Before The Golden Age - A SF Anthology of the 1930s

by Edited By Isaac Asimov

  His arms did not rise, instead six tentacles projected upward to force back the machine. Professor Jameson gasped mentally in surprise as he gazed at the result of his urge to push the strange, unearthly looking machine-caricature from him. With trepidation he looked down at his own body to see where the tentacles had come from, and his surprise turned to sheer fright and amazement. His body was like the moving machine which stood before him! Where was he? What ever had happened to him so suddenly? Only a few moments ago he had been in his bed, with the doctors and his nephew bending over him, expecting him to die. The last words he had remembered hearing was the cryptic announcement of one of the doctors.

  “He is going now.”

  But he hadn’t died after all, apparently. A horrible thought struck him! Was this the life after death? Or was it an illusion of the mind? He became aware that the machine in front of him was attempting to communicate something to him. How could it, thought the professor, when he had no mouth. The desire to communicate an idea to him became more insistent The suggestion of the machine man’s question was in his mind. Telepathy, thought he.

  The creature was asking about the place whence he had come. He didn’t know; his mind was in such a turmoil of thoughts and conflicting ideas. He allowed himself to be led to a window where the machine with waving tentacle pointed towards an object outside. It was a queer sensation to be walking on the four metal legs. He looked from the window and he saw that which caused him to nearly drop over, so astounded was he.

  The professor found himself gazing out from the boundless depths of space across the cosmic void to where a huge planet lay quiet. Now he was sure it was an illusion which made his mind and sight behave so queerly. He was troubled by a very strange dream. Carefully he examined the topography of the gigantic globe which rested off in the distance. At the same time he could see back of him the concourse of mechanical creatures crowding up behind him, and he was aware of a telepathic conversation which was being carried on behind him — or just before him. Which was it now? Eyes extended all the way around his head, while there existed no difference on any of the four sides of his cubed body. His mechanical legs were capable of moving in any of four given directions with perfect ease, he discovered.

  The planet was not the earth — of that he was sure. None of the familiar continents lay before his eyes. And then he saw the great dull red ball of the dying sun. That was not the sun of his earth. It had been a great deal more brilliant.

  “Did you come from that planet?” came the thought impulse from the mechanism by his side.

  “No,” he returned.

  He then allowed the machine men — for he assumed that they were machine men, and he reasoned that, somehow or other they had by some marvelous transformation made him over just as they were — to lead him through the craft of which he now took notice for the first time. It was an interplanetary flyer, or spaceship, he firmly believed.

  25X-987 now took him to the compartment which they had removed him to from the strange container they had found wandering in the vicinity of the nearby world. There they showed him the long cylinder.

  “It’s my rocket satellite!” exclaimed Professor Jameson to himself, though in reality every one of the machine men received his thoughts plainly. “What is it doing here?”

  “We found your dead body within it,” answered 25X-987. “Your brain was removed to the machine after having been stimulated into activity once more. Your carcass was thrown away.”

  Professor Jameson just stood dumbfounded by the words of the machine man.

  “So I did die!” exclaimed the professor. “And my body was placed within the rocket to remain in everlasting preservation until the end of all earthly time! Success! I have now attained unrivaled success!”

  He then turned to the machine man.

  “How long have I been that way?” he asked excitedly.

  “How should we know?” replied the Zorome. “We picked up your rocket only a short time ago, which, according to your computation, would be less than a day. This is our first visit to your planetary system and we chanced upon your rocket So it is a satellite? We didn’t watch it long enough to discover whether or not it was a satellite. At first we thought it to be another traveling space craft, but when it refused to answer our signals we investigated.”

  “And so that was the earth at which I looked,” mused the professor.

  “No wonder I didn’t recognize it. The topography has changed so much. How different the sun appears — it must have been over a million years ago when I died!”

  “Many millions,” corrected 25X-987. “Suns of such size as this one do not cool in so short a time as you suggest.”

  Professor Jameson, in spite of all his amazing computations before his death, was staggered by the reality.

  “Who are you?” he suddenly asked.

  “We are the Zoromes from Zor, a planet of a sun far across the Universe.”

  25X-987 then went on to tell Professor Jameson something about how the Zoromes had attained their high stage of development and had instantly put a stop to all birth, evolution and death of their people, by becoming machine men.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER IV

  The Dying World

  “And now tell us of yourself,” said 25X-987, “and about your world.”

  Professor Jameson, noted in college as a lecturer of no mean ability and perfectly capable of relating intelligently to them the story of the earth’s history, evolution and march of events following the birth of civilization up until the time when he died, began his story. The mental speech hampered him for a time, but he soon became accustomed to it so as to use it easily, and he found it preferable to vocal speech after a while. The Zoromes listened interestedly to the long account until Professor Jameson had finished.

  “My nephew,” concluded the professor, “evidently obeyed my instructions and placed my body in the rocket I had built, shooting it out into space where I became the satellite of the earth for these many millions of years.”

  “Do you really want to blow how long you were dead before we found you?” asked 25X-987. “It would be interesting to find out.”

  “Yes, I should like very much to know,” replied the professor.

  “Our greatest mathematician, 459C-79 will tell it to you.” The mathematician stepped forward. Upon one side of his cube were many buttons arranged in long columns and squares.

  “What is your unit of measuring?” he asked.

  “A mile”

  “How many times more is a mile than is the length of your rocket satellite?”

  “My rocket is fifteen feet long. A mile is five thousand two hundred and eighty feet.”

  The mathematician depressed a few buttons.

  “How far, or how many miles from the sun was your planet at that time?”

  “Ninety-three million miles,” was the reply.

  “And your world’s satellite — which you call moon from your planet — earth?”

  “Two hundred and forty thousand miles.”

  “And your rocket?”

  “I figured it to go about sixty-five thousand miles from the earth.”

  “It was only twenty thousand miles from the earth when we picked it up,” said the mathematician, depressing a few more buttons. “The moon and sun are also much nearer your planet now.”

  Professor Jameson gave way to a mental ejaculation of amazement.

  “Do you know how long you have cruised around the planet in your own satellite?” said the mathematician. “Since you began that journey, the planet which you call the earth has revolved around the sun over forty million times.”

  “Forty-million-years!” exclaimed Professor Jameson haltingly. “Humanity must then have all perished from the earth long ago! I’m the last man on earth!”

  “It is a dead world now,” interjected 25X-987.

  “Of course,” elucidated the mathematician, “those last few million years are much shorter than the ones in whic
h you lived. The earth’s orbit is of less diameter and its speed of revolution is greatly increased, due to its proximity to the cooling sun. I should say that your year was some four times as long as the time in which it now takes your old planet to circumnavigate the sun. How many days were there in your year?”

  “Three hundred and sixty-five.”

  “The planet has now ceased rotating entirely.”

  “Seems queer that your rocket satellite should avoid the meteors so long,” observed 459C-79, the mathematician.

  “Automatic radium repulsion rays,” explained the professor.

  “The very rays which kept us from approaching your rocket,” stated 25X-987, “until we neutralized them.”

  “You died and were shot out into space long before any life occurred on Zor,” soliloquized one of the machine men. “Our people had not yet even been born when yours had probably disappeared entirely from the face of the earth.”

  “Hearken to 72N-4783,” said 25X-987, “he is our philosopher, and he just loves to dwell on the past life of Zor when we were flesh and blood creatures with the threat of death hanging always over our heads. At that time, like the life you knew, we were born, we lived and died, all within a very short time, comparatively.”

  “Of course, time has come to mean nothing to us, especially when we are out in space,” observed 72N-4783. “We never keep track of it on our expeditions, though back in Zor such accounts are accurately kept. By the way, do you know how long we stood here while you recounted to us the history of your planet? Our machine bodies never get tired, you know.”

  “Well,” ruminated Professor Jameson, giving a generous allowance of time. “I should say about a half a day, although it seemed scarcely as long as that.”

  “We listened to you for four days,” replied 72N-4783.

  Professor Jameson was really aghast.

  “Really, I hadn’t meant to be such a bore,” he apologized.

  “That is nothing,” replied the other. “Your story was interesting, and if it had been twice as long, it would not have mattered, nor would it have seemed any longer. Time is merely relative, and in space actual time does not exist at all, any more than your forty million years’ cessation of life seemed more than a few moments to you. We saw that it was so when your first thought impressions reached us following your revival.”

  “Let us continue on to your planet earth,” then said 25X-987. “Perhaps we shall find more startling disclosures there.”

  As the space ship of the Zoromes approached the sphere from which Professor Jameson had been hurled in his rocket forty million years before, the professor was wondering how the earth would appear, and what radical changes he would find. Already he knew that the geographical conditions of the various continents were changed. He had seen as much from the space ship.

  A short time later the earth was reached. The space travelers from Zor, as well as Professor Jameson, emerged from the cosmic flyer to walk upon the surface of the planet. The earth had ceased rotating, leaving one-half its surface always toward the sun. This side of the earth was heated to a considerable degree, while its antipodes, turned always away from the solar luminary, was a cold, frigid, desolate waste. The space travelers from Zor did not dare to advance very far into either hemisphere, but landed on the narrow, thousand-mile strip of territory separating the earth’s frozen half from its sun-baked antipodes.

  As Professor Jameson emerged from the space ship with 25X-987, he stared in awe at the great transformation four hundred thousand centuries had wrought. The earth’s surface, its sky and the sun were all so changed and unearthly appearing. Off to the east the blood red, ball of the slowly cooling sun rested upon the horizon, lighting up the eternal day. The earth’s rotation had ceased entirely, and it hung motionless in the sky as it revolved around its solar parent, its orbit slowly but surely cutting in toward the great body of the sun. The two inner planets, Mercury and Venus, were now very close to the blood red orb whose scintillating, dazzling brilliance had been lost in its cooling process. Soon, the two nearer planets would succumb to the great pull of the solar luminary and return to the flaming folds, from which they had been hurled out as gaseous bodies in the dim, age-old past, when their careers had just begun.

  The atmosphere was nearly gone, so rarefied had it become, and through it Professor Jameson could view with amazing clarity without discomfort to his eyes the bloated body of the dying sun. It appeared many times the size he had seen it at the time of his death, on account of its relative nearness. The earth had advanced a great deal closer to the great star around which it swung.

  The sky towards the west was pitch black except for the iridescent twinkle of the fiery stars which studded that section of the heavens. As he watched, a faint glow suffused the western sky, gradually growing brighter, the full moon majestically lifted itself above the horizon, casting its pale, ethereal radiance upon the dying world beneath. It was increased to many times the size Professor Jameson had ever seen it during his natural lifetime. The earth’s greater attraction was drawing upon the moon just as the sun was pulling the earth ever nearer itself.

  This cheerless landscape confronting the professor represented the state of existence to which the earth had come. It was a magnificent spread of loneliness which bore no witness to the fact that it had seen the teeming of life in better ages long ago. The weird, yet beautiful scene, spread in a melancholy panorama before his eyes, drove his thoughts into gloomy abstraction with its dismal, depressing influence. Its funereal, oppressive aspect smote him suddenly with the chill of a terrible loneliness.

  25X-987 aroused Professor Jameson from his lethargic reverie. “Let us walk around and see what we can find. I can understand how you feel in regard to the past. It is quite a shock — but it must happen to all worlds sooner or later — even to Zor. When that time comes, the Zoromes will find a new planet on which to live. If you travel with us, you will become accustomed to the sight of seeing dead, lifeless worlds as well as new and beautiful ones pulsating with life and energy. Of course, this world being your own, holds a peculiar sentimental value to you, but it is really one planet among billions.”

  Professor Jameson was silent.

  “I wonder whether or not there are any ruins here to be found?” queried 25X-987.

  “I don’t believe so,” replied the professor. “I remember hearing an eminent scientist of my day state that, given fifty thousand years, every structure and other creation of man would be obliterated entirely from off’ the earth’s surface.”

  “And he was right,” endorsed the machine man of Zor. “Time is a great effacer.”

  For a long time the machine men wandered over the dreary surface of the earth, and then 25X-987 suggested a change of territory to explore. In the space ship, they moved around the earth to the other side, still keeping to the belt of shadowland which completely encircled the globe like some gigantic ring. Where they now landed arose a series of cones with hollow peaks.

  “Volcanoes!” exclaimed the professor.

  “Extinct ones,” added the machine man.

  Leaving the space ship, the fifty or more machine men, including also Professor Jameson, were soon exploring the curiously shaped peaks. The professor, in his wanderings had strayed away from the rest, and now advanced into one of the cup-like depressions of the peak, out of sight of his companions, the Zoromes.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER V

  Eternity or Death

  He was well in the center of the cavity when the soft ground beneath him gave way suddenly and he catapulted below into the darkness. Through the Stygian gloom he fell in what seemed to be an endless drop. He finally crashed upon something hard. The thin crust of the volcano’s mouth had broken through, precipitating him into the deep, hollow interior.

  It must have been a long ways to fall — or so it had seemed. Why was he not knocked senseless or killed? Then he felt himself over with three tentacles. His metal legs were four broken, twisted masse
s of metal, while the lower half of his cubic body was jammed out of shape and split. He could not move, and half of his six tentacles were paralyzed.

  How would he ever get out of there? he wondered. The machine men of Zor might never find him. What would happen to him, then? He would remain in this deathless, monotonous state forever in the black hole of the volcano’s interior unable to move. What a horrible thought! He could not starve to death; eating was unknown among the Zoromes, the machines requiring no food. He could not even commit suicide. The only way for him to die would be to smash the strong metal head, and in his present immovable condition, this was impossible.

  It suddenly occurred to him to radiate thoughts for help. Would the Zoromes receive his messages? He wondered how far the telepathic messages would carry. He concentrated the powers of his mind upon the call for help, and repeatedly stated his position and plight. He then left his mind clear to receive the thought answers of the Zoromes. He received none. Again he tried. Still he received no welcoming answer. Professor Jameson became dejected.