A Large Anthology of Science Fiction

by Jerry

  The room of the old factory, which stretched for three hundred feet with bare cement walls and rusty iron beaming, appeared like the finest laboratory in Ernest’s eyes. He glanced around with pride and pleasure. It was his, to do with as he pleased during the long summer vacation.

  The machine had been standing, ready for use, for almost a month before the closing of the university. Each day the professor found time to run out and look it over carefully, to check and recheck every part. Since the machine was assembled, it was hard for him to keep his mind on the subject he was teaching. He was living in a dream.

  The electric wiring in the huge building had been checked and tested, and small leaks in the roof had been repaired. Everything had been gone over to make it comfortable and practical for the experiment. Lights might be switched on in any part of the structure, and every power outlet was ready for use.

  Only a small motor was required to operate the machine. It pumped air pressure into a small tank, and the air was used for power in the small parts. In this way the vibration of the motor was separate from the parts to be operated, and they were not disturbed by outside influence. It transferred the power efficiently, without any solid connection, through the apparatus.

  Once assembled, the machine appeared like the keyboard of a giant organ, with a boxlike compartment—six feet wide, by nine feet in length—behind the controls. This was packed with parts from the smallest taut wires to large metal tubing and wooden flutes. The whole thing stood about six feet high, with the keyboard halfway up from the floor. On the back side there were several small conelike amplifiers, which could send forth an unbelievable volume of sound.

  As the professor’s fingers ran over the keyboard, sound issued from the amplifiers. To him it was sweet music, but to any one else it would have seemed like the most ear-splitting racket imaginable. He had to become accustomed to handling it before any attempt at a set result. Every small control must be mastered, until it became almost second nature to use them. One little mistake might offset hours of constant searching for a certain rhythmical strain.

  As the days passed, Ernest spent more and more time at the strange keyboard. He reached the place where he could follow through a strain until it had grown to unbelievable peculiarity. Small metallic objects were made to vibrate before the amplifiers, until they almost shrieked from the strain. The professor had to cover his ears with heavy wrapping at times, to keep the sound from reaching his eardrums. Even then he turned away with a splitting headache.

  Some of the nearest neighbors had been very much interested when Ernest moved his equipment into the deserted factory. They had come to peek into the broken windows, and some had even come to the door for a view of the new machine.

  Their curiosity was not satisfied, although it appeared like some odd type of organ—until the first strains of discord rang through the empty floors. Then they were willing to stay away. “The professor has simply brought an organ out here to practice on—and from the noise, he certainly needs the practice.”

  NOW a bright glow had come into the face of Robert Ernest. Everything had developed just as he had planned. In constant testing the machine had shown set results, following the lines of his theory as forecast in his mind.

  The day came when he was ready to try the great experiment. Every door and every window in the building was sealed carefully. He would take no chance on anyone wandering in when the vibration was in force. It might have upsetting effects on the result, and might be almost fatal to the intruder.

  A carefully insulated chair stood before the big keyboard. The mountings of soft rubber would absorb most of the numbing effect of higher vibration, yet there was a chance that it would affect him more than he thought. The human system would not respond to vibration the way any metal-constructed building would, and yet it might respond enough to upset his mind.

  Before starting these experiments, he arranged for everything in case of sudden death. He left details of all experiments he would carry out, and designs of the machine used. If he brought on disaster, they would know how to avoid the same result again.

  It had always been his dream that it would be possible to tear a metal bar apart with the vibration which fitted its peculiar rhythm—that each individual object contained its own vibrational cord, and if it could be duplicated by mechanical means, it would have an unique effect on its structure.

  He believed that it might even pass through changes, resulting in strange new forces. Where the experiments would lead, or how they would end, was beyond his theory. He knew that he could obtain results that had never been accomplished before, and watch the new reaction take place.

  He was going to attempt a lot. The small machine was expected to duplicate the tone of the huge building, setting up vibration throughout the structure. He didn’t intend to carry it beyond that point, but simply test the theory that any object of any size could be shaken by the power created in a small motor.

  As the sound increased in volume, Robert Ernest covered his ears carefully. The doors of the temporary room were thrown open, so he could see the length of the building—to the dingy windows at the far end. His equipment was on the ground level, where it had been easier to close off a small section for the early experiments. The two floors above had no partitioning.

  It was early morning when he sat down at the keyboard and tried the first strain of rhythm. When darkness fell he was still searching for the unknown key, but twice he had felt a slight sign of response in the structure. This narrowed the range of tone down slightly, and he set the machine within that cycle.

  Three times more the building showed slight response, but nothing that would hold sufficiently long to carry through to the vibration of rhythm. At last he shut the machine down and turned away. He had his first mouthful of food in fifteen hours. Time had been forgotten while he delved into the unknown.

  The following morning he started the machine again. The work of the day before had laid a foundation to start from. He had been able to leave the same setting under which there had been slight results the day before. The tone was only slightly different from a variation in temperature.

  Knowing how the vibration would have to be changed to match even a small amount of dampness in the air, Ernest had been loath to leave it to the evening before. How it required hours to obtain the same result—to strike the same response in the building and vary it to search out the peculiar off-tone which would affect the structure with a true key.

  AS vibration in the steelwork responded to a note of the machine, the professor transferred the range to within the small margin of the note. Then the tone was subdivided into almost one hundred separate changes. They were so slight that it required a change from the highest to the lowest tempo for the human ear to detect. The range between seemed identical.

  Slowly, the vast structure began to vibrate, but it seemed to come from one section. One beam, toward the far end of the floor, showed more quiver than any other section. As he switched the range slightly, Ernest watched that piece of steel almost two hundred feet from him.

  Perhaps it just displayed more of the vibration than the rest of the beaming, yet it seemed to be alone in its steady shaking. The section of cement ceiling, surrounding the top, began to flake slightly, and suddenly a larger piece of the cement dropped to the floor.

  Still the professor held that tone. The beam seemed to shiver as it absorbed the rhythm sent forth from the vibratory. The steel seemed to almost moan under the terrific strain, and beads of perspiration gathered on Ernest’s forehead. For some unknown reason he felt afraid, but would not ease the pressure of his finger on the key which caused the disturbance.

  The beam had reached its utmost vibration under that tone. A new tone, three keys higher, replaced it. Again the beam quivered and shook from the strain, but this time its action was greater than before.

  Once again a different key was depressed on the vibratory scale and again the beam shook, but slightly less this time. For a
long time the keys were switched back and forth, until the one which created the most action became a certainty. Then it was locked in place.

  Once more the range of tone was changed, until the former tone of one key was divided into nearly one hundred. From the top to the bottom of the total keyboard there seemed to be no change to Ernest’s human ear, yet he knew that the vibratory was working properly, dividing just as accurately as it did before the tones had been divided the first time.

  The change in the range of sound was shown by the action of the steel beam. It vibrated so terrifically that it seemed impossible for it to stay in its moorings. The ceiling above was shaking so hard that a cloud of dust constantly rose from the falling pieces. The hard cement was being turned to powder under the strange effect of the sound.

  As his fingers crept farther and farther along the keyboard, the professor stared in awe at the work created by his hand. Slowly the sound in the huge factory faded out. Nine keys in a row sent forth no audible sound. The machine was sending forth the same tones that it had earlier, but now they were cut to the finest possible degree.

  Then one of the nine silent keys was pressed, the steel beam almost glowed. For a time it seemed to remain motionless from vibration of too high a tempo to be visible, then it slowly faded.

  There was no longer any beam there!

  The windows at the far end of the building were visible in an unbroken row, where a few minutes before they had been crossed to the steel upright.

  For a long time the professor held the key rigid. His hand was cold, and numbness crept up his arm. The experiment had gone beyond the point that he could foretell the result.

  The cement had ceased to fall in clouds of dust from the ceiling. Ernest nearly toppled from his chair at the sight! A perfectly round opening, about eighteen feet in diameter, appeared where the beam had stood. The cement of the floor above had disappeared with the beam!

  FOR A time he sat still. Forces that he had never dreamed of had been brought into use. He slumped slightly, and from the vigor of a young man he looked twenty years older than he should. He had started with the firm idea that he could control the action of the vibratory.

  There had been the possibility that the building would be damaged slightly in the tests, but he had not realized it would only be a small section that was affected. It had taken several hours to vibrate the beam sufficiently to know that it was absorbing the total energy from the amplifiers. It would require days to accomplish the same result with the huge structure.

  Vibration had to be built up to the capacity of the object to be affected. The small motor did not develop more than its rated power, but had to take the time to build up sufficient energy to obtain response.

  Professor Robert Ernest sank lower in his chair. His theory, that perhaps the laws of physics might not hold true in this one instance, had been wrong from the beginning. It had seemed at first glance that they did not apply to vibrational effects.

  Slowly his head lifted. His finger gradually eased the pressure from the key which had caused the strange action of the steel support and surrounding cement ceiling. It was inconceivable that vibration could cause such action—yet the invisibility of the pillar was before him.

  For several minutes after releasing the pressure on the key there was no change in the vacant spot in the building. The professor’s feet dragged as he walked slowly toward the spot where there should have been solids—yet there was nothing.

  Then he stopped short! There was a hole in the foundation, as well as in the ceiling overhead. It was curved like a bowl and sunk about six feet below the surrounding level. The vibration in the pillar affected everything around it for a certain distance. The size of both openings were identical.

  As his gaze wandered up through the opening, he saw the blunt end of the hissing steel beam hanging from the second-story ceiling. It appeared as if it had been sheared off about the same distance above the top of the pillar in the first story as the depth of the opening in the foundation.

  There was vague unreality about the missing section, almost as if the empty space between the two openings was cloudy. As Ernest bent forward to peer closer at the hole in the floor, his head hit something solid!

  It threw him off his feet, as if he had been shoved back by some fast-moving object! His forehead was burned where it had made contact, and for a moment he couldn’t see. Everything turned in dizzy circles.

  When his vision cleared, the beam had become a vague blur, and the cement was beginning to form in its original state. While he lay still to get his bearings, the professor realized that the supposedly sheared-off section of beam overhead had been supported by something tangible. Invisibility had done away with its appearance, but not with its support of the sections of the floor above.

  There seemed to be no explanation for the effect on the empty air surrounding the pillar. That had become a solid and had nearly knocked him unconscious when he ran into it. It had absorbed the same vibration as the solid materials.

  An axis was evidently created by the beam. Perhaps there had been formed a new existence for inanimate things, purely by accident. It had made his head ache to follow the strange behavior of his experiment.

  Having destroyed the pillar through some new form of power, it should have been gone. But, instead, it was returning to its original state. Even during its supposed disappearance something had replaced it, to keep the supports of the building intact.

  THEN he sat up——An exclamation escaped his lips! Twice he rubbed his eyes, but each time he saw the same phenomenon.

  There was a live creature being formed within the pillar!

  There was a battle going on within the clear, tangible space around the beam! Some live thing was squirming and fighting the reformation of the steel in its original state. The metal was being bent out of shape by the creature!

  Ernest’s hair tried to stand on end. He was not superstitious, but it was almost too much to stand. He couldn’t

  believe what he was watching!

  He sank back with a moan. The events of the last few moments had been too much to stand. He sank into untroubled oblivion.

  It was an hour later when he awoke. He lay still for a few moments, trying to remember past events. He knew there was something that he should remember.

  His mind jerked back at the sound of peculiar noises from near by. He dared not turn his head for fear he would see what he remembered as a vague dream. When he did find stamina enough to face the pillar again, it proved to be all too real.

  A creature was hanging from the side of the metal by one leg and what might be taken for an arm! It was making odd noises, and trying to pull away from the grip of the metal.

  Still the professor couldn’t believe that it was true. The metal had formed around the two limbs of the creature, as if he were fused to it!

  If he had been in the section of vibration which was simply filled with air, he would have been free. But he had been in the part that represented the dissolved pillar, in whatever state of existence he came from. When the pillar solidified, it had to give and leave room for his limbs within its surface.

  In the vibrational state the creature must have been more solid than the steel of the support. When the steel returned to the present form, by the elimination of vibration, the creature had come with it—and was alive in the pillar!

  It was covered with thick hair, of a bronze hue, and wore no sign of clothing. He might have been an ape of the jungle, except that his hands were enormous—with twelve fingers on the one which was free of the pillar. His foot had nine digits.

  His arm and leg seemed to be of about the same length, and were both long in proportion to his body. But his general proportions were similar to those of a man. He would stand about nine feet tall, and weigh about three hundred and fifty pounds.

  The light was poor, but Ernest was able to see that his face was smooth and very pink. Suddenly he realized that he was watching an intelligent creature. The thin
g was motioning for aid to escape from the imprisoning metal!

  He was trying desperately to tell the professor, through motions, exactly what was needed to free him from his uncomfortable position.

  It was useless, Robert Ernest could not understand the sign language. There certainly was no human equipment which could cut a man free from heavy steel without serious physical injury, or else by a long, slow process. The man (as Ernest considered him) was trying to imply the use of equipment which was unknown to the professor.

  The man watching the suffering of the other strung up to the side of the metal post through no blunder of his own tried desperately to think of some solution. The hairy man was above reach and, hanging as he was, must be suffering from lack of circulation and the strain on his limbs.

  There was lumber outside the door of the factory and Ernest had an armful inside before he stopped to think. A few moments later he was busy with hammer and nails from his tool kit. At least he could build some support for the man’s body, even if he couldn’t free him from the beam.

  From the appearance of his limbs where they entered the surface of the steel, they were not injured, but simply sealed tight within the surface. While he worked, the professor’s mind was busy.

  There only seemed one possible way of freeing the man from the imprisoning metal—by re-creating the vibration which had enabled him to enter it in the first place. The scaffolding, for support of his body, would ease his suffering while the vibration was being built up to accomplish the result.

  IF it was not for the time required to obtain the action, the professor would have started the vibratory without bothering with the lumber. But he knew that it might require an hour, or even three or four, to dissolve the material. It was impossible to judge the time required to build up the forces, as the vibratory had been affecting the beam for a long time before the proper combination was found.

  Even the vibration of earlier experiments might have been building up the power, until it only required the right touch to accomplish the result.