John Russell Fearn Omnibus

by John Russell Fearn

  “Better take it easy, Mister Eric,” Jonathan advised uncomfortably.

  “Easy! At a time like this?”

  “Anyhow, your thoughts will take about four minutes to crass space,” the girl murmured, thinking. “Assuming Mars to be at the mean distance of forty million miles, that is.”

  “Why should they?” Eric demanded. “Thought is instantaneous.”

  Sonia’s curls shook. “I don’t agree. Everything in the universe, by its very structure and the FitzGerald Contraction, must be limited to the speed of light—even thought waves, which are included in the basic order of radiations.”

  Eric stared at her and her level pools of eyes stared back.

  “I—I can’t understand you, Miss Benson,” he muttered. “For a girl who knows science so well to drive a car until it runs out of gas, and get stuck here of all places—Frankly, it looks far more than coincidence.”

  She shrugged. “What’s my being here got to do with it, anyway? You’ve far more important things to think about at the moment. I’ve brought you luck, anyway, and incidentally done myself the good turn of being in on one of the most amazing radio communications in scientific history—”

  She broke off and looked at the loudspeaker again—but it was the same message, repeated in the same calm, inscrutable voice. For nearly an hour it went on, then Eric got stiffly to his feet.

  “Guess my thoughts aren’t strong enough,” he growled disconsolately.

  “Maybe they take some analyzing,” the girl suggested, rising up beside him. “I’m quite sure these Martians must know what they’re about. It may take them a long time to sort matters out.”

  “Maybe…” Eric stood looking at her, then started as she tried ineffectually to stifle a yawn.

  “Say, I’m forgetting I’m host!” he cried. “You must be about worn out.” He glanced at his watch. “Whew! Two o’clock! I’ll show you your room. Not very feminine, I’m afraid, but passing comfortable… Jonathan, fetch Miss Benson’s bags from the car.”

  “Yes, Mister Eric.”

  At the doorway of her room the girl turned and looked at Eric seriously. “I suppose this is your room, Mr. Sanders? What are you going to do for the night?”

  “Sit by that radio and wait for something to happen. You surely didn’t expect me to do anything else?”

  She moved to one side as Jonathan came in with the bags.

  “Frankly, no. If anything really important happens, outside of that repeated message, don’t forget to wake me up.”

  “I promise,” he smiled, and they surveyed each other. Then she began to withdraw into the room.

  “Well, good night. And thanks again.”

  She closed the door gently and Eric turned away, not feeling at all sure of himself. On the one hand he had the excitement of his radio messages; on the other he had the fascination of this strange and lovely girl who had dropped into his life.

  “She may be one of them newspaper reporters,” Jonathan muttered, when they were back in the experimental room. It was as though he’d read Eric’s thoughts.

  “No, Jonathan, I don’t think that. They don’t come that beautiful as newspaper reporters… Funny. Sort of puts me off experimenting.”

  “Them experiments is business, Mister Eric,” Jonathan observed heavily. “The other is only pleasure…” He hesitated, then asked, “Seeing I’ve to go to ’Frisco in the morning, I wonder if you’d mind if I went to bed?”

  “Eh? Oh, sure—sure. Go right ahead. Good night…”

  Eric turned aside to the radio once more, prepared for an all night sitting—but although he sat through seemingly numberless hours nothing was added or deleted from that same steady communication. Then towards the dawn it began to fade. At sun up it stopped entirely. But Eric wasn’t aware of that. He was dead asleep—

  *

  It was Jonathan who aroused him, and by the time he had dressed and shaved Sonia had arrived, even more freshly beautiful after a night’s rest. She looked up from the ham and eggs.

  “Anything happen?” she asked quickly, then sighed as Eric shook his head.

  “Maybe I’m too dense to register thoughts,” he growled. “Anyway, they surely ought to have had time to analyze them by tonight. The moment darkness sets in I’ll be on the job again. Lucky that I’ve nothing else to do. Jonathan does all the running about for provisions, and money, and stuff. That’s why he’s going into ’Frisco this morning.”

  “You’re independent, then?”

  “Sure. Dad was worth a fortune, otherwise he couldn’t have built the things he did. When mother died, it all came to me, of course.”

  The girl was silent for a moment, toying with her breakfast. Then she said, “Funny, isn’t it, that we both have plenty of money, are both interested in the same things, and yet came together because I was foolish enough to run out of gas?”

  “If that was the reason, yes,” Eric agreed.

  “Oh, it was—really!” Her eyes were very serious.

  “It’s a pity there are conventions in the world,” he grunted; “otherwise you could stay here with me and we’d experiment together. Your friends would think things, though. So would mine, the few I have… It wouldn’t work out. Even in these days, Platonic friendship is looked at askance.”

  “You’re right,” she said in regret. “Besides, I’ve several things I must attend to in ’Frisco. Just the same I’m coming here every chance I get. If I may?”

  Eric grasped the hand she extended over the table. “Nothing would suit me better,” he murmured. “Nothing—”

  Jonathan came in and interrupted him. “I’ve got the car ready, Mister Eric, and fixed Miss Benson’s bags. It’s just nine-thirty.”

  “The devil it is! Say, you’ve got to get moving—”

  The girl drank up her coffee, hurried into her overcoat. Eric found it an effort to control himself as she took her leave, held out her hand again.

  “You’ve been so kind, Mr. Sanders,” she smiled. “And I’ll come again at the earliest moment.”

  “Do!” he said earnestly. “In the meantime, where can I reach you? I’ve no ‘phone here, but there’s always the mail.”

  “Mark Hopkins Hotel, San Francisco. That will be my base for a day or two… Now, goodbye…”

  Goodbye.” Eric stood watching her slim form in the morning sunlight as she walked out to the car, Jonathan beside her. He was still watching when the car made its way round her own stranded bus, then finally passed out of sight on a bend in the pass.

  Eric felt as though something had dropped out of his life as he turned back into the room. He reflected it was just his damned luck that his experiments needed his whole attention at this very time. A day earlier, and he’d probably have abandoned them for the pleasure of Sonia Benson’s company.

  III – Love or Duty?

  The day passed quietly for Eric. He pottered around among his instruments, ate a lonely dinner, and thought of Sonia and Mars by turns. In the afternoon, garage men came and took her car away.

  At sundown he settled himself before the radio again—but to his infinite disgust, and dismay, no further messages came through. Only the old static that had neither sense nor meaning. By midnight he gave it up and went to bed to catch up on his previous night’s vigil… The room carried a certain perfumed memory of Sonia and he slept blissfully, dreamed of her and the red planet by turns.

  Jonathan arrived back by tea time the following afternoon, loaded with fresh previsions. He patiently answered all Eric’s eager questions about the girl. Yes, he had dropped her at the Mark Hopkins Hotel; he hadn’t seen her after that. She had been very grateful.

  “She’s a grand girl, Jonathan,” Eric murmured, wagging his head. “I begin to think I’ve fallen for her… Pity is I have to divide my attention over two things. I got no results last night from Mars; maybe I’ll be luckier tonight. Fix up some tea when you’re through and we’ll get busy.”

  “Right, Mister Eric…”

 
And by seven o’clock they were both before the radio. Eric tensed himself as the static began to disappear as it had two nights before, vanished under the gentle power of an incredibly distant communication. Taut and rigid, he listened, head crouched toward the speaker.

  “…I know that Eric Sanders, son of Gerald Sanders, lives on Earth. My machines received the impact of his concentrations. I speak to you, Eric Sanders, because I know you hear me. I am the last of my race, the last of what you call Martians. I have everything, yet I have nothing. I have a mighty empire beneath the desert sands, yet when I die it will cease. Robots work for me, machinery acts for me, but my mind alone controls it all. You understand that, Eric Sanders?”

  Eric nodded absently, foolishly enough, and went on listening. He frowned irritably as Jonathan tried to plug up his pipe.

  “I am forgetting,” the communication suddenly resumed, “that you evidently have not the apparatus to answer me. Very well, then—listen. I, the sole remaining survivor of the Martians, have the name of Yana. I am female… Twenty-six of your years ago I was born, but when I was six years old, your father came to our world and died here from his injuries.

  “It happened, however, that he brought with him many instruments and records of which we took possession. But several of those instrument cases had within them germs, brought from Earth, harmless on your world but fatal to our particular constitutions. In a week vicious disease was abroad among our peoples. Men and women fell before the Plague of unknown bacteria, with which our medical science was powerless to cope because it had no conception of the basic nature of the trouble. It belonged to the chemistry of another world…

  “At the time of this disease entering the heart of our main city I was under long period anaesthetic undergoing surgery. Every young Martian of both sexes undergoes operation at the age of six for the removal of unwanted evolutionary organs which only show themselves at that age. From the records of your father there is a similar case with the human appendix, an evolutionary throwback. You wait until it gives trouble. We remove all possible cause of trouble when a similar organ is ripe…

  “It must have been when the operation had just been completed that the disease struck down the surgeons and other occupants of the hospital. Being in a state of suspended animation, the equivalent of your anaesthesia, the disease passed me by. I awoke to a hospital of the dead, hours after the normal time for revival since there was no normal restorative used upon me. The more I wandered round the more I realized the ghastly thing that had happened. What few had been left from the disease’s ravages were now dead! My parents, my friends, the people of this particular sector of the city, were wiped out. I was alone…

  “The disease seemed to have spent itself. There were no more living carriers for it. I was alive in a dead world—a world of machines, of colossal possibilities, on the very verge of starting a new empire under the deserts whither we had been driven by lack of surface air. Water there was—and is—in plenty. Atmosphere we manufacture artificially. Year by year the surface canal system passes the water down into the underworld… Eric Sanders, your father unwittingly destroyed an entire race on the very edge of its newest achievements!”

  The communication stopped for a while. Eric sat immovable, his face evidencing some of the horror he felt; nausea at the knowledge of the mass-murderer his dead father had unwittingly been. “I thought once of destroying myself,” the voice resumed steadily, “when I discovered I was the only living being in a dead world. Then I thought better of it. At six years of age a Martian is as fully developed in reasoning as a young Earth adult. Robots fed me: I would come to no harm. For years I just grew in knowledge and physical size, absorbing the information left by my dead people, and particularly that of the man who had come from another world. I solved the riddle of the diseases he had brought with him: I rid myself of all chances of disaster from decaying bodies by raying them out of existence…

  “I mastered the language of this Earthman from his talking machine, studied all about his planet, found diary notes to the effect that back on his world his mate, your mother, was expecting an offspring. It was more than possible that, some day, that offspring would try and reach Mars. But though I waited for twenty Earth years nobody came. Then I hit on the idea of radio communication. I patterned a machine similar to the one in your father’s machine and communicated… Your thoughts impacting on my telepathic machines revealed that you had heard me…”

  Again there was a long interval. Eric sat in brooding silence, chin on hand, and when the words were resumed they were full of subtle meaning, had a certain grimness.

  “Eric Sanders, I believe you love Mars. I believe you love it because of the mighty thing your sire accomplished in crossing space to reach it. More than that, I believe you owe Mars a debt of honor! A race has perished through no fault of its own: a race can only be born again through your willingness… I am not threatening you, Eric Sanders, but I am reminding you of your duty. If on Earth you unwittingly did a wrong to a neighbor, you would deem it necessary to put matters right insofar as you could. You have a similar chance now.

  “As fortune has it you are fundamentally male: I am female. Biological research on my part has revealed that union between us can be just as perfectly accomplished as between different races of Earth. I have tried, ineffectually, to create synthetic life, but the secret still eludes me. Between us, by the intermarriage of offsprings, a race can be born anew. Mars acknowledges no sects or creeds in the creation of a new generation—not when the very life of the planet depends upon it.

  “You owe it to Mars, Eric Sanders—in the name of your father… I shall not expect your answer yet. I will not communicate until two more Earthly nights have passed, by which time I shall expect your decision. It will, as before, be rendered telepathically by your concentrations. If you agree I will tell you what you have to do. If you do not—I will deal with that later. For the time being, Eric Sanders—farewell!”

  The voice faded out, was succeeded by a terrific burst of static. Eric sat heedless, staring blankly before him, soaking in the terrific import of the proposition hurled at him over forty million miles. Then as the speaker row became deafening he slammed off the receiver switches and got unsteadily to his feet.

  “It’s—it’s incredible!” he whispered at last, rubbing his forehead. “I must have dreamed it—”

  “That you didn’t, Mister Eric,” Jonathan interrupted him shaking his gray head. “I heard them words myself, and mighty queer they was, too! I got the idea that that woman—if woman she be—is sort of proposing to you! She wants to marry you… Leastways, that’s how I saw it.”

  “Then I didn’t dream it,” Eric breathed, smiling bitterly. “This is the sort of reward I get after years of struggle—A request, almost a command, that I sacrifice everything on Earth in order to be the procreator of another race on another world! The—the Granddaddy of the red planet! A Summons from Mars! Why it’s ludicrous!” he cried.

  “Ay, it is,” Jonathan agreed sagely, smoking steadily. “But have you reckoned what might happen if you refuse?”

  “If I refuse! I shall refuse! What do you take me for?”

  “I takes you for an intelligent man like your father, Mister Eric, if you’ll forgive the liberty—intelligent enough leastways to know what might happen if you don’t do what this Martian woman asks. She might start a war! War between worlds might become a fact!”

  “But she distinctly said she wasn’t threatening me.”

  Jonathan spat eloquently at the coke heater. “Huh! Don’t they all?” he demanded sourly. “Even invaders on Earth don’t threaten anybody these days—they apologize while they blow the damned ground from under your feet. An’ she’ll do the same! Maybe she’s a sort of lone wolf, but if she’s got robots and machines like she says, she can be the controller of a mighty tough army. She must have some way of crossing space, too, else she wouldn’t have suggested you coming to Mars. Probably she’s gotten the secret from your dad
’s own ship.”

  “Yeah—probably she has.” Eric lighted a cigarette and sat down again, pondering. Then he said slowly, “You know, Jonathan, that war angle hadn’t occurred to me. She might, at that! If she can’t get me she’ll take Earthmen, or an Earthman, by force. Maybe women too. Faced with such a desperate situation she might do anything. This is evidently a sort of preliminary negotiation…”

  “I know wimmin, Earthly, Martian, or anything else,” Jonathan growled. “They’re all the same.”

  “Oh, but the thing’s so fantastic!” Eric cried. “It just isn’t reason! Married to a Martian! Some ghastly monstrosity or other… It’s hideous! Monstrous she’ll have to be. No life on two planets can evolve on the same lines. For one thing, Mars’ lesser gravity will produce physical differences. I can imagine a mighty-lunged creature, heavily muscled, broad backed and—Oh, what’s the use?” he finished irritably glaring at the apparatus. “I’ve a damn good mind to scrap all that stuff right now—set fire to the shack—return to ’Frisco and live in peace.”

  “But you won’t,” Jonathan said, staring moodily at the heater.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because if you do you’ll have a little voice remindin’ you all the time that you shouldn’t have done it—that you’ve perhaps brought a threat of wholesale destruction down on the world—that every death that might happen from a Martian invasion will be your fault…. No; you won’t do that, Mister Eric.”

  “Then what the hell am I to do?” he shouted helplessly. “Don’t sit there with your philosophies! Give me a line of action.”

  Jonathan shrugged. “There ain’t no line, Mister Eric—but I’ll remind you of one or two things. That woman was right when she said you had a duty to your father’s memory: she was right, too, when she said that it’s up to you to pay off for the damage he caused.”