Omega, the Man

by Lowell Howard Morrow

  Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  A Classic Reprint from AMAZING STORIES, January, 1933

  OMEGA, the MAN

  By LOWELL HOWARD MORROW

  Illustrated by MOREY

  The silver airship cut swiftly through the hot thin air. The noonday sunblazed down upon it and the desert world below. All about was the solemnsilence of death. No living thing appeared either in the air or on thedrab, gray earth. Only the aircraft itself displayed any signs of life.The sky, blue as indigo, held not the shadow of a cloud, and on thehorizon the mountains notched into it like the teeth of a giant saw.

  The airship finally came to a hovering stop, then dropped rapidly towardthe salt-encrusted plain. It came to rest at last on the bottom of agreat, bowl-shaped hollow situated at the end of a chasm whose gray,rock-strewn sides rose in rugged terraces for miles back into the sky.In a few moments a panel in the vessel's side rolled noiselessly upward,disclosing a brilliant light, and from the interior of the airship soonappeared two figures who paused at the aperture and gazed out over theparched earth. Then without fear or visible effort--although they wereseventy-five feet above the ground--they emerged from the ship andfloated down to earth.

  These two humans--the sole survivors of all earth's children--were manand wife--Omega and Thalma. They were burned a deep cherry by the fiercerays of the sun. In stature they were above the average man now onearth. Their legs were slender and almost fleshless, because for manycenturies man had ceased to walk. Their feet were mere toelessprotuberances attached to the ankle bone. Their arms were long and asspare as their legs, but their hands, although small, werewell-proportioned and powerful. Their abdominal regions were very small,but above them were enormous chests sheltering lungs of tremendouspower, for thus nature had armored man against the rarefaction of theearth's atmosphere. But the most remarkable parts about this trulyremarkable couple were there massive heads set upon short, slim necks.The cranial development was extraordinary, their bulging foreheadsdenoting great brain power. Their eyes--set wide apart--were large andround, dark and luminous with intelligence and their ears wereremarkably large, being attuned to all the music and voices of life.While their nostrils were large and dilated, their mouths were verysmall, though sensuous and full-lipped. They were entirely hairless--foreven the eyebrows and the eyelashes of man had entirely disappeared agesbefore. And when they smiled they betrayed no gleam of teeth, for naturehad long discarded teeth in man's evolution.

  The great, silver ship of the sky now rested in a deep pocket on thefloor of an ancient sea. Millions of years, under the sucking energy ofthe sun and the whip of many winds, had sapped its waters, until only ashallow, brackish lake remained. Along the shores of this lake, whichcovered scarcely more than a hundred acres, a rim of yellowish, greengrass followed the water's edge and struggled against the inevitable,and here and there among the grasses flowers of faded colors andattenuated foliage reared their heads bravely in the burning sunshine.And this lone lake, nestled in the lowest spot among the mountains andvalleys which once floored the Pacific, now held the last of earth'swaters. Barren and lifeless the rest of the world baked under amerciless sun.

  * * * * *

  Now clasping hands, like children at play, Omega and Thalma approachedthe lake. They glided over the ground, merely touching their feet to thehighest points, and finally stopped with their feet in the warm, stillwater.

  Omega ran his cupped hand through the water, then drank eagerly.

  "It is good," he said in a low, musical voice. "And there is much of it.Here we may live a long time."

  Thalma laughed with sheer joy, her large, red-rimmed eyes aglow withmother light and love.

  "I am glad," she cried. "I know that Alpha will be happy here."

  "It is so, my love, and--"

  Omega checked and stared out over the glassy lake. A spot in its centerwas stirring uneasily. Great bubbles rose to the surface and eddied toone side, then suddenly huge cascades of water shot into the air as ifejected by subterraneous pressure. As they stared in silent astonishmentthe commotion suddenly ceased and the surface of the lake became astranquil as before.

  "There is volcanic action out there," said Omega fearfully. "At any timethe ground may open and engulf the lake in a pit of fire. But no, thatcannot be," he added, staring at Thalma with an odd light in his eyes.For he suddenly recalled that no volcanic action or earth tremor haddisturbed the surface crust for ages.

  "What is it, Omega?" she whispered in accents of awe.

  "Nothing to fear, my dear, I am sure," he replied, averting his eyes."Likely some fissure in the rock has suddenly opened."

  And then he embraced her in the joy of new-found life. For long agesmind had communicated with mind by telepathic waves, speech being usedfor its cheer and companionship.

  "We will make ready for Alpha," said Omega joyfully. "In very truth hemay be able to carry on. Moisture may return to earth, and it is morelikely to return here than elsewhere. Remember what the Mirror showedlast week over the Sahara plains--the makings of a cloud!"

  They cheered each other by this remembrance how, just before they hadconsumed the last of the water in their recent home and buried the lastof their neighbors and friends, the reflecting Mirror had brought a viewof a few stray wisps of vapor above the Great Sahara which once had beenreclaimed by man, where teeming millions in by-gone ages had lived theirlives.

  "The inclination of the earth's axis is changing as we know," he went onhopefully as they turned back toward the ship. "The moisture may comeback."

  His was the voice of hope but not of conviction. Hope, planted in man'ssoul in the beginning, still burned brightly in these last stouthearts.

  Alpha was still unborn. Omega and Thalma had willed a male child. In himwas to be the beginning of a new race which they hoped with the aid ofscience would repeople the earth. Hence his name, the first letter ofthe Greek alphabet, of which "omega" is the last.

  "I am afraid, my love," said Thalma, looking back over her shoulder atthe placid lake. "I wonder what heaved the water about that way."

  "Don't worry about it, my dear," he said as they paused beneath the shipand he put his arm protectingly about her. "As I have said, it probablywas the shifting of a rock on the bed of the lake. It is nothing toworry about, and I feel that we have nothing to fear for a long, longtime. And we have so much joy to look forward to. Remember Alpha iscoming, and think of his glorious future! Think of his changing allthis!" And he swept his hand toward the grim, gray hills. "Just think ofagain gardenizing the world!"

  * * * * *

  It was indeed a dreary view upon which they gazed. On every side, uponthe mountains and hills, over salt-encrusted plains and upon the rocks,were the skeletons and shells of departed life. Fossils of the animaland the vegetable kingdoms greeted one on every hand. Great fronds ofpalms of the deep, draped with weird remains of marine life longextinct, stood gaunt and desolate and rust-covered in the hollows and onthe hills. Long tresses of sea weed and moss, now crisp and dead asdesert sands, still clung in wreaths and festoons to rock and tree andplant just as they had done in that far-off age, when washed by thewaters of the sea. Great forests of coral, once white and pink and redwith teeming life but now drab and dead, still thrust their arms upward,their former beauty covered and distorted by the dust of the ages.Whales and sharks and serpents and fish of divers species and sizes,together with great eels and monsters of the deep, lay thickly over theland, their mummified remains shriveled by the intense heat, theirghastliness softened by the ashes of the years.

  Millions of ages had rolled away since the struggle began--the battle oflife on earth aga
inst the encroachments of death. And now death stalkedeverywhere, grinning with malicious triumph, for he had but one morebattle to fight. Already his grisly clutch was closing on the standardof victory. Man had mastered life but he had not conquered death. Withthe magic wand of science he had reached out into space and viewed thelife of far-off worlds. He had routed superstition and fear andselfishness. He had banished disease and learned all nature's secrets;had even visited other worlds and had come to know and understand hisGod, but still death had marched grimly on. For even the abysmal momentof creation had marked the world for his prey. Slowly but surely deathhad closed his cold hands about the earth. The sun flung forth his hotrays and drew more and more of the earth's moisture and dissipated it inspace. Gradually the forests vanished and then the streams and lakesdwindled and disappeared. By this time the