by Jerry
THE physicist turned his head for a moment. When he faced them again, there was no sign of his mental struggle. Firmly, he threw a lever, and the green base silently lowered to the floor. McLaren and the girl stepped upon it, and when it rose again it carried them into the glass bell. The professor turned to the raised platform where the control board was located.
“Good-bye!” he called. “I’ll bring you back when an hour has passed.”
“Good-bye!” they returned, their voices muffled.
A powerful generator sprang into action, filling the laboratory with its high-pitched whine. The vacuum tubes glowed dully, and a powerful odor of ozone permeated the air. With a loud crash, the high-tension electricity discharged between adjacent turns of the helix. The professor hastened to adjust a condenser, and again the silence was broken only by the whine of the generator and a low humming.
As the professor continued to adjust the controls, the bell gradually filled with a deep violet light that swayed and swirled tenuously like the drapes of an aurora borealis. The light swirled around the man and the girl, at times almost hiding them from view. It gradually concentrated toward the bottom of the bell, seeming to cling to the green base, intertwining the two living forms until it almost hid them from view. Yet they continued to smile and wave encouragement.
And now it was evident that they were growing smaller. Already they were less than four feet tall, and as the apparatus was brought more and more into perfect resonance, their rate of shrinkage accelerated. Soon they were but a foot high, standing in a sea of violet light, then six inches, then hardly an inch. The professor turned off the generator.
The girl and the man now walked the few inches necessary to bring them to the exact center of the base. Here, in a slight depression in the smooth material, was a tiny granule of carbon, one of the atoms of which they were to explore. It was so tiny that it could hardly be seen under the microscope, ordinarily, yet to McLaren, it must already have become plainly visible, for he soon spoke to the girl and she joined him, standing with him very closely near a spot on the floor which he indicated.
Again the mysterious harmonics of the cosmic ray were brought into action, and the two tiny figures vanished from sight. The professor stayed at the controls, his eyes fixed anxiously on his watch until the proper time had elapsed, as indicated by his calculations. He stopped the dynamo again and laid his watch on the table. He marked the time when he should recall them, 10 minutes after four, and paced nervously up and down the room in which he was now alone. Moisture beading his brow, he stopped and stared at the slight depression in which lay a million universes, each one as complete and as perfect as his own, and in one of those universes was a whirling speck on which he had deposited his daughter and best-loved assistant.
He started as the telephone whirred and disposed of a student who wanted to make a trifling inquiry. Then he went back to his watch again, listened to see if his watch might have stopped. It was very still in the laboratory, and when a small rill of water suddenly cascaded out of the cooling jacket of one of the heavy duty vacuum tubes, the noise seemed loud and strident.
A new thought was now harassing Professor Halley. Suppose that in that unthinkably small world, there were dangerous creatures, with whom Hale and Shirley might be battling for their lives even at that moment. Perhaps this world might happen to be a blazing sun; suppose they had gasped their lives out on a sterile and airless moon? He looked at his watch again. The half-hour was almost up. A few more minutes, and they’d be ready and waiting to come back—wouldn’t do to turn on the ray while they might be a short distance away, out of focus.——A few more seconds——now!
WITH a fierce sweep, he threw the switch and the violet light filled the glass bell again, Quickly he reversed the current—then crept to the base of the glass dome so that he might see the returned wanderers as soon as they grew into visibility.
Within a few minutes a small cloudy patch appeared in the glassy depression where the microscopic granule of carbon lay. Before the physicist’s eyes this spot resolved itself into hundreds of tiny dots—dots that grew rapidly until they resembled minute upright pegs—pegs that presently grew large enough to show arms and legs. Small human-like creatures that were plainly men and women by the time they were half an inch tall. Men and women that grew and walked about, and were evidently greatly perturbed.
Halley watched them with amazement until they were a few inches tall. He did not move until they began to be so crowded that there was danger of smothering some of them. Then he leaped to the switch to stop their growth, and lowered the green disc until it was at the same level as the table, to which some of the more venturesome now jumped for the sake of more room. As he watched them in stupefaction, looking vainly for McLaren and Shirley, a man separated himself from the crowd, walked to the edge of the table, made a deep obeisance, and called:
“Where are we?”
His voice was thin and reedy, like the chirp of an insect, and his accent was slurred and difficult to understand. Yet he spoke recognizable English.
“You are on earth,” said Halley automatically.
This remark created the most profound impression. A thin, sighing cry arose from the little people, and many of them prostrated themselves. They wore filmy, short robes that came to their knees, held to their bodies by girdles. Men and women were dressed pretty nearly alike, but there was a well defined plan of ornamentation which distinguished the sexes.
The leader turned on them and cried.
“Hark! Hark! Is it not as we, your priests, have told you! To the faithful shall it be granted to be carried from our vale of tears to the Earth, with its portals of gold, where the milk and honey flow. You have heard the voice of the Angel. In a voice of thunder he has told you, you are at the gateway of the Earth, while those who believe not shall be cast into the outer darkness, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth!
Someone in the background began a hymn. The mass of pygmy humanity joined, and the faint insect-like chorus filled the room.
Halley addressed the priest again.
“Where do you come from?”
“We are citizens of Elektron, so named by our illustrious ancestors, Hael, the Man, and Shuerrely, the Woman, who came to our planet in its youth, aeons and aeons ago—so many millions of years ago that they are to be reckoned only in geological epochs.”
“How did you know the name of our earth?”
“It was handed down to us from generation to generation. It is preserved in our monuments and temples and in the records of our wise men. We knew for many ages that it is the elysium of perfection—the place of infinite happiness. For did not our illustrious forebears, Hael and Shuerrely, pine for the Earth, though they came to our Elektron when it was a young planet with a soft climate, and rich in luscious fruits?”
“You say Hale and Shirley came to your planet many ages ago? Wasn’t your planet peopled then?”
“There were animals, some of terrifying size and frightful armament. But our Earth-sent ancestors, through superior cunning, overcame them, and their children gradually conquered all of Elektron. We are their descendants, but we have preserved their language, and their traditions, and their religion, and we treasured the Great Promise?”
“The Great Promise?”
“The Great Promise,” the Elektronite intoned, almost sonorously, despite his small size, “was given us by Hael and Shuerrely. They declared that a great wizard, an Angel of superlative power and understanding, would some day penetrate the vast empty Earth. On the spot where they first appeared, they commanded that their children reside and await the coming of the Angel, which they called Cosmicray. Many were there who fell from that true religion, but we have builded ourselves a temple on that sacred spot, and The Great Promise has been kept!”
Halley said to them dully, pain in his heart, “I am Shirley’s father and Hale’s friend, and it is not an hour since I sent them to your Elektron!”
But his grandchi
ldren a thousand generations removed, again prostrated themselves and burst into song anew.
PROFESSOR HALLEY was in a decidedly awkward position, He narrowly escaped being indicted for murder. The disappearance of his daughter and his assistant naturally provoked inquiry, and the ugly suspicion was current that he had done away with them and consumed the bodies in his formidable looking Cosmic Ray machine.
Curiously enough, the proof which finally cleared him of the murder suspicion got him into trouble with the immigration authorities, who did not know what to do with several hundred lilliputian people who couldn’t be deported to anywhere. Professor Halley positively refused to send them back to Elektron unless they agreed to go of their own free will, and none of them wanted to go back. Finally the immigration authorities consented to admit the Elektonites under bond, after they had been increased to normal size. Friends were found who assisted them in adjusting themselves to a new type of civilization, and according to latest reports, most of them are getting along very well.
The writer, after many attempts, finally obtained from Professor Halley a first-hand account of his experience and a detailed explanation of the operation of his invention. Skipping the technical details, which have nothing to do with this story, it is only necessary to give here the professor’s own explanation of the remarkable fast life-cycle as lived on Elektron.
“I blame myself,” said Professor Halley sadly, “for overlooking this important point. While it is true that the sub-universe resembles our own; while it is true that the electrons follow their orbits in a manner analogous to the planets around the suns; yet I overlooked the fact that due to the great difference in size there is also an enormous difference in time. It takes the earth a year to go around the sun; an electron circles its positive nucleus mil lions of times a second. Yet every time it completes its orbit it is like a year to the inhabitants.
“Before I had time to even blink an eye, Shirley and Hale had lived, loved, died, and many generations of their children had gone through their life cycles. It was normal to them—to us it was unthinkably brief.”
He turned his patient face wearily towards the window, staring over the broad campus with unseeing eyes. They say his scientific apparatus is dusty from disuse, but the college board has decided to keep him on the faculty as long as he lives. He is a gentle, pathetic old man who will not live long.
THE END.
THE HEAD
Joe Kleier
IF you are at all nervous and given to nightmares, we advise you not to read this story before you go to bed. It gives an excellent thrill, and contains good science as well.
Recent experiments in Germany have proven conclusively that it is not only possible to decapitate insects, but to actually transplant heads from one insect to another, and after the heads are healed in place, the insects seem to be no worse for having their heads cut off and exchanged for others.
Of course, it’s a far cry from an insect head to a human head, but the thing may not be so improbable a hundred years hence, as it may seem now.
“SO you have come here to ask me to help you, Jim?” queried Professor Beardsley in a weak voice, as he looked inquiringly at his friend, Dr. James Leeson. “What assistance can you expect from a man who has only a month to live at most?”
Dr. Leeson glanced about the room and shifted uneasily in his chair. For some reason he seemed unwilling to state the nature of the help required.
A faint smile flitted over Professor Beardsley’s narrow, shaven face as he observed Dr. Leeson’s scrutiny of the room.
“Now don’t try to foist a little inconsequential research work or something like that on me, so you can have an excuse to pay me a good price and camouflage your charity,” bantered the Professor. “I’m devilish poor, I know, but doctors are useless to me now, so I dispense with them. As for food,” he added grimly, “in my condition I can hardly eat anything, so that expense is also avoided.”
“I may as well tell you straight out what I came for,” blurted Dr. Leeson. “I want your head!”
“What?” gasped the Professor.
“Listen,” went on Dr. Leeson hurriedly, “We haven’t seen each other for some years, but you must have heard that I gave up my practice?”
Professor Beardsley nodded assent. The acquaintances and friends of Dr. Leeson had been astonished when he had abruptly retired some years before without any explanation.
“You may remember how deeply interested I was in biology and plastic surgery when we were students at the university,” continued Dr. Leeson. “I became a surgeon; you became a professor of chemistry. I was a success as a surgeon, but I wanted to be independently rich, so that I could devote my whole time to what I considered my life’s work. Having saved some thousands of dollars, I began to speculate in stocks. I was more than lucky. In a short time I was very rich.
“I bought a place in the country not far from here, fitted it up as a laboratory, and withdrew from the world, as you might say.
“I tried for a long time to find a substitute for blood. At last I succeeded in making artificial ape blood, and with a pump that I devised to act as a heart,. I have kept a chimpanzee’s head alive for over six months!”
“And now you want a human head!” breathed the Professor, wonder and horror in his voice.
“Yes,” replied Dr. Leeson. “I am certain that I can do the same with a human head and my substitute for human blood. A man may lose arms and legs and still live. I intend to prove that the entire trunk can be done away with, and the head and brain can be kept alive and active as long as there is blood and something to act as a heart.
“Some time ago, I put an advertisement in the papers, for persons who were contemplating self-destruction—of course I did not mention what they were wanted for—hoping in this manner to get a subject for my experiments. I received dozens of answers. Quite a few were women, but I don’t want a woman for this. Some came out of mere curiosity. Some were reporters hunting for a sensational news item; others were adventurers looking for excitement. One or two of the would-be suicides were really tired of life, but they lacked the intelligence I desire.”
“So you have come to me,” remarked the Professor with a slight sneer. “I must say that I’m flattered.”
“Wait till I have finished,” protested Dr. Leeson, “and then think it over.
“You are as much interested in the progress of science I think—as I am. I need a keen mind in the head I use. By a system of signals we could arrange—for you won’t be able to speak—you, or rather your head could communicate with me.
“To be brutally frank, I heard you were dying of cancer, and that you were in bad shape financially. You have a six year old, motherless daughter to think of, and whether you accept my offer or not, I shall see to it that your daughter never wants for anything as long as I live, because you were my boyhood friend. But—if you want to rest assured of her future, I will give you fifty thousand dollars cash for your live body, which money you can place in trust for her.”
“What about yourself in case I should accept?” asked Professor Beardsley. “If the authorities or some of these pious keepers-of-their-brothers find out what you have done to me, they’ll certainly have you brought to trial for murder.”
“Perhaps, if the experiment fails,” smiled Dr. Leeson. “Should your head live, I don’t know what they could bring me to trial for, if I can prove that you were a willing collaborator.
“You no doubt have read of scientists losing arms and legs fooling with radium and other things; they are never arrested for committing suicide piecemeal, so why should I be accused of murdering piecemeal.
“However, you can let yourself be examined by three specialists. In case of trouble I can have these specialists testify as to your condition. After you have been examined, let it be known that I shall operate on you as a last hope. Should you die, I have a friend who is an undertaker, and he will see to it that you are buried without any questions. Should your head live, I
shall preserve the body.”
“Do you think I care to have my head live on for I don’t know how long?” demanded Professor Beardsley.
“I’ve thought of that. You must agree to let me keep your head alive for at least two months after the operation, if it is possible. After that you can signal me to let your head die, and it shall be done. Should it be impossible for you to make signs, I promise to let it die within that time.”
“This sounds ghoulish! But what about the pain?”
“I have perfected a local anesthetic which heals while it deadens pain. You won’t know a knife has touched you during the operation or after.”
Dr. Leeson paused and waited for an answer.
“Give me until this time to-morrow to think it over,” said Professor Beardsley thoughtfully.
“Good!” exclaimed Dr. Leeson, looking at his watch. “Tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock I’ll be here. I’m sure, if you think this matter over, you will see that it is feasible.”
With a brisk handshake, Dr. Leeson left the room.
PROFESSOR BEARDSLEY sat in his chair, hour after hour, debating this strange offer with himself. Suffering with cancer of the stomach, he had more than once decided that suicide was the only way to end his agony. But the thought of his daughter had always made him reconsider, for he had clung to the forlorn hope that in some way he could provide for her before he died.
And now Dr. Leeson, who had buried himself in a laboratory for a number of years, popped up like some uncanny genie at this time and made a fantastic proposition. Dawn found Professor Beardsley still in his chair, but his decision was made. His daughter’s future could not be left to the vagaries of friendly help, or the mercies of a public orphanage. Then again, he was curious as to the outcome of such an attempt to baffle nature.
Almost eagerly he awaited Dr. Leeson’s arrival. Promptly at eleven o’clock Dr. Leeson knocked, and entered the room.