by Jerry
“I DON’T envy your job,” Douglass said in a half whisper. “But do you mean that you can make new men; living, thinking men out of that green jelly and bones?”
“Partly, yes,” replied Pontius, sucking at his pipe. “The creation of life is no longer a mystery, at least to me, but the solution lies deeper than dead men’s bones.”
“Of course,” commented Douglass with a strange sense of reality. “Still, I think, if I were you, I would be afraid of the wrath of the Super Intelligence that created all life at the beginning. Synthetic creation of human life by man, it seems to me, is a violation of all the laws of God.”
Dr. Pontius shrugged. “The Super Intelligence is the mind, young man,” he said bluntly. “All life originally evolved through the crystallization of a colloid. The idea that one creator made all things is a primitive superstition. At least that is my opinion and it is founded on two generations of research and experimentation in the realms of material physiology, by my father and myself.”
“You are an atheist, then?” Douglass inquired, amazed.
Dr. Pontius’ pipe had gone out. He scrutinized his guest with an amused look as he applied the lighter again.
“I’m afraid my views on religion would be uninteresting to you, Douglass,” he said simply. “It is a delicate subject to discuss and not injure the feelings of another; so let us get down to the business of your visit.”
Douglass’ face brightened. He had discovered himself forming unkindly opinions of this old scientist for his seemingly dogmatic views. The idea that the Creator had made all things had been drilled into Douglass from childhood by devout parents and he resented anything to the contrary—despite his broad-mindedness. He was glad to change the subject, for he had no stomach for an argument with the scientist and, above all, he wanted the story.
The reporter nodded. “Then you can proceed, Dr. Pontius,” he said, taking a sheaf of folded foolscap from his inner pocket in preparation to take notes. “You need not deviate from scientific parlance. I am well schooled in science and will understand your terms quite amply. Biology has always fascinated me. I am glad of this opportunity to hear an expert discuss it.”
“That’s fine,” applauded Dr. Pontius with a mischievous grin. “I want you to get it right. Don’t hesitate to interrupt if I get too deep for you.”
CHAPTER II
The Story of Pontius
FOR two solid hours the scientist’s voice droned out in the dismal room. It seemed smothered and stifled by the closeness of the place. The reporter’s pencil literally flew over his papers. Dr. Pontius talked steadily, touching many details of his discoveries. But he talked about it abstractly. He did not seem eager to have the world know that he, of all men, had been the first to solve the mysteries of life.
If Douglass had thought himself well-schooled in science, he soon discovered that he was pitifully ignorant. Many times was he forced to interrupt the scientist for a simpler explanation of a detail. Dr. Pontius rallied to his aid on each occasion. Again and again he gestured toward the test tubes. Each time the reporter experienced chilling sensations running up and down his spinal column.
The story that Pontius told was, in effect, the history of two generations of unremitting devotion to an idea. Two men, father and son, following each other in the silence of this laboratory, watching over bits of microsopic material, that were finally to become men. Not perfect men. Pontius emphasized this fact to Douglass. And to illustrate it, he took the fascinated reporter in front of one of the bodies and switching on the globe suspended above, illuminated the internal structure of the creature. He showed Douglass that instead of having blood coursing through his veins, the creature had a green fluid that Pontius called, Ay one. And further, as a memento that the hand of the potter might occasionally shake, he showed that the synthetic man’s heart was on the right side instead of the left. There were other differences, too, that set the synthetic man apart from our own flesh and blood, hut these differences only served to Douglass to heighten the reality of this amazing creation. Leaving the creature who, seemed to be asleep in his enveloping green fluid, the two men returned to their seats and Pontius went on with his story.
The original discovery that the elder Pontius had made was the creating of a single-celled organism from agar, a derivative of sea weed, that had been treated at various temperatures and in various solutions. It was all part of a preconceived idea of Edward Pontius that under the proper conditions animal life could be produced from plants. That was where the Q-Ray came in.
Edward Pontius had experimented with the effect of cosmic rays on animal life, and found that they were fatal in large doses. So were the much longer radium rays and the still longer X and ultra-violet rays. But each of these in proper doses was beneficial to life. Here indeed was the beginning of a puzzle that the giant mind of the elder Pontius could unravel. Might not one of these short wavelength radiations be the one that coming from outer space had caused plant life to change miraculously into animal protoplasm.
The Q-Ray was the answer. Lying between the gamma rays from radium and the cosmic ray,[*] they were found to be a narrow band of radiations unexplored by science. Perhaps they were unexplored because of the peculiar conditions necessary to their propagation. And further, because the conditions necessary to produce them were so delicate, their presence had not even been detected.
But Edward Pontius had discovered that on projecting the Q-Ray on the agar he produced a microscopic bit of living matter. And when the ray was intensified, the microscopic organism, in a miraculous way, began to subdivide and grow and become more complex. The process of the increasing complexity of simple organisms that took hundreds of thousands of years in nature took days in the laboratory of Edward Pontius.
Feverishly he set to work to yest this amazing fact to the fullest. After inadvertently telling the world about his Q-Ray he saw his mistake and retired to his laboratory for the rest of his life. Month after month, year after year—testing, retesting, discarding, starting over; he finally evolved a process that had finally culminated in the two synthetic men his son had produced.
What it meant was that the process of the evolution of a single-celled organism into a mature man, which had taken hundreds of millions of years had been compressed under the action of the Q-Ray into sixty-five years! Douglass gasped when the significance of these words penetrated his mind.
“Of course,” Pontius said slowly, “when my father died and left me his experiments I knew I would succeed. All I had to do was to carry them on; and allow the half-formed creatures to continue evolving. But now they are finished, badly finished, perhaps. But I know that they live. I can arouse them to life at any moment I wish.” He paused. “I am old. I have no heir; and I want the result of this work to be given to the world. The world must do with it as it will.”
“And your creatures really live,” Douglass said when he could find his voice.
Pontius nodded. “Only yesterday I saw that one there,” and he pointed to one of the imprisoned men, “making efforts to get out of his tube. The human desire for freedom of course, and that fellow is a particularly pugnacious member of his species.”
FROM the streets outside came a sudden shriek of police sirens. Douglass sat up with a jolt. The scientist appraised him quizzically and glanced at the tubes. The reporter heard him mutter something incomprehensible as he tensed in his swivel chair. He glanced toward the two synthetic men.
The green, fire-shot eyes of one were roving over the room. Douglass clutched his papers and pencil lightly in a trembling fist, and watched silently in awe. Dr. Pontius half-rose from his chair in a tense attitude; Then the synthetic creature lifted a feeble hand and ran it. nervously across his face; A cry of fear clogged the reporter’s throat. He struggled to down it, hut it came forth in a terrified grunt.
“Good God!” he groaned. “He’s coming to!”
“Silence!” hissed Dr. Pontius severely. “Those damned sirens! Their vibrations ha
ve awakened my subjects before I was ready for them!”
Douglass watched the synthetic beings in peculiar fascination. His brows were contracted into a frown that bordened on stark terror. It seemed to him that something like an electric current passed from the tubes to Dr. Pontius, making him as rigid as steel. The scientist gripped the arms of his chair so tightly that his knuckles showed white and bloodless.
So distinct was the impression of the reporter that there was some mystic, unfathomable tie between Dr. Pontius and his synthetic creations, that he almost dropped his pencil. With a startled gasp he pocketed it safely with his papers and fumbled nervously for a cigarette. His taut nerves were shattering and he had a strange premonition that something was going to happen. Something dire and untoward. A weird chill seemed to permeate the room suggesting violence and death. It made the reporter experience hot and cold sensations from head to foot.
Dr. Pontius watched his subjects in silence. A sense of awe and apprehension placed itself upon him. There was a marked change of expression in the faces of the synthetic men in the tubes. Gone was their seemingly lifeless sleep. Their emerald-green eyes that were flecked with fire stared out into the gloomy laboratory with unblinking steadiness. The bodies began to squirm suddenly, weakly. The creature that had appeared on the verge of death had strangely taken on new life. He showed even more strength now than the other.
Then Douglass felt the full force of their stare. As they swung their fiery eyes upon him, he felt a sensation of nausea in his vitals. His stomach seemed to turn over completely. There was a powerful something in the eyes of the creature that made him shudder and feel sick. It seemed to him that a faint, diabolical grin formed on their lips, remaining as if glued there.
“God!” he mumbled under his breath. “What a terrible curse they are to humanity!”
His eyes flashed grimly as he fought to remove them from the leering faces behind the glass. Dr. Pontius eyed him thoughtfully and laughed quietly. He spoke in an almost inaudible whisper that made the reporter start.
“I will ask you to remain as my guest tonight, Douglass,” Pontius hissed softly, tensely. “I will need your help.”
The reporter stiffened. He stared for a moment apprehensively at the scientist, then shook his head.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he whispered nervously. “I cannot possibly remain. The service is waiting for my press copy—”
“Tut! Tut!” Pontius countered. “Unmistakeably you are afraid.”
Douglass smiled grimly, his lips feeling strangely tight across the teeth. “I am uneasy,” he snapped in muffled tones, “but not afraid. I have seen men hanged and electrocuted, and dead, decayed bodies in the police morgues. As a reporter I’ve had to handle some, but never have I encountered such a horrible experience as this. No, Dr. Pontius, I am not afraid. I beg to be excused, nevertheless.”
Help Needed
DR. Pontius shrugged resignedly. “Of course I would not hold you here against your wishes,” he muttered disappointedly. “I thought you would welcome the chance to aid me as a means of bettering your story. It will be necessary to remove my subjects from the tubes tonight. It is too big a job for me to handle alone. I will have to call on my niece for help if you insist on going.”
“You mean you would get a woman’s help?” Douglass inquired dumbly, incredulously. “Why, you don’t even know what the creatures might do!”
“You are correct, young man,” said Pontius stiffly. “I don’t know what will happen. But Allanna, my niece, has often helped in the laboratory. In fact she seems quite fond of my subjects.”
Douglass shuddered again and cursed his own emotions of fear. He was afraid to remain and knew it. Something in his subconscious mind advised him to go, but a greater force held him. He could hardly picture a woman, doubtlessly young, handling such awful creatures as the tubes contained. He realized that if the subjects became uncontrollable, old Dr. Pontius would be little protection for his niece. What then? He would never be able to forgive himself if anything happened in the place after his departure.
Before he could prevent himself from giving his final answer, the words fairly splurged from his tight lips. “Then I’ll remain, Dr. Pontius,” he whispered, squirming uneasily in his seat, “not because I want to, but for your protection. Something might happen. I have a hunch—”
“That’s fine, Douglass,” the scientist interjected. “Just remove your coat. I’ll give you a robe after I call Allanna.”
“You—you are going to bring your niece in anyhow?” the reporter gasped brokenly.
Dr. Pontius nodded grimly. “She wouldn’t want to miss it,” he mumbled. “In fact she asked that I let her in on the work. I’ll need her, too, for she’s a trained nurse.”
The scientist turned to his desk phone, lifted the receiver and pressed a button on the call-box. Douglass thought he heard the faint tinkle of a bell not far away and wondered if Allanna lived with her uncle in the big house that was built around the laboratory. His thoughts were diverted by Pontius’ muffled voice.
“Allanna,” the scientist half-whispered. “Can you come to the laboratory at once? The time has arrived to remove the subjects from the tubes.”
The reporter shivered slightly as he began removing his coat. The sound of a musical voice reached him as it came over the wire to the scientist.
“Why of course,” he heard Allanna’s reply. “I was just wondering when it would happen. But isn’t it a trifle early?”
“Ordinarily they should not have been removed until the end of this week,” Dr. Pontius said, controlling a voice that was filled with excitement and suspense. “The awakening is a bit premature due to the vibrations from some sirens. Then you will be right down?”
“Right away, Uncle Cliff,” she replied a trifle eagerly. “Anyone there to help?”
Dr. Pontius automatically glanced at the reporter. Douglass stood coatless, rolling his sleeves.
“Mr. Douglass, a reporter, is here, Allanna,” responded the scientist. “He will help.”
“Oh,” said the feminine voice. “Not much there, but it will come in handy. I’ll be right down.”
CHAPTER III
The Creatures Live
THE reporter’s face reddened and his ears stung at the insinuation of the invisible woman. Before he had time to decide if he resented it, Dr. Pontius grinned up at him, went softly to a closet and handed him a linen gown.
“Protect your clothes, Douglass,” he said quickly. “You’ll find this an unpleasant job.”
Douglass agreed silently that it was not the least bit inviting. Inwardly he rebelled at the thought of touching the greasy subjects in the huge tubes, but he steeled himself to the impending ordeal. Quickly he donned the gown, then glanced at the synthetic creatures.
The diabolical grins that had been on their lips had given away to murderous leers. The reporter recoiled a trifle when one of them cast him a side-long glance. Twin jets of fire seemed to come from those fiery eyes to sear his very soul. They bit into him like blades. He turned to Pontius.
“Are you sure that it will be safe to release them, doc?” he inquired tensely.
The scientist tied the belt of his gown behind his back and looked at the reporter calmly.
“Certainly!” he replied nonchalantly. “Moreover it must be done, otherwise they will die and my life’s work will go for nothing.”
“What do you plan to do with them?” Douglass blurted.
“That, I have not fully decided,” Dr. Pontius stated, advancing. “For the present, I’m going to try to teach them to be house servants and drill a little sense into them.”
“Then they will emerge from the tubes dumb and witless?”
Dr. Pontius laughed quietly, but Douglass noticed that it was a dull, humorless laugh. Then his face sobered and his eyes sparkled with the mysterious light of functioning genius.
“An infant is dumb and witless when it is born, Douglass,” he nodded. “My subjects are men in stature
but will emerge from the test tubes with the intellect of a five-year old. I will be forced to develop their brains, such as they have. The brain runs second in all human mysteries and while I have succeeded in creating synthetic life, I do not profess to have solved the mystery of thought and subconscious phenomena. Perhaps the next experiment will show better results in that line.”
The reporter gasped aloud with a sucking in of breath. “Then you are actually going to try it again?” he asked, mouth agape.
Dr. Pontius was on the verge of making a reply when the door bell tinkled. His attention was diverted and drawn to the lock control. He went to his desk hurriedly and pressed the button. Douglass glanced at the door expectantly and in a moment it swung open. Into the dismal room walked the only bit of sunshine he had seen since arriving hours before.
Allanna was like a beautiful flower in an ugly vase. She was young and fairly radiated sunshine. Her cheeks seemed to glow even under the subdued illumination of the dreary, dismal laboratory; and her eyes, a deeper shade of blue than the scientist’s, sparkled with a frank, understanding tenderness. She was dressed in the spotless white of a trained nurse. From under her starched cap protruded curling whisps of auburn hair.
Douglass felt that never before had he beheld such a beautiful girl. Before her arrival, he had mentally visioned her as skinny, curt and undemonstrative. He was completely bowled over now and he gaped at her in astonishment when she paused a few feet away from him.
“Good evening!” she said in a soft, musical voice. “You are Mr. Douglass?”
The newspaper man shook his head eagerly, forgetting entirely that he was immersed in the dreary gloom of a womb of science.
“Douglass—Morton Douglass,” he stammered. “You are Allanna, Dr. Pontius’ niece?”
She smiled warmly. “Uncle calls me Allie,” she said. “I’ve read and digested many of your scientific articles, Mr. Douglass, and found them charmingly written and precisely correct.”