A Large Anthology of Science Fiction

by Jerry

  “Yes,” agreed Felix; “but what? I have only until to-morrow to find and do it.”

  Betty looked thoughtful. Suddenly her attention was attracted by a newsboy shouting the afternoon extra, and her eyes brightened. “Felix,” she asked, “have you any friends who are reporters?”

  “Sure!” answered Felix. “There’s Bill Jones on the Ledger and Ted Wilson on the World. Why?”

  “Because,” replied Betty, “they are going to help us out.”

  Later that afternoon Professor Boswell was visited by two young men—two of his students, probably; he never could remember all the freshmen—who asked innocent questions about mathematics while they used their eyes to good advantage. Then they thanked the professor and left.

  That evening the Ledger brought out an extra with the startling headline:

  UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR

  DISCOVERS DIMENSION

  OF INVISIBILITY.

  PUTS HIS FOOT IN IT.

  And the World followed with:

  NOTED PROFESSOR LEGLESS

  IN FOURTH DIMENSION,

  BUT STILL KICKING.

  Betty would not tell Felix what the professor said when he saw these headlines, but Bill Jones told us that he called up the editor of the Ledger and used language that moved that expert to admiration.

  The next morning a man with a little black box called to see the professor. Betty was not deceived by his story of being an instructor from a neighboring college, but she showed him—and the little black box—into her father’s study.

  “Well,” began Boswell ungraciously from behind the fortification of his desk, “what can I do for you?”

  “A great deal, sir,” replied the man, pressing the little box against the pit of his stomach. “I represent the Associated Press; and——”

  “What!” The professor’s visible portion shot into the air and sailed over the desk. “How dare——”

  There was a click in the little black box. “Hold that; hold it just a minute!” begged the man. “I want to get another in case this one doesn’t turn out well.”

  He did not get it. Instead, he got the experience of leaving the house with the assistance of an invisible boot.

  Muttering unprintable things, the professor turned to his morning mail. His wild roar as he read the first letter brought Betty on the run.

  “Listen to this!” he bellowed. “A vile, sniveling motion-picture company has the nerve to offer me ten thousand dollars for my fourth dimension ‘invention’ to use in their fool trick photography.”

  He thumped down the letter and opened another. Again he roared.

  “A damned vaudeville company has the audacity to ask me to travel with them—in their disgusting act of sawing a man in half!”

  Savagely he tore the letter across and reached for a third. This time he turned purple and choked and sputtered for fully five minutes before articulate speech came to him.

  “This is the worst!” he managed at last. “It’s—it’s from a circus!” His progress through the rest of his mail resembled a machine gun in action. Betty said nothing when he had finished; there was nothing left to say.

  Later in the morning a second visitor called. Since he claimed to be a United States census taker, he had to be admitted. The professor answered his questions civilly, but with the air of a bulldog straining at a leash.

  At last the man rose to go; but at the door he turned.

  “Just one question about your clothing, professor,” he said. “Does it become visible when you take it off at night and invisible when you put it on in the morning, or does it stay——”

  He never finished his sentence. As to what stopped him, testimony differs. Some of the neighbors claimed that there was a slight earthquake; others, that some one had thrown an infernal machine into the study.

  Witnesses in the street claimed that they saw the door of the professor’s house suddenly burst open, and a man, wild-eyed and disheveled, flee through it as if for his life, while after him shot half a man waving frantic arms and emitting a stream of such sulphurous profanity that the atmosphere about him threatened to burst into flame. Down the street the two charged, while women fainted, and strong men grew weak at the sight.

  A traffic officer, stunned by what he beheld, confused the semaphore lights, and in half a minute traffic was congested for blocks around. Some one, possibly inspired by the professor’s language, sent in a fire alarm, and the clang of the city fire department was added to the commotion.

  People came running from all directions. The press of humanity was becoming so great that human life was endangered, and a riot call was sent in. Presently a cordon of police forced its way through the surging human sea to a telegraph pole at its center, halfway up which a man was clinging desperately, while at its foot ranted the upper half of another man, swearing horribly.

  In a few minutes it was all over. One policeman, gripping the upper half of the professor, and another, apparently empty-handed but going through all the antics of a man trying to hold a bucking broncho, climbed into the patrol wagon. The doors were slammed shut, and amid screams of “Felix Graham is responsible for this; I’ll kill him!” from inside, the wagon drove off.

  FELIX AND I had just returned from morning classes when the dormitory telephone operator, who was talking to a policeman, nodded in our direction.

  The policeman came up to us. “Which of you is Felix Graham?” he demanded.

  “I am,” admitted Felix, “but I don’t own a car.”

  “That’s all right,” said the policeman. “I’m not here to give you a ticket. What I want to know is, do you know an old guy named Lynn Boswell, that says he’s a professor at this college?”

  “Professor Boswell of the mathematics department?” asked Felix. “Yes; I know him.”

  “Well,” continued the policeman, “he’s down at the station, charged with disturbin’ the peace, and wants to see you. Come down and have a look at him. But you’d better not let him get his hands on you, or the charge might have to be changed to first-degree murder.”

  Arrived at the jail, Felix was taken to the cell in which sat the professor, at last thoroughly subdued.

  “Good morning, sir,” said Felix respectfully, diplomatically ignoring the unusual circumstances of their meeting. “You sent for me?”

  “Er—yes, Graham; I did,” answered Boswell. “As you doubtless remember, I made a slight miscalculation in my fourth-dimensional calculations, which has placed me in—er—a somewhat embarrassing position. While I could find a way out of my difficulty if given proper time, the dean is anxious that matters be remedied at once. Accordingly, I shall require your help. I shall, of course—um—er—recompense you in whatever way you may see fit to demand.”

  It was unconditional surrender. Felix accepted it like a general and set to work. In a quarter of an hour, under his direction, the professor had become as other men. However, it was not until the dean, to whom Betty went with the whole story, had interceded in his behalf that the charge against him was removed, and he was dismissed with a reprimand.

  Betty and Felix announced their engagement the following week. As for the professor, he has turned his attention to the writing of a book in which he is attempting to explain his fourth-dimension theory. He will, however, indulge in no further demonstrations.

  THE LONG NIGHT

  Charles W. Diffin

  This man out of the far past looked down on a fabulous city—and saw that it was a city tragic, desolate, and lost!

  GARRY COYNE was nervous. His hands, clasping and unclasping, showed it; so did his restless pacing back and forth over the full length of his laboratory. But there was nothing of fear in his level gray eyes that stared unseeingly; rather was there the tension that comes with some terrific excitement strongly repressed.

  Coyne was tall and wiry, his face too lean and too strong to be handsome. He was dressed in a suit of plain gray—dressed carefully as if for some important event. But his black hair, unrul
y at the best, was a tangle where his hand had passed nervously and repeatedly through it.

  Beside the door of the laboratory another man sat watching him. Older, a touch of gray at his temples; he watched Coyne as a doctor might watch an eccentric patient.

  Coyne, turning abruptly, blundered into a glass case in which lizards crawled sluggishly about. He went on past other cases of dark-red glass where more small reptiles lay as if dead. He turned, hesitated, then came to a stop before a gray metal box on the floor.

  The box was like a casket. It was large enough to hold the body of a man, and its length was further extended by a metal case at the casket’s head. A cover of heavy glass was over it all; dark-red glass, like the cases that held the inanimate lizards and frogs. The glass cover was edged with a metal lip which was seated in a mercury-filled groove. Coyne touched the box, jarring it ever so gently. Instantly the cover swung into motion and came smoothly up. It showed, inside the casket, a series of soft pads and cushioning springs, and, in the metal case at the head, small cylinders of compressed gas with an actuating mechanism for opening them.

  Strange equipment for a laboratory, as strange as the rows of glass cases and the stranger things they held. All this the man near the door must have seen; he spoke as if his curiosity could no longer be controlled.

  “What’s it all about?” he asked. “You sent for me, Coyne; now, for Heaven’s sake, tell me what’s on your mind.”

  Coyne swung abruptly about. His answer came almost curtly; the tension he was repressing showed in his voice.

  “Listen, Mellinger! I’ve sent for you because I can trust you to attend to things when I am gone, to see that my body is held safely in some secure place—the Smithsonian, perhaps.”

  Professor Mellinger’s stooped shoulders jerked back, and his lips opened. Coyne forestalled any interruption.

  “Listen! Look at this!” He reached one hand into a glass case. Carefully he picked up a lizard. The creature wriggled violently in his hand, then lay still.

  “How old is this?” Abruptly Coyne’s voice grew strained and higher-pitched; plainly he had all he could do to restrain some surging emotion. He answered his own question:

  “More thousands of years than you or I dare dream of. This lizard came from a bed of coal. It was incased there in the Carboniferous period. I took it out, myself—this and four others. The four others died. But they were alive after countless years. Alive, I say!”

  Professor Mellinger said quietly: “Go on!”

  “I am going on,” Coyne’s tired young face lighted with an odd smile, “going further than you think. A thousand years—two thousand—I can’t tell as to that. I am going into the future. I shall see the glory of that new day. I shall——”

  Mellinger came to his feet. He snapped out: “Who is your doctor? Call him, Coyne. If you don’t I’ll give you a sedative, myself. You’re raving, man.”

  He took one step toward Coyne, but Coyne moved more quickly. Two strides brought a flat-topped desk in the middle of the room between them. In a leather case on the desk, instruments glinted. Coyne snatched up a hypodermic syringe and stabbed the point against his wrist where a vein made a thick blue line. But he did not press the plunger.

  “Wait!” he ordered sharply. “In a moment you will understand. These reptiles—suspended animation—you get that, of course. Now get this:

  “In their bodies a new substance is secreted. I have isolated it. I have tested it upon animal subjects. I’ve worked out a dosage scale, and I know how long its effects persist in a body incapable of secreting more.”

  Mellinger said in a quick excitement: “You mean—you are telling me you have isolated the hormone, the activating substance that holds a physical body dormant, that suspends animation without destroying life!” Then, shouting in sudden horror: “Not yourself, Coyne! Don’t——”

  Coyne smiled again; a tired smile, but it held triumph, too, and his face was alight with anticipation. Slowly, surely, he pressed the plunger until the hypodermic was empty.

  “It is done.” His voice was very low.

  Mellinger sprang then. He gripped Coyne by the shoulder. He shouted: “You fool! You utter fool! A thousand years——”

  Coyne repeated it: “A thousand years—or two or three thousand! What wonders, what marvels will be waiting——”

  His face, even while he spoke, was changing. It grew more drawn and tired, then its muscles relaxed. All the driving power of that pent-up nervous energy seemed ebbing away. Coyne spoke as if speaking were an enormous effort:

  “You will find—written instructions—very complete. The casket must—remain sealed. Place it—where it will be safe—while the centuries pass.”

  With dragging feet he crossed toward the waiting casket of gray metal and knelt, then let himself into it, his body resting on the soft pads and springs. He settled himself as one weary from a hard day’s toil.

  Mellinger was beside him, kneeling, looking down with horror-widened eyes. Mellinger said hoarsely:

  “Speak, Coyne! Tell me it’s a ghastly joke! Coyne, for Heaven’s sake——”

  On Garry Coyne’s face that little smile came and rested for a moment. For a brief instant a ghost of his former wild elation shone in his eyes. But his voice was a tired whisper:

  “The long night—beginning——”

  And, after a pause: “A thousand years——” Inside the casket hidden mechanism clicked.

  Slowly the glass cover came down and seated itself in the mercury-filled grooves. Under it, seen dimly through the dark-red glass, Coyne lay at rest. He was unmoving; no slightest breath disturbed his lips.

  II.

  BACK of those eyes, closing warily under the red glass, was e mind, the soul, all the real self that was Garry Coyne; Coyne, plunging into unplumbed depths of a void that was darker than night.

  Black nothingness wrapped him about. It was immeasurable, as if it had always been and might never end. It was timeless; time itself, like some mere lingering human dream, seemed blocked off. Utter nothingness—sleep—until Coyne was waking. Out of the depths he rose slowly. He was like a swimmer coming up from a deep dive where each dragging second is an age. He was gasping—drowning. Then a blast of oxygen filled his lungs and stung in his nostrils. The first beating of his heart had released it.

  The gas bit in his throat. Thoughts flashed like little bursts inside his brain. Oxygen—a thousand years! He was breathing oxygen that instant! Then understanding came crashing upon him. Yet Garry Coyne, suddenly, startlingly awake, lay as one dead, while a wave of disappointment, overwhelming him, almost carried him back to the darkness from which he had come. For Coyne knew he had failed.

  The time had been so short. Minutes—at the most an hour—Mellinger had been bending over him. Coyne groaned aloud in the bitter agony of his disillusionment.

  He knew that he must open his eyes; knew he would see the cover lifting, actuated by the same mechanism that had released the oxygen. He would see Mellinger—laughing, without doubt; see the mocking familiarity of his own laboratory.

  By sheer strength of will he forced his eyelids apart. And, having done it, with his eyes wide, he stared straight above into blackness and nothing more.

  He flung upward spasmodically with his hands. They moved only inches, then struck against a hard surface. And, with that, new terror gripped him.

  His sleep—he knew it suddenly and with devastating sureness—had been more than an hour. And Mellinger—Mellinger had not believed! Mellinger had allowed them to bury him.

  Terror was a gripping hand at his heart; his thoughts ended in turmoil; the sides of his coffin were pressing him, smothering him—all in a single fraction of a second before the blackness of the grave was rent by a thin sliver of light.

  He watched with protruding eyes while it grew. He saw the thin line of light broaden, saw it reflected with a dull red glow from the under side of the cover that was lifting slowly and smoothly above him. But the cover was opaque where l
ight should have shone through—until, on the upper surface of the tilting glass, some substance which had clouded it slipped and cascaded and left the glass smudgily red.

  Dust—the dry smell of it was wafted to him. He knew it was the dust of ages. Stunned, he watched it slip and slide; heard it thud upon the floor; saw its tiny particles whirl up and roll like smoke under a high, curving roof. Then Coyne moved—moved suddenly. All his strength went into the one wild effort that flung him up to a sitting posture, took him sideways and rolled him crashing to the floor.

  He never felt the fall. He knew only that he must know. The time—the year of his awakening—where was he? His eyes were like a madman’s as he rolled in the thick dust.

  It choked him. He sprang to his feet. His clothing lost its last cohesiveness and rained down to join the dust on the floor. Even his shoes were disintegrated. He stood nakedly erect, swaying slightly, weak with a faintness that left him trembling, while his eyes searched the room.

  The floor was placed in the lower part of a great sphere. Walls, curving and meeting above him, were a riot of blending colors as if carved from one huge jewel. Through them ran lines of white light that flooded the sphere with brilliance.

  He knew it was a sphere. And somehow he knew that it was suspended in space. He knew this even before a voice spoke out in confirmation.

  “Hail, Man of the Twentieth Century!” said the voice.

  It came from a cabinet let into the wall. It must have been thrown into operation by some ray interference from the opening casket. A man’s voice, high and nasal, repellently disagreeable. But it was a human voice, and Coyne listened avidly as it went on:

  “I, Princeps Tahgor, Chief of the Science Control, Grand Ruler of the Rulers of Earth, address you. I speak in the year five three nine of the Rule of Science. You have slept for one thousand years.

  “And still you sleep; it may be for centuries more. But this day my voice is recorded to greet you; this day we place you in the sphere; we raise the sphere on high; we fix it immovable on an invisible shaft of force, the negative gravitation of which men in your day were unaware. Only your awakening can operate the controls to remove this force; only your awakening will bring the sound of my voice.