A Large Anthology of Science Fiction

by Jerry

  “Forgive me, Celia! We will not give in, not even against a hostile universe! She moves!—we go!”

  There was a sudden shock that threw them staggering against each other for a moment; a rending, tearing, rolling crash of masonry and metal, and the Red Sphere rose through the falling ruins of the house and soared up into the night, slanting slightly to the west as it rose. One brief glimpse they had of the dials of the Time Indicator falling across a gap of the ruin; and then their eyes were busy with the white face of earth beneath and the clear brilliance of the starry dome above.

  They were still clinging to each other, when both caught sight of a small dark object approaching them from beneath. It came, apparently, from a black spot on the chill whiteness of the landscape to the west of their abandoned home, and it was travelling faster than themselves.

  They gazed down at it with sudden interest, that, as they gazed, turned into acute apprehension, and then to a numb horror.

  “The other Sphere!”

  “Amy and her lover!”

  While they spoke it grew definitely larger, and they saw that a collision was unavoidable. By what caprice of fate it had so fallen out that the helpless paths of the two Red Spheres should thus come to coincide in point of space and time, they could not imagine. The idea of leaving the earth might, by magnetic sympathy, have occurred to both couples at about the same time, but the rest of the unlucky coincidence was inexplicable. They turned from looking at the second Sphere and sought each other’s eyes and hands, saying much by look and pressure that words could not convey.

  “They did not mean to keep the pledge of the Decision,” said Alwyn. “The desire for life must have come to them as it came to me to-day, and Amy must have remembered the Instructions. I can understand them coming up faster than us, because their Sphere was in a sheet-metal shed in the open, and so would start with less opposition and greater initial velocity. But it is strange that their path should be so nearly ours. It can only be a matter of minutes, at the rate they are gaining, before the end comes for all of us. It will be before we get through the atmosphere and gather our full speed. And it will be the end of Humanity’s troubled dream . . . . . And Amy is in that——”

  The thought of possible malice, impulsive or premeditated, on the part of the occupants of the second Red Sphere, never entered into the minds of those of the first.

  “The responsibility of action rests upon us,” said Celia. “They evidently cannot see us, against the background of the black sky. They are coming up swiftly, dear.”

  “It will have to be that: there is no other way. Better one than both,” said the man.

  “Be what, Alwyn?”

  “The fulminate of sterarium.”

  “It will not injure them?”

  “No; not if we fire the fuse within—about—three minutes. It must seem hard to you, Celia, to know that my hand will send you to the Silence so that Amy may have the last desperate chance of life. Somehow, these last few hours, I have felt the ancient emotions surging back.”

  The hand that clasped his gave a gentle pressure.

  “And I, too, Alwyn; but their reign will be brief. I would rather die with you now than live without you. I am ready. Do not be too late with the fulminate, Alwyn.” They swayed together; their arms were about each other; their lips met in the last kiss. While their faces were yet very near, Alwyn’s disengaged right hand touched a tiny white button that was embedded in the padding of the interior.

  There was an instantaneous flash of light and roar of sound, and the man and woman in the second sphere were startled by the sudden glare and concussion of it, as their metal shell drove upwards through the cloud of elemental dust that was all that remained of the first Red Sphere and its occupants.

  The silence and clear darkness that had been round them a moment before, had returned when they recovered their balance; and in that silence and clear darkness, the man and woman who had not been chosen passed out into the abyss of the Beyond, ignorant of the cause and meaning of that strange explosion in the air, and knew that they were alone in Space, bound they knew not whither.

  A DREAM OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

  Winnifred Harper Cooley

  IT was New Year’s night of the twentieth century. The new cycle of a hundred years had been ushered in by chimes and bugles, by jollity and revel, and I was wearied by all the excitement, and, sleeping, dreamed a dream. I dreamed that it was the first day of the twenty-first century, and that I, an old woman, somehow sojourning still upon the earth, was seeking knowledge as to the new conditions. My instructress was a radiant creature, in flowing, graceful robes—a healthful, glorious girl of the period: the product of a century of freedom.

  “Tell me,” I said, “what evolution has done for you, my fair Feminine Type.” The maiden answered: “We have made such advances that I fear to seem egotistic if I tell you, for I have heard that at the beginning of the twentieth century the world actually considered itself civilized! I have tried to read the history of those early days, but ignorance, cruel injustices, and utter irrationality existing in a supposed free land affect me as unpleasantly in retrospect as the Spanish Inquisition affected you.”

  I felt somewhat insulted at this reflection upon my own times, and replied: “But we of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries made marvelous additions to the wealth and knowledge of nations. We invented the automobile, wireless telegraphy, and the Roentgen ray; we gave you a fine system of education, a democracy.”

  “Not so,” she interrupted. “You gave a republic; a corrupt, subsidized government, manipulated by greed, controlled by one set of selfish mercenaries after another, under partizan leaders; a one-sided affair at best, where only one sex voted, and an absurd electoral college registered the votes of States instead of counting the majority of the people. Now, we have unqualified equal suffrage—for all of the citizens are educated, and women are among the best voters; also the initiative and referendum, complete civil service, government control of public utilities.”

  “Stop!” I cried; “I never could straighten out those technical names.”

  “You see,” she explained, “in your day millionaires were made by getting control of that which the people were obliged to have, and charging what they wished, as if they were imitation gods, having a monopoly of Nature. They almost charged for the air you breathed! We have abolished oil trusts, private ownership of mines, railways, electric-light plants, and express and telegraph companies; and you would be amazed to see how the frightful discrepancies in individual wealth are done away with, without any artificial schemes of ‘dividing up’ personal property and giving the belongings of the industrious man to the shiftless. Ambition and individuality are still allowed; also private incomes. All these businesses are run as smoothly in the cooperative spirit as the Post Office ever was; and they pay for themselves, besides allowing the poorer people to use the necessities and comforts for a nominal sum. I wish I might tell you of the marvelous changes wrought along industrial lines, but the instances are too numerous to explain.”

  “You mean that sweat-shops are abolished?”

  “All such, and a thousand other evils once considered almost a requisite of trade. The hours of labor in every department of work are greatly reduced. By using all the adults, permitting no dependent classes, either tramps, paupers, or idle rich, we have found that the world’s work can be done by each healthy individual working five hours a day. You will readily understand how this benefits the indolent by compelling exercise, and the industrious by affording leisure, not to speak of the good that accrues to society by having all its members in a normal state, with time at their command for inventions, art, and letters.”

  “This accounts, also, doubtless, for the good health that seems to prevail?” “There are many reasons—increased happiness, development of science, perfect sanitation everywhere existing. The abolition of slums was brought about chiefly by women.”

  “In my time, excepting the college se
ttlement workers and the Salvation Army, there were few who seriously labored along such dirty lines.”

  “Some time ago women began to comprehend that, not alone for the safety of their own loved children but for that of all little ones, in the alleys as well as on the boulevards, there must be an eradication of disease, that the rising generation should not begin life hampered by unclean bodies and tainted morals. Hindered at first, by not having official power, the women did their best with the insidious, left-handed influence that always was recommended to them by men; but when given political freedom they went to work with enthusiasm, using the ‘influence’ necessary to effect transformations—the ballot. And so we have a fine sanitary condition and a healthful race.”

  “Marriage is as of old?” I timidly ventured.

  “That depends upon what you consider was in vogue in your time. Monogamy was officially recognized but not universally practised, we have been told.”

  “I thought perhaps it is now abolished,” I retorted.

  “Oh, no; it is almost universal with us. The improvement in the average income has done away with the barrier of poverty, and a higher moral standard has abolished that nineteenth-century horror—the city bachelor. Every one marries, and the number of ideal unions is really very large. The age of marrying is a trifle higher, following the tendency of your time; but this is as it should be, for every one stays in college until at least twenty-two.”

  “Everyone?”

  “Yes, our compulsory education extends through college, and all, including universities, are free. As in your day, the happiest marriages were those formed by the products of coeducational colleges; so now, you see, all the unions are happy ones.”

  “I do not see many children?”

  “No; they do not swarm the back streets like rats. But you will find, by our statistics, that the increase is sufficient to keep the race extant.”

  “Goodness! Are families regulated by law?”

  “Hardly that; but the advance of civilization seems to go hand in hand with a decrease in population. The tendency toward having fewer children has been encouraged instead of censured by public opinion, which now, as ever, is the greatest ruler of mankind. Instead of bewailing the ‘good old families of fifteen’ or acting hypocritically, we frown upon people who bring more than two children into the world, unless they, by virtue of excessive wealth, health, morals, or talents, seem unusually well qualified to educate and nurture a family. Social Control suggests that men and women devote much thought to the minds and hearts of their youth; consequently, the character of children has increased marvelously as the number has decreased. Even their longevity is now prolonged, and the death-rate of infants is remarkably small.”

  “All this is strange and fascinating, though it would have shocked my contemporaries,” I ventured.

  “It is not unnatural. It is but the logical working out of civilization. Another cause for the finer type of childhood to-day is the tender love and congeniality existing between parents. The abolition of multi-millionaires prevents mercenary marriages, and a few simple laws discourage discrepancies in age between men and women; but, unless physically and morally unfit, two persons strongly attracted to each other are expected to wed.”

  “All this is most remarkable; and, I doubt not, the inventions and all material matters have kept pace with these social and moral innovations. But how could such radical transformations be wrought—improvements, I grant, and desired by the prophets of my day—while human nature remained sordid, selfish, grasping, and sensual? Surely your last hundred years have not revolutionized the heart of man?”

  “I think it is mainly due to our rational religion. It was a mighty struggle to overcome dogmatism, superstition, ritualism, emotionalism, and conservatism, especially as the leaders of our great Religion of Humanity had nothing exciting, dramatic, pompous, or mystical to offer in place of the old. But simplicity and sense at last conquered. The only weapon of the new church was Education; and at length all the old creeds crumbled away, and now are preserved in libraries, with the Icelandic myths and Vedic hymns, to record the development of the mind of man in its groping toward God.” “Is the new religion Christian?”

  “Yes; its essentials are based upon the moral teachings of Jesus, but it does not fear to inculcate the best that has been worked out by every people that has struggled and suffered and aspired beneath the sun. It does not scorn the simplest death-song of an Indian if this expresses some noble conception of immortality more clearly than do the sages.”

  “And it is this world-religion that has wrought so many reforms in politics, economics, and morals?”

  “Yes, and it has done more. By destroying the spite and fight over hair-splitting theological problems it has enabled men and women to turn their zeal and energy into practical ethics and philanthropy, and to believe that if all men are indeed children of God, and brothers, they must act as such; and so we have attained Universal Peace!”

  “Indeed? This must be something like heaven. The Bible proclaimed ‘peace on earth,’ but for two thousand years Christians seemed content with bloody war.”

  “We are not yet perfect, but we are no longer pessimists. The low rumble of insurrection heard in your day has died away, and all of us are bending every force toward the serious business of making life worth living and this world habitable, in a moral as well as in a material sense. Criminals, paupers, and tramps are practically unknown, and the strong public feeling toward one standard of purity—and that the highest—for men and women has elevated the social life of the whole world.”

  “I should think you would want never to die!” I cried. “The rate of mortality is much lower than formerly; we know little of old age, in the sense of decrepitude, as of yore. We live better as well as longer lives, too,” said the beautiful woman. “We do not profess any didactic knowledge of a future existence, but we hope and long for personal immortality, as people always have hoped and longed, and our scientists and psychologists believe they are about to prove it. We all try to live so that if our activities continue after death we may have somewhat approximated perfection upon this earth.”

  I awoke—to hear the ragged little newsboys (products of an imperfect social system) bellowing forth the financial crashes, murders, suicides, and scandals so glowingly regaled by the “yellow journals.” I turned my face to the pillow, and prayed: “O God, may I live to do my small part of the world’s work, and help to hasten the conditions that I dare dream will prevail in the twenty-first century!”

  THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH

  Jack London

  When I look back, I realise what a peculiar friendship it was. First, there was Lloyd Inwood, tall, slender, and finely knit, nervous and dark. And then Paul Tichlorne, tall, slender, and finely knit, nervous and blond. Each was the replica of the other in everything except colour. Lloyd’s eyes were black; Paul’s were blue. Under stress of excitement, the blood coursed olive in the face of Lloyd, crimson in the face of Paul. But outside this matter of colouring they were as like as two peas. Both were high-strung, prone to excessive tension and endurance, and they lived at concert pitch.

  But there was a trio involved in this remarkable friendship, and the third was short, and fat, and chunky, and lazy, and, loath to say, it was I. Paul and Lloyd seemed born to rivalry with each other, and I to be peacemaker between them. We grew up together, the three of us, and full often have I received the angry blows each intended for the other. They were always competing, striving to outdo each other, and when entered upon some such struggle there was no limit either to their endeavours or passions.

  This intense spirit of rivalry obtained in their studies and their games. If Paul memorised one canto of “Marmion,” Lloyd memorised two cantos, Paul came back with three, and Lloyd again with four, till each knew the whole poem by heart. I remember an incident that occurred at the swimming hole—an incident tragically significant of the life-struggle between them. The boys had a game of diving to the
bottom of a ten-foot pool and holding on by submerged roots to see who could stay under the longest. Paul and Lloyd allowed themselves to be bantered into making the descent together. When I saw their faces, set and determined, disappear in the water as they sank swiftly down, I felt a foreboding of something dreadful. The moments sped, the ripples died away, the face of the pool grew placid and untroubled, and neither black nor golden head broke surface in quest of air. We above grew anxious. The longest record of the longest-winded boy had been exceeded, and still there was no sign. Air bubbles trickled slowly upward, showing that the breath had been expelled from their lungs, and after that the bubbles ceased to trickle upward. Each second became interminable, and, unable longer to endure the suspense, I plunged into the water.

  I found them down at the bottom, clutching tight to the roots, their heads not a foot apart, their eyes wide open, each glaring fixedly at the other. They were suffering frightful torment, writhing and twisting in the pangs of voluntary suffocation; for neither would let go and acknowledge himself beaten. I tried to break Paul’s hold on the root, but he resisted me fiercely. Then I lost my breath and came to the surface, badly scared. I quickly explained the situation, and half a dozen of us went down and by main strength tore them loose. By the time we got them out, both were unconscious, and it was only after much barrel-rolling and rubbing and pounding that they finally came to their senses. They would have drowned there, had no one rescued them.

  When Paul Tichlorne entered college, he let it be generally understood that he was going in for the social sciences. Lloyd Inwood, entering at the same time, elected to take the same course. But Paul had had it secretly in mind all the time to study the natural sciences, specialising on chemistry, and at the last moment he switched over. Though Lloyd had already arranged his year’s work and attended the first lectures, he at once followed Paul’s lead and went in for the natural sciences and especially for chemistry. Their rivalry soon became a noted thing throughout the university. Each was a spur to the other, and they went into chemistry deeper than did ever students before—so deep, in fact, that ere they took their sheepskins they could have stumped any chemistry or “cow college” professor in the institution, save “old” Moss, head of the department, and even him they puzzled and edified more than once. Lloyd’s discovery of the “death bacillus” of the sea toad, and his experiments on it with potassium cyanide, sent his name and that of his university ringing round the world; nor was Paul a whit behind when he succeeded in producing laboratory colloids exhibiting amoeba-like activities, and when he cast new light upon the processes of fertilisation through his startling experiments with simple sodium chlorides and magnesium solutions on low forms of marine life.