Astounding Stories of Super Science, February, 1930
What was the extraordinary connection between Dr. Livermore’s sudden disappearance and the coming of a new satellite to the Earth?
M any of my readers will remember twenty-fifth. At the time, some inspired the mysterious radio messages writers tried to connect the two events, which were heard by both amateur
maintaining that the discovery of the fact that and professional short wave the earth had a new satellite coincident with operators during the nights of the twenty-third the receipt of the mysterious messages was
and twenty-fourth of last September, and even evidence that the new planetoid was inhabited more will remember the astounding discovery
and that the messages were attempts on the
made by Professor Montescue of the Lick
part of the inhabitants to communicate with
Observatory on the night of September us.
Astounding Stories of Super Science 2
The fact that the messages were on a
and who had no interests in life, so far as
lower wave length than any receiver then in
anyone knew, other than his work.
existence could receive with any degree of
I first made contact with him when I
clarity, and the additional fact that they was a freshman at Calvada, and for some appeared to come from an immense distance
unknown reason he took a liking to me. My
lent a certain air of plausibility to these father had insisted that I follow in his ebullitions in the Sunday magazine sections.
footsteps as an electrical engineer; as he was For some weeks the feature writers harped on
paying my bills, I had to make a show at
the subject, but the hurried construction of
studying engineering while I clandestinely
new receivers which would work on a lower
pursued my hobby, literature. Dr. Livermore’s wave length yielded no results, and the solemn courses were the easiest in the school and they pronouncements of astronomers to the effect
counted as science, so I regularly registered that the new celestial body could by no for them, cut them, and attended a class in possibility have an atmosphere on account of
literature as an auditor. The Doctor used to
its small size finally put an end to the talk. So meet me on the campus and laughingly scold
the matter lapsed into oblivion.
me for my absence, but he was really in
While quite a few people will sympathy with my ambition and he regularly remember the two events I have noted, I doubt gave me a passing mark and my units of credit whether there are five hundred people alive
without regard to my attendance, or, rather,
who will remember anything at all about the
lack of it.
disappearance of Dr. Livermore of the
When I graduated from Calvada I was
University of Calvada on September twenty-
theoretically an electrical engineer. Practically third. He was a man of some local I had a pretty good knowledge of prominence, but he had no more than a local
contemporary literature and knew almost
fame, and few papers outside of California
nothing about my so-called profession. I
even noted the event in their columns. I do not stalled around Dad’s office for a few months
think that anyone ever tried to connect up his until I landed a job as a cub reporter on the disappearance with the radio messages or the
San Francisco Graphic and then I quit him discovery of the new earthly satellite; yet the cold. When the storm blew over, Dad admitted
three events were closely bound up together,
that you couldn’t make a silk purse out of a
and but for the Doctor’s disappearance, the
sow’s ear and agreed with a grunt to my new
other two would never have happened.
line of work. He said that I would probably be Dr. Livermore taught physics at a better reporter than an engineer because I Calvada, or at least he taught the subject when couldn’t by any possibility be a worse one,
he remembered that he had a class and felt
and let it go at that. However, all this has
like teaching. His students never knew nothing to do with the story. It just explains whether he would appear at class or not; but
how I came to be acquainted with Dr.
he always passed everyone who took his Livermore, in the first place, and why he sent courses and so, of course, they were always
for me on September twenty-second, in the
crowded. The University authorities used to
second place.
remonstrate with him, but his ability as a
research worker was so well known and The morning of the twenty-second the City recognized that he was allowed to go about as Editor called me in and asked me if I knew
he pleased. He was a bachelor who lived alone
“Old Liverpills.”
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3
“He says that he has a good story
me was that a “lot of junk” had come for the
ready to break but he won’t talk to anyone but Doctor by express and that a lot more had
you,” went on Barnes. “I offered to send out a been hauled in by truck from Redding.
good man, for when Old Liverpills starts a
“What kind of junk?” I asked him.
story it ought to be good, but all I got was a
“Almost everything, Bub: sheet steel,
high powered bawling out. He said that he
machinery, batteries, cases of glass, and Lord would talk to you or no one and would just as knows what all. It’s been going on ever since soon talk to no one as to me any longer. Then he landed there. He has a bunch of Indians
he hung up. You’d better take a run out to
working for him and he don’t let a white man
Calvada and see what he has to say. I can have on the place.”
a good man rewrite your drivel when you get
Forced to be satisfied with this meager
back.”
information, I started old Lizzie and lit out for I was more or less used to that sort of
the ranch. After I had turned off the main trail talk from Barnes so I paid no attention to it. I I met no one until the ranch house was in
drove my flivver down to Calvada and asked
sight. As I rounded a bend in the road which
for the Doctor.
brought me in sight of the building, I was
“Dr. Livermore?” said the bursar. forced to put on my brakes at top speed to
“Why, he hasn’t been around here for the last avoid running into a chain which was
ten months. This is his sabbatical year and he stretched across the road. An Indian armed
is spending it on a ranch he owns up at Hat
with a Winchester rifle stood behind it, and
Creek, near Mount Lassen. You’ll have to go
when I stopped he came up and asked my
there if you want to see him.”
business.
I knew better than to report back to
“My business is with Dr. Livermore,” I
Barnes without the story, so there was nothing said tartly.
to it but to drive up to Hat Creek, and a long,
“You got letter?” he inquired.
hard drive it was. I made Redding late that
“No,” I answered.
night; the next day I drove on to Burney and
> “No ketchum letter, no ketchum
asked for directions to the Doctor’s ranch.
Doctor,” he replied, and walked stolidly back
“So you’re going up to Doc to his post.
Livermore’s, are you?” asked the Postmaster,
“This is absurd,” I shouted, and drove
my informant. “Have you got an invitation?”
Lizzie up to the chain. I saw that it was merely I assured him that I had.
hooked to a ring at the end, and I climbed out
“It’s a good thing,” he replied, and started to take it down. A thirty-thirty
“because he don’t allow anyone on his place
bullet embedded itself in the post an inch or without one. I’d like to go up there myself and two from my head, and I changed my mind
see what’s going on, but I don’t want to get
about taking down that chain.
shot at like old Pete Johnson did when he tried
“No ketchum letter, no ketchum
to drop in on the Doc and pay him a little call.
Doctor,” said the Indian laconically as he
There’s something mighty funny going on up
pumped another shell into his gun.
there.”
I was balked, until I noticed a pair of
Naturally I tried to find out what was going on telephone wires running from the house to the but evidently the Postmaster, who was also the tree to which one end of the chain was
express agent, didn’t know. All he could tell fastened.
Astounding Stories of Super Science 4
“Is that a telephone to the house?” I
until I got there that you were up here.”
demanded.
The Doctor chuckled.
The Indian grunted an assent.
“I guess I forgot to tell where I was,”
“Dr. Livermore telephoned me to he said.
come and see him,” I said. “Can’t I call him
“That man I talked to got me so mad
up and see if he still wants to see me?”
that I hung up on him before I told him. It
The Indian debated the question with
doesn’t matter, though. I can dig you up a new himself for a minute and then nodded a toothbrush, and I guess you can make out with doubtful assent. I cranked the old coffee mill that. Come in.”
type of telephone which I found, and presently I followed him into the house, and he
heard the voice of Dr. Livermore.
showed me a room fitted with a crude bunk, a
“This is Tom Faber, Doctor,” I said.
washstand, a bowl and a pitcher.
“The Graphic sent me up to get a story from
“You won’t have many luxuries here,
you, but there’s an Indian here who started to Tom,” he said, “but you won’t need to stay
murder me when I tried to get past your here for more than a few days. My work is barricade.”
done: I am ready to start. In fact, I would have
“Good for him,” chuckled the Doctor.
started yesterday instead of to-day, had you
“I heard the shot, but didn’t know that he was arrived. Now don’t ask any questions; it’s
shooting at you. Tell him to talk to me.”
nearly lunch time.”
The Indian took the telephone at my
“What’s the story, Doctor?” I asked
bidding and listened for a minute.
after lunch as I puffed one of his excellent
“You go in,” he agreed when he hung
cigars. “And why did you pick me to tell it
up the receiver.
to?”
He took down the chain and I drove on
“For several reasons,” he replied,
up to the house, to find the Doctor waiting for ignoring my first question. “In the first place, I me on the veranda.
like you and I think that you can keep your
“Hello, Tom,” he greeted me heartily.
mouth shut until you are told to open it. In the
“So you had trouble with my guard, did you?”
second place, I have always found that you
“I nearly got murdered,” I said had the gift of vision or imagination and have ruefully.
the ability to believe. In the third place, you
“I expect that Joe would have drilled
are the only man I know who had the literary
you if you had tried to force your way in,” he ability to write up a good story and at the
remarked cheerfully. “I forgot to tell him that same time has the scientific background to
you were coming to-day. I told him you would
grasp what it is all about. Understand that
be here yesterday, but yesterday isn’t to-day unless I have your promise not to write this
to that Indian. I wasn’t sure you would get
story until I tell you that you can, not a word here at all, in point of fact, for I didn’t know will I tell you.”
whether that old fool I talked to in your office I reflected for a moment. The Graphic
would send you or some one else. If anyone
would expect the story when I got back, but
else had been sent, he would have never got
on the other hand I knew that unless I gave the by Joe, I can tell you. Come in. Where’s your desired promise, the Doctor wouldn’t talk.
bag?”
“All right,” I assented, “I’ll promise.”
“I haven’t one,” I replied. “I went to
“Good!” he replied. “In that case, I’ll
Calvada yesterday to see you, and didn’t know tell you all about it. No doubt you, like the
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5
rest of the world, think that I’m crazy?”
that the two are separate, but similar
“Why, not at all,” I stammered. In manifestations of one force. The parallel point of fact, I had often harbored such a
between the two grows closer with each
suspicion.
succeeding experiment. You know, for
“Oh, that’s all right,” he went on example, that each magnetized particle has cheerfully. “I am crazy, crazy as a loon, two poles. Similarly each gravitized particle, which, by the way, is a highly sensible bird
to coin a new word, had two poles, one
with a well balanced mentality. There is no
positive and one negative. Every particle on
doubt that I am crazy, but my craziness is not the earth is so oriented that the negative poles of the usual type. Mine is the insanity of
point toward the positive center of the earth.
genius.”
This is what causes the commonly known
phenomena of gravity or weight.”
He looked at me sharply as he spoke, but long
“I can prove the fallacy of that in a
sessions at poker in the San Francisco Press
moment,” I retorted.
Club had taught me how to control my facial
“There are none so blind as those who
muscles, and I never batted an eye. He seemed will not see,” he quoted with an icy smile. “I satisfied, and went on.
can probably predict your puerile argument,
“From your college work you are but go ahead and present it.”
familiar with the laws of magnetism,” he said.
“Perhaps, considering just what your college
“If two magnets are placed so that the north
career really was, I might better say that you pole of one is in juxtaposition to the south
are supposed to be familiar with them.”
pole of the other, they attract one another,” I I joined with him in his laughter.
said. “If the position of the
magnets be
“It won’t require a very deep reversed so that the two similar poles are knowledge to follow the thread of my opposite, they will repel. If your theory were argument,” he went on. “You know, of course,
correct, a man standing on his head would fall that the force of magnetic attraction is off the earth.”
inversely proportional to the square of the
“Exactly what I expected,” he replied.
distances separating the magnet and the “Now let me ask you a question. Have you attracted particles, and also that each ever seen a small bar magnet placed within the magnetized particle had two poles, a positive field of attraction of a large electromagnet? Of and a negative pole, or a north pole and a
course you have, and you have noticed that,
south pole, as they are usually called?”
when the north pole of the bar magnet was
I
nodded.
pointed toward the electromagnet, the bar was
“Consider for a moment that the laws
attracted. However, when the bar was reversed of magnetism, insofar as concerns the relation and the south pole pointed toward the
between distance and power of attraction, are electromagnet, the bar was still attracted. You exactly matched by the laws of gravitation.”
doubtless remember that experiment.”
“But there the similarity between the
“But in that case the magnetism of the
two forces ends,” I interrupted.
electromagnet was so large that the polarity of
“But there the similarity does not end,”
the small magnet was reversed!” I cried.
he said sharply. “That is the crux of the
“Exactly, and the field of gravity of the
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