Collected Tales (Jerry eBooks)

by Leslie F Stone

  In the ocean, Sehti, lies Ora, a large island, with a few smaller ones near it. Ora is the seat of all learning; it existed in the day of the Moata. Here any man or woman is welcome to study, to forward science, to teach. Ora belongs to no nation, having a government of its own. It is a place of refuge for the exile, the outcast. Once within its bounds, the malefactor is safe and can in no way be extradited.

  To the south of the ocean lies Zoada, extending over a thousand miles from east to west and several thousand miles to the low-lying swamps that separate her from Gora. Beyond her boundaries is the ice cap of the Southern magnetic pole. To the west of her lies Loata. Loata’s west coast fronts all of the eastern shore of the ocean, and extends over a great part of the northern coast besides.

  One might wonder how Abrui, which lies so far from the Sun as to have a solar year of 365 earthly years, can be inhabited. The answer is simple; for, whereas all her sister planets depend solely upon the common sun for their heat and light, Abrui is fortunate enough to have a sun of her own. Dana Gleason is certain that on Earth astronomers have never conceived the possibility of a planet possessing a sun of its own in the same manner as Abrui possesses one, although the phenomena of twin suns encircling each other, as well as triple suns, have been observed. Taboran astronomers have observed many planets with satellite suns exactly like Abrui’s companion.

  Still the satellite sun is no rival of Sol, so called by Earth people, but named Coe by Abruians. Tradr, the second sun, gives off a warm, rosy-pink glow; unlike Sol it does not send out sharp rays but shines more like the glow from a lamp, so that it is possible to look directly at the satellite without discomfort. It is believed that once Tradr was nothing more than a moon shining only by reflected light. Then the planet must have been cold, unable to foster life in the poor warmth from the distant sun. However, something warmed the moon’s core so that its center seethed as a furnace; and gradually the heat penetrated the whole shell, turning its solids into gases. Many theories have been brought forth from Ora concerning the reason of this strange occurrence of a sphere, once dead, coming to life. The most prevalent and the most generally believed theory is that on Tradr is a vast quantity of the element, radium. They understand the power of this element; and it is certain that its presence accounts for the “catching afire” of the satellite.

  Tradr, therefore, controls the day of Abrui, and it encircles the entire globe in a little less than thirty hours; while the planet, which turns slowly on its axis, has a solar day of almost one hundred hours. Sol, therefore, is like unto a moon to Abrui in the nights when it still lingers in the heavens; while the planet depends entirely upon its satellites for both heat and light.

  Tradr never alters its course; it gives an even heat, day after day, with no change of climate year in and year out, a pleasant warmth; and, except at the southern pole, extreme cold is unknown. It is toward the northern pole that Sol directs his rays, and the warmth is enough to keep that part of the globe from freezing.

  The planetary year is naturally reckoned according to the phases of the satellite sun, counting ten phases to a year. A phase is of twenty-two days, while the length of each day is thirty hours.

  A Visitor from the Void

  IT was night when the earth rocket dropped into the unfruitful land of the Gora. Sol had been hidden for many hours behind clouds, but now he was drawing himself out of the blanket. In size he looked not as large as an orange, and the light that came from him was silvery. All about him were myriads of stars that tried to rival his splendor, great brilliant stars that twinkled and winked and refused to be extinguished in the light that Sol shed about him.

  Moura-weit and Ubca-tor had no time for the light of the sun. They were busy with their patient, trying to bring her to consciousness; yet she seemed fighting them. This bothered the two men. “She is seeking for the other one who accompanied her on her journey,” observed Moura. “Were it not for those ropts (rodentlike creatures)[3] we could search for the remains of the other traveler; for, no doubt, he was caught within that debris. Were the Gors to find him they would only kill him, thinking him a demon or whatnot. Well, at least we have this one.”

  Ubca said nothing, his eyes fastened on the strange being in her queer clothing. He had come on this adventure because Moura-weit had so directed. He was no more than a boy, who had taken Moura-weit as his hero and who followed blindly wherever the other might lead. He was a younger son of the brother of Kirada Walti (king of Doata), as the suffix tor, added to his name, implied. And as Moura was merely of the Weita, the lowest rank of Taboran nobility, it was surprising to find the boy in his train. However, Moura-weit was not a common man. He was ambitious.

  Already it was whispered that Moura-weit had attained enviable power behind the throne of Doata. He was beloved of the masses for it, and hated by his superiors—the nobility. Abrui is not unlike Earth. It has its kings to rule, its common people to rave and rant and dictate, its slaves to suffer. And Moura-weit’s ambition was to be a dictator not only to Doata but also to Zoada and Moura-weit’s social rank can be compared to that of the English baronet. People declared that this Moura was not born of woman as are all men but of the Unkonatas, a group of scientists, who years before taught that the foundation of life was not flesh but mind. It was said that they had produced a child by means of thought with the aid of a woman. Their next step was to bring forth a child without woman’s help. The Wukonuals, a second group, who were materialists, preached against the Unkonatas, calling them traitors to the State. Consequently the sect was sought out, many were killed and the rest dispersed. What happened to the child, if there was a child, was not known; but the masses liked to believe that the Unkonatas, on dying, had bequeathed to the child their brains, so that the child, should he grow to manhood, would possess their collective consciousness entire. And it was said that Moura-weit was that child!

  Moura-weit liked to foster that thought. True, he had a great mind; none could best him in any line of endeavor. His oratory, his science, abstract and concrete thought, his knowledge of divers things, his understanding of all that went on in the world, marked him as a man apart. Nothing that he set himself to do was left undone, either in art, mechanics, science, or athletics. And it was always he who did it best.

  ON Abrui man has learned more about the brain than he has on Earth. He has solved the secret of thought transference from mind to mind. And in a world that finds it a common thing to know another’s thought, Moura-weit surpassed them all. He not only read his fellow man’s thoughts, his secrets, his desires, he followed the train of thought of the thinker and knew what his next move would be ere that man himself knew it. And no man could close his mind to his penetrating gaze. He could know what a man separated from him by a wall was thinking. Consequently he was feared by those who hated him; and while many would willingly have done away with this man of power, they dreaded his prying brain, knowing that Moura-weit would forestall any attempt made on his life.

  And it was this man alone who knew that there was a living person in the rocket that came swimming into the atmospheric belt of Abrui. So it was he who was thereafter to have Dana Gleason in his keeping.

  His attention was now focused on the woman. Her breath was still coming in gasps, due to a slight difference in the atmosphere of this planet from that of her own. Soon, however, her breathing became easier as her lungs adjusted themselves to the change. Moura-weit studied her strange covering, her coloring, her appearance her strange mind.

  Dana Gleason knew nothing of mental telepathy, though she had heard its theory expounded on earth; she knew nothing of closing her brain, even had she been conscious of the fact that Moura-weit was searching out its nooks and corners. She was at that moment living over again all that had passed in the last two months. Many nightmarish dreams swept across and clouded out the actual memories from time to time, but the man knew how to differentiate between the two.

  Recurring time and time again, he saw the figure of a man, a fig
ure that at first had puzzled Moura, for the complexion of the figure seemed to Moura to be that of a bronze Gora. Then, as the figure became clearer to him, he realized that the tall, handsome man was not an inhabitant of Abrui; that he had neither the squatness of the Gora nor the broad face and features of the barbarians; his eyes, too, were the color of the sky, while Goran eyes were brown.

  Covertly Moura flashed a look at Ubca. Had he seen anything of this? Did he read Moura-weit’s mind? But no; his eyes were on the quiet figure on the couch, his thoughts were elsewhere. So Moura kept his own counsel. He might then have told Ubca that the man he had found and thought to be a Gora was in truth the companion traveler of Dana Gleason, but he said nothing of that. Had he told him, the train of events might have turned out differently.

  Moura-weit had not as yet shaped his plans. He realized that he had indeed a find. Doata and Ora would do him honor when he brought the news of this voyage from Out of the Void. Science would be forwarded. And Moura would prosper.

  Ubca-tor broke the line of his thoughts. “What planet could this creature have come from, Moura? They must have progressed far, to be able to send a vehicle through Space. And to send a woman!”

  “Yes, the planet must be far advanced. Yet it must be one of the four planets upon which our observatories have discovered life, one of the four planets that lie close to the Great Sun. The other four we know to be either too hot or too cold to sustain life. It was a long journey to make! And it is indeed lucky that we discovered this woman in time. If she had a companion, as I believe she had, he must surely have perished in the flames of the exploding machine. But, it will be a great day for Ora when we take her thither!”

  “Surely you will take her to Doata first?” said the boy.

  “Naturally to Carajama first! Are we not Doatans?”

  Moura had really been wondering which would be the best course—to take the woman first to Doata or to Ora. He knew that by presenting her to the Orans he would gain favor with the people of Zoada and Loata, who would appreciate the fact that he had not first given Doata the honor of greeting the space-traveler. On the other hand, the advantage it would give him in Doata was to be considered. Yes, it would be better so. Zoada and Loata must wait.

  THE woman had not as yet regained consciousness.

  Moura continued to minister to her from time to time, and was rewarded to find that the heartbeat was becoming stronger. A glow was coming into the waxen skin; her lips, which seemed to have been drained of blood, were red now. They had only to wait until the brain was ready to resume the burden of consciousness once more. Slowly she opened her eyes and glanced about, breathing the name “Dick” once; then she slipped back into her unconscious state.

  Moura was again looking into her mind. “Ah,” he suddenly exclaimed, “she lives again on her own planet: I see a city, a ship, airplanes, a battle, strange engines. I see men, men very unlike us on Abrui. Ah, I see, I think the machine by which they shot their rocket into space.” Ubca sat staring uncomfortably at Moura. It is one thing to read the mind of the man to whom you are talking, but another thing to peer into the sleeping brain of an unconscious being from another world.

  “She awakes!”

  The voices had disturbed Dana Gleason, for suddenly she opened her eyes and was staring around the cabin wildly. “Dick, Dick, where are you? Why do you not respond?”

  Then, as her eyes focused upon Moura-weit’s strange face and stranger eyes, a cry of surprise escaped her. “My God, where am I?” she asked. “Who are you, and what have you done with Richard Dorr? Oh God—the heat, the explosion, the fall. . . .” Then she covered her face with her hands.

  The Taborans could not understand her words, hut they could read her agitation and understand her emotions. They knew hysteria; and Moura was not anxious to have an hysterical woman on his hands. He did not know that Dana Gleason was not given to hysteria. Had he the words, he could have spoken and reassured her; but not having these, he sat quietly by, and a force transferred itself from his mind to that of the woman. A calm came over her.

  When she looked up again, she was rational. She wondered at this feeling that had crept through her. She knew that all was well. For the first time she saw the strange appearance of things about her. She saw she was no longer in the living-quarters of the rocket. She was now in another room. Through the sensation of a gentle vibration she knew that she was in a machine that was moving. She saw that she was surrounded by a glass wall, and that below lay the darkness of a sleeping country. She saw that she had been made comfortable on a couch, and that she was being cared for by these two men of such strange appearance. She looked down upon her own person and saw where the khaki of her trousers and shirt had been scorched, where a sleeve had been torn, a boot partly burned. She looked more closely at the man seated opposite her on a low stool. She had a knowledge of men, and in this one she saw a leader.

  Moura-weit, whose power of telepathy surpassed that of any of his fellow men, now had the opportunity to attempt a thing that neither he nor any other had tried before. Could he project his own thought-images into the mind of a being of another world? Could it be done at all? He knew already that the brain of this woman differed somewhat from those brains of his own race. The two main lobes were of different shape and thickness, and their convolutions took a different form.

  Leaning forward, he reached for her hands, and by magnetism of his eyes forced her to look into his own. She did not remonstrate; caught by his stare, she looked back. Moura then attempted to fill her mind with his thought-images. He began with something she was familiar with, the rocket.

  Dana Gleason knew no emotion when the silver man took her hands in his. She did recognize that some bond existed between them; for even in her wild dreams her subconscious mind had been aware of his searching eyes. She was without thought, unable to think, as if her mind had been literally washed clean. Then her thoughts became clouded. She began to recognize that this cloud was night with stars twinkling.

  For a time she tried to fight against the cloud, but it was mastering her. When she at last gave in to it, she became aware of a darker spot in the cloud. Gradually the night passed, and she saw the dark spot taking shape. It was long and cylindrical, and it was black and ugly and fiery. It was smoking, it was burning. Now below the rocket appeared a landscape, an inhabitable land bathed in a reddish light. Three times night descended upon the rocket, and on the third night it was evident that the rocket was about to fall to the ground. She saw it fall; she saw its fiery course, the explosions, the flying debris, her own fall!

  She saw Ubca-tor pick her up and carry her to the flyer. She saw the plane circling the wreck, searching; and she knew they were searching for another body. None was found! It showed her the heart of the burning rocket, flames leaping up fifty feet. Now she saw the approach of the Gora, and recognized them for barbarians. Then the retreat of the plane. With that the vision vanished. Moura dropped his hands, freed her eyes.

  FOR several minutes she did not move. Her eyes said nothing. She was remembering the last minute on the rocket before that awful explosion that had torn her from Richard Dorr’s arms. “We can at least die together,” said Dick. “He can’t take that away from us!” Only He had taken Dick’s life and given her hers. Dick dead! Impossible. Something, a feeling, a voice, was telling her that he lived. Still, no man could live in that conflagration she had just seen. Had she really seen all that happened? Was it all? Could not Dick have been thrown out just as she had been? Those brown men, the barbarians—perhaps they found Dick?

  She could not cry, tears would not come. A cold lump lay where her heart had been. She now remembered that this strange man with his stranger eyes had come into her mind and pictured to her all that had gone before. What manner of man was this? Where was she, then? When she and Dick thought they were about to die, they had already reached another planet that was waiting for them. If only they had known, and could have landed in their waiting plane.

 
; That was over, however; all over. Happiness, it seemed, was not for her. What was there for her? Existence on a strange planet, a new life, new interests? What new interests could she have? Oh, she wanted to cry, to turn her face to a blank wall. And since she could not cry, since she could change nothing, there could be naught for her to do but to accept things as they came. She sighed deeply, then turned her interest again on the two men and the chamber in which she lay.

  She saw that the walls of the cabin were of glass, and above her she could hear the beat of wings. A few yards from her was set an instrument-board on which were a series of levers, dials, and strange instruments. A carpet covered the floor, and there were several low easy chairs and the couch upon which she was lying. Through the glass she could see the black shapes of mountains below and an occasional light shone out. Above was a moon, a moon that sent out rays of weak light. Myriad stars glowed brilliantly.

  She turned now to Moura-weit. Her eyes asked a question; and, understanding, the man formed the word “Abrui.” She repeated the word, and in turn pointed to herself and thence out into the dark sky. She pronounced the word “Earth.”

  She realized the necessity of learning the language of the people among whom she had descended. Pointing to herself again, she next said “Dana Gleason.” Moura said the name after her, and, pointing to himself and then to Ubca, gave their respective names. The next half-hour was spent in pointing to objects about them and calling them by name. Dana repeated each word. Taking a small notebook from a pocket, she jotted down each word, spelling it as it sounded to her ears. The little book and pencil interested Moura, and he asked to examine them. Taborans write on sheets of thin metal, and in writing use a brush and a thick paint. They have no printing-presses. From the original hand-painted copy subsequent copies are photographed.