John Russell Fearn Omnibus

by John Russell Fearn

  “Well, where the devil does the light come from?” Rad demanded at length, gazing round. “Must be concealed between ceiling and wall. But who switched it on?”

  Ann pointed significantly to the floor. “Maybe that vibration has something to do with hidden engines. Feel it?”

  He nodded slowly, scratching his chin in bewilderment and staring up at the sundered roof. Then he swung round and went to the valve, started to work on the clamps and bars with Ann assisting him. Even so it took them an hour. Then it swung open slowly to reveal a softly lighted cavern that was in itself a wilderness stretching to infinity.

  They stepped through the opening, glanced back sharply as the valve mysteriously closed again behind them. They had taken an irretrievable step.

  But for the moment the view absorbed them. They stood gazing on buildings and machines in untold numbers. Between the buildings were fields of synthetic crops growing sturdily under the artificial light. No living thing tended those fields—only robots who used mechanical aids to efficiency. Here indeed was a miniature continent flawlessly designed to meet every possible need. There were even radio towers and strange forms of traffic, all robot driven. Somehow the place looked like a vast scale model operated by an unseen hand.

  At last the dazed eyes of the two rose to the further side of the colossal place. They beheld metal wall, arching up to a tremendous height and ending at last in a gigantic circle. Nor was it a plain circle—it was a perfectly drawn replica of the moon! The markings were unmistakable, chiseled into the metal. The dead seas, the rills, the craters, the mountains—

  “Map of the moon,” Ann breathed in wonder. “Can there be—be Selenites in this place?”

  Rad looked round with mystified eyes. “Search me! Anyway, it’s shelter. Food too no doubt and—” He swung round sharply at a sudden sound, gave an exclamation of alarm. Four robots had approached silently from the expanse, driven by powers unknown.

  To dodge them was impossible: they moved too fast. Before either Rod or the girl had a chance to escape they were seized in the metallic arms, lifted irresistibly, and borne along towards the heart of the vast mechanical expanse.

  Finally they became passive and gave themselves up to looking about them as they were carried through the heart of the replete city to an ornamental looking building a little apart from the others. It was divided up in the fashion of a normal apartment block, but once they were inside its brightly lighted reaches they discovered as they passed that each room was far more perfectly conceived for comfort and service in a small space than any they had ever known.

  Into one of the apartments they were finally taken, set down carefully on a divan, and left to themselves. The door closed gently, locked significantly.

  “Now I know I’m dreaming!” Rad exclaimed at length, looking round on the softly lit walls of blue enamel, the quite normal looking furniture, the grateful warmth of the sunken heater. “Why, dammit, it’s better than a first class New York hotel!”

  Ann was about to speak, then she looked up with a sudden start as a panel in the wall opened abruptly and shot forth a heavy, loaded tray filled with drink and foodstuffs. Softly the panel slid back into position.

  “You’re right—it is a dream!” she said wryly. “We’re out in the ice fields right now, having delusions—thinking of all the things we’d like to have, and instead—”

  “Eat, my friends!”

  They swung round at that voice, but saw nobody. Then Rad gave a sudden start and pointed dumbly to the wall over their heads. A panel had come into life as a screen and was televizing a picture of a man of apparently incredible age, his face a network of seams and wrinkles, his mouth toothless and sunken.

  “Oh!” Ann gasped, horror stricken. “How—how awful!”

  “Shut up—he’ll hear you!” Rad hissed.

  Evidently her voice had carried through a concealed microphone for the faintest suggestion of a smile curved that old mouth. The almost hidden eyes’ peered out from sunken sockets.

  “Don’t be alarmed, either of you. I am your friend. Eat, and while you do so I will explain.”

  Slowly they stood up, tugged off their stifling suits, then moved to the table. The food was all they could have wished, and the light wine that went with it—but they were so busy looking up at the televized face they had hardly time to notice anything else.

  CHAPTER V

  City Beneath the Ice

  “I am old,” the face said wearily. “Unguessably old, but I have preserved my life by every means known to my science until such a time as this, when a worthy man or woman—or as it happens, both—could take over the results of my own and my dead colleagues’ scientific achievements. That day is here.

  “I know you, Radford Blake—and you, Ann. I watched your rise to power through televisual means. I watched your courage in the face of overwhelming odds, and I watched too your dethronement by the unscrupulously ambitious Saxby West. I had planned that I would send for you at one period, then I stayed my hand when I realized you were to be sent to the Arctic. It was inevitable that you should find the ice break—mental telepathy, amplified, forced you to find it. Maybe you felt an uncommon urge?”

  “Yes,” Rad acknowledged very quietly. “And you, sir—what are you, anyway?”

  “I am a Selenite—the last of a mighty race of a world long since dead. I am a master of science, a ruler of mechanical aids to progress. Here in this deep underworld you behold scientific perfection and synthesis to the last degree—but not synthesis of life. That has forever eluded me. There was a time when my colleagues and I ruled the moon. At that period earthly life was crawling up the ladder. Volcanic eruptions and fast thinning air on our own world forced us to the mother world. We built numberless cities in various lands. In some cases my ancestors rose to dominance, but in other instances licentiousness and laziness brought an end of those early civilizations.

  “We were a young race then, full of the follies of the young. But there came a time when a terrific earthquake shattered all our works. The entire surface of the globe slipped. Sobered, my forbears realized they had to start again. A weeding out began; the scientific was sorted from the useless. What remained of the cities were mere ruins, thousands of miles from their original position because of an earth-slip created through the passage of densely heavy material close to the earth.”

  “Neutronium?” Rad demanded. “The one we recently encountered?”

  “The very same, but on that occasion it was far enough away to escape being drawn into the sun. It became evident to my people that the surest method of progress lay in going underground, in the least known quarter of the world—the Arctic. Down below the race would not interfere with normal mankind and could also be left in peace under a solid roof of pack-ice. Further, there was inexhaustible power supply to be gained from the earth’s steady spin against the ether—enormous currents concentrated at the Pole, the surplus of which has sometimes been seen in the form of the Aurora Borealis, or else has been driven to the opposite pole to appear as the Aurora Australis.

  “Down here, protected by a metal which can never be crushed by the mightiest of ice, given power that can never fail so long as the earth rotates—and therefore independent of the light and heat of the sun now so surely expiring—is a land for the chosen. And the chosen shall be those who tried to gain real government, and failed. Those whom you call democrats, and who will be bound to be exiled to these polar wastes before long. But as they come, my telepathic machinery will lead them here even as it led you. That they will be worthy remains undoubted. Particularly as you will again rule over them, Radford Blake.”

  There was a long silence, then at last Rad said haltingly, “You—you mean you are handling this—this land over to me and my followers without knowing a thing about me?”

  “I know all about you; I have intimated that much. I have followed your movements, understand your language, have debated all there is about you. I know you to be a young man of strength a
nd just motives, with a wife who has useful scientific knowledge which can soon be augmented. I shall only die content when I know that this long empty land—save for me—has been handed over to worthy hands, representatives of the mother world, Earth.

  “Down here, when the surface is frozen and dead, you and your followers will have nothing to fear. No amount of ice can ever smash this underworld. Nor will there ever again be an earth-slip. What damage could be done has been done—one compartment broke under the force of sliding ice above, but naturally the slip was by no means as noticeable at the pole here as it would be on the equator line. Fortunately, the automatic sealing doors closed the broken compartment section for all time. I left it as it was, knowing you would eventually find it useful no matter in what manner you finally came here.

  “In all your wildest dreams, Blake, you could never have made so perfect a haven for your followers. Not even with alcazite. I have done what I can to transform these buildings into earthly appearance for the coming of the others—but there is still much to do. I shall need help. Rest now, both of you, and later we will meet personally. You will then see the resources of this chosen land, learn what to do to take my place, master all details. And then—”

  The face faded from the screen. The speaker became mute.

  * * * *

  Completely unaware of the strange events being enacted in the far North, sure within his own mind that the fading sun was only a temporary phase, Saxby West took advantage of his dictatorship with a ruthless disregard for human feelings, concentrated mainly on exactly how much he could make out of a deal with protective shelters.

  Once he had seen all the democrats exiled to the Arctic—men, women and children sent forth in remote controlled planes without a single personal possession—beyond what they could smuggle along at the last moment—he felt ready to tackle more immediate matters. In vain, astronomers warned him that the sun was really dying. Being a totally unscientific man be did not place the slightest credence on what they said. He stifled all their reports, suppressed all news that might leak to his masses of followers—or when they got too inquisitive he had them done away with entirely through the medium of his relentless agents.

  And as West’s armies of men burrowed into the earth with the best instruments at their command, the earth grew colder. The sun, after West had been in power for three months, had become a mere red ball that no longer gave forth heat at all. The moon, shining by reflected light, no longer appeared in the heavens.

  Beholding these things West had to admit he was inwardly a little disturbed. Things had gone much worse: no sense in denying that. Nor was there much optimism in the news flashing to him across the frozen world of vast ice storms obliterating what few surface cities remained, killing millions of people in the very midst of their effort to drive underground.

  West increased his efforts. Once be even regretted that he had exiled all the alcazite chemists to the Arctic. He had to rely on reinforced steel now whether he liked it or not. No matter, he was piling up millions for future control. Shelter after shelter, stocked with every possible necessity to meet a long siege, was rushed through to final completion at fifty feet below the surface. West allowed no respite.

  With his immediate associates be evolved a counter check system for the housing of the populace, but even at that he was forced to the realization that if millions could be sheltered, far more millions would perish. He suppressed the information hurriedly, worked out a system of survival for those whom he knew were rigid totalitarians.

  But that did not satisfy the people. They were becoming insane with panic as news of disaster after disaster radioed across the darkening, freezing world. They demanded shelter as the sun turned from red to a pale, dull glimmer, as they staggered helplessly in sub-zero winds, or died horribly in their efforts to get justice for themselves. And through it all crept vast ice pack from the oceans. Insomuch as water on freezing expands a twelfth of its volume, the frozen oceans began to crawl over the land in a solid, slow moving tidal wave, a white juggernaut that mowed down everything in its track invincibly. It came from out of the dismal, howling wastes of the north, closed down slowly towards the darkening equatorial regions like a mammoth-hydraulic press of ice, waiting to join the other mountainous ice pack creeping up from the south polar regions.

  Regardless of orders, of checking systems, frantic with the nearly interstellar cold, and hunger, the lashed peoples of America made for the West shelters and fought their way in against troops and all the resources of the militia. This was the last chance of survival. And still they did not know the shelters were only steel. They had assumed that the impregnable alcazite, used by Radford Blake was being used by Saxby West also. Not yet did they know how utterly their demigod had betrayed them. Huddled in the depths of the shelters they heard the last wild cries from other parts of the doomed world. In Europe, shelters of beryllium steel and concrete had smashed in like eggshells under the impact of spreading Atlantic ice.

  The buried people of the Americas laughed hysterically. They had alcazite! They waited, confident—But Saxby West himself was stunned into speechlessness when the news of beryllium steel collapse—far stronger material than his own reinforced steel—came like a truncated cry from the wilderness. He sat in his own quiet shelter with his men around him—the men who had shared in the gain of profits from substituting steel for alcazite. Financiers, most of them, masters of labor, using the masses as pawns.

  And now they too faced death! They sat in a little semicircle before the viewing screens connected with the surface, watched the milling myriads that had been locked out at the closure of the gigantic valves, watching them as they ran in mad fright before a vast wall of shining white crawling inevitably forward in the dim light of the stars. The surface metropolis was crumbling and rending. The ice reared up like a titanic arm of judgment—inevitable, relentless.

  One man, controller of more money than he could possibly imagine, turned his fat, greasy face to the silent West in sudden fright as the mass loomed nearer.

  “West, what have you done?” he shouted hoarsely, leaping to his feet. “What have you done to all of us? Nothing can stand against that! Nothing! How are we supposed to survive to use the money we have made?”

  Silly, trifling little cry in the face of all embracing doom. West knew it now, sat huddled in his chair, deaf to the chatter of his colleagues, his eyes fixed immovably on that screen. He was realizing in those agonizing seconds whither his totalitarian ideals and passion for money had led him—into extinction.

  He must die, and millions with him. Perhaps it was minutes, perhaps hours. He did not know. But be realized that at last all the thunders of a crashing world descended upon him as the ice pack came right overhead. He had a momentary vision of steel walls crumpling up like sheets of thin tin, of hearing wild and frantic shouts from the depths of a crumbling hell. Then blackness…

  The world was dead. The last trump had sounded. From end to end, from equator to Pole, there was a sameness. As the months had passed, ice leveling itself over mountain, plain and former sea, it had formed itself into one complete blanket. The atmosphere too was slowly solidifying. Life was extinct—except in the far north.

  There, some two miles down under the ice, the democratic exiles had come—those who had been able to brave the blizzard winds and answer the telepathic impulses from the chosen land. Even so, many had died in the struggle. Now some fifteen hundred were present—men, women and children. The race would go on, under the ice, might one day even defeat their prison and escape to other worlds. But that was in the future. For the present, they were content, chained to a planet that had a white dwarf as its luminary, a faded, densely heavy star that had been the lord of day.

  Truly, the end of the world had come. Yet to the buried people there was a certain richness in the situation. They had had everything they had formerly had—and more. Their little universe was still expanding into the deeper quarters of the still hot earth. They
were doing things denied on the surface because of tempest and flood. Many of their democratic ideals might reach a glorious fruition.

  And they had Rad Blake and Ann as their leaders. Some day, perhaps, their children would take over control of the rising generation, and so it would go on.

  But Rad and Ann at least knew whom to thank. There were times when they went into a little known quarter of the city and gazed in reverent silence on a small, weedy figure—stone dead, yet preserved at his own will by scientific processes.

  The last man of the moon had died content. The knowledge of his peoples, the finer principles of a world wiped out by cosmic disaster, would live on—until the world itself became drifting dust.

  Secret of the Buried City

  Edited by Philip Harbottle

  Introduction by Philip Harbottle

  John Russell Fearn (1908-1960) was an English author who began his career as a science fiction writer in the American pulp magazines in 1933, when his first novel The Intelligence Gigantic was serialised in AMAZING STORIES. The following year he sold a short story “The Man Who Stopped the Dust” to ASTOUNDING STORIES, the first of many outstanding ‘thought variants’ he was to contribute to the magazine over the next several years.

  Over the next 15 years, Fearn published some 120 magazine stories in all of the leading pulp magazines under his own name and numerous pseudonyms, creating a variety of plot-forms under different styles that ranged from universe-destroying thought variants to the intensely human story. His most popular pen names were Thornton Ayre and Polton Cross. As Ayre he introduced detective story techniques to science fiction and also created the first female super-heroine, Violet Ray (the ‘Golden Amazon’) with four stories in FANTASTIC ADVENTURES (1939-43).

  Post-war, using numerous pseudonyms, Fearn increasingly began to write novels for UK book publication, mainly science fiction, but he had equal success with westerns, detective thrillers and romances. When he died of a sudden heart attack, aged only 52, he had published over 150 books, most of them over a ten year period.