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

by Edited By Isaac Asimov

  But I need no answer. I think I understand. These beings of science realised that such an entity as myself should never be … that I am a blasphemy upon all creation and beyond all reason … they realised that eternal life is a terrible thing … a thing not to be desired … and as punishment for delving into secrets never meant to be revealed, none of them will release me from my fate …

  Perhaps they are right, but oh, it is cruel! Cruel! The fault is not mine, I am here against my own will.

  And so I continue ever down, alone and lonely, yearning for others of my kind. Always hopeful – and always disappointed.

  * * * *

  So it was that I departed from a certain world of highly intelligent gaseous beings; a world that was in itself composed of a highly rarefied substance bordering on nebulosity. So it was that I became even smaller, was lifted up in a whirling, expanding vortex of the dense atmosphere, and entered the universe which it composed.

  Why I was attracted by that tiny, far-away speck of yellow, I do not know. It was near the centre of the nebula I had entered. There were other suns far brighter, far more attractive, very much nearer. This minute yellow sun was dwarfed by other suns and sun-clusters around it – seemed insignificant and lost among them. And why I was drawn to it, so far away, I cannot explain.

  But mere distance, even space distance, was nothing to me now. I had long since learned from the Pure Intelligence the secret of propulsion by mind influence, and by this means I propelled myself through space at any desired speed not exceeding that of light; as my mind was incapable of imagining speed faster than light, I of course could not cause my material body to exceed it.

  So I neared the yellow sun in a few minutes and observed that it had twelve planets. And as I was far too large to yet land on any sphere, I wandered far among other suns, observing the haphazard construction of this universe, but never losing sight of the small yellow sun that had so intrigued me. And at last, much smaller, I returned to it.

  And of all the twelve planets, one was particularly attractive to me. It was a tiny blue one. It made not much difference where I landed, so why should I have picked it from among the others? Perhaps only a whim – but I think the true reason was because of its constant pale blue twinkling, as though it were beckoning to me, inviting me to come to it. It was an unexplainable phenomenon; none of the others did that. So I moved closer to the orbit of the blue planet, and landed upon it.

  As usual, I didn’t move from where I stood for a time, until I could view the surrounding terrain; and then I observed that I had landed in a great lake – a chain of lakes. A short distance to my left was a city miles wide, a great part of which was inundated by the flood I had caused.

  Very carefully, so as not to cause further tidal waves, I stepped from the lake to solid ground, and the waters receded somewhat.

  Soon I saw a group of five machines flying toward me; each of them had two wings held stiffly at right angles to the body. Looking around me I saw others of these machines winging toward me from every direction, always in groups of five, in V formation. When they had come very close they began to dart and swoop in a most peculiar manner, from them came sharp staccato sounds, and I felt the impact of many tiny pellets upon my skin! These beings were very warlike, I thought, or else very excitable.

  Their bombardment continued for some time, and I began to find it most irritating; these tiny pellets could not harm me seriously, could not even pierce my skin, but the impact of them stung. I could not account for their attack upon me, unless it be that they were angry at the flood I had caused by my landing. If that were the case they were very unreasonable, I thought; any damage I had done was purely unintentional, and they should realise that.

  But I was soon to learn that these creatures were very foolish in many of their actions and manners; they were to prove puzzling to me in more ways than one.

  I waved my arms around, and presently they ceased their futile bombardment, but continued to fly around me.

  I wished I could see what manner of beings flew these machines. They were continually landing and rising again from a wide, level field below.

  For several hours they buzzed all around while I became steadily smaller. Below me I could now see long ribbons of white that I guessed were roads. Along these roads crawled tiny vehicles, which soon became so numerous that all movement came to a standstill, so congested were they. In the fields a large part of the populace had gathered, and was being constantly augmented by others.

  * * * *

  At last I was sufficiently small so that I could make out closer details, and I looked more intently at the beings who inhabited this world. My heart gave a quick leap then, for they somewhat resembled myself in structure. They were four-limbed and stood erect, their method of locomotion consisting of short, jerky hops, very different from the smooth gliding movement of my own race. Their general features were somewhat different too – seemed grotesque to me – but the only main difference between them and myself was that their bodies were somewhat more columnar, roughly oval in shape and very thin. I would say almost frail.

  Among the thousands gathered there were perhaps a score who seemed in authority. They rode upon the backs of clumsy-looking, four-footed animals, and seemed to have difficulty in keeping the excited crowd under control. I, of course, was the centre of their excitement; my presence seemed to have caused more consternation here than upon any other world.

  Eventually a way was made through the crowd and one of the ponderous four-wheeled vehicles was brought along the road opposite to where I stood. I supposed they wanted me to enter the rough box-like affair, so I did so, and was hauled with many bumps and jolts over the rough road toward the city I had seen to the left. I could have rebelled at this barbarous treatment, but I reflected that I was still very large and this was probably the only way they had of transporting me to wherever I was going.

  It had become quite dark, and the city was aglow with thousands of lights. I was taken into a certain building, and at once many important looking persons came to observe me.

  I have stated that my mind had become much more penetrative than ever before, so I was not surprised that I could read many of the thoughts of these persons without much difficulty. I learned that these were scientists who had come here from other immediate cities as quickly as possible – most of them in the winged machines, which they called ‘planes’ – when they had learned of my landing here. For many months they had been certain that I would land. They had observed me through their telescopes, and their period of waiting had been a speculative one. And I could now see that they were greatly puzzled, filled with much wonderment, and no more enlightenment about me than they had been possessed of before.

  Though still very large, I was becoming surely smaller, and it was this aspect that puzzled them most, just as it had on all the other worlds. Secondly in their speculations was the matter of where I had come from.

  Many were the theories that passed among them. Certain they were that I had come a far distance. Uranus? Neptune? Pluto? I learned that these were the names of the outmost planets of this system. No, they decided; I must have come a much farther distance than that. Perhaps from another far-away galaxy of this universe! Their minds were staggered at that thought. Yet how very far away they were from the truth.

  They addressed me in their own language, and seemed to realise that it was futile. Although I understood everything they said and everything that was in their minds, they could not know that I did, for I could not answer them. Their minds seemed utterly closed to all my attempts at thought communication, so I gave it up.

  They conversed then among themselves, and I could read the hopelessness in their minds. I could see, too, as they discussed me, that they looked upon me as being abhorrent, a monstrosity. And as I searched the recesses of their minds, I found many things.

  I found that it was the inherent instinct of this race to look upon all unnatural occurrences and phenomena with suspicion and
disbelief and prejudiced mind.

  I found that they had great pride for their accomplishments in the way of scientific and inventive progress. Their astronomers had delved a short distance into outer space, but considered it a very great distance; and having failed to find signs of intelligent life upon any immediate sphere, they leaped blindly and fondly to the conclusion that their own species of life was the dominant one in this solar system and perhaps – it was a reluctant perhaps – in the entire universe.

  Their conception of the universe was a puny one. True, at the present time there was extant a theory of an expanding universe, and in that theory at least they were correct, I knew, remembering the former world I had left – the swirling, expanding wisp of gaseous atmosphere of which this tiny blue sphere was an electron. Yes, their ‘expanding universe’ theory was indeed correct. But very few of their thinkers went beyond their own immediate universe – went deeply enough to even remotely glimpse the vast truth.

  They had vast cities, yes. I had seen many of them from my height as I towered above their world. A great civilisation, I had thought then. But now I know that great cities do not make great civilisations. I am disappointed at what I have found here, and cannot even understand why I should be disappointed, for this blue sphere is nothing to me and soon I will be gone on my eternal journey downward …

  Many things I read in these scientists’ minds – things clear and concise, things dim and remote; but they would never know.

  And then in the mind of one of the persons, I read an idea. He went away, and returned shortly with an apparatus consisting of wires, a headphone, and a flat revolving disc. He spoke into an instrument, a sort of amplifier. Then a few minutes later he touched a sharp, pointed instrument to the rotating disc, and I heard the identical sounds reproduced which he had spoken. A very crude method, but effective in a certain way. They wanted to register my speech so that they would have at least something to work on when I had gone.

  I tried to speak some of my old language into the instrument. I had thought I was beyond all surprises, but I was surprised at what happened. For nothing happened. I could not speak. Neither in the old familiar language I had known so long ago, nor in any kind of sound. I had communicated so entirely by thought transference on so many of the other worlds that now my power of vocal utterance was gone.

  They were disappointed. I was not sorry, for they could not have deciphered any language so utterly alien as mine was.

  Then they resorted to the mathematics by which this universe and all universes are controlled; into which mathematical mould the eternal All was cast at the beginning and has moved errorlessly since. They produced a great chart which showed the conglomerated masses of this and other galaxies. Then upon a black panel set in the wall was drawn a circle – understandable in any universe – and around it ten smaller circles. This was evidently their solar system, though I could not understand why they drew but ten circles when I had seen twelve planets from outer space. Then a tiny spot was designated on the chart, the position of this system in its particular galaxy. Then they handed the chart to me.

  It was useless. Utterly impossible. How could I ever indicate my own universe, much less my galaxy and solar system, by such puny methods as these? How could I make them know that my own universe and planet were so infinitely large in the scheme of things that theirs were practically non-existent? How could I make them know that their universe was not outside my own, but on my planet? – superimposed in a block of metal on a laboratory table, in a grain of sand, in the atoms of glass in a microscopic slide, in a drop of water, in a blade of grass, in a bit of cold flame, in a thousand other variations of elements and substances all of which I had passed down into and beyond, and finally in a wisp of gas that was the cause of their ‘expanding universe.’ Even could I have conversed with them in their own language, I could not have made them grasp the vastness of all those substances existing on worlds each of which was but an electron of an atom in one of trillions upon trillions of molecules of an infinitely larger world! Such a conception would have shattered their minds.

  It was very evident that they would never be able to establish communication with me even remotely, nor I with them; and I was becoming very impatient. I wanted to be out of the stifling building, out under the night sky, free and unhampered in the vast space which was my abode.

  Upon seeing that I made no move to indicate on the chart which part of their puny universe I came from, the scientists around me again conversed among themselves; and this time I was amazed at the trend of their thoughts.

  For the conclusion which they had reached was that I was some freak of outer space which had somehow wandered here, and that my place in the scale of evolution was too far below their own for them to establish ideas with me either by spoken language (of which they concluded I had none) or by signs (which I was apparently too barbaric to understand)!! This – this was their unanimous conclusion! This, because I had not uttered any language for them to record, and because the chart of their universe was utterly insignificant to me! Never did it occur to them that the opposite might be true – that I might converse with them but for the fact that their minds were too weak to register my thoughts!

  Disgust was my reaction to these short-sighted conclusions of their unimaginable minds – disgust which gave way to an old emotion, that of anger.

  And as that one impulsive, rising burst of anger flooded my mind, a strange thing happened:

  Every one of the scientists before me dropped to the floor in a state of unconsciousness.

  * * * *

  My mind had, indeed, become much more penetrative than ever before. No doubt my surge of anger had sent out intangible waves which had struck upon their centres of consciousness with sufficient force to render them insensible.

  I was glad to be done with them. I left the four walls of the building, emerged into the glorious expansive night under the stars and set out along the street in a direction that I believed would lead me away from the city. I wanted to get away from it, away from this world and the people who inhabited it.

  As I advanced along the streets, all who saw me recognised me at once and most of them fled unreasonably for safety. A group of persons in one of the vehicles tried to bar my progress, but I exercised my power of anger upon them; they drooped senselessly and their vehicle crashed into a building and was demolished.

  In a few minutes the city was behind me and I was striding down one of the roads, destination unknown; nor did it matter, except that now I was free and alone as it should be. I had but a few more hours on this world.

  And then it was that the feeling came upon me again, the strange feeling that I had experienced twice before: once when I had selected the tiny orange sun from among the millions of others, and again when I had chosen this tiny blue planet. Now I felt it for a third time, more strongly than ever, and now I knew that this feeling had some very definite purpose for being. It was as though something, some power beyond question, drew me irresistibly to it; I could not resist, nor did I want to. This time it was very strong and very near.

  Peering into the darkness along the road, I saw a light some distance ahead and to the left, and I knew that I must go to that light.

  When I had come nearer, I could see that it emanated from a house set far back in a grove of trees, and I approached it without hesitation. The night was warm, and a pair of double windows opened upon a well-lighted room. In this room was a man.

  I stepped inside and stood motionless, not yet knowing why I should have been drawn there.

  The man’s back was toward me. He was seated before a square dialled instrument, and seemed to be listening intently to some report coming from it. The sounds from the box were unintelligible to me, so I turned my attention to reading the man’s mind as he listened, and was not surprised to learn that the reports concerned myself.

  “– casualties somewhat exaggerated, though the property damage has reached millions of dollars,” came the
news from the box. “Cleveland was of course hardest hit, though not unexpectedly, astronomical computators having estimated with fair accuracy the radius of danger. The creature landed in Lake Eerie only a few miles east of the city. At the contact the waters rose over the breakwater with a rush and inundated nearly one-third of the city before receding, and it was well that the greater part of the populace had heeded the advance warnings and fled … all lake towns in the vicinity have reported heavy property damage, and cities as far east as Eerie, and as far west as Toledo, have reported high flood waters … all available Government combat planes were rushed to the scene in case the creature should show signs of hostility … scientific men who have awaited the thing’s landing for months immediately chartered planes for Cleveland … despite the elaborate cordons of police and militiamen, the crowds broke through and entered the area, and within an hour after the landing roads in every direction were congested with traffic … for several hours scientists circled and examined the creature in planes, while its unbelievable shrinkage continued … the only report we have from them is that, aside from the contour of its great bell-shaped torso, the creature is quite amazingly correct anatomically … an unofficial statement from Dr. Hilton U. Cogsworthy of the Alleghany Biological Society, is to the effect that such a creature isn’t. That it cannot possibly exist. That the whole thing is the result of some kind of mass hypnotism on a gigantic scale. This, of course, in lieu of some reasonable explanation … many persons would like to believe the ‘mass hypnotism’ theory, and many always will; but those who have seen it and taken photographs of it from every angle know that it does exist and that its steady shrinking goes on … Professor James L. Harvey of Miami University has suffered a stroke of temporary insanity and is under the care of physicians. The habitual curiosity seekers who flocked to the scene are apparently more hardened … the latest report is that the creature, still very large, has been transported under heavy guard to the Cleveland Institute of Scientific Research, where is gathered every scientist of note east of the Mississippi … stand by for further news flashes …”