Tanner came at intervals, said little, stood watching the workmen Perry had engaged as they labored on the skeleton of a metal ship in a newly added section to the big laboratory. Perry had little time to talk; his explanations were brief in the extreme. Nor did he pay any attention to the screaming of country leaders as they demanded action by the scientists to save the human race.
Time and again President Gregory had spoken to the world, usually giving the same speech as on the first occasion—but each time now it was charged with increasing anxiety. As the death rate went steadily on, as men the world over died from either natural or violent causes, the expectation of life for the human race correspondingly shortened. Science had confessed itself beaten, knew nothing of the lone biochemist struggling with might and main to sort the mystery out.
Exactly six weeks after the girl’s initial instructions, the vessel was finished. The workmen had constructed the skeleton only; Perry himself manufactured and fitted the wanthorium plates, placing them in position before it reached its critical temperature and afterward covering it with berylium shields. In this way he had no difficulty in handling it.
“When do you figure on going?” Tanner asked, surveying the gleaming ovoid in the floodlights. He had braved a particularly beastly winter night to come over and see the thing at Perry’s request.
“Right now,” Perry answered briefly. “Everything’s ready. The girl’s inside. On a hunch I’ve put some clothes on her – my own. I’m loaded up with provisions, guns, surgical instruments. I’ve given Denham an indefinite holiday, so…” He shrugged. “Only the hop to be made, I guess.”
“Wish I was coming with you,” Tanner sighed enviously.
“What’s stopping you?”
“My work, of course. I can’t just walk out and do as I like.”
Perry smiled twistedly. “Try a bit of logic, old man. In a little while men will start fighting each other when it is fully realized—as far as they know anyhow—that humanity is finished. Men always like an excuse for a fight; they’re a vile breed, you know. Ordinary business like yours will go to pot. Only the toughest will survive to the end. You’d do much better to take a chance and come with me.”
Tanner pondered for a few moments, then he suddenly nodded.
“O.K., I will. I don’t need much persuading. I’ve made private arrangements for a vacation, anyway. Let’s be going.”
He led the way through the airlock into the vessel’s small and compact interior, stood regarding the roughly clothed girl on the specially designed bed by the curved wall. Perry stopped only long enough to shift the switch that opened the workshop roof, cut out the lights, then he came into the control room and slammed home the heavy operculum.
He settled down before the switchboard.
“Grab yourself a seat and strap yourself into it,” he ordered curtly. “This wanthorium stuff is mighty powerful and achieves a terrific acceleration. Once we’re clear of these storm clouds the moon will be visible. She’s at the full again, anyway.”
Tanner nodded and seated himself. Then he felt as though the bottom had dropped out of everything as Perry closed the switch actuating the berylium shields. The moment the shields moved to the top of the ship the Wanthorium exerted its weird powers, lifted the ship like a feather and hurled it into the night at terrifying speed. The sensation was one of headlong, terrible falling into nothing.
Perry gave a gasp and struggled mightily with his weighted hands to close the shield switches. Tanner was held motionless, his heart laboring mightily, the room swimming before his eyes. He fought desperately for breath, reeled into darkness.
The stinging taste of brandy was in his mouth as he recovered consciousness to find Perry bending over him. Perry himself was white and strained, had obviously been through considerable physical stress.
“Sorry, old man,” he panted, as Tanner got unsteadily to his feet. “I underestimated the power of wanthorium. It gets up speed at an incredible pace. I’ve cut it down now so that our acceleration is equal to earth gravity. We’re O.K. now.”
“Thank Heaven for that!” Tanner rubbed his aching head, slowly moved to the outlook port and stared outside. In a moment Perry had joined him.
Right ahead of them, seeming far larger than ever before, was the full moon, bulging and globular, shedding its brilliant silver light into the utter black of star ridden space. Tanner narrowed his eyes and stared at it.
“Funny thing about those bright streaks and rays,” Perry murmured. “See them? From Tycho, Copernicus, and other craters? Always visible at full moon when the sun is directly overhead on the moon’s surface. No man really knows what they are, how formed, or anything about them. They travel over all parts of the moon’s surface, independent of mountain ranges and everything else.”
Perry paused, frowning.
“Something wrong?” Tanner asked at length, not quite recovered from the breath taking beauty of the view.
“Mebbe; I don’t know. Just struck me as queer that Kay Wancliffe gets busy on her double at full moon, at the same time as the streaks and rays. Don’t suppose there’s any connection, but it’s queer.”
“Like lunacy at full moon?” Tanner chuckled.
“Yeah; and that isn’t so preposterous as it sounds. Such things do happen. And by the way,” Perry went on musingly, “the death of women started at full moon and recurred at every full moon after that, until—until there wasn’t a women left in the world. Say! That looks like more than coincidence!”
“You’re not trying to connect up the death of womankind and interstellar telepathy with the bright streaks and rays, are you?”
“Perhaps…” Perry relapsed into silence. It was clear the matter interested him. At last he shrugged and turned aside, sat down at the controls.
From then on he said but little. Hours passed. He and Tanner took turns at the controls, losing all count of time. They realized finally that several ordinary days and nights must have elapsed and the moon was nearing her third quarter when she loomed below them—no longer a globe, but a black plain embraced in the utter cold of the lunar night.
Perry stared through the window fixedly as he brought the ship curving down into the raven shadows of the lunar Appenines. He clicked on the short wave radio, spoke a few brief sentences.
“We’ve reached the moon. What do we do next? Awaiting your instructions…”
He slowed the ship’s speed and circled around, waiting. The Earth, huge and magnificent, disappeared behind the mountain range. The sky was naught but brilliant stardust.
Chapter V
“My Life Is In Your Hands…”
Tanner gave the slightest of shudders. For the first time the utter weirdness of it all struck home to him. This commonplace journey to the moon, when it should have been an event of world shaking importance; the tomb-like silence outside; the girl who had never lived lying motionless on the bed in Perry’s old suit. Tanner turned to study her, then he started as he saw her lips moving.
“Perry!” he whispered tensely. “The girl! Look!”
Perry gave her a brief glance, then nodded. “Good—she’s going to communicate…” He turned back to the controls, more accustomed than Tanner to the girl’s strange moments of ephemeral life.
“You have reached the moon,” she stated impassively, and this time her voice was much stronger. “From the direction of your radio wave, you are apparently on the eastward side of the Appenines. Before long, if you proceed northwards, you will reach a crater some four miles in diameter, easily distinguishable because it is elliptical and not circular in shape. Descend into it. Deep down, nearly at the core of the moon you will find me. I will tell you how to do that when you arrive.”
The girl became silent again. Perry glanced at Tanner, then he squared his jaw, swung open the floor window and looked down keenly. The searchlights flooded the starlit blackness of the lunar night. He slowed down the ship’s speed still further, juggling with the shields, gradually the vessel pa
ssed over an infinity of rills, gullies, and pits, until at last he detected the crater the girl had mentioned standing alone in the middle of a dead sea bottom.
He altered the controls, pushed the ship’s nose down and dropped into the cavernous hole, searchlights blazing into the darkness. The terrific width of the natural shaft made it impossible to see the sides. All Perry could do was work with half opened shutters and lower the ship inch by inch.
One mile, three miles, five … Ten, fifteen … Then Tanner gave a shout.
“Look below! Some kind of illumination!”
Perry nodded. He had already seen a pale lavender light, increasing in intensity as the ship went down, until finally they burst into a titanic cavern and beheld the source of the illuminant. At opposite ends of the huge natural hole were two monstrous metal bars, remarkably like electrodes, from each of which streamed an unwavering flood of lavender light concentrated on a glowing ball, invisibly supported between them.
“Energy of some kind,” Perry muttered, frowning. “Plenty of science behind the idea too. They’ve figured out a way to make positive and negative power mate together at a given point and produce a flood of light. Nice going…”
“And machinery.” Tanner breathed, screwing up his eyes and staring amazedly. “Look at it! As far as the eye can see. Machines upon machines, of all sorts and sizes. So much so it looks like—It is!” he whistled. “A city of machines instead of buildings! Say, what do you know about that?”
“Nothing—yet.”
Perry tightened his hands on the controls and flew swiftly over the vast reaches of the machine city. There was no doubt about it. There were no recognizable buildings, no people, no sign of anything except the machines—small, squat, and in flawless condition. What was more, they were working! Every one of them, their wheels and cogs spinning steadily. Each one of them was working out some individual destiny.
“This has got me licked,” Perry muttered at last. He glanced at the instruments connecting with the ship’s exterior. “Anyway, there’s no air here,” he grunted. “Only explanation is that the moon’s a rock sponge, open right through to the cold and airlessness of the void. Won’t affect machinery, of course, but it will certainly affect living matter like us. If we go outside we’ll need space suits—”
“What’s that?” Tanner interrupted him, pointing. “Looks like some kind of guardian machine.”
Perry stared ahead at a monstrous object on four heavy metal legs, standing alone in the center of a circle of machines. Slowing speed to minimum he crawled toward it, flew round it, studied the queer design of the thing. Somehow, it had the outlines of a human being; it even had arms fitted with vast pincer hands. Clumsy four-pronged feet, too, providing a means of solid, un-sliding foundation. It stood perhaps thirty feet high, dominating the smaller machines around it. Apparently it was motionless. The weird quasi-human effect was further accentuated by two projecting lenses on the cannonball-like head, creating the appearance of projecting, many-faceted eyes.
“Gosh!” Perry yelped suddenly, as he flew round the back of it once more. “I just caught sight of an indented name on one of the metal plates. It said ‘Fowler Incorporated.’ They’re the biggest engineers in New York. This thing belongs to Earth—”
“Stop your ship!”
Perry and Tanner both swung round at the command. It was the girl speaking. Perry glanced back at the monstrosity through the window, then he slowly brought the ship down in front of the colossus.
“Is—is Kay Wancliffe inside that?” Tanner whispered.
Before Perry could make a response the girl spoke again.
“Listen to instructions! Inside this metal robot are three brains in air conditioned cases, floating in a life preserving fluid which produces all the essentials of life away from the body. The three brains are my own, my father’s, and my mother’s. Of course you followed my wishes to bring surgical instruments? Listen very carefully. At the top of the jeweled globe my brain lies inside its special section of the case. Remove the glassy case and sever the connecting wires on the side of the green jewel. Afterwards, subject the brain in that third-section to anaesthesia and place it inside the skull of the woman you have made. It should exactly fit in the place of the one you have already made, which of course can now be discarded. You will connect up all the synapses, ganglions, neurons, and so forth. You can do it. You made that model without flaw; the rest will not be difficult. Remember, my life is in your hands. Once I recover, I can explain. There is not the time now.”
Perry stood in thought as the girl’s lips ceased moving; then he turned to the cupboard and dragged out a space suit and a small portable extension ladder.
“Then you’re going to do it?” Tanner demanded.
“Sure I am. What the hell do you think we came for? I can do what she wants all right. I learned all there is to know about surgery when I made this woman. You’re going to help me. Grab that other space suit from the closet.”
Tanner nodded rather reluctantly, followed Perry outside as he opened the airlock. For a while, now they came to walk, they had to flex their legs to accustom themselves to the lesser gravity, far more noticeable outside than in the vessel.
Then at last Perry went slowly forward, planked his ladder in front of the monstrosity and climbed slowly up to the head, stopping when he was above the massive compound lens that formed the green “eye” of the thing.
He found the proper section of the brain compartment easily enough, pulled various tools from his belt and got to work. In fifteen minutes he had cut through a maze of wires and lifted out a transparent section containing a gray organism floating in yellowish fluid. Two other sections remained.
Tanner eyed it doubtfully, even with revulsion. He was no biologist. Perry’s face did not seem in the least perturbed behind his helmet glass. He descended the ladder slowly with the precious braincase in his gloved hand. Only when he had his space suit off and the airlock closed did he expel a huge sigh of relief.
“Whew! That was ticklish work.”
“I don’t like it,” Tanner grunted. “Something horrible about all this. It’s—it’s repulsive, Perry!”
“Repulsive be damned!” Perry retorted, rolling up his sleeves and washing his hands in disinfectant. “A brain’s a brain, whoever it may belong to. I’ve rarely seen one better developed. Come on, give me a hand into this smock.”
He angled up his hands and slipped into the spotless white overall, snapped on rubber gloves and face mask.
“Better do the same,” he ordered briefly. “You’ve got to help me on this. Switch on those floodlamps.”
Tanner obeyed, washed and prepared himself as he watched Perry lift the limp model of the girl onto the long table under the lights. He slipped the brain case into the anaesthesia cabinet, broke the case away.
Tanner came forward, could not help but marvel at the incredible skill with which Perry worked, handling the living, anaestheticized brain with astounding delicacy, supporting it with surgical instruments which touched in spots where no harm could be done. Perry himself considered he needed no praise. This job, compared to the making of a woman from raw materials, was mere child’s play. His main anxiety was to finish the operation and bring life to this beautiful body which so far had only been a mouthpiece.
An hour passed as he labored on under the brilliant arcs, Tanner assisting tirelessly. The skull of the model was opened, and the useless brain replaced with the living one. With smooth efficiency, using electro-magnetic beams and instruments of glittering immaculacy, Perry linked up the vital connections one by one, grafted back skin and bone onto the skull, wiped it with pungent ointments and finally left not even the trace of a scar. And, since the entire top of the skull had been removed for the purpose, not even the hair was shaved away. At the close of the operation a thin pale line, rapidly disappearing, round the girl’s head over her eyebrows, was the only trace of the surgical miracle.
Perry stood aside, shaking now from
reaction, mopping his perspiring face with a towel. The girl lay motionless, but as her brain at last began to clear of the anaesthetic her breast began to rise and fall slowly. For the first time since her creation color crept into her dead white face.
Perry snatched up a stethoscope and held it to her heart.
“She’s alive—at last!” he whispered. “Sixty beats to the minute. By the time she’s fully recovered it will be hitting the normal seventy two. Reflexes O.K…”
He turned aside, regarding the girl in silent wonderment, and not a little affection. But something was still puzzling him.
“Why should life just happen because a living brain is put inside a body that has never lived?” he asked in a low voice. “Has this girl solved the secret of life, or what? Is life purely in the mind…?” He stopped reflecting, then with a sigh he sat down to wait.
An hour later he and Tanner were rewarded by seeing the girl’s blue eyes slowly open as she gazed in wonderment about her.
Chapter VI
“I’ll Tell You My Story…”
Immediately the two were at her side.
“You’re alive—at last!” Perry whispered exultantly, as her vivid eyes turned to him. Then he swung round to Tanner. “The restoratives, quick!”
“O.K.”
Between them, they raised the girl’s head and shoulders, forced the biting restoratives between her lips. She coughed and spluttered for a while, then rapidly began to gain full possession of her senses. Slowly she sat up and flexed her arms, wiggled her fingers in something like awe. Perry stood watching her in critical silence. She was more beautiful than ever now, she had come to life; yet still he couldn’t understand the miracle.
John Russell Fearn Omnibus Page 50
