A Large Anthology of Science Fiction

by Jerry

  The Chief Electrician did not know whether to laugh or to cry.

  “You have run me out of a job, Ball. There will be no work for me at the University from now on.”

  “You should worry. I’ll give you double your salary if you will work for me from now on.”

  “But how about the television and the radio, Ball?” asked the puzzled master mechanic. “I can understand your substituting human players for machines, but what did you do to the wireless? Or was that just a coincidence? A freak of the atmosphere?”

  Ball smiled.

  “You will have to guess at that for a while. Too many folks are around here to discuss important affairs like television. Suppose you come and take supper with the team. I am entertaining them tonight, and, perhaps, we can talk after they fill up and go to bed. I suppose we shall have to fight the reporters on the way out. You and Haggard can do the talking. Of course, you had better put all the blame on me. It was not very sporting to treat the Penn team that way, but I wanted to give the nation a startling object lesson, and when the papers feature it I guess the whole world will start thinking.”

  What Happened

  THE next day, Sunday, was one long to be remembered in the history of the nation. The fact that eleven men had won a decisive victory over eleven machines was only a part of the news that almost glutted the capacity of the Sunday editions. People bought papers who had not done so for several years, as the news broadcasting stations were not working. Something had happened to the radio; not one of the machines in the entire nation was working and none of the experts knew why. That in itself was news. Then the television broadcasting stations were out of commission, and that was more news. People had to depend for their news on the papers and content themselves with the telegraph and the telephone. That Saturday evening and Sunday they had to be entertained and, the few theaters still open did a record business.

  Monday came, a beautiful day in Indian Summer. The calm of the season was felt even in busy New York. No one knew what was going to happen, and, yet, everyone felt that this quiet might be the lull before a deadly storm. Labor crouched, ready to spring in its last struggle against machinery. The twenty-five thousand robots had been delivered, they had been installed, the men whom they replaced had been discharged—and then—not a single robot started to work.

  For some reason they were unable to even begin.

  They were beautiful pieces of machinery, but absolutely lifeless.

  Every day of idleness, meant a huge loss to the manufacturers.

  In despair, they called back their human laborers, increased their wages, lessened their hours of work, and hurled despairing questions at the owners of Robots International.

  Those questions were never answered. All that the scientists could say was that the ethereal waves which made television, radio and robots possible were no longer at the control and the beck and call of mankind. Something had happened to them, not necessarily to destroy them, but to twist or convert them in some way, so that they no longer were capable of serving the caprices of mankind.

  The next day, Tuesday, there was a joint meeting of all the Boards of Directors of the companies concerned in the gigantic change in the affairs of society. The meeting was called at the request of Ed Ball, but till he rose to address the Directors no one realized how large a part he had taken in the sudden cessation of television and the radio and other forms of activities, dependent on the wireless waves. Calling for attention, Ball stood up and told them all about it.

  “Gentlemen,” he began, “when I returned to America a year ago, I little realized the changes in human life that were the direct result of your commercializing the inventions of science. I deliberately invested over thirty million in your various companies so I could gain a correct insight into the entire problem. I found that you had given to the world some blessings, but they were all tangled up with rather definite curses. You had made possible a vast extension of the use of the radio, television and the wireless control of machinery, which you dressed in the form of men and women and called robots. With these robots, you threatened the very life of American labor. You destroyed the befit there was in sport, took away the pleasure of attending amusement in a mass, and, by placing all entertainments in the home, you turned mankind into a selfish, introverted, anti-social animal, who cared for little save his own entertainment. You did this to make money—there was little of the altruistic, the love of humanity, in your efforts to popularize these scientific discoveries.

  “I prepared to teach the world a lesson by thrashing a football team of robots with a team of wide-awake young Americans. That was easy for me, because I was a former football star. It was different with the wireless waves of ether. Finally, I located an old inventor who saw this whole problem the same as I saw it. He was willing to work on the control of the wireless waves, and, finally, with my encouragement and cash he invented a little electrical machine, not much to look at, but rather gigantic in its power. Press one button and all these waves you use are dislocated, bent in some way so you cannot use them. Press another button and they are all returned to their former usefulness. We pressed one button when the game started the other day, and you saw what happened.

  “This old gentleman who is sitting so quietly at my right is Mr. Henry Scherer, the brilliant inventor, who happened to hit on this new power. When he arrives at his home tomorrow he will press the other button and restore to you all your former control of the air. Whether he will ever press that button again will depend on yourselves. Your activities will be under the observation of a group of humanitarians, men who love their fellow man, and these men will be in my employ. If they think that your work is harmful to mankind, they will first warn you and then will stop you by notifying Mr. Scherer, who will press the appropriate button, Mankind must never again be threatened by the crushing weight of machinery. The robot must be the servant and not the master.”

  The next month Ed Ball sailed for Australia, leaving Scherer to protect American labor against any further onslaughts of the robot.

  THE END

  ISLANDS IN THE AIR

  Lowell Howard Morrow

  HERE is one of the most extraordinary air stories that we have read in a long while. It is sure to arouse your wonder and excitement.

  One of the important and most revolutionary inventions, which is sure to come about sooner or later, is the control of gravitation. When we have conquered gravitation, man will be set free in earnest.

  The slavery of weight, which chains us to this planet and to the ground, is far more serious than we appreciate, simply because we have always been “earthbound”. But, sooner or later, it will be possible to bring about such conditions as our author describes so vividly in this excellent short story. When it does, aviation will be helped tremendously, and indeed the conditions of our entire world will be revolutionized literally.

  CHAPTER I

  An Astounding Plan

  “HE CAN control the laws of gravitation and perform new miracles.”

  My good friend, Professor Gustave Steiner, was speaking, and for that reason I pondered his remarkable words.

  “Such an attainment would overshadow all else in the realms of science,” I observed casually.

  “Already the problem has been mastered,” asserted the professor solemnly.

  I gave him a startled look. He gazed back with calm assurance, stroking his pointed beard as was his way when discussing a serious subject. Had his astounding declaration come from any other source I would have treated it as the idle mutterings of a diseased mind.

  “Has been mastered?” I repeated incredulously.

  The professor nonchalantly lit a cigar, puffed silently a moment and eyed me speculatively.

  “Absolutely mastered,” he answered finally. I stared. “But it will take capital to perfect the system,” he added timidly.

  I understood the professor. He reversed the time-honored maxim by having more brains than money. Still I could not help rea
soning that this time his mighty intellect had slipped a cog. How could one upset the basic law of the universe? It was impossible, absurd. However, the savants of two continents did obeisance to Professor Stiener. The furore caused by his lecture on cosmic energy, delivered at Heidelberg, was still fresh in mind.

  “I see, my boy, that you doubt my claim,” he went on presently.

  “It is so astonishing.”

  The professor smiled tolerantly. “It is not astonishing when you know how to harness the forces of nature, my boy.” He rubbed his hands together gleefully. “A few known principles well chosen, an opportunity—and there you have it.”

  “And you have overcome the gravitational pull of mother earth?”

  “Nothing of the kind, my dear boy; I have but neutralized it.”

  “Why, man alive,” I cried, “such a thing would send this old globe wobbling through space like a drunken man—leaderless and beyond control.”

  “Precisely. But I propose to control gravitation locally.”

  Again I stared. Was the professor going crazy? Was he breaking under the strain of overwork? I recalled his sister Greta’s remark to me that she feared some day he would lose his mind, inasmuch as both his father and his grand father had ended their days in a madhouse. But as I gazed steadily into his calm blue eyes I read no sign of insanity there. Nothing but steadfast confidence.

  “Locally,” I echoed at last, staring at him blankly. “And for what purpose?”

  “To build islands in the sky.”

  “Islands!” I gasped.

  “To be sure, my boy. Do you not realize the need of such things? Airplanes are creatures of the air—are they not? Therefore they should fuel in the air, and the beacons set to guide their course should shine in the element through which they pass.”

  “That is true,” I assented, catching a faint glimmering of his stupendous scheme. “But what is to hold your islands in place and keep them from blowing away? And will they not become a serious menace to air travel rather than an aid?”

  “By no means,” he replied confidently. “I will not only control gravitation, I will also use its force as a repellent.”

  “A repellent?”

  “Exactly.” The professor drew his chair nearer and leaned toward me with shining eyes, his hands spread out comprehensively. “Instead of attracting objects to its center the earth must be made to repel them,” he continued in a low voice, glancing furtively about the brilliantly lighted room, then at the open windows where the breeze stirred the curtains lazily. “I have invented what I call a gravity repeller, which causes the gravitation lines of force to bend through 180° and lift an object away from the earth with the same force that it would ordinarily be attracted.”

  “I understand,” I said doubtfully.

  “Well, then we have only to perfect my device and operate it on a large scale.”

  “But that would throw the world out of balance and destroy all life.”

  “Don’t be alarmed, my boy,” went on the professor, smiling complacently, “as I have intimated I do not propose a blanket control. I shall tap this energy only in spots for the benefit of my—that is—our islands.”

  The Professor’s Fear

  THE professor’s face glowed with enthusiasm as he looked at me. I saw that he was looking to me for funds to further his experiment. As the goddess of fortune had blessed me with more than my share of riches and I loved the eccentric professor I listened sympathetically. I may say that my interest was somewhat heightened by my friendship for Greta, who was a skillful air pilot and who had given me many pleasurable rides in her plane which embodied many of the professor’s radical ideas of airplane construction.

  “What do you want me to do?” I encouraged. “Well, Walnut Ridge is a good place to start.”

  “Walnut Ridge—why that is away out in the wilderness.”

  “Of course, but that is where we want to start—away from everybody. You see I have not been idle since coming to America. While you were away on business I was out looking the ridge over. I would buy and fence a section of the west end of the ridge perhaps a half mile in length by a quarter of a mile in width. There would be machinery to install, you understand, and an island to manufacture—perhaps many of them.”

  Again I stared at my friend, and he smiled back in his inscrutable, confident way.

  “And the islands—what will you do with them?”

  “I shall place them in the sky and anchor them.” This was too much for my sense of humor and I laughed in spite of myself. Manufacturing islands and anchoring them in the sky was such a ridiculous proposition that I treated it as a big joke. But now the professor was frowning and a cold light flamed in his eyes.

  “You think me joking,” he said with quiet dignity, “but I am not. Already I have proved my theory.”

  “Forgive me,” I said contritely. “But my God, man,” I added, “your proposition fairly stuns me. It will revolutionize aviation, astronomy—everything pertaining to the heaven above us. Have you worked it out alone and does no one know your secret?”

  A shadow came over Professor Stiener’s fair face. For a long minute he looked down at the floor, then raised his head with a jerk.

  “I believe that no one has stumbled onto this thing but me. However, there is Van Beck. You know something about that confounded Dutchman, how that while I have worked with him and discovered much for the benefit of our fellowmen, he also has pestered me, often garnering the fruits of my toil. You know how he has disputed my claims on several occasions while posing as my friend. The devil take him. I wish I was sure.”

  Professor Van Beck, a small, wiry man with a bristling black beard, was Professor Stiener’s closest rival in the realms of science. The men, differing widely, still had much in common and had been closely associated in Europe before Van Beck took up his residence in the United States. But always Van Beck had managed to gather most of the rewards to himself. And now that I had invited Professor Stiener and his sister to make me a long visit, the irony of fate had guided him to the faculty of the university where the great Dutchman labored.

  “You haven’t said anything about this to Van Beck?”

  “Not a word. But he is always trying to worm something out of me. You know what a persistent way he has—his strange personality—you like him and yet you hate him. And last week while I was conducting my experiments out on the ridge I spied a fellow far across the valley looking in my direction through a field glass.”

  I certainly sympathized with Professor Stiener’s efforts to stop his rival. The little Dutch scientist seemed to exercise some sort of an influence over Greta. She was often seen in his company and always took his part whenever he was held up to scorn by her celebrated brother.

  “Your words imply that there is much still to be done; that you have proved only that the theory is feasible.”

  “That is just it, my boy—perfectly feasible.”

  And then drawing his chair still nearer the professor told in low tones many of the details of his marvelous plans, but as he talked on his voice rose on a wave of enthusiasm and more than once I had to caution him for fear some servant might overhear.

  The night was far advanced when at last he finished and rose to retire. His face shone with ardent hope as he bade me good night and ascended the stairs. I stared after him until he passed from view, and then too much upset by his astounding revelations to sleep I went out to take a turn or two about the lawn in an effort to get the thing thoroughly analyzed before committing myself to sponsor a scheme that seemed to be the most impossible thing ever conceived by the mind of man.

  As I went down the porch steps I fancied I heard a slight scraping noise from the direction of my study window. I looked that way and for a moment thought I saw a vague shadowy form emerge from the deeper shadows and disappear over the porch railing. But as the sky was overcast and the gloom deep in that particular quarter I dismissed the notion.

  For more than an hour I paced up
and down the drives and across the lawn thinking over the professor’s words. The result of it all was that I finally concluded to back him financially.

  CHAPTER II

  The Secret of Walnut Ridge

  WE HAD no difficulty purchasing the desired tract on Walnut Ridge. We enclosed it with a high, woven wire fence topped by five strands of barbed wire. Our workmen were selected carefully, housed to keep their mouths shut. As secretly as possible the material of divers sorts was collected on the ridge and the actual work of construction began. The few reporters and other curious humans that found their way out through the wilderness to the plant were sent on the wrong trail by the report that we were about to test out special iron mining machinery and make borings for other minerals.

  While our electricians under the able direction of a little red-headed Scotchman named McCann were familiar with all the workings of the intricate machinery, motors, transformers and so on, no one understood the complete working principle save the professor himself, although McCann, being canny and deep, I credited with understanding more than he let on. Certain it is that the professor was in love with him and trusted him implicitly. The professor was everywhere, tireless, secretive and often provoking. Sometimes he worked far into the night when all others had sought their beds.

  As for myself I wandered about from one section to another in a maze of doubt and wonder. The whole thing was too deep for me, and I thought so much on the subject that it began to rob me of my sleep. Besides, the Professor’s taciturnity finally began to irritate me. Although I was furnishing all the money he did not offer to divulge the inner secrets of his scheme. My wonder was intensified as the sky islands, two in number and located one near each end of the enclosure, began to take form. These islands were fashioned out of structural steel, were square in form and about one hundred yards from rim to rim. Although their superstructure was built of light-weight materials, each must have weighed many thousands of tons burdened as they were with machinery of many kinds—oscillators, condensers, motors and divers other machines whose names and offices were known only to the Professor.