“Don’t be a fool, Dave,” Jerry rasped disgustedly. “We can’t land on Earth with this cargo! You’d let something like this loose on the human race just to save your own precious neck! Why not try to do something yourself? You’re a chemist; you should be able to dope out a way to kill the things.” Frowning thoughtfully, Jerry looked at the image of Earth in the vision plate, a green and silver sphere glowing like a giant moon. That was a new idea that he had tossed at Morkill, one that hadn’t occurred to him before. They couldn’t land on Earth unless they wiped out every one of the monstrosities, and purged the space ship of every life spore. That brought him to his other problem. Jerry grinned mirthlessly. Maybe this was the answer! Morkill must not land on Earth, either, unless he could be parted from his radium—and with himself at the controls, The Apollo need never land—anywhere.
Jerry grimaced. A hell of a martyr he’d be! That was a way out—but he’d try to find another way if he could.
HIS glance fell on two unused space suits hanging against one wall, suits put there for an emergency. There were two other suits hanging in the laboratory, he remembered.
“Ho, Dave,” he called, “put on a space suit. That’ll be some protection if they do break in.” He heard an eager grunt from the big man, and as he slipped into a suit of rubber-covered, metallized, spun-glass fabric, he heard sounds of activity beyond the partition.
A few moments later Morkill exclaimed: “Jerry—I’ve got something!” His voice shook with suppressed excitement and eagerness. “I’m sure it will work, but it’ll take about ten minutes’ time. Don’t do anything till I call you.”
“Good boy, Dave!”
Jerry crossed to the controls, holding the steady Earthward course. He was glad Morkill had snapped out of his whining spell—glad that he’d misjudged him. After all, there was no satisfaction in being teamed up with a coward who couldn’t stand on his own feet. There had been times when he wondered how Morkill had found sufficient courage to attempt a space flight—but now that he considered it, enough had happened to him to make any one somewhat nervous.
Impatiently Jerry waited, wondering what means of attack Dave would use: It was a cinch that there wasn’t a thing in the control room that could be used as a weapon. If salvation came, it had to come out of the laboratory. While he waited, he listened idly to the sounds outside his door. There wasn’t much to hear—only an occasional thud as something fell to the floor, or an infrequent liquid gurgling that suggested loathsome, crawling things. Now he heard a loud, steady hissing, and to his nostrils came an acrid odor suggesting burning flesh. He frowned wonderingly, then shrugged as the sound broke off and the odor disappeared.
“How are you getting along, Dave?” he called finally. There was no answer. “Dave—” The words died in his throat, and Jerry gasped, his forehead furrowing into lines of consternation.
On the vision plate before him he saw the tiny emergency space boat they had kept in the vacuum chamber of The Apollo! He had forgotten it—but Morkill hadn’t! And now Morkill had run out on him! He had the emergency rations that were kept in the little craft, as well as sufficient fuel to land on Earth! The dirty rat!
Jerry caught a glimpse of Morkill’s grinning face at one of the glassite port holes—and he cursed savagely. The other had flung back his helmet—was laughing at him! Then suddenly the laugh broke off; and Jerry’s eyes straified at the vision plate.
Something, a writhing mass of ropelike tentacles, had leaped from nowhere—had wrapped itself around David Morkill’s head!
Man and monster dropped from sight.
Rigidly Jerry watched. The little sphere drifted along beside The Apollo for endless minutes—then suddenly it fell behind the larger craft—back toward the Moon. Mechanically Jerry swung the space ship around; saw the life boat dropping plummetlike through emptiness. It vanished in moments in the brilliance of the dead world, falling free, flashing toward destruction.
With trembling fingers Jerry Blaine resumed the course toward Earth, then wiped cold perspiration from his forehead. That was—that! A horrible way to go out—yet Morkill deserved it. Yellow, clean through—and his cowardice had caught up with him. That hissing—it must have been a blow torch or the action of a chemical with which the big man had burned his way through the monster horde. He’d been sure his plan would work—and it had—but now he was gone. That solved one problem.
Jerry’s eyes narrowed speculatively, and the muscles of his jaws knotted with sudden determination. There still remained the problem of the—things—and he’d soon settle it in one way or another. If he could reach the laboratory, he might have a chance. If he couldn’t . . .
Jerry grinned with one side of his mouth as he snapped shut his glassite headpiece, and started the air purifier. Then he flung open the door and leaped out crouching. He heard a faint rush of air—and he stopped short.
Uncomprehending, he surveyed a spectacle that looked like a painting from the brush of an insane, alien artist. Everywhere incredible growths, splotches of jarring color, masses of disgusting forms coated floor and walls and ceiling. But in none was there sign of life! It seemed as though they had burst under internal pressure, and now drooped or lay flaccid in death!
Jerry’s roving eyes saw the open airlock, saw the black of space beyond—and he knew the answer. Morkill in fleeing had failed to close the vacuum chamber! The air had rushed out; and with pressure removed, with atmosphere gone, the alien things had burst. Were dead!
There was justice in that, Jerry thought grimly, justice that David Morkill could never appreciate.
He started toward the airlock, then paused. If he closed it, and permitted the air supply to renew itself, there was every possibility that other growths might spring up. He had better destroy every vestige of the things first, perhaps even go over every inch of the walls and floor to be certain that no microscopic spore remained.
HIS glance fell on the bins with their heaps of radium ore, now hidden beneath a thick film of foulness. A fabulous fortune—and all his. But did he want it? Did he want to bring it to Earth? There was so much to consider. Was the human race ready for so vast an amount of radium? Could men be trusted with the power that this could create? He thought of the petty bickerings, the trivial wars, the selfishness and unrest, and he shook his head.
And what of its action upon these seeds of life he had brought from the Moon? Similar dust was settling to Earth every day, and nothing happened. Was the radium solely responsible for the spectacle before him?
With his mind a turmoil of uncertainty, Jerry Blaine returned to the control room and looked at the spreading disc of green and blue and silver beneath him. Suddenly his jaws clicked together. If there were some way in which he could land on Earth without the space ship, some way in which he could drift down through the miles of atmosphere alone, Man need never cope with this possible menace from the Moon.
Deep in thought Jerry watched the Earth draw closer. Hours passed while he weighed possible means of his landing safely. Then suddenly he rose, a broad grin on his face. He saw something out of childhood memories—a big balloon shaped like a bloated fat man, tugging at the end of a string . . . There was work for him to do . . .
A transformed Jerry Blaine tensely watched a sea of cloud rushing up toward him as he stood in the open airlock—a Jerry Blaine who looked like an inflated balloon. Over his own space suit he had put another, a suit designed for a much bigger man. And the space between the two suits he had filled with neo-hydrogen from the fuel tanks of The Apollo, a gas with vastly greater lifting power than ordinary hydrogen or helium. Tensely he watched for the moment when the space ship would enter Earth’s stratosphere—the moment it would flash along a course almost parallel with the surface far below—the moment when he would leap free, would drift and float slowly downward to the world of men—and The Apollo with all its cargo, heated to incandescence by friction with the air, would drop like a flaming meteor to destruction . . .
On the night
of August 10th at 9:38, astronomers on the west coast of the United States observed the sudden appearance of an amazingly brilliant meteor in the Constellation Virgo. It sped across the sky like a lance of silver radiance, until suddenly it vanished m the pallid light of the Moon—a visitant from space that drifted to Earth as impalpable, lifeles dust . . .
THE END.
THREE WISE MEN
A Time-Traveling Machine Explodes on a Millionaire’s Doorstep
“NOW, listen, Sergeant, I’ve got some information that you really ought to get. I guess I’d be better off if I kept my mouth shut, but—well, this Doctor Stoner you’re holding is innocent. He didn’t murder those three freaks. They—just died.
There’s a lot to this case that you don’t understand, Sergeant. Doc Stoner and I are the only ones who know the inside story. And he won’t talk.
Who, me? My name’s Tom Dorion. Age thirty-two. I’m a freak-hunter for the Empire Circus combine—you know, the outfit that bought out Ringling and Barnum . . .
Oh—I just keep hunting up freaks for the shows. Whenever the boss gets a lead on something new and big for the midways, he sends me out to sign ’em up. Between times I keep roving, scouting for material.
Where do I cut in on this case? That’s what I want to tell you. It’s a long story, and I’m not much of a hand at talking, but here goes. About two months back, I’d just returned from Borneo with a two-headed snake, and a Dyak boy with a pair of singing parrakeets, when the big boss—that’s Joe Wallace—called me into his office. I could see right off that he didn’t feel like patting me on the back and handing me a cigar, and, suddenlike, he jammed a newspaper into my hand and pointed to a headline.
“Look!” he yelped. “Somewhere out on Long Island are three freaks—little guys with big heads—and I want them for my shows! They’re gettin’ a swell build-up. An’ you’re gonna sign ’em—or else!”
I didn’t like that “or else,” but I didn’t say so. I just looked at the article. Maybe you read it, too, Sergeant—most everybody did, I guess. Anyway, I have the clipping here, and if you don’t mind, I’ll sort of skim over ’em, just to refresh your memory.
THREE WISE MEN COME OUT
OF FUTURE
Ambassadors From Tomorrow Appear at
Long Island House Party
SCIENTISTS ASTOUNDED
Long Island City, July 9—A house party at the country estate of Oliver P. Mawson, millionaire automobile manufacturer, came to an abrupt and thrilling termination last night with the appearance of three uninvited guests. With more than two hundred famous people present, including the leading figures in artistic, scientific and financial circles the party reached its height at about 2 a.m., when a terrific explosion shook the sumptuous Mawson mansion. Shouts were heard from the lawn outside, and excited guests streamed into the night.
A startling spectacle greeted them. The entire western sky was lit up by a strange greenish light rising from a little hill a hundred yards away. And in that unearthly glow they saw a huge polished metal cylinder sprawled on the hillside, its lower end twisted and torn by the explosion which had gouged and blasted the hilltop, uprooting several young trees.
As the guests reached the hill, they heard sounds within the metal cylinder, and one after another, three strange small men crawled out. Almost identical in appearance, they were little more than four feet in height, and their bodies, covered only by white sleeveless shirts of some soft silky material, and flaring white shorts, seemed amazingly thin and fragile, though tanned a golden brown. Their heads, completely bald, were enormous, being fully twice the size of normal human heads. And their faces, thin almost to the point of emaciation, were old and wrinkled, with deeply sunken eyes and thin, indrawn lips, the whole somehow grotesquely out of proportion with their huge heads.
SCIENTIST INTERVIEWED
In an interview, Roger St. John, noted asstronomer and writer, stated: “I never saw a more startling spectacle. That green glow which seemed to emanate from the very earth of the hilltop, cloaked those three little men with an air of the unearthly. It stunned us. There was something almost juvenile in their faces, yet with it was something so incredibly ancient that—well, it marked them as creatures of another world—or time!
“It seemed almost as though they had stepped from the pages of a Wellsian fantasy—men from the future. When one of them spoke, his voice was peculiarly flat and bore an indescribable accent.
“ ‘A slight miscalculation, Lon’ he said, ‘doubtless due to the changing contour of the Terrestrial surface. We should have raised our supports two feet higher.’
“ ‘Fortunate that our miscalculation had no more regrettable result than the loss of our Time-drive,’ replied the second little man dryly.
“The third waved a hand toward us and said in the same flat voice, ‘We have audience, comrades’. And the three walked slowly down the hillside.”
COME OUT OF FUTURE
After the excited throng escorted the strange visitors into the great ballroom of Mawson Manor, and subsided to a point where intelligent conversation could be carried on, the three introduced themselves as “Lon St-228-86,” “Andcr Cw-741-22,” and “Ken Mb-390-54,” visitors from the Forty-third Century, A.D., or the year 2351, New Era. They had come back into the past, so they said, to view at first hand what their history indicated was the first year of the New Era—this very year.
There followed an animated discussion, during which the visitors were dubbed “The Three Wise Men,” for they revealed a startling knowledge about everything. The effect of this discovery was startling . . .
WHAT’S that, Sarge? . . . Well, okay. Anyway, maybe it gives you an idea how I felt when I looked at Joe Wallace after I’d finished reading the thing. I opened my mouth—“Don’t say it, Dorion,” he snapped. “I’m dumb enough to give you credit for having a little brains—an’ if you try to tell me you’re failin’ for this time-travelin’ bunk, I’m liable to get sore. Look! You scram over to that Mawson guy’s joint an’ stay there till things break. Sooner or later the bottom’ll fall outa the story these three big-headed freaks are dishing up, an’ when it does, I want you there to sign ’em!”
I didn’t waste much time getting out to Mawson’s little fifty-acre estate on Long Island, but getting inside was something else. A faked reporter’s card didn’t work. Neither did a black bag, a pair of spectacles, and a doctor’s front. So—well, I got in, but I was glad there didn’t happen to be any police around.
After I brushed the dust off my soup-and-fish, there wasn’t anyone could tell me from the other guests. When I first saw those three little men—well, it was an experience. The papers hadn’t stretched things a bit. Boy, I figured, if Joe Wallace could get them, we sure had three world-beaters on our hands.
This guy Mawson had sort of set himself up as proud father and legal guardian of the Three—and let me tell you, he did things right. Some of those feeds of his would set you back twenty bucks in a Manhattan hash house.
The second day, Mawson arranged an interview with the press. Never saw such a mob of reporters before or since. The scientists were there, and—well, when the lid blew off, and the physics, astronomy, higher mathematics, biology and all the rest of that bunk started flying around sort of casual-like, the Three Wise Men got to telling the scientific big shots where to head in. Those little guys knew everything!
There was one egg there, a German scientist, who thought he was pretty hot stuff. Seems he’d written a book called “Atoms, Protons and Positrons, the Building Blocks of the Universe.” The way he looked at it, now there was nothing more to be said. He mentioned his work, and Ander—he was the only one of the Three with a sense of humor—started spouting a chapter of the book, word for word! Just sat there looking at nothing while the syllables rolled out in that flat, hollow voice.
I could see the Dutchman swelling up like a balloon—not thinking of the brains this little man had, but of how important his work was to be remembered two tho
usand years in the future. Then Ander said, sort of soft and gentle:
“We preserve some of the more absurd of the ancient writings as entertainment for the children. A counterpart, I should say, of your fairy tales.”
When the reporters left at the end of three or four hours, the Three Wise Men were headed for the biggest splash of publicity that ever hit anybody. I still remember some of those headlines.
The Three Wise Men Explain
Relativity to Einstein
Super-Mentals Baffle Scientists
Future Men Ride Rough Shod Over
Earth’s Best Minds
There were pictures by the dozens, pictures of the Three, pictures of their machine—what was left of it after the souvenir hunters got through with it.
FUNNY, but there was one big angle that everybody’d overlooked at first. But when it struck, it socked about forty million people all at once. If these little birds had come out of the future, they must know some history that hadn’t happened as yet! And you know, Sarge, there’s nothing a man wouldn’t give to know what’s going to break tomorrow or the next day. Think how swell it would be for a guy playing the market! And these Three with their super memories—well, it looked like a natural.
About forty million phone calls, telegrams and letters struck Mawson Manor at the same time. Could the Three Wise Men tell the history of the future? They could and would!
Oliver P. Mawson arranged it. He’s a big fat man about six-feet-two, with round red cheeks like a pair of apples, and eyes as bright as two blue marbles—and he’s just as hard. Worked his way up from a laborer in an auto plant to become one of the richest men in the country.
With Mawson pulling the strings, the Three Wise Men were scheduled for a big television broadcast on a world hook-up. That was just a few months before the Presidential election, and the Three crowded the candidates right off the air waves.
Forgotten Fiction Page 52
