The Collected Stories

by Earl

  But the next moment he understood. He suddenly felt an extreme lightness and an unlucky movement of his foot shot his body off the floor so that only his instinctive clutch on the rings kept him from shooting away like a bullet. His quick mind grasped the situation in a trice. They had somehow removed all the force of gravity from the room. Any slight movement would propel him about like a thistle; the rings had become a necessity.

  He watched in fascination the opening of Reinhardt’s casket. First one of the other large-headed humans came floating from the other side of the bizarre room with a bulky box in his hand, held by a little ringlet. He grasped the bars of the frame and pulled himself down to the casket. From an opening in the box he extracted a slender needle attached to a metal handle. Starting from one point he ran the needle along the welded seam all around the casket, using one hand to propel his body.

  Nothing apparent happened, but Boswell could see a thin line of separation where the weld had been. A delicate plunge with the needle into the top surface opened a tiny hole into the interior. With a gentle flip of his hand, the one who had cut the seam raised the lid away from the bottom section which was an integral part of the frame. Lightly as a feather, the lid that had weighed two tons but a moment before—or some similar amount—came away and floated to the floor, pushed there by a guiding hand. The man with the box and needle floated to the other side and a moment later, gravity came back with a rush.

  With a cry of joy, Boswell ran to the casket and looked at the death-like figure lying on peculiarly crinkled cotton. A cold hand grasped his heart at the white pallor of the skin and the absence of signs of life. Was Professor Reinhardt dead?

  But as Boswell watched, he saw a faint tinge of color sweep into the still face, increasing rapidly to a normal pink. Breathlessly the young man watched for the full awakening, suddenly cognizant of the fact that more than anything else right then, he wanted his friend to come to life. He felt a great need for someone to talk to, some one he could understand, who shared his range of thought and desire. He wanted a companion with whom he could stand shoulder to shoulder while fearfully investigating the wonders of this alien time whose first few impressions had already dizzied his understanding. Not that he feared his rescuers—they were obviously friendly and well intentioned—but he needed, yearned for, company of his own kind.

  For several minutes the professor’s chest heaved convulsively; his eyes remained closed. Boswell waited patiently; he realized that his companion was going through the same awakening process he had before him—the brain striving to fill in the enormous gaps of clogged time, trying to bridge a wide chasm of things forgotten in ages of unfilled existence. Then the eyelids fluttered; the awakening had come. Several times they closed and opened, but each time there was less of bewilderment, more of understanding, in the eyes. Finally Professor Reinhardt stirred and raised an arm slowly.

  “Professor!” cried Boswell, “Professor Reinhardt! It’s I, Andrew Boswell. Are you all right?”

  “Quite all right,” assured the biologist in a weak voice. “Help me up, Andrew.”

  With the younger man’s help, the professor got up from his age-long bed and sat on its edge, feet on the floor. He looked around with that same eager wonder that Boswell had some time before. Then he turned his beaming brown eyes on his young companion.

  “Andrew, my boy!” he cried with undisguised exultation, “We’ve succeeded! We’ve bridged time! Ah, my young friend. . . .”

  He stopped in the excess of emotion; silently they shook hands.

  “Where are Callahan and Goodwin? Haven’t they opened—Andrew, what’s the matter? You are pale. . . . you. . . .”

  Professor Reinhardt followed Boswell’s pointing finger and saw the hole that had destroyed the vacuum in Goodwin’s casket.

  “Callahan too?” asked the biologist softly.

  Boswell nodded sadly.

  Professor Reinhardt bowed his head. “It seems that our toll to cross the bridge of time had to be paid with two human lives. May they gain their just reward in the unknown world beyond death.”

  After a few moments of silence in honor of the martyrs, the biologist broke the spell: “Are we all alone, Andrew?”

  After a glance around, Boswell said puzzled: “Yes, but it’s strange. They were here just a few minutes ago—two men and a woman.”

  “What did they look like?” asked the biologist eagerly.

  Thereupon Boswell described them as best he could and also told everything that had occurred after his own awakening.

  “I wonder if we’re still in Boston, or what corresponds to Boston,” commented the professor. “But that’s a useless query at present.”

  A sharp exclamation burst from his lips as he looked closely for the first time at the caskets and the frame that had held them together.

  “Good Lord, Andrew! Look at our caskets—how worn and corroded they are. The nickel plating. . . . why, every bit of it is gone I And look at those dents here in front—like a shower of ton-size rocks had struck it. And the framework. . . . it’s unbelievable. Some of the struts are mere broomsticks.”

  “Not only that, professor,” added Boswell, “but if you look at the whole thing from the end where our feet were, you will see that the whole framework, as a unit, is sloping toward what was my side. It seems that some gigantic weight or force struck a blow on that side and twisted the whole framework. Only its supreme toughness must have kept it from snapping in the middle. I should judge that great weight or force struck squarely on. . . . on Callahan’s casket, because it’s his that has the split seam.”

  l Together they walked around the framework and viewed with many comments the terrific punishment that it had seemingly gone through.

  Professor Reinhardt frowned in perplexity. “Ordinary earth movements or convolutions couldn’t have done all that, Andrew. By some unfortunate circumstance, we must have been buried at a place that suddenly became the center of some titanic cataclysm of nature. I am afraid”—he shook his head sadly—“that the Boston we knew, Andrew, was wiped off the face of the earth. If there is any city now on that site, it must be a totally new one—like the new Chicago after the fire of 1871.”

  The two men looked at each other suddenly in mutual wonder. When the professor had said “1871,” the same thought sprang up in both their minds.

  “I wonder,” spoke the biologist for the both of them, “what year this is, and just how old we are and where we are and what we’ll see outside and what sort of building this is and. . . . oh, a million things. You know, Andrew. . . . this is the greatest adventure in human history—that is, in our history. Here we are thousands of years in the future, able to witness at first hand the progress, for I would call this progress”—he swept an arm around the room which was filled with things of which they knew nothing—“of the human race.”

  The biologist’s face beamed with the pride and excitement of that type of nature known as “pioneer.” In the exuberance of feeling, he drew himself to full height and drummed his chest—an atavistic gesture that genus homo inherits from his dim, ape-like ancestry. He dropped his arms slowly, surprise in his face.

  “Have you noticed, Andrew,” he asked, “or is it my imagination, that our bodies are lighter?—that it seems as if gravity is less than what we are accustomed to?”

  “Yes,” agreed Boswell eagerly, “and not only that. It feels to me that this air is thinner or is different in some way from the air we breathed in the twentieth century. Do you notice that?”

  “I do, Andrew,” returned the professor. “Not only thinner, but cooler. This room is decidedly cold. I suppose that’s because we are naked and feel it more than we would clothed. I wonder just what. . . .” He stopped as a section of the wall of the room opposite them glowed suddenly red. The next moment a figure materialized and the wall became blank.

  “That’s one of the same men that was here before,” said Boswell excitedly as the bulbous-headed figure, without seeming to notice the
m, looked around. After a cursory examination of the caskets and framework, the wall became glowing again, and the creature disappeared.

  The two men from the past looked at each other in bewilderment.

  “Good Heavens, it’s impossible!” gasped the professor.

  Boswell looked at his companion in surprise. “You mean how he comes in and out through a wall?”

  “No, not that,” replied the professor with a shake of his head. “After all, this is the future and we must not be surprised at anything that occurs. But, Andrew,”—the biologist looked at him with strangely disturbed eyes—“that man. . . . that creature himself. . . .”

  “What do you mean?” cried Boswell perplexed. “You are not surprised that the people of this age are different than we. That’s inevitable, I should think.”

  “Quite,” accorded the biologist. “But I didn’t realize from your description. . . .” He broke off and continued more calmly. “As a chemist, Boswell, of course it wouldn’t be apparent to you what has hit me like a blow in the face when I saw that. . . . that person. Andrew, if you’ve read any of the early history of mankind on earth before the rise of civilization, you will remember the reference to the so-called Neanderthal Man. He was of the genus homo, but of a different species than sapiens. The point I am driving at is that though this species of the genus homo lived and thrived for at least two hundred thousand years, very little change came over it. The earliest sub-men of that species were not much different from the latest, in physical form, although they went through a variety of changed conditions of every sort. In other words, Nature is very slow to change.”

  Boswell caught an inkling of what his companion implied. “Go on, professor,” he whispered with a rapidly beating heart.

  “Now this man we have just seen, if he is typical of his race at present, could not in any way have been evolved from our race in as short a period of time as ten thousand years, or even twenty thousand years. . . . or even, I doubt, in one hundred thousand years!”

  “That means, professor. . . . you mean that. . . .”

  “Simply this, Andrew,” said the professor in a low, tense voice. “That unless these people are from another planet, we have somehow awakened at least, I should say, not twenty thousand years in the future, but perhaps three or four hundred thousand years! Because, Andrew, they are obviously no longer of the species sapiens, although they may be of the genus homo!”

  Boswell stood stunned a moment. Three or four hundred thousand years! Was it possible? Even his young and powerful imagination quailed before that searing possibility. Then he laughed weakly.

  “You said before we must not be surprised at anything, professor. Even back in the twentieth century you told me that. Under the circumstances, as long as we’re here safe and sound, what does it matter if it’s ten years or a million?”

  “You’re right, my young friend,” said the biologist wiping a bit of moisture off his brow. “We’re here and we’ll make the most of it.”

  They sat on the edge of a casket for a moment, thinking deeply, adjusting themselves to the new concept, the new realm that would soon unfold to their eager, undaunted intellects.

  When Boswell turned to speak to his companion some time later, he saw that the professor’s face was pale. Even as he watched, a glassy green complexion replaced the white.

  “Professor!” shouted the younger man, shaking him by the shoulders, “What is the matter?”

  “I don’t know,” muttered the biologist thickly. “I feel very bad in my stomach. . . . must be this air. . . . or the after-effect of the virus.”

  He suddenly began to shiver violently, his whole body quivering in the chill that gripped him. But young Boswell was unable to administer to him, for he too suddenly felt extremely sick. Out of blurring eyes he saw the biologist sink to the floor unconscious. He made a futile effort to control himself, but he felt himself in the throes of a most energetic shivering that laid him prostrate beside the older man.

  He managed to shout once weakly before all became black, and he thought he caught out of the corner of his eye a reddening of a part of the wall that would signify the entrance of their rescuers. Then he relaxed completely into a coma.

  (How long have the two men of the past been asleep? Don’t miss next month’s thrilling instalment.)

  DAWN TO DUSK

  l The first instalment of this story left us in a quandary. Boswell and the professor have been in suspended animation for an unknown length of time. Just what year is it upon their awakening?

  The answer to this question provides us with a series of incidents hard to equal in other stories. Like in “Enslaved Brains,” Mr. Binder has a tremendous revelation which leads to thrilling adventures and amazing discoveries.

  Though the two men from the past were supposed to have slept somewhere between ten and twenty thousand years, the professor states that the evolution which had taken place in the human race during the time of their sleep must have required much more than one hundred thousand years! Is he right in his assumption or are the men who discovered them, and unearthed their caskets, from another planet and of another race? We shall soon find out.

  PART TWO

  WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE:

  l Professor Reinhardt invites six men to his home in Boston, five of whom are distinguished, world-renowned scientists, the other being a young chemist friend of his. He tells them that he has discovered the secret of suspended animation and intends to go to sleep, with any who will accompany him, for ten or twenty thousand years. All of them refuse, laughing at his crazy idea, except the young chemist and two of the scientists who go with him into the long sleep to the future world. Professor Reinhardt and Boswell, the chemist, are the only ones who survive. They find themselves in a strange world, and they can only guess what year it is. The strange beings, though human, strike them as far advanced over their own type, and this leads them to think that they have travelled much more than twenty thousand years into the future. Then, as an after effect of the sleep-virus, they fall unconscious for a while. As part two starts, we find them face to face with the men of the future, and they are about to learn things which will stagger their imagination. Now go on with the story:

  CHAPTER V

  Monituperal Explains

  l When young Boswell next opened his eyes, he found it hard to gather his thoughts. He saw plainly enough that he was in a different place than where the caskets had been unsealed and nearby he could distinguish the form of his companion lying on a billowing expanse of very white material, covered with a thin blanket. He remembered dearly the events succeeding the unsealing, up until the attack of that strange ailment that had prostrated them, but from then on things were exceedingly muddled. He felt there had been a definite period of time between the prostration and this awakening, but it was filled with memories of dreams—dreams that had sometimes chilled him with dread and sometimes soothed him with sweet sadness. At times he had had visions of white-robed figures bending over him with strange things in their hands, soft lights, and humming noises. Then he would see the four caskets in their frame as from a distance, snapping apart and tossing in the forces of earthquakes and volcanoes. Monstrous creatures with evil faces would rip off the lids and pull out the sleepers like one would an oyster. Such horrible scenes would be replaced by a vision of pure whiteness and purring lights. So blended was the real and unreal that Boswell could not say where one began and where the other stopped.

  He looked again at the biologist. His eyes were fast shut and he was breathing deeply and regularly in restful slumber. Boswell was puzzled. They had been sick, he knew; and the people of this age had ministered to them, but he felt there was something more. It seemed that many things had happened of which he could remember nothing—a vague undercurrent of fleeting impressions. He felt a new strength within him that he had never felt before, like a person who has been relieved of a physical disorder of long standing. Suddenly he became aware of one thing—his chest was risin
g and falling much more rapidly than it ever had before. And yet it was not the pant of chronic asthma or of deadly pneumonia, but a regular, easy breathing. Unless his time-sense had been distorted, he knew that his respiration—and that of the professor’s too, he could see—was probably twice normal. A sudden suspicion caused him to feel for his pulse. He found his heart beating with an unwonted rapidity that he sensed could not be normal. He thought of calling to Professor Reinhardt then to communicate to him those astonishing things, but the biologist slumbered on despite Boswell’s repeated calling of his name, each one louder than the last.

  Boswell was about to reach over to shake his shoulder, having already raised himself to a sitting posture, when he caught out of the corner of his eye a reddening of part of the wall. Next moment the man he already had seen upon his first awakening stood before him, grave and dignified. For a long minute, the intruder looked at him with those eyes that bespoke infinite intelligence. Then he spoke in a silk-smooth voice.

  “You have awakened somewhat sooner than we expected. You have a very strong constitution. Do you feel weak?”

  For a moment young Boswell thought he was in the midst of a realistic dream, for although the speaker had not used English, he had understood every word he said.

  He recovered and answered, “No, I feel quite strong. But tell me please, how is it that I am able to understand and speak your language?”

  A faint smile appeared on the lips of the large-skulled man.

  “I will tell you that and several other things. Lie down while I talk. Although you feel strong, you are really very weak.”