Forgotten Fiction

by Lloyd Eshbach

  The latter had come, a great cloud of spiked crystal globes, divested of their metal armor, had swept all life from the surface of the airport—all save one man, who had concealed himself, and who had later returned with the tale of the invaders’ coming.

  Then the cloud of globes had divided, and had spread abroad over the face of the Earth. A night of terror, devastation, death had followed for every city on Earth. The globes, flashing about high above the teeming hives of humanity, had hurled showers of liquid fire down upon them, fire that cascaded over the cities like molten metal, white-hot, searing—but metal that seemed not to cool as it flowed. Like a crimson-and-amber acid that glittered and flamed, it had eaten its way from level to level, from aerial street to aerial street, destroying as it went, until at last, after working incalculable destruction, its powers had slowly vanished.

  Spasmodic, ineffectual attempts at retaliation had been made by fleets of armed helicopters, hastily marshalled, but the globes had out-maneuvered them at every turn, and had put them to route with their liquid fire.

  Then, before the devouring flames had completed their work, the globes, spinning madly, had sent thin jets of purple vapor from the tips of their spikes. The vapor spread in faint, tenuous clouds and sank slowly, like blankets of fog, over the cities. And men, as they breathed the vapor, slowly, with agony unspeakable, had passed into the oblivion of death. Then the crystal spheres had darted away to vanish beneath the sea.

  So delicate had been the balance of the complex supercivilization, that that single night of turmoil had been enough to start it tottering on the brink of destruction. It was not the loss of life that was to blame; rather was it the complete demoralization of commerce, the disruption of industry, the shattering of organized government. Given time, of course, conditions would have righted themselves—but the invaders gave Man no respite. An unremitting warfare between the monsters in the globes and the human race had begun, to continue for fourteen long years.

  All that had occurred before he, Vastine, had been born—a natural birth, his, for with the coming of the invaders the long-standing Ectogenetic Law with all other laws, had become void, meaningless. His parents had been a male and female scientist who had given him birth and had raised him in the heart of the Science Tower.

  SHORTLY after he had reached his twelfth year the warfare between mankind and the invaders ceased. For then—the floods had come! Until that time the monstrosities had made no concerted effort at destruction except the first, evidently occupied with some preparations and tasks of greater importance to them. But in the fourteenth year after their coming, they had emerged from the sea in all their power.

  Millions upon millions, there must have been, the result of fourteen years of procreation. From Atlantic and Pacific, from every large body of salt water on Earth, they had risen, to gather in a gigantic body in the upper reaches of Earth’s atmosphere.

  And mankind, expecting another deluge of fire, had cringed in abject fear.

  But the globes had ignored the puny humans, and as though by prearranged plan, had divided into groups; and each great group had flashed away on a mission that would result in death for Man and increased life for themselves. Several had gone to the Arctic ice cap; others to the Antarctic; and still others to the snow-covered peaks of Earth’s great mountains. And hovering above the frozen wastes, they had loosed their torrents of liquid fire—to melt the snow and ice of Earth—to flood the seas and make them rise—to drown the world of Man!

  From all high places the myriad converging streams had flowed, as the mountain snows had dissolved, mad torrents of water that swept all before them. From the mighty Alps into the European lowlands; from the Himalayas into the Ganges plains; from the African heights into the slowly-rising negro civilization, and northward into the thickly-peopled Egyptian flatlands; from the Rockies into the gigantic cities of the world power, America; from the Andes into the vast South American manufacturing centers—from all these and other lesser heights the aqueous doom had triumphed down.

  But far worse than these, even in the aggregate, had been the thawing polar ice sheets—they had been the cause of the ocean’s fearfully rapid rise.

  Refuge? There had been none save in the great towers and skyscrapers—and these could hold only an infinitesmal fraction of Earth’s hordes. Fights there had been for the meagre available refuge—a mere lad, they had terrified Vastine; and he remembered them now—bloody, brutish affairs!

  His scientist father at that time had been an attendant of the Brain; and when the globes had started to flood the world, though before panic had stricken humanity, the Brain had told him of the impending doom, and he had taken his wife and son up into the domed chamber with him. After securing a supply of water and food tablets, he had fastened the door of the room beyond all power to release it from within.

  Weeks had passed before the Brain had informed them that the waters had ceased rising, that the ice and snow were all gone, and that they could safely open the door. They had done so, to learn that the half-mile of tower that still remained above water was filled with an incredible number of scientists, living in terribly congested conditions. But because they feared the Brain and its power, they had left the domed chamber unmolested.

  That had been five years before, five years during which the marine monstrosities had been seen but rarely; evidently they thought that the few survivors of the flood could be no menace to them—nor had they. During that time, Vastine’s parents had died—whether by violence or accident he did not know. They had gone below into the tower for water—the salt water of the sea was distilled in the laboratories—and had failed to return. And he, Vastine, had become the attendant of the Brain.

  All had been well with him after that—though the scientists below had not been so fortunate—until three days before, when some of the globes had come out of the sea to destroy the surviving men of learning, and to put into effect some plan that they evidently had in mind. He had been in a state of fear for all of the three days; and the visit he had dreaded had finally taken place.

  But soon all would end, must end—and—and he would die . . . His mind, moving in a circle, had returned to his original thought.

  CHAPTER VII

  The Warning

  “VASTINE, come here!” Abruptly the Brain broke in upon his reverie. In a moment he had risen and stood before the crystal sphere.

  “Yes, Master.”

  The thought of the Brain came slowly, with great deliberation:

  “The time has come, Vastine, for these monsters from space to be destroyed. I could do nothing before, because the hour had not arrived; but now the invaders’ destruction and the salvation of man are to be accomplished.”

  A momentary doubt assailed Vastine, to be replaced instantly by a wave of eager joy. Was not the Brain all-powerful?

  “Far out in space,” the thought of the Brain continued, “a gigantic swarm of meteors is sweeping across the void with terrific speed. Before long it will reach the orbit of the Earth—and Earth will pass through the very heart of the swarm!

  “The world has passed through clouds of meteors before this, but none of them remotely approached this one in density and in the size of its component bodies. Under ordinary circumstances the bombardment of incandescent metal would reduce the world to a miniature sun; but now the water will be the means through which we escape that fate. For the meteors upon striking the water, will be cooled, and their velocity will be checked.

  “And as the water saves Earth from the meteors, so will the meteors free Earth from the enslavement of the waters. For when the molten masses strike the sea, the oxygen in the water will unite with the hot iron in the meteors—and they are composed chiefly of iron—to form iron oxide; and the hydrogen will be free as a gas, which will unite with the atmosphere.

  “I am aware, of course, that this vast amount of hydrogen in the air would render it unfit for breathing. So, many years before the coming of the invaders, I had an appara
tus constructed that will rid the atmosphere of the excess hydrogen. It lies far down under the water now, but at the proper moment, when the water is reduced to a certain level, it will begin to operate.

  “The apparatus—though you can scarcely comprehend even a part of my explanation—employs a principle brought forth many centuries ago by a famous astronomer of that day—the idea that under certain conditions the transmutation of elements takes place. This scientist said that in the Sun hydrogen is constantly changing to helium gas, by the union of four atoms of hydrogen to form one atom of helium. I’ve gone a step farther, and my device will change hydrogen to helium, and helium to palladium—the latter, a silver-white metal which has the power to absorb a great amount of hydrogen without losing its metallic form. This metal will aid my transmutor—but enough of explanations! They mean nothing to you.

  “You’ll be more interested in knowing that the monsters in their globes will die during the meteoric shower, for the seas will be boiling, together with the liquid in which the creatures float. For, though the invaders send streams of liquid fire from their globes, that fire has no great heat until it unites with the oxygen in the air; they are no more immune to heat than is Man.

  “Ask me not how I know all this; that I do know is sufficient!”

  Numerous questions leaped to Vastine’s mind as the thought of the Brain ceased for a moment, but he knew that to give them utterance would avail nothing; the Brain would tell him only that which it wished him to know. In silence he waited.

  Suddenly the Brain resumed its communication.

  “During the rain of meteors, the few towers that now remain above the water, and many of the buildings that are submerged, will be shaken to their foundations, some even destroyed, while the tops of most of them will be shattered and broken by bombardment. The Science Tower will be one of those most seriously affected—we’ll have to leave this chamber immediately.”

  “Leave!” Vastine exclaimed. “But there is no place for us to go to—and how can you leave?”

  The thought of the Brain continued uninterrupted.

  “When this tower was erected centuries ago under my supervision; I had the artisans construct a great, circular shaft that begins beneath the floor of this room and reaches to the ground level of the tower. And beneath the shaft on that level, is a chamber identical with this one, a chamber which, together with the shaft, I had constructed for just this emergency. For in that chamber we’ll seek refuge from the meteors.”

  THE Brain then directed Vastine to gather together his entire supply of food tablets and water, and to place them on the floor close to the device holding the Brain. As he did this, Vastine noticed for the first time that an almost invisible line in the floor completely surrounded the Brain, forming a great slab of metal fully eight feet in diameter, a slab separate from the rest of the metal floor. He placed his bed on end within the circle, beside his supplies.

  Then at the Brain’s direction, he turned a little knob in the exact center of the slab, beneath the apparatus of the Brain—and they began sinking slowly.

  “This, like the motors in my apparatus, is run by atomic energy,” the Brain informed Vastine.

  Down, down they sank, slowly at first, but with their pace accelerating until they were descending at breathtaking speed. Vastine clung, to a metal support in a sort of frenzy as the smoothly polished walls flashed by them. Steadily the light from above grew fainter, till at last they were hurtling through utter blackness.

  After an interminable period of downward progress, the slab of metal seemed to check its speed. At last they were only creeping along. And then, when they seemed to have reached a standstill, the slab of metal jarred against another hard surface; there was a sharp clang—a slow drop of fifteen or twenty feet—a faint click—and the sudden flood of light streaming from the lavender walls told Vastine that they had reached their destination.

  Quickly he stepped from the sheet of metal, and at the Brain’s command, removed his supplies and his bed. As he did so, he noted that there were now two layers, one of metal, and one of glass, the latter evidently a part of the ceiling of this room. With his possessions removed, he stood before the Brain awaiting orders.

  “Now,” the message came, “you must lift the entire mass of apparatus that holds me, and bear it to one side of the slabs so that they may return to their former positions.”

  Vastine stared in amazement at the entity in the sphere of crystal. “But—I—I can’t lift all that weight!” he cried in consternation.

  “You can,” the Brain replied, “if you’ll let me control your body, for my will is far stronger than yours . . . But first we must deal with a visitor!”

  At that instant Vastine fell back from the Brain with a cry of terror. For into the room from the mouth of the shaft above him had dropped a great spiked globe; and from one of its spikes flowed a stream of liquid fire. Only for an instant did the radiant stream strike the floor; as abruptly as the monster had come, the fire ceased flowing. And the spiked globe hung motionless in midair, every tentacle of the monster within it reaching toward the Brain.

  Vastine stared at the creature in wide-eyed surprise. Then he became aware of a Titanic struggle that was taking place. It was silent, and motionless, yet it was violent—the clashing of two powerful wills.

  Moment after moment he watched the tense figure of the monster—then abruptly it shrank back to the rear wall of the globe, and the spiked sphere settled to the floor. With a slow, cringing, beaten motion, one of the slender cords reached out, fumbled with a device behind a spike—and a circular section of the globe drew aside, leaving an opening a foot in diameter. Out through this the monstrosity crawled, collapsing on the floor like a pricked balloon. The globe tilted over and dashed its contents across the floor.

  With a little shudder of revulsion, Vastine drew back his foot and kicked the quivering, flabby thing to the far side of the room. It landed with a dull thud and a rasp of metallic scales—then it lay still.

  “Vastine!” It was the Brain. “The survivors in the three other towers must be warned of the coming shower of meteors in order that they may hide in the depths of the towers and escape destruction. This globe affords a means of your accomplishing that end. You shall enter the vehicle, rise up the shaft, and visit each of the towers. The shaft will remain open until you return.”

  While Vastine poured the remainder of the liquid from the globe, the Brain revealed how it was operated—knowledge it had gained in its mental struggle with the monster. Then Vastine crawled into the globe, closed the twelve-inch opening, and gingerly fingered the mechanism behind the spikes. As they answered to his touch, his confidence increased, and an instant later he flashed up through the blackness of the shaft.

  Nearing the top of the tower he checked his pace, and proceeded cautiously through the domed chamber, across the hallway, and out through an open window. The gray of dusk had fallen; Vastine was thankful for it, for it minimized the chances of his being discovered by the monsters. But with the open sea below him, a sea whipped into long, rolling, white-capped waves by a brisk wind, his courage faltered; the spiked globe however continued unswervingly toward the goal he had set, the Tower of Music. It buoyed up his spirit. In a very few minutes, it seemed, he reached the gigantic edifice.

  DIM lights shone from the windows to within a few hundred feet of the water; faint sounds of music drifted out into the twilight air from the highest floor. But when Vastine’s globe drifted in through a window the music broke off like a snuffed-out flame. A sudden, palpitating silence fell over the small group of men in the room.

  Then one of them cried, “A man! It’s a man!” A half-breathless murmur of amazement and incredulity burst from the lips of the others.

  Quickly Vastine settled to the floor, slid back the opening in the globe, and stepped out.

  “Yes, a man,” he said. “I come with a message from the Brain. He bids me inform you that in the very near future a swarm of meteors will st
rike the Earth; the water will withdraw, and the monsters will be destroyed. He bids me say that your only safety lies in descending as deeply as possible into the heart of your tower, where you may escape the fall of meteors from the sky.”

  A swift hush had fallen over the group at Vastine’s first words; but now they burst into a frenzy of questioning. Their voices mingled in a strangely musical hubbub of excitement.

  Suddenly one of them began to sing, a lilting melody sung to a queer bit of improvised verse:

  In an instant the entire body had joined in singing and the room was filled with the sound. With a grimace of distaste, Vastine reentered the spiked globe preparatory to leaving. They paused long enough in their singing for Vastine to repeat his warning; then he drifted out through the window and sped toward the Tower of Business. For a few moments he could hear the song drifting after him: “Prais’d be the Brain!”

  His visits to the two remaining towers were without incident; a comparatively short time after leaving the Science Tower, he was returning. Reaching it without mishap, he darted into the lighted chamber—with the coming of darkness it had automatically illuminated itself—flashed down the shaft, and entered the room that now housed the Brain.

  There, at the direction of the Brain, he yielded his mind to it, and actuated by its superior will, moved the mass of apparatus to one side while the slabs closed the shaft, then replaced it in the room’s center. When control of his senses was returned to him, he knew nothing of what he had done, except that it was done. But he was conscious of the dragging weight of a terrible fatigue.

  Wearily he relaxed on his bed. There was only one thing to be done now—he must await the coming of the meteoric swarm.

  During the days that followed, a change came over Vastine—a subtle change, one that he himself did not recognize—but nevertheless a definite metamorphosis that made of him a new man. The solitude was responsible for it. Alone with the Brain and the motionless monster across the room—that, and the constant thought of the Brain, himself, and the future. He had to think of something beyond the room, he told himself, or sight of that ghastly, scaly thing before him would drive him mad.