John Russell Fearn Omnibus

by John Russell Fearn

  “We’ve got to step on it!” Munro cried in anxiety. “It looks as though the whole continent is slowly going down. If only we have the time to release that safety valve we can still save a greater part of it. Get all you can out of her, Terry!”

  Terry did not answer. He was already hurling the globe at maximum speed between the towers of Manhattan, staring below on streets that had become rivers, at edifices gleaming with the lashing deluge, on numberless windows through which stared countless faces.

  Twisting and turning, he made for the Corporation grounds, beheld them at last with a tumbling lake where the tarmac should have been, the walls standing up in lonely isolation.

  “Guess we’ll have to float,” he snapped out. “Water’s through the walls at last. Stand by for a bump.”

  He brought the ship down with a resounding smacking splash: it reeled wildly, finished on even keel by the weight of its floor engines. A boat started out from the marooned Corporation building, presently gained the vessel’s side. It was Conway’s rain smeared face that appeared in the opened airlock.

  “Been watching for you coming,” he explained. “Why didn’t you radio —?”

  “No time,” interrupted Munro briefly. “How are things going?”

  “Pretty bad. Practically all the western states have subsided under the Pacific, and—Well, I guess we’re isolated here completely, with food fast running low.” He stopped, smiled faintly. “Find anything worthwhile in Africa?”

  “Probably the answer to everything,” Munro responded. “Let’s get across to the building; there’s work to be done. How about the laboratories? Still above water?”

  “Yeah—but I can’t say for how long.”

  Munro climbed purposefully through the airlock, the others following up behind him.

  *

  For days afterwards Munro was a tornado of energy, working now with frantic desperation against time. Fortunately, the laboratories were on the upper floor and, as yet, safe from the flood. The huge self-contained building still provided all the necessities of life, but there was no guarantee how long they would last.

  Terry fretted around in helpless anxiety, watching Munro urging his radio engineers onward in the construction of two projectors—one a small affair no larger than a good sized valise, and the other an almost exact replica of the apparatus he had studied aboard the sunken space ship. Hour by hour coils were wound with precise number of turns, condensers fashioned, banks of tubes arranged, special long storage batteries manufactured.

  Terry wandered from room to room of the building, gazing through the windows onto the surging flood waters, listened over the radio to the events transpiring in other parts of the world. They were reports that carried the news of death and suffering.

  In the United States in particular havoc was abroad. Overflowing rivers and tempest driven seas were twin enemies, sweeping out entire states with ever spreading waters. Farms, outlying districts, villages and cities were all being cut off from one another. Whole cliffs were collapsing, mountains crumbling under the force of incessant earthquakes, dams cracking under the weight of waters and releasing boiling cataracts into valleys below, before which nothing could stand.

  Hour in, hour out, tens of thousands of people were fleeing for whatever safety they could find. America, England, Europe; everywhere it was the same. Doom was fast stalking the bursting, groaning world.

  Deeply though the news moved him, Terry’s thoughts were mainly on the Dallaway mausoleum. Suppose the flood had reached it, had even drowned the girl as she lay in her tomb? That was the thought that anguished his mind. Of course, the mausoleum was on the Dallaway estate outside New York, situated at the top of rising ground. It was just possible that it might so far have escaped.

  For three days he wandered round moodily, then at last Munro burst into the headquarters office, his pale eyes gleaming with satisfaction.

  “All set!” he announced crisply. “It’s been a hell of a job, but we’ve made it. One beam radio projector is fixed right here in the building, can easily be trained and guided so that its waves will affect the machinery in the Sahara. Range is well over seven thousand miles, and that’s ample. The waves of course will affect anything else they impact on the way, but that doesn’t matter since, so far as we know, the Sahara machinery is the only apparatus likely to react to that particular periodicity.

  “Our own set is smaller, and portable. Can’t take any chances: to be dead certain we’ve got to be within inches of Miss Dallaway. Well, are you ready?”

  “Ready and waiting!” Terry followed the scientist eagerly from the office, wrapped himself in oilskins then went down to the waiting motorboat, Dawlish carrying the small transmitter. Conway had stopped behind to release the giant transmitter on the stroke of three o’clock—two hours hence.

  Terry switched on the boat’s engines, sent the craft chugging actively through the streaming, muddy waters. Steadily they went on through the tumult, rain pouring remorselessly into their faces. Once they had left the confines of the flooded Corporation grounds they headed out city by way of the rivers streets, pushed onwards through a natural stormbound Venice across a flooded park, until at last in the somber light of the wild afternoon Terry gave a shout.

  “There, Munro! There’s the hill! Thank God the waters haven’t risen that far yet!”

  The scientist gazed at the rising ground in the near distance, the huge granite mausoleum standing in lonely majesty against the storm sky. Further down the slope, the Dallaway residence was flooded to the upper windows, entirely empty of staff. Trees pushed out forlornly from the racing waters.

  At last the boat grounded but some seconds before that happened Terry was out of it and plunging ankle deep in sloshing mud up the slope, bending against the screaming wind and rain, only stopping in breathless anxiety against the sodden heavy oak doors.

  “They’re locked!” he cried hoarsely, swinging round. “That’s something we didn’t reckon with—The steward’ll have the keys —”

  “Be damned to the steward!” Munro retorted, gazing under his dripping hat.

  “I’m ready for this. Dawlish—the flame gun!”

  “Right, chief!” Dawlish tugged the instrument out of his oilskins and fired it—The lock on the great doors went out in a blast of blue fire.

  Terry strode through the dispersing smoke into the dank, musty interior, tugged his torch out of his pocket and walked with an unconsciously reverent tread between the massive stone sarcophagi grouped around him. He had eyes for only one of them, paused as he came to it and stared at the inscription recording the dates of the birth and death of the girl he loved—Elsa Judith Dallaway.

  “Ready?” Munro asked, coming up with crackling oilskins.

  “Suppose,” Terry whispered, as Dawlish set down the apparatus, “that we’re wrong? That Elsa really did die? I couldn’t bear the sight of …”

  He stopped, stared round the ghostly shadows and shivered a little. The wind howled round the smashed and creaking doors. Through the gray opening yawned the waste of tumbling waters.

  “I get it,” Munro said sympathetically. “We’ll look first. Come on, Dawlish—here we go!”

  They both eased their shoulders under the sarcophagus’ lid. Gradually it began to rise, slid gently to one side under the effort of steady heaving. At last it dropped off the edge with a shattering crash. Terry waited, not daring to look—then he heard Munro’s whispered voice—“By all the saints, she does live! Terry! Look, man!”

  Shaking, he stared into the oblong space. There the girl lay, untouched by the slightest sign of decomposition, her shroud draped on her slender figure, white hands across her breast. The ring caught the light of the torch and blazed enigmatically. In the time that had elapsed there was no trace of decay in that silent, beautiful figure.

  Terry suddenly came to life, looked up quickly.

  “Well, what are we waiting for?” he demanded fiercely. “Let’s get busy with that radio! Come on!�
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  Munro took no offense at the sharp demand. Calmly he took the tarpaulin from the small transmitter, switched on the batteries. Not a sound proceeded from the instrument, but a quivering needle on its dial testified to the surge of power emanating from it.

  Only the scream of the wind disturbed the men in those moments. Munro’s pale eyes never left the instrument; Terry stared in dumb anguish, which turned to slow awe as presently he saw the girl’s eyelashes flicker ever so slightly. A few more minutes and her bosom began to rise and fall gently; she drew in air through parted lips.

  “She’s coming back!” Dawlish breathed tensely. “No doubt of it now!”

  Terry was incapable of speech or movement. He clung to the edge of the sarcophagus with a clutch of iron.

  “Father …”

  It was Elsa herself who spoke, in a tired, faraway voice.

  “Father … Where are you? It’s so suffocating in here …”

  The men glanced at one another. Munro switched off the machine and raised a hand for silence. Rigid, they listened. The girl was not yet conscious, was talking like one rising from anaesthesia.

  “… yes, I know, father. We can take those who believe. But the others; they may try and destroy. They …”

  The girl sighed deeply, was silent for a while—then with a sudden spasmodic effort she started again.

  “Father, why are you so long? The doors—they won’t open. Father—I’m choking! I’m cho —”

  Her voice broke off abruptly and at that same instant her eyes suddenly opened, big gray eyes that stared in utter bewilderment in the reflected glare from the torch as Terry turned it from blazing into her face.

  “What …?” she whispered weakly. “Where—where am I? Who are you …?”

  “Elsa, it’s me—Terry.” He bent down, raised her thinly clad shoulders. Gently he raised her bodily out of the dank tomb and laid her on the blanket Dawlish had brought along. For several minutes she was silent, warmly wrapped up, taking the restorative forced to her lips.

  “Oh—Terry,” she muttered at last. “What—whatever happened? How did I get here … ? I dreamed the most amazing things —”

  “We’ll tell you our story later,” Munro interjected quickly. “The main point at the moment is to get a story from you—if you’re strong enough to tell it, that is?”

  The girl nodded slowly. “I’m getting stronger every minute. What do you want to know?”

  “Well, just before you recovered consciousness you spoke of your ‘father,’ and remarked that you were choking—dying. What did you mean?”

  “I hardly know …” Elsa pondered for a while. “Just a silly dream, I guess,” she said finally. “I had the strangest conviction that I was a girl belonging to a highly scientific race, owning a great city which was being overwhelmed by storms and earthquakes. My father hit on the idea of saving the world and trying to reach Venus at the same time, by sinking a shaft into the earth that had direct contact with the earth’s core. There were rings somewhere; rings like …”

  She stopped, stared at the ring on her finger, looked up sharply into Munro’s face. “Mr. Munro, what’s happened?” she asked sharply.

  “Never mind that for the moment please. What more have you to tell?’

  “Very little; I’m almost forgetting it all now. Oh, yes—I remember! We had everything ready. I was in the space ship, and we were waiting for the few people who were loyal to us to come and join us. They didn’t arrive, so father went out to find them. He locked the doors as he went out in case any of our enemies might try to get at me and destroy the machinery. The doors were, controlled with a radio key, you understand, and could be opened from either inside or outside—but there was only one key, and father had it.

  “I remember I seemed to wait for him an interminable time, so long indeed that the air supply began to give out. I tried to break open the walls that hemmed me in, did all I could to escape … But I failed. I had the idea I was choking —”

  Elsa broke off, shuddered. “It was horrible. The worst dream I have ever known.”

  “Was your name Thensla?” asked Munro very quietly.

  The girl looked up in stunned amazement. “Yes—now I come to remember, it was! But Mr. Munro, how could you possibly —”

  “Listen, my dear …” The scientist leaned forward, laid a lean hand on the girl’s blanketed shoulder. Quietly, with his usual impassivity, he told the whole story, throughout which Elsa sat in motionless silence, too astounded to interrupt. When at last it was over she cried, “Good Heavens, you mean I was actually thought dead? That’s why I’m in this horrible place?”

  “Exactly!”

  “Then—then this Thensla? Was it me? An astral projection or something?”

  “No, nothing like that. You are Thensla, yes, living again. Call it reincarnation, if you wish. We know now, why so many scientific things existed in early times. They had their roots with your race, but the storms scattered your people so much that each succeeding generation of children knew less than their ancestors. One girl alone, after untold generations, was born with a clear memory of the past—almost an actual link—and that girl is you, Elsa.”

  “But—but how? I don’t understand!”

  “Is it so difficult? Science today almost universally accepts the belief that death does not end the entity of an individual. The entity lives on eternally, is manifested again in other bodies, and continues in such a way until, perhaps, it comes back to the starting point—that is if we accept time as a circle.

  “At one period you spoke to Terry of your feeling of detachment from your normal existence. A psychoanalyst would have placed your condition as the influence of events early in this life, or in some other past existence. There are, as we know, many people in the world such as you—who can remember things that have no part in their natural existence, who know of places they have never visited. What else but a memory link with a past state? Which one of us, indeed, has not at some time in his life said—‘I have been here before!’?”

  Munro paused for a moment, and frowned, went on again slowly.

  “The original strain of a past life was so strong in you, my dear, that you even carried your physical appearance across the interval of death. You never had any idea of the real cause of your superficial feelings until certain events repeated themselves. The ring, as I have told you, reacted. The moment you passed into unconsciousness you lost all remembrance of Elsa Dallaway; your mind reverted to a time generations before in another life where the ring had figured so prominently. You described in detail events you had experienced in another form.

  “Freud, for instance, has said that dreams of a fixed design can be induced by stimulating a sleeper to certain sound or sensations. What is false death—your experience—but a particularly vivid dream, wherein all the circumstances exactly matched up to induce in you the memory of a past event?”

  “Now I begin to understand,” the girl whispered slowly. “The memory of myself as Thensla, the memory of a great feat to be accomplished, that had ended in failure, has remained with me through the generations …” She stopped, looked up slowly. “But how did I ever come to get hold of this second ring?” she demanded.

  The scientist shrugged. “That we can never really know—but we can form two guesses. One is that it was originally worn by your father. He left the space ship, never to return—was lost by some unknown cataclysm, killed probably. His ring was found eventually by somebody, and they wore it. So it was handed down through ages upon ages, until at length, it came to you. That is one theory. The other is that if, as Eddington once said, we move in a Time circle, and must eventually repeat certain predominant actions all over again in sequence, the ring was bound by mathematical law to finally reach you and complete the purpose of the events for which it was intended. Not the same ring, of course, but the experiences bound up with it were identical. Call it either chance or unerring inevitability—the fact remains that it did come to you, and by producing
false death, led you back to that other life.

  “Last of all, do not forget that in the interval no man until your father—Douglas Dallaway, that is—found a way to get high enough into the stratosphere in order to allow unmitigated cosmic rays to reach him. At any rate the ring never had cosmic rays upon it until you went up with Terry. From that moment events started to repeat. As is so often said, history repeats itself …”

  He broke off in sudden alarm and glanced round anxiously at a sudden violent shaking of the mausoleum. A distinct ripple went through the ground; loose chunks of masonry came clattering down. The wind seemed to scream the louder for a split second.

  “Nothing to worry about,” Munro said briefly, glancing at his watch. “It’s just three o’clock. The shock was the shaft being opened by radio waves —”

  “The Sahara shaft!” Elsa cried.

  “Exactly; just as I told you. I’d have given anything to see that fountain of fire go into space. The intensity of the explosion can be imagined when we can feel it even at this distance.”

  “I guess we’d better be getting out of here,” Terry said quickly. “I’ll carry you, Elsa. We’ll see what’s happened.”

  By ten o’clock that night the whole world knew what had happened.

  By radio across the earth the news was flashed. Eyewitnesses spoke of having seen that living column of incredible fire leap from Africa. The whole world felt the stunning concussion of the explosion, experienced the increase in hurricanes created by the superheated wind.

  But by ten o’clock the raging winds were abating. A calmer, more settled appearance was over the face of the earth. The incessant earth tremorings of the past weeks were subsiding; volcanic eruptions gradually ceasing—The inner pressure had gone. Nothing of course could return the lands already sunken, but those that had survived were safe, at least for another three or four thousand years.