Classic Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories

by Stephen Brennan

  Suddenly, as light grew brighter and sound more clear and definite, a new element entered—the element of hope. At first it was feeble: its only suggestion was that sometime, somehow, he might escape this prison. But it was like water to a parched plant. It caused his will to expand, to extend its feelers, to press up a little more bravely against the crushing pile of the Master Will.

  Now another surprise sprang upon him. He was moving! That is, Clason’s body was moving in some kind of a conveyance, which was threading its way through crowded streets. Stores, buildings, buses, people—Quest remembered them all distantly as things he had known thousands of years ago. The driver turned his head, and his profile seemed vaguely familiar.

  Now a rush of foreign thoughts drowned out his own. They were a sort of overflow from the mind of Clason. They thronged along the conduits that bound the two wills together, but only Quest was conscious of the movement.

  Keane’s mind was on his brother Philip: that much was particularly clear. And there was something about a telephone call. Yes, Keane had telephoned to the police, disguising his voice, refusing to divulge his name. He had said that a man by the name of Philip Clason was in trouble and had told them where to find him. Then the police had telephoned the factory, and Keane had pretended astonishment and alarm at the news. That’s why he was here now—he was on the way to confer with the police. And he was chuckling—chuckling because he had fooled Quest and the police, and because now the hundred million dollars was almost in his grasp.

  Cutting in close, the car turned a corner and drew up before one of a row of loft buildings in a section of the city which Quest failed to recognize. As Clason stepped to the sidewalk, Quest was more painfully aware than ever of his powerlessness to influence by so much as the twitch of a muscle the behavior of this hostile body in which he had permitted himself to be trapped. In his weakness he felt himself shrinking, contracting almost to nothingness under the careless pressure of the Master Will.

  Clason glanced casually at his watch, and three men converged toward him from as many directions. There was nothing to distinguish them from anyone else in the street, but along the conduits it came to Quest that they were detectives and that they were there by appointment with Keane Clason.

  “What floor?” asked the latter, with an excitement which Quest felt instantly was pure pretense. “Are you sure they haven’t spirited him away?”

  “Don’t worry,” replied the leader of the detectives. “The alley and roof are covered. We’ll take care of the rest ourselves.”

  On tiptoe they climbed three long flights of stairs in the half-light. Clason held back as if in fear. He was a good actor, and Quest felt the shrinking and hesitation of his body as he crouched and slunk along in the wake of the detectives, pretending terror at what was about to happen, though he knew—and Quest knew he knew—that there would be no resistance up there—that Philip would be found alone exactly as he had been left by Keane’s hired thugs.

  On the top landing Burke, the leader, paused to count the doors from front to rear.

  “This is it,” he whispered to the bull-necked fellow just behind him.

  The other nodded, and crouched back against the opposite wall while his companions placed themselves in position to cross-fire into the room the moment the door gave way.

  Quest longed for the power to kick his hypocrite of a master as he still held back, cowering on the stairs, playing his fake to the limit. Then the door flew in with a splintering shriek under the charge of the human battering ram, and across it hurtled the other two detectives in a cloud of ancient dust.

  “Here he is!” someone shouted.

  “Phil! Phil!” Keane Clason’s voice fairly quavered with sham emotion as he ran into the room and threw himself at a man tightly bound to an upholstered chair, which in turn was wedged in among other articles of stored furniture.

  But Philip was too securely gagged to reply, and as Burke slashed the ropes from across his chest he dropped forward in a state of collapse. Stretched on a couch, he soon gave signs of response as a brisk massage began to restore the circulation to his cramped limbs. Suddenly he sat up and thrust his rescuers aside.

  “What time is it?” he demanded with an air of alarm.

  “One o’clock,” replied Keane before anyone else could answer, patting his brother affectionately on the shoulder while within him Quest writhed with indignation. “By Jove! Phil, it’s wonderful that we got to you in time. Really, how—you’re not injured?”

  “No,” grunted Philip, “just lamed up. I’ll be as fit as ever by tomorrow.”

  “If you feel equal to it,” suggested Burke, “I wish you’d tell me briefly how you arrived here. Do you know the motive behind this affair? Did you recognize any of the body-snatchers?”

  Philip frowned and shook his head.

  “Yesterday noon,” he said slowly, “I took the eight-passenger Airline Express to Cleveland on business. There were three other passengers in the cabin—two men and a woman. Right away I got out a correspondence file and was running over some letters. The next thing I knew I was approaching the ground in the strangest state of mind I ever experienced. My head was splitting, and everything looked unreal to me. Seemed as if I was coming down on some new planet.”

  “You mean the ship was gliding down to land?”

  “No, no. I was dangling from a parachute… . By the way, where am I now?”

  “In a Munson Avenue loft.”

  “In Chicago?”

  Burke nodded.

  “I guessed as much,” frowned Philip. “You see, I came down in a field, and then before I could free myself from my trappings I was pounced on—trussed up and blindfolded—by a gang of men. I knew they had taken me a long distance by automobile, but I saw nothing more until they tore the blindfold from my eyes when they left me here.”

  “And they were all strangers to you?”

  “Yes—those that I saw.”

  “Isn’t this enough for just now, Burke?” interrupted Keane, and Quest received an impression of uneasiness that was not apparent in the inventor’s tone. “After a good rest he’s sure to recall things that escape him now.”

  “Just one minute,” nodded the detective, turning back to Philip. “Can you think of no plausible reason for this attack? Is there no one who might possibly benefit by putting you temporarily out of the way?”

  Philip gave a frightened start. Then he was on his feet, clutching at his brother’s arm.

  “Keane!” he pleaded, “Keane! What’s happened? I know, I know! It’s the Projector.”

  “Water!” roared Keane, and Quest felt the panic that coursed through him as he tried to drown out his brother. “Somebody bring water! He needs it!”

  At the same time he snatched up Philip’s hand in a grip of steel. Instantly the latter’s wild eyes became calm, the flush passed from his relaxing face, and he slumped down weakly on the couch.

  In that fleeting moment Quest surged into the body of Philip and confronted his will with a fierce and triumphant ardor. For now his will would have command of a body with which to fight his fiend of a Control.

  With a sensation of contempt he met Philip’s resistance and buffeted him ruthlessly backward, crushed down and compressed his feebly struggling will. And as Philip yielded, Quest felt his own will expanding to normal, taking possession of the borrowed body with hungry greed, and flashing from its faded eyes the spark of youth.

  Burke stared in amazement at the kaleidoscopic rapidity of the changes in the rescued man’s expression. Strange lights and shadows continued to flit across Philip’s face as Quest’s invasion of him proceeded, but with a diminishing frequency which soon assured Keane that his Agent was tightening his command.

  The younger of Burke’s aides stood fascinated, his mouth agape. The other spoke guardedly to his superior:

  “Dope, eh!”

  “Nah!” replied Burke, shrugging himself out of his trance. “Shock.”

  The actual durati
on of the conflict in Philip was something less than three seconds. It would have been more brief if Quest had exerted himself to the utmost. But his sensations as he first surged into this new habitat under Keane’s propulsion were so weird and unearthly that for the moment he was lost in the wonder of the experience. For that short time, therefore, Philip was able to fight back against the onrush of the invading will.

  In the next second Quest became conscious of the resistance. Urged on by his Control, he must push Philip back and quell him; but his sympathy for his opponent and his hatred of Keane roused him to sudden revolt. He wanted to disobey the Master Will, retreat, leave Philip in command of himself. But he could only go on, unwillingly thrusting back Philip’s will despite the indescribable torment and confusion in his own. Then, with the feeling that he was ten times worse than the most inhuman ghoul, he took full possession of his borrowed body.

  “I’ll take him home now,” said Keane composedly to Burke. “As you see, he needs a little extra sleep. Meanwhile, if you have any occasion to call me, I will be at the factory.”

  To the youthful mind of the Agent, used to the lightness of an athletic physique, the body in which it moved down the stairs to the limousine seemed strangely heavy and awkward.

  “I’m badly done up, Keane,” he said with Philip’s lips as the car got under way.

  “Bah!” snorted Keane, “you’ve had a scare, that’s all. Go to bed when you get home and sleep till nine this evening. At ten a man named Dr. Nukharin will call for you. He will drive you to a garage, leave the car, and transfer to another one a few blocks away.

  “Out near Marbleton you will find an airplane staked in an open field. Nukharin is a capable pilot. He will fly back southeast along the lakeshore to the meeting place. You should arrive about twelve-thirty. The test is set for one o’clock.”

  Quest listened in a state of abject rage. Lacking the power to resist his Control, he could only boil away in Philip’s body like a wild creature hemmed in by bars of steel.

  “Bring with you,” continued Keane venomously, “the set of papers that you took from the safe in my office. Hold the other set in readiness to deliver to Nukharin tomorrow, after he has studied the results of the test and has notified Paris to release a hundred million dollars in cash for delivery at your Loop office at 3 p.m.”

  The murderous greed of the man maddened Quest. He tried to revolt, his will squirming like a physical thing, threshing the ether like a wounded shark in the sea. For a moment he felt that he was about to burst the bonds that his demon of a Control had woven around him. So violently did he resist that the immured and sporelike will of Philip forged up fitfully out of the blackness and joined his in the hopeless struggle. But along the attenuated conduits that still chained Quest to the Master Will Keane caught the impulse of the mutiny, and his eyes darted flame as he countered with a will-shock that paralyzed his unruly Agent.

  “Listen! You whimpering dog,” he snarled. “Think as I tell you—and nothing more! You are going to apologize to Dr. Nukharin for your previous unwillingness to sell the Projector. You are going to tell him that I am at fault—that I held out—but that you found a way to force my compliance. You understand?”

  Quest could find no words. With Philip’s head he nodded meekly. Just then the car stopped and the chauffeur threw open the door.

  Dr. Nukharin flew high despite the masses of cumulus cloud which frequently reduced visibility to zero. He had merely to follow the rim of the lake to his destination, and an occasional glimpse of the water was sufficient to hold him on his course.

  In the back seat hunched Philip, his body crumbling under the weight of Quest’s despair. For hours the latter had gone on vaguely, hoping somehow to thwart this horrible transaction that was rushing the world to its doom, thinking he might grow strong enough to wrench himself free and so liberate Philip from the dominance of his conscienceless brother. Even though such a move should leave his own will forever separate from his body, he was ready and anxious to make the sacrifice.

  Suddenly the crash of the motor ceased and Nukharin banked the ship up in a spiral glide. Quest had never been in the air before, and the long whirl down into the darkness on this devil’s errand was to him as eery as a ride to perdition in a white-hot projectile.

  His mind seemed to trail out in a great nebular helix behind the descending ship. He felt that he had suddenly crossed some cosmic meridian into a new plane of existence, where he was changed to a gas, yet continued capable of thought. But even here his obsession remained the same. Keane Clason—trickster, traitor, arch-criminal—must be destroyed!

  “I’ll get him!” vowed Quest in words that were no less real for being soundless. “I’ll trail him to the end of space and bring him to account!”

  Then wheels touched earth and the cold, bare facts of his destiny rushed in on him with redoubled force. He felt the nearness of his Control seconds before he perceived him through the eyes of Philip. With a sensation like a stab he realized that now he must speak, play his part, be any bloodless hypocrite that Keane Clason chose to make him. The silent order surged down the conduits promptly enough; he responded as an automaton obeys the pressure of a button.

  “Well, Doctor,” chuckled Philip with a cunning leer, “here’s the magic tower, just as I promised you. We’ll run it up in a jiffy. This test is going to be so vivid and conclusive that not even a hard-headed skeptic like you can raise a question.”

  “You misunderstand me,” returned Nukharin in an injured tone. “So far as I am concerned this procedure is only a formality, but it is none the less necessary. Suppose that I should spend a hundred million of my government’s money and the purchase prove worthless? You may guess that my folly would cost me dear.”

  Keane Clason was waiting on the platform of a giant truck, the motor of which was idling. All the apparatus was in readiness except that the three demountable sections of the tower had yet to be run up into position.

  “One of the beauties of the D. P.,” said Philip gleefully to the Doctor, while Keane smiled slyly to himself, “is that this pint-size dynamo provides all the current needed for the test. We pick the power for our radio right out of the air by means of a wave trap and mensurator invented by this bright little brother of mine,” and he clapped Keane patronizingly on the back.

  “Yes, ah—Dr. Nukharin,” ventured Keane timidly, and at that moment Quest experienced the raging red hatred that causes men to murder. “Philip has promised me that you will employ this device only as a threat to hold the ambitions of the larger powers in check.”

  “Of course, of course!” replied the Doctor heartily. “But now let’s have the test. Even at night I’m not too fond of these open-air performances.”

  The height of the tower as they ran the upper sections into place was forty feet. When all connections had been inspected, first by Keane, then by Philip, the former led Nukharin aloft.

  As the climax of his plot approached, Keane’s excitement bordered on a cataleptic state, hints of which came confusedly through the conduits to Quest. With a peculiar satisfaction he felt that Keane was suffering. The inventor’s jaws became rigid, as though his blood had changed to liquid air and frozen him, and he had difficulty in controlling the movements of his arms.

  Now he was afraid! Genuinely afraid, this time. Quest caught the impulse too clearly to doubt its meaning. This was no sham! Keane was doubting his own machine, fearing that in the crisis some element in the finely calculated mechanism might fail to operate, thus cheating him of the blood-money on which his heart was set. Then he was speaking, and even Nukharin noticed the tremor in his voice:

  “These nine tubes, which look like a row of gun barrels, are molded from silicon paste. Each shoots a beam of invisible light and a radio dart of precisely the same wave length. The destructive effect depends chiefly upon this exactness of synchronization.”

  “A question occurs to me,” said the Doctor: “will others be able to manipulate the machine as successfu
lly as you can?”

  “It’s fool-proof,” chattered Keane, almost losing control of his voice, “absolutely fool-proof. Surely you have scientists in your country who can follow written directions! Nothing more is necessary.”

  “Very well,” shrugged Nukharin. “I only want to be sure that no unforeseen difficulties may arise in an emergency.”

  “See this range-setter?” continued Keane. “The thread on the vertical shaft enables us not only to limit the range by angling the beams into the ground, but it can also be disengaged and the Projector revolved in a flat circle for maximum ranges.”

  “And is there no danger of the machine going wrong—of destroying itself and us?” suggested Nukharin.

  “None whatever, Doctor. There is no explosive force and no great electrical voltage involved. As long as we stand back of the muzzles we have nothing to fear.

  “Now look. I have set the micrometer at three hundred yards, which will just about cover the stretch between ourselves and the lake. I will cut a swath for you—and every bush, every blade of grass, every insect in this swath will be withered to ash in the twinkling of an eye. The destruction will be absolute.”

  “Please proceed,” said Nukharin grimly.

  Keane pulled a lever in its slot, then pressed it down into its lock as his projection battery swung lakeward at the desired angle. Then with one hand poised on another lever, he pressed an electric button.

  At the controls below, a bulb flashed on and off. The signal was superfluous, for already Quest had received his silent command from the Master Will. An icy dread fastened on him. He must obey the unspoken command; he had no will of his own with which to resist. The test would be a success; the Projector would be sold; the world would be turned into a shambles. And he, Owen Quest, would be the destroyer, the murderer, the weak fool who made this horror possible.