“Mmmm. As a scientist, Miss Denham, it sounds to me more like a definite telepathic contact, between worlds. Telepathy takes no cognizance of distance and some kind of contact might be established between yourself and this unknown spot in the microcosm … From here on, Miss Denham, take careful note of your dreams. Write down every detail of them the moment you wake up, no matter how trivial those details may seem. Everything helps … For the moment I think that is all we can do. Tonight I shall work out a plan of attack to neutralize the trouble. Do all you can to sleep well, and if you don’t I’ll fix a sedative for you.”
It was more than evident to me that Page wanted to hurry both of us off to our rooms. I waited about my own room for nearly an hour after bidding Alice good night; then I returned downstairs to the laboratory. Sure enough Page was there, as I had expected, a long pipe smoldering between his bearded lips, his compact figure bent over the brightly lighted writing desk.
He merely glanced up and nodded to me, then went on working. Every now and again he got to his feet and set to work with electrical apparatus. There were satanic cracklings of energy, the air becoming tainted with the odor of ozone discharges. Once or twice he tried putting the diminutive mouse in a glass tube between anode and cathode and subjected it to a bombardment of unknown forces. The mouse appeared unharmed, but evidently the effect was not what Page desired for I saw he was becoming increasingly irritated.
“It’s damnable!” he muttered at last, and threw down the pencil on his desk.
I looked at him morosely. “I could think of an even stronger word that that, Earl!”
“I’m talking about this microcosmic world, wherever it is, and the fiendish inhabitants thereon! They must possess scientific knowledge far greater than ours. Why, they’re even using a form of electrical energy that I just don’t understand! And that, from me, is some admission!”
It certainly was! Earl Page was one of the foremost electrical wizards of his time even if he did keep his genius to himself.
“Like groping in the dark!” Page banged his fist on the desk.
I looked at him again. “Look, Earl, do you mean by all this that Alice is —”
“I don’t mean anything yet for certain.” His voice was sharp with frustration. “I’ve tried to neutralize the mouse and you can see for yourself what’s happened. The poor little devil still goes on shrinking! Look at it!”
I looked. Then I said mechanically, “There must be a way, somehow! You’ll find it, Earl. I’m sure you will!”
“You mean you hope I will! So far I have had nothing but failure to offer and upstairs there is that poor girl relying on my addled brains to save her from —” Page checked himself. “We don’t know what from. That’s probably the worst part of the whole business.”
“Suppose,” I said deliberately, forcing myself to speak words that were utterly deadening to me, “no cure can be found and Alice just … fades away? How long will the process take?”
“No idea. If she reacts as the mouse has there is no predictable speed to the shrinkage. Sometimes it is slow, sometimes fast — but it’s always there! It never stops.”
There was a long silence between us. Page lighted his pipe and drew at it savagely, his brows down, his face a pool of darkness under the diagonal rays of the desk-lamp. I turned the whole horrific business over in my mind and finally arrived at what seemed to me a logical inference.
“You say it is some form of electrical energy which is causing the orbits of the electrons forming Alice’s body to shrink? Well, can’t you find the opposite wavelength — or whatever it is — and make them expand?”
“That’s what I have been trying to do, but it’s like trying to work out a sum without knowing the basic principle of mathematics. I keep telling you, man, this electrical energy is not of the same type as we’re familiar with.”
“I can’t understand that at all, Earl. Surely electrical energy is the same throughout the universe? Positive and negative and —”
He interrupted me with a dry chuckle. “We once thought the electron radiated energy, and that this would make it describe a continually decreasing orbit until it would spiral down into the nucleus and cause the whole atom to vanish in a flash of radiation. We once thought that, I say, until Niels Bohr came along with his quantum theory and showed that an electron whilst rotating in its orbit does not in fact radiate any energy whatever! It only radiates energy when jumping from one orbit to another, and the energy thus radiated is a quantum … So you see, if one supposed form of radiant energy can be supplanted so easily by another, why cannot electricity as such be in far more forms than the one we know? Come to think of it, electrical energy in a microcosmic universe probably would be very different from ours. Different laws. Different balance … The whole thing’s plain hell, Rod!”
From here on he took so little notice of me, seemed indeed rather distracted by my presence, I took myself off to my room again. But as I passed along the dim corridor past Alice’s room I paused and listened. I could hear her talking — or rather mumbling — at intervals, obviously as she slept. I pressed closer to the door and tried to catch the words.
“… shall be found and taken away … So vast and barren and alone … The machines! The robots! The cities! So far away … So far away … So small and yet so mighty!”
Then silence for a long while and deep breathing. At length I swung and raced quickly back to the laboratory to tell Page.
“Well, we obviously can’t wake her,” he said briefly. “But we might hear plenty with this …” He picked up a wafer-flat microphone attached to a small portable tape recorder. Once we were upstairs again he pushed the microphone under Alice’s bedroom door and then we both kept a silent vigil in the gloom, our faces faintly lighted by the green glow from the recorder’s volume control. When presently the volume indicator began to jump on its green dial we both slipped on subsidiary headphones and listened to Alice’s amplified voice as the recording was made.
“… the city covers the planet. The last man is dead but the robots live on … Even the robots must die unless they make a being of flesh-and-blood who will grow into an intelligent, reasoning creature and supply them with the life-force to make them anew …”
Long pause. The night wind sighed gently against the big window on the corridor. Down in the hall the big clock struck two.
“Looks as though we might be getting some idea of what really is the basis of all this,” Page muttered, dragging at his extinguished pipe. “I don’t like the sound of it, either! Robots needing a flesh-and-blood creature! It sounds —”
“She’s talking again!” I interrupted.
“… robots follow out the commands of the flesh-and-blood master who is dead … They must have human life — flesh-and-blood … The microcosm is empty of life. But there is life on Earth. A mighty world is Earth, huge beyond imagining. One living being from that world and life can be manufactured from it, unit by unit. Unit by unit …”
A jumbled mumbling and then: “Once I am small enough they will take me in an intra-atomic ship, bear me across the gulf to their own strange world. By then I shall be little more than an electrical charge, but the flesh-and-blood basis will still remain …”
The words drifted off. Page waited for what seemed an interminable time; then he silently withdrew the microphone, and switched off the instrument. With a silent movement of his head he indicated that I should follow him to the laboratory where we could talk in our normal voices.
“Looks to me as though we’re really up against it!” he said bitterly. “Those vague statements were obviously begotten of a telepathic contact with the microcosm, such as I theorized at first.”
“Evidently,” I admitted worriedly.
“Seems clear enough what is wrong,” Page continued after a moment. “A race of robots — or at least they evidently seem that way to poor Alice’s distracted mind — on a microcosmic world cannot continue indefinitely without a reasoning flesh-and-blood creatu
re — or creatures. Following out the orders of the last flesh-and-blood master they have got to find more living matter from which to manufacture the life-force that animates them. There is apparently no life anywhere in their realm, so they have turned to this Earth of ours — hence the creation of the Sunstone; hence the disappearance of the previous owners thereof; hence the remorseless shrinkage of Alice Denham.”
“What happened to the previous owners of the Sunstone, do you suppose?” I asked. “Did these microcosmic scientists get them? If so, why aren’t they satisfied? Why keep on trying to get more flesh-and-blood?”
“I don’t know for sure,” Page responded, “but I have thought of one rather horrifying possibility. Miss Denham spoke of a race of robots that needed life-force to animate them: she also spoke of there being no life in the microcosm. It could be that this race has denuded the microcosm of all life, and are now having to turn to Earth to replenish their supply. As to why they are continuing their activities, it may be because of the different time-ratio. A few hours in our universe must be centuries to them; they must be using up the energy of living beings as fast as that damnable ring can supply them!’
I was too horrified to make any comment to this. Alice had mentioned ‘units’. That could mean … vivisection! After a moment my gaze wandered from Page’s troubled face to where the Sunstone was lying beyond him. It still lay on the bench not far from the greatly shrunken white mouse. A thought struck me, though I had no idea whether it was logical or not.
“According to your theory, Earl, once the gem has been in contact with the flesh for over twelve hours it produces an electrical effect which is progressive, whether the stone continues in contact or not?”
“That’s right — and it’s obvious my theory is correct.”
“Are you sure, though? Is it not perhaps possible that the stone radiates or transmits its queer energy over an enormous distance and thereby sort of keeps replenishing the mysterious energy which it has imparted to the ‘subject’?”
“Most improbable, I’d say. Why, what have you in mind?”
“I was thinking that we might isolate the gem completely, surround it with a lead wall or something, to stop any radiation getting through. Would that work?”
“It might. Matter of fact I have a lead container that was used recently for radium needles. It might suit our purpose.”
“Try it!” I urged. “Nothing is too fantastic at a time like this. We can soon see if it has any effect on the mouse.”
So we went to work — or rather Page did. Handling that terrible jewel was a task I preferred to leave to him alone, so I stood watching as with his insulated forceps he transferred the stone to the interior of the lead container and then clamped down the lid.
“By all normal laws this should block all radiation,” he said, thinking. “The trouble is that I still don’t know what kind of a radiation it is — even if it is radiation at all! I believe it’s a form of electrical energy —”
“Makes no difference,” I interrupted. “That container will still block it, won’t it?”
“Definitely!”
So we started to watch the mouse as it moved with mournful slowness about its cage. There was none of the bright-eyed scampering usually attached to such a rodent. Just listless movements, and the obvious government of fear. Presently, since there was nothing we could do for a while, we went into the house proper and had some refreshment. It succeeded in partly chasing away our tiredness; then we returned into the laboratory and studied the mouse intently. Quietly, Page picked up the nearby ruler, lifted the mouse from its cage and laid it alongside the inches scale.
His face grim, he dropped the rodent back in the cage, and closed the lid.
“Still shrinking,” he said.
Those words were to me an actual physical shock: I had been so sure my theory was the right one. Yet, just as quickly a new thought came, and I wondered why I had not grasped it before.
“Earl! How’s this for another idea? The world from which this infernal energy, or whatever it is, is emanating, may actually be within the stone itself.”
He gave a slight start. “Why, yes,” he murmured softly. “I never thought of that. More than probable, in fact, which would explain how it is always kept in focus. Not only that world but its universe, and maybe a myriad other universes besides.”
“Destroy the stone utterly by electricity and we destroy that electronic world,” I said solemnly. “Stockbroker I may be, but I can grasp that much!”
He hesitated no more. Quickly taking the gem from the container — once again with insulated forceps — he put it in the matrix of the atomic equipment. It seemed mighty force to use upon so small an object — the smashing of the nut with the sledgehammer indeed! — but the purpose merited it. Switches closed. For nearly ten minutes energy built up — then Page released it by throwing the switches. The Sunstone vanished in unholy fire and cascades of electrical energy, and to both of us it was a somber thought that maybe thousands — millions — of universes in the microcosm had been destroyed in that instant.
“Now!” Page breathed, moving back to the rodent. “Let us see … I still think the energy once absorbed is irreversible and continuous. But we can hope …”
In an hour we knew the answer. The mouse was three inches less in size …!
The morning showed that Alice was visibly smaller. Breakfast was an almost silent affair, neither Page nor I saying what we had been doing in the night. He still seemed to think there was something he could try.
What I found particularly hard to endure was the dumb look of terror in Alice’s eyes. I tried to reiterate assurances — but as the hours flew by and Page labored to master a science centuries ahead of him, my hopes began to sink into my boots. Evidently the energy was progressive, for it was still operating even though we had probably destroyed the original creators of it. This again was an awful thought. Alice had muttered something in her sleep about being picked up in an interatomic ship. That might now never be. Where in the devil’s name would she go if we could not save her? If we could not. Egoist! The whole thing relied, as before, on Page.
Alice could see that we were fighting the impossible — and Page left no channel unexplored. He called in other scientists, and once they realized the astounding implications they threw all their combined genius into an effort to overcome the devilish power which was reducing the silent Alice before their fascinated eyes.
Hour by hour now, Alice was changing incredibly. She went to her room and I was the only one whom she would permit to see her. I gave her the news of the grim battle we were fighting, and still I tried to assure her that we would yet win the battle. Her only response was to smile faintly. She lay there in the bed, overcome now by a tremendous lethargy, which all the drugs sent up by Page failed to break. Yes, she lay there, like a waxen doll, and when I looked down on her I openly cursed that heinous stone we had seen in the jeweler’s window.
I could not remember meals, or periods of rest, or anything. I was flying up and down stairs all the time. Until at length it was early evening and I realized that all the feverish activity of the day was over. The scientists had departed and Page sat in the laboratory, his dead pipe forgotten between his teeth.
Presently he looked up at me. “It’s no good, Rod! We’ve got to tell her — even if she doesn’t know already. We’re beaten! The latest reports from the other workers show that there is no known way of fighting this mysterious electrical force which, once infused into a living organism, causes the electronic orbits to shrink, and shrink and shrink!”
I stirred slowly as I stood before his desk. “Somehow I had thought, even to the last, that you’d pull something out of the hat.”
“I’m not a magician, Rod.” He gave my arm a brief grip. “Sometimes there drifts into the orbit of science a power, an unknown factor, which is completely beyond analysis. This is one of those times.” He got to his feet and put a hand to his forehead. “God, but I’m weary …!
We’d better go and break the news as gently as we can.”
We went solemnly from the laboratory, through the hall, and up the stairs. When we had reached the corridor I caught hold of Page’s arm.
“Earl — a moment. We can’t tell Alice a terrible thing like this without giving her a way out. You’ve got dozens of potent, painless drugs down in that lab of yours. Can’t you use one so that she …”
He hesitated. “That would be euthanasia,” he said.
“I don’t care!” I told him brutally. “Every court in the land would uphold a mercy killing in a case like this! I insist on it, Earl. I’ll take the responsibility!”
He looked at me steadily, then without another word he went back down the corridor. Quietly I entered Alice’s room and took a few steps forward, leaving the door open.
I stopped. There was a deadly quietness in the evening light. Outside the window the newly budding beech tree swayed in the evening breeze … I absorbed the merciless, overwhelming fact that the bed was empty! There were the tangled clothes, the sewn-in nightdress, which Alice had contrived to fit her diminishing proportions … And that was all.
At the sound of swift footsteps I turned and looked fixedly towards the doorway as Page came in, a phial in his hand. He looked at me, at the bed, and back to me.
“We shan’t need that now,” I said in a low voice.
Outside the window the beech tree swayed and was straight again …
Judgment Bell
I had noticed the storm gathering for some time. During the afternoon while Enid Cleggy and I had picnicked amidst a carpet of green grass and buttercups, the heat had taken on a certain sullen, crushing load. It had become an effort to even move, so we had lain on our backs and gazed at the drowsy June sky, watching the slow but imperceptible gathering of deep smoky-blue clouds on the southern horizon.
Towards late afternoon quiet had fallen over the rolling landscape of this southern English countryside. Far away, cows stood with their backs to the hedges. This in itself was significant.
John Russell Fearn Omnibus Page 41
