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

by Edited By Isaac Asimov

  “This secret?” he demanded. “What is it? What’s this about the end of the world?”

  Again Barron Kane thoughtfully studied the tips of his laced fingers. “I’ll begin, I think,” he said, “by asking you a question—by asking you, Foster, the greatest riddle in the world. What is the Earth?”

  Startled, Foster searched the weary, patient face. He studied the gray eyes, calm, yet shadowed with brooding horror. He shook his head. Barron Kane was an enigma.

  “All right, what is the Earth?”

  “I’ve a very astounding thing to tell you,” went on Barron Kane, “a very terrible thing. It will be hard for you to accept, for it is contrary to a lot of our unthinking dogma that is older than science.

  “The idea is so strange, so terrible, Foster, that no western mind could have conceived it. We owe a debt, after all, to the Cult of the Great Egg. The oriental mentality, working with the secret science of the order, saw a thing that we should never have been able to see, in spite of all the evidence in front of our eyes.

  “But I can make it easier for you to accept the thing, Foster, by recalling a few notorious gaps in scientific knowledge. And you must accept it, Foster. The very life of humanity depends upon you.”

  Foster dropped into a chair directly before Barron Kane. Sitting bolt upright, he waited silently.

  “We live in appalling ignorance of the planet beneath us,” the same calm voice spoke on, edged still with a terrible intensity. “Out of four thousand miles to the center of the Earth, how far have we penetrated? Not four miles!

  “What lies beyond? What, really, is the thing whose tremors we call earthquakes? What lies beneath the thin shell of solid rock we live upon? What is it whose heat causes our volcanoes? I could cite you a thousand vague, conflicting theories, guesses, about the nature of the Earth’s interior —but hardly one proved fact. We know actually as little of the Earth, Foster, as a fly, crawling on an egg, knows of the mystery of embryonic life within.

  “And how much less we know of the other planets! What scientist can tell you even how they came to be? Oh, there’ve been fine theories enough, since Laplace. We have the planetesimal hypothesis, the nebular hypothesis, the gaseous hypothesis, the meteoritic hypothesis—this hypothesis and that. The most remarkable thing about each one is that it successfully contradicts all the others.

  “Think of the puzzle of the lost planet! According to Bode’s Law, you know, there should be another planet in the gap between Mars and Jupiter, where the asteroids are. The asteroids and the comets and the meteor swarms apparently are fragments of it—but, altogether, they account for no more than a tenth of the bulk it should have had. What unthinkable cataclysm shattered the lost planet, Foster? And, tell me, what became of the nine-tenths of it that is gone?

  “Take another cosmic enigma! What is the Sun itself, upon which our very lives depend? What is the life story of a sun, any sun? How does it acquire its matter and its motion and its heat? What is the purpose in existence of a sun? When you look at the stars on a winter night, Foster, can you conceive them without any end in being?

  “Consider the riddle of entropy! There is a force of death that pervades the universe. Stars grow cold and die; star dust is scattered; radiation is diffused and lost. Our cosmogonists say the universe is running down. But must there not also be a force of life, of growth, of creation?

  “How can death be, Foster, without life before it?

  “Did you never wonder, Foster, why the Sun, like other variable stars, expands and contracts in the rhythm of the sun-spot cycle, with a beat like the pulse of a living thing?”

  Barron Kane leaned forward. His gray eyes—the shadow of haunting horror was deeper in them, now—fixed upon Foster’s face with a desperate, appealing earnestness.

  “Foster,” he went on, “I know what the Earth is!

  “Years ago, struggling with the failures and the contradictions of our western science, I vaguely guessed the thing. Twelve years ago, from a chance faint rumor, I inferred that oriental insight had seen the truth hidden from our dogmatic western minds.

  “I went, as I say, into the Gobi. I found the secret sect. After seven years of effort and endurance, I reached the inner mystery. L’ao Ku confirmed my terrible inference.

  “I learned from him things I had not dared even to guess. I learned that the Earth—the entire solar system—is destined to break up within a very short time. We shall see the end, Foster—unless the secret agents of L’ao Ku make away with us first.

  “We must not forget him, Foster, in the greater danger. The man is inhuman, fanatic, diabolical; but he is a genius. And all his power, all the secret science that produced the poison ray, is bent upon our destruction.”

  The calm voice paused. Quiet hung in the wide library, strained, electric. And Foster whispered, incredulous:

  “The end of the world!”

  “The end,” repeated Barron Kane, with the same compelling calm. “I had hoped we might have—years. But I know to-night, from an item in the evening paper, that the change has already begun.”

  Foster Ross surged back to his feet, towered over the little brown man. “Tell me,” he implored, “just what are you getting at?”

  Barron Kane told him, leaning forward, his low voice sunk almost to a whisper. Foster listened silently, still standing. Unbelieving wonder was first in his blue eyes. It gave way slowly to the dawn of a terrible fear.

  * * * *

  II.

  An hour later, it was, when the grave little scientist finished and leaned back in the huge leather chair lacing his thin brown fingers together again.

  Without speaking, Foster strode to a tall window. He put up the blind and stared out into the early-winter night. The bare trees were a ghostly rank of skeletons on fields of snow that shimmered faintly under the dark sky. Flakes of snow gleamed white in the flood of light from the window. The bitter wind moaned bleakly against the ancient stone walls.

  “Please draw the blind,” requested Barron Kane, with that same calm that nothing disturbed. “The agents of L’ao Ku might be watching. The poison ray-”

  Foster snatched down the blind. He strode back to his uncle, tense, trembling a little. “Sorry!” he muttered. “I forgot.”

  “The idea is a peculiarly difficult one for the western mind to receive,” said Barron Kane sympathetically. “It would drive most westerners mad, I suspect, to be forced to believe it. But, if you will try to grasp it with something of the oriental fatalism-”

  Foster seemed unconscious of him. He strode up and down the vast, dark-paneled room. He paused, once, to touch the little aluminum model of the space ship on the table. He took a photograph of dark-eyed June Trevor from the mantel, and studied her demure, classic loveliness for a moment and replaced it very carefully. He strode back to his uncle.

  “The Earth—that!” he rasped. “I can’t believe it! It’s too—monstrous!”

  Barron Kane rose and came to him eagerly. “You must believe me, Foster,” his low voice pleaded. “Because only you have the means to save the seed of humanity. And you must begin the work at once—to-night!”

  “To-night?” echoed Foster, in dull surprise.

  “You must realize, Foster, that we’ve only months. Half a year, at most. And the undertaking is—terrific. We must set up a laboratory to rush the development of your motor-tube. Your steel mills must begin fabricating parts for the—the ark of space.

  “We’ve a thousand problems to solve in every branch of engineering. And the thing must be finished in less time than was ever taken for a similar construction. Much less time!”

  “There has been no similar construction,” Foster said. “Even a battle ship is a simple toy compared to the space machine. It would take a lifetime to launch the thing.

  “Besides,” he protested vaguely, still lost in wonderment, “I’m going to Palm Beach. I promised June that I—”

  “Then you must break your promise,” cut in Barron Kane imperatively. “
Both of us must give every second to the job. Even then, the time is fearfully short. And we must look out for L’ao Ku with his poison ray.”

  “Really, you see, I can’t—can’t quite believe.” Foster’s blue eyes looked soberly at Barron Kane. “The thing’s too damnably fantastic!”

  “You must try to grasp it with the oriental viewpoint,” urged his uncle. “The eastern fatalism—”

  “I’m no Chinaman,” said Foster. “But I do love June Trevor—more than anything. Even if you’re right—if the next six months will be the last—I’d rather spend them with her.”

  “Don’t you see?” whispered Barron Kane. He gripped Foster’s arm with thin fingers. “If you love June Trevor, you must build the space machine to save her. Would you want to see her die, Foster, with the rest of the human race, like—like vermin in a burning house? Wiped out-annihilated?”

  “No!” exclaimed Foster. “No! But I can’t believe-”

  “You must!” insisted Barron Kane. “There’s proof, I tell you. To-night, in the evening paper, is an item that heralds the disruption of the solar system.”

  “Proof?” cried Foster incredulously. “Proof of—that?”

  “Have you an evening paper?”

  “It’s here somewhere. I had no time to look at it. The experiment, you know.”

  He found the paper, unfolded it curiously. His eye sought the chief headline, saw that it concerned merely a new disclosure of political corruption.

  Barron Kane’s thin, eager hands took the paper from him, pointed out an obscurely headed item at the bottom of the page.

  SAVANTS PUZZLED

  Doctor Lynn Poynter, of the Mount Wilson Observatory, reported this morning that the planet Pluto has left its orbit and is wandering away from the Sun on an erratic and inexplicable path. The planet’s color, Doctor Poynter also stated, has changed from yellowish to vivid green.

  He is unable, Doctor Poynter says, to give any explanation of the phenomenon. He refuses to make any further comments upon it, except to say that other astronomers, in all parts of the world, are being requested to check his observations.

  Foster’s face set grimly as he read the brief paragraphs. His fingers, trembling, closed unconsciously upon the newspaper, tore it slowly in two. Into his blue eyes, when he looked back at Barron Kane, had come a new, consuming horror. Huskily, he spoke:

  “So Pluto is already—gone? Already, the solar system is breaking up!”

  He gazed down at the torn paper in his hands.

  “We’ll go down to the mill in the morning, Barron,” he said, “to begin.”

  Silently, the little brown man gripped his hand, mutely thankful.

  “Now,” said Foster, “I must telephone June.”

  * * * *

  “It’s you, Foster!” came the girl’s clear voice over the wire, eager with anticipation. “You’re coming down to-morrow? I’ll drive to meet you-”

  Foster was picturing her staid, brown-eyed charm; he saw her as she would sit at the wheel, tall, slender: a gay, childish eagerness beneath her sedate reserve. And he was faint, suddenly, with a sick regret that he could not go to her.

  “No,” he was saying, trying to keep the pain from his voice; “I’m afraid I can’t come down.”

  He sensed the quick anxiety in her reply: “Is something—wrong?”

  “A thing has come up,” he stumbled, searching for words not too alarming. “A job that I must do. It’s tremendously important. I must stay--”

  “Oh!” In her voice was a little catch of agony. “Will it keep you—past the New Year?”

  “Yes,” he said. “We’ll have to name a new wedding day.”

  “Oh!” It was a gasp of pain: Foster was sick with pity for her. “Can’t you tell me what it is?”

  “No; not over the phone. But I want you to come to me, June, as soon as you can. I’ll explain.”

  “I’ve a lot of engagements,” she protested. “And you seem so—strange!”

  “It’s really important,” he urged. “Please come! I need you, really. Oh, June—please-”

  A moment of silence; then she spoke decisively:

  “All right, Foster, I’ll be there—let’s see—Monday.”

  “Thanks, dear!” he said gratefully. “When you understand-”

  “Atta boy!” she cried, almost gayly. “Get some sunshine in your voice! You were talking as if the world were going to end! I’ll be there Monday.”

  Dear June, the same good sport, he was thinking, as she hung up. Gay and unselfish as ever. She always understood. And he would, he must, finish the space machine in time to carry her away from this unbelievable terror that Barron Kane promised.

  * * * *

  That night Barron Kane and Foster Ross did not go to bed. They stayed in the long library, beside the little aluminum model of the space machine, planning how to transform the dream of it into reality. Foster ventured to the kitchen at midnight and brought bread and cold ham and a bottle of milk and set them beside the toy ship.

  At dawn he began packing into a brief case the model and the sheets they had covered with plans, to carry down to the mill.

  “There’s a danger, remember,” warned Barron Kane. “The men who followed me won’t be far away. They won’t go back without proof that I am dead.”

  “I’ll call the mill,” said Foster, “have a few men sent out.”

  But the line, he discovered, was dead.

  “The wires are down,” he said. “The storm--”

  “L’ao Ku’s men have cut them,” whispered Barron Kane. “They are waiting for us.”

  “We’d better make a dash for it, then,” Foster suggested, “while we can.”

  Barron Kane nodded. “We’ll have to fence ourselves in if we do get to the mill,” he said. “For we’ll be fighting L’ao Ku, to the end, as well as fighting against time. It is the basis of the secret sect that all life must perish when the Earth breaks up. Any attempt to save even a single human life breaks the first tenet of their fantastic dogma.”

  Leaving the lights burning in the library, the two slipped out through the rear of the old mansion. The grounds were ghostly white with snow. Dense clouds hid the sky, ice-gray with the first glow of dawn. Mysterious shadows were clotted against trees and buildings.

  Foster carried his priceless model. Barron Kane had drawn his heavy automatic, snapped off the safety. At a half run, they crunched through thick snow to the garage. Foster unlocked the doors, flung them back.

  A thin orange ray, bright as a blade of incandescent metal, flamed silently out of the gloomy doorway. It struck Barron Kane’s arm. His automatic spoke once in reply. Then, gasping with agony, he crumpled down on the snow.

  Foster caught his breath. His lean body catapulted instantly into the black corner from which the silent ray had come.

  His groping hand closed over a talonlike hand that held a light metal tube. His shoulder struck a lithe, powerful body, flung it heavily against the wall. Another lean hand closed on his throat. He caught a sinewy wrist, forced it back.

  The two recoiled from the wall, thudded on the concrete floor. Foster had heard a guttural grunt of surprise. That was the only sound from his unseen opponent. The battle was finished in silence and darkness.

  A doubled knee drove into Foster’s groin. As he writhed in agony, hard fingers twitched under his. A blinding finger of yellow light stabbed from the little tube. It wavered across the wall of the garage. Slowly it came down.

  The poison ray! If it touched him, to make a deadly venom of his own blood--

  Intolerable agony burst suddenly from the tortured wrist of his resisting arm. He trembled with the pain of effort. Hot sweat burst out on his face.

  The orange ray touched the floor, trembled toward his shoulder. The talons that moved it were hard as steel.

  Foster was giddy with the unbearable pain from his twisted arm. The world spun; a wave of blackness rose. Then, in the moment of defeat, a queer something happened to him, a blind
ing revelation. In a moment of crystal vision, he saw himself not as one man fighting for his own life, but the champion of humanity, battling for ultimate survival.

  * * * *

  A new strength came oddly with the vision; deathless purpose flowed into him like a strange tide.

  He straightened his tortured arm. Red agony flamed in it. But the orange needle flickered away. The hard body against him knotted with exertion; the ray flashed back. Faint and dizzy, Foster drew on his new strength to the utmost.

  He heard the dull snap of a breaking bone. The steel talons in his grasp turned to limp flesh. The orange blade described a sudden arc, that touched the head of the other man. Then the little tube crashed against the wall, the ray went out.