island steamer. It was actively, actually cold. A chorus of exclamations arose, full of the wit of the American a-holidaying.

  “Br-r-r-r! I feel a draft!”

  “Say, Min, are you givin’ me the cold shoulder?”

  “Sadie, d’you want to borrow all of my coat or only the sleeve?”

  And one young man caused a ripple of laughter by remarking.

  “Feels like my mother-in-law was around somewhere.”

  People hastened to put on such wraps as they had with them. On the lower decks there arose a sound of tired voices, saying with variations only in the names:

  “Johnnie, button up your coat. It’s getting cold.”

  The cold wave lasted only for a few moments, however. As the steamer forged ahead the strata of cold air seemed to be left behind, and the hum­ming sound grew fainter. If the pas­sengers on the boat had listened, they might have heard a faint splash in the water behind them, but as it was the sound went unnoticed. The humming died away. The boat went on and docked, and the passengers dispersed to their homes. Everyone of them woke the next morning to find himself or herself locally celebrated.

  Half an hour after the Coney Island boat had docked a tramp steamer was nosing her way out of the Narrows. She was traveling at half speed, the air was clear, the channel was well buoyed, and there seemed no possibility of any harm or danger befalling her. The lookout leaned over the bow negligently, watching and listening to the indignant interchange of whistle signals between two small tugs in a dispute over the right of way. He dropped his eyes and stiffened, then turned toward the pilothouse and shouted frantically, but too late. The shout had hardly left his lips before there was a shock and grinding sound, mingled with the raucous shriek of rent and tormented iron plates. The tramp steamer shuddered and stopped, and began to sink a trifle by the head. At the first intimation of danger the man on the bridge had ordered the watertight doors closed, and now he rang for full speed astern. The tramp swung free of the unknown obstruc­tion, but the two bow compartments were flooded and the steamer’s stern was lifted until the propeller thrashed helplessly in a useless mixture of air and water. Her whistle bellowed an appeal for help. “Want immediate assistance!”

  Half a dozen tugs, including the two that had been quarreling by whistle, responded to the stricken steamer’s call. Their small sirens sent cheery messages promising instant aid, and they began to tear across the water toward her. One tug reached the helpless vessel’s side. A second rushed up and began to pull the unwieldy tramp away from the unknown obstacle. The lights of a third could be seen very near, when there was a crash and a frantic bellow from the tug. It also had struck the obstruction against which the tramp had run. The tramp bellowed anew.

  A destroyer shot down the river with a searchlight unshipped, her crew standing by to rescue any persons who could be reached by lifeboats. She swung up and saw the tramp being hauled and pulled at by busy, puffing tugs. The long pencil of light danced over the surface of the water to find the derelict or wreck that had caused the trouble. Back and forth it swept, and then stopped with a jerk as if the operator could not believe his eyes.

  Floating soggily in the water of New York harbor in late August—the hot­test time of the year—a wide cake of ice lay glistening under the searchlight rays! The harbor waves ran up to the edge of the ice cake and stopped. Be­yond their stopping point the surface was still and glassy. The cake floated heavily in the water and showed no sign of cracks or fissures. It was evi­dently of considerable thickness.

  A second searchlight reinforced the first. The two white beams moved back and forth, incredulously examin­ing the expanse of ice. It was hundreds of yards across. At last one of the beams passed something at the center of the cake and hastily returned to the thing it had seen. Rising calmly and quietly from what seemed to be a small crater at the center of the ice cake, a plume of steam floated placidly into the air. It was a huge plume, precisely like the flowing of a white ostrich feather, rising from a small orifice in the center of the mass of frozen seawater.

  A wail from the siren of the tug that had run against the ice cake caused the searchlights to turn in its direction. The engine had ceased to run and a cloud of escaping steam was pouring from the tug’s funnel. Men on the deck gesticulated frantically. The de­stroyer ran as close as the commander dared, and he shouted through a mega­phone. It was impossible to distinguish words in the confused shouts that came back from half a dozen throats at once, but the searchlights soon showed the cause of the excitement. The men on the tug pointed over the side. The small harbor waves rolled uncon­cernedly up to a point some twenty feet from the stern of the tug, but there they stopped abruptly. The tug had become enclosed in the ice floe. As those on the destroyer watched, the twenty feet became thirty and the thirty forty. The ice cake was increasing in size with amazing rapidity.

  A boat put off from the destroyer, and the commander shouted to the crew of the tug to take to the ice. There was a moment’s hesitation, and then they jumped over the side and ran to the edge of the floe. The life­boat touched the edge and was instantly frozen fast, but the sailors managed to break it free again by Herculean efforts. It went back to the destroyer, whose wireless almost instantly began to crackle. Two other destroyers dashed down from the Brooklyn. Navy Yard and turned their searchlights on the strange visitor in the harbor. The sem­aphore of the first destroyer on the scene began to flash, and the three lean naval craft began to circle around the huge ice cake, warning away all other craft and constantly measuring and re-measuring the size of the mass of ice. One of the destroyers at last slipped outside the Narrows and stayed there, patrolling back and forth to keep other vessels from running foul of the strange and as yet inexplicable phe­nomenon.

  By daybreak the Battery was a black mass of people. They looked eagerly toward the Narrows, but could see nothing but a wall of mist, from which the gray shape of a destroyer now and then emerged. High in the air, how­ever, the plume of steam was visible. It was now more than a thousand feet high and was dense and white. The first rays of the sun had gilded the top, while the ground below was still dim and dark, but now it rose in calm and quietness to an unprecedented height, mystifying the people who looked at it and causing a sudden si­lence to fall upon them all. A warm, moist sea breeze had blown in from the ocean during the night and had been changed to fog as it passed over the expanse of ice, so that the ice itself was hidden from view, but the tall plume of steam told of some mysteri­ous menace to humanity that the crowd assembled at the Battery feared with­out understanding.

  As the mass of people watched the supremely calm column of steam rising high in the air of that August morning, newsboys began to circulate among them, their strident cries sounding strangely among the silent multitude. The Narrows were frozen solidly from shore to shore, and all entrance to and egress from New York harbor was blocked. Small craft could go out be­hind Staten Island through the Kill van Kull, and some vessels could use the other channel which goes from the East River into the Sound, but the great Ambrose Channel—one-third the size of the Panama Canal—and the broad opening that made New York the great­est port on the Atlantic coast was closed. The growth of the ice cake had greatly lessened, so that it could be predicted that it would not expand far beyond its present size, but its ori­gin and the means by which it r
esisted the disintegrating effect of the August warmth were utterly unknown. The cause of the plume of steam from the center of the ice cake was an unfath­omable mystery.

  Suddenly, from the empty sky, there came a deep, musical humming. In­stinctively people looked up. The hum­ming grew louder and more distinct, while curious eyes swept the sky.

  Then a black speck appeared below one of the fleecy white clouds and dropped toward the earth. A thousand feet, two thousand feet it fell, then checked and hung steadily in the air. Those who looked with the naked eye could only discern that it seemed like a wingless black splinter suspended above the earth, but those who had glasses saw the whir of dark disks above a black, streamline body. A small cabin was placed amidships, and a misshapen globe hung from chains below. It was still for several min­utes. The passenger or passengers seemed to be inspecting the earth be­low, and particularly the ice cake, with deliberation and care. Then it began to rise with the same deliberation and certainty, swung around, and sped off with incredible speed toward the north­east. The humming sound grew fainter and died away, but the crowd standing on the Battery began to murmur with a nameless sense of fear.

  CHAPTER II.

  New York was frightened, and the newspapers as they appeared did not allay that fear. The conserv­ative Tribunal ran a scare head:

  HAS THE GLACIAL AGE COME AGAIN?

  and printed underneath a resume of the phenomena up to the time of going to press—which did not include the ap­pearance of the black flyer—with an interview from a prominent scientist. An enterprising reporter had routed the worthy gentleman out of bed and rushed him to the scene of the expand­ing ice cake in a fast motorboat, taking down in shorthand his comments on the matter. The scientist had been much puzzled, but spoke at length nev­ertheless. He said in part: