by Earl
It was gone from sight before Welton could finish a single curse. He let out a dismal wail. “What will Archie say when lie hears of this!”
A BLAST OF TOWER swung the ship neatly within fifty feet of the vacuum suit. Osgood arrowed for the lock with his reaction pistol, clumped in noisily.
“Hellish lonesome hanging in space in a vacuum suit and watching your ship barreling away,” he complained, when Welton had unzippered his neck piece. “An aching feeling like you had met both ends of eternity in the middle. Am I glad——”
“You won’t be glad in another second. Archie, the diamond ’toid is gone—hell bent for nowhere last time I saw it.” Welton moaned miserably. “I was pretty clever to use it as a battering-ram to smear Gentle Jasper into a better land, but oh, how dumb I was then! I forgot that things keep on going, with undiminished speed, in the direction given. Me, an A-l pilot! Our beautiful prize for which we’ve searched, sweated, suffered and killed is beyond our reach.
“I gave it one hell of a velocity when I swung it like a kid with a sling. No use to even try to trail it. Some day, some one may see what he thinks is a new comet with a length of chain for a tail, out near Uranus. But not us. We’ve lost it. We’ve——”
“Yeah.”
Welton stared. “You’re pretty calm about it, damn you! And what are you doing with that X gun? Doesn’t it take your heart out at all?”
Osgood pointed his blue-cold finger at a bar line of black on the spectrum chart. “Carbon.” He pursed his lips, rolled his eyes querulously upward. “It’s really ironical, Wade. To Gentle Jasper and his pals, I mean. You see, there was more than one diamond ’toid all the time—three, in fact. The other two didn’t have any facets, and didn’t shine, but while I was hanging there like a bump on the nose of eternity, I saw they were of the same texture in Saturn light. The X gun here proves it.”
He had now hauled out another length of chain, an enormous length. “We’re going back with a double-header, Wade. One for each of us. Toss the tub in position, will you?”
THE CHESSBOARD OF MARS
Professor Thode Combs the Entire Ether Spectrum in Search of the Elusive Psycho-wave—and Discovers a World Saturated with Vibrations of Hate!
CHAPTER I
The Great Change
STUPENDOUS things have happened in this world, but nothing as stupendous as the Great Change that came over Earth in 1938.
At first it was just a subtle change, hardly noticeable. It was not a physical change. Continents did not sink, nor did tidal waves engulf cities. Nothing visible or tangible occurred at all. Nevertheless, it was different.
Manifestations were numerous, yet hard to define. First of all, a greedy little nation dreaming the dreams that Caesar and Napoleon had also once dreamed, suddenly and inexplicably withdrew her powerful navy from the Hawaiian Islands, thus taking away the threat of war between herself and another great power. At the same time she demobilized from the Siberian front, when it was expected that within a month she would have swept into the wheat fields of the north, robbing them from a frantic European nation. Not long after, these two enemies signed an everlasting peace treaty.
That was the first major indication of the Great Change. It was not long after that the big powers of Europe, so delicately balanced on the verge of a disastrous war, demobilized from opposing frontiers, almost all at once. And in another few months a dozen short and honest treaties made war remote and unthinkable. Before a decade had passed, all Europi united to form a commonwealth for the betterment of all concerned—a union not in name only, but in fact.
These astounding results in the international field were matched by equally amazing changes in the general, everyday life of mankind. People began to grow kinder toward one another. A feeling of brotherhood sprang up and waxed stronger day by day. It is safe to say that a person taken from the twentieth century prior to July, 1938, and transported suddenly to July of 1939, would swear he was on some other world than that he had known, because of the difference in human relationship occasioned by the Change.
For instance, up in the hills of Kentucky, two lanky, bearded, drawling-tongued backwoodsmen, armed with rifles, faced one another shyly and finally shook hands. That was in September of 1938. A few months before those two would have shot it out between them, for their feud went back a hundred years. And so on and on.
It was as though the human race had labored for countless centuries under an incubus of evil, which had suddenly, in July of 1938, been wrenched away from Earth and flung into the nethermost voids of space.
THE two experimenters stood before a sprawling apparatus on the workbench, whose various unorthodox parts were connected with strands of silvery-looking wire, but paler in color. A modest fortune in beryllium lay there, and its many lines were to carry a new type of energy—a leaping, sizzling kind of energy that would have burned copper to vapor, and would have caused even silver to weaken and soften. Some of the coils of beryllium were immersed in vats of liquid air to preserve them from a like fate.
A dialed panel reposed at the center of the maze, with a series of button switches and illumined indicators over its surface. Hardly breathing, the two men watched the meters as the professor slowly twisted one dial after another. Up above, hung from the ceiling, and connected to the panel by a single wire, was a triangle of delicate wiring, again beryllium.
It was the aerial for psycho-waves. Suddenly there was sound, and the two men stiffened attentively. Yet it was not sound I Nothing came through the air from the apparatus to their ears, yet they seemed to hear voices! Voices that went directly to their brains, without going through their auditory organs.
They were simply thought-waves, vastly amplified by the psycho-receiver, and so powerful that they impinged directly on the auditory seat of the brain.
In awe and wonder they looked at each other’s toil-lined faces as they heard the cacophonous voices of a million different people. They were hopelessly entangled, like a radio receiver attuned to the entire wave-band at once.
“The voice of the world!” whispered Professor Thode almost reverently. “The constant flow of thought that whirls about our heads and is never heard except in a few instances. Every human on Earth must always be thinking something, but the thoughts can never be detected except by supersensitive minds, and then only under exceptional circumstances—those carefully arranged experiments in telepathy. With this sort of receiver and amplifier, one can be in touch with all the world’s thoughts at once. Listen now while I turn the selector dial.” His face held a rapt expression.
The scientist twisted the dial and clutched at his chest as a dry cough bent him almost double. He would have fallen except that Fred Bilte, his assistant, caught him in strong arms and helped him to a chair.
“Success, Fred! Success!” cried the old scientist weakly when his coughing had subsided.
That ecstasy of achievement had cost them ten years of painstaking research, and most of the professor’s fortune. Ten years before, Professor Boris Thode, retired from the industrial boom that had enriched him, had said.
“The mystery of thought! How is it born? How does it manifest itself? Regardless of the contempt that science associates with telepathy, I truly believe in it, and believe that thought can be transmitted as readily as voice, as light, as electricity, if only we knew the means!”
AT the time it had seemed to Fred Bilte that they had completely lost themselves in a maze of pseudoscience. They pursued research that was only half science, the other half something beyond.
They had combed the entire ether spectrum in the search for thought-waves. Cosmic rays, gamma rays, X-rays had been the first three steps. Then had come the examination of several octaves only slightly explored by others. The ultra-violet, visible light, and infra-red had been dissected for their purpose. Another little known gap in the scale next, and then the radio waves, and finally the alternating current waves.
Each of these had been suspected in turn of being the r
ange of psychowaves, but what they had sought had not been found.
They had gone further. Above the scale they explored waves that were possibly the answer to the condensation of nebulae, but were not in any way related to thought radiation.
Then, below the cosmic rays, they came across radiations, half electromagnetic, half something else, that were closely related to gravitation. These had proved to be a sort of transition product between ether emanations and waves that had no measurable velocity. Just as the Archaeopteryx was a transition between reptiles and birds in prehistoric times.
The Z-rays, they were tentatively named. They had a shorter wavelength than the cosmic rays and a still more terrific penetrative power. They were apparently the next step above the gravitation rays, which were undoubtedly infinitely penetrative. In common with the latter, these Z-rays had an almost infinite velocity in that mysterious sub-ether beyond the electromagnetic ether.
It was only a year before that the professor had said, eagerly, tensely: “All electromagnetic waves have a constant speed, something over 186,000 miles a second. These new Z-rays below the cosmic, of a different order, must have a far higher speed, possibly beyond measurement. And the penetration of thought, though figurative, is proverbial! Come on! There’s work ahead, and hope!”
A month after they had succeeded in first absorbing thought-waves out of the air, they had completed a pair of miniature psycho-receivers modeled after the big set, with which they planned to carry out tests of range and selectivity. These were contained in small, flat wooden cases that fitted easily into their pocket. The energy supply was a batterylike, tiny cylinder of cellophane containing delicate coils of gossamer beryllium.
“It is simple,” explained the professor at the doubt that was still in Bilte’s face. “Suppose we are separated now by a distance of a hundred miles. I send my thoughts out. Your receiver picks them up instantaneously and amplifies them—”
“But what amplifies them?” insisted Bilte.
“Your own thought emanations!” the old scientist smiled. He was again a jump ahead of his assistant. “Your own psycho-waves, constantly contacting the receiver-coils in your pocket, induce a psycho-current which amplifies the far weaker waves coming from me. There is an analogy in radio transmission; very weak stations are sometimes caught up in the carrier wave of a powerful station and are thereby greatly amplified. The carrier wave of your psycho-waves will similarly pick up and strengthen my incoming emanations.”
“But then I will be receiving both sets of thoughts—”
“Well, I hope,” grinned the professor, “that you can distinguish your own thoughts from mine!”
Bilte grinned sheepishly in return. “Then as long as these test receivers are done, let’s try them out.”
“All right. You have a sister in Los Angeles, Fred, whom you haven’t visited for some time?”
“Not for three years.”
“Then take a trip down there, and we’ll see if these psycho-phones, as we may call them, will give us ah unbroken connection. Each hour during the day, on the hour, we will connect up and transmit to one another short sentences of any kind, which each of us will record in writing at both ends. Then, on your return, we’ll compare notes. Now pack up. and go, but be back in two weeks.”
CHAPTER II
Mass Psychology
BILTE returned from Los Angeles on July 1, 1938. That date meant nothing in particular to the two experimenters, but to the world it was to mean that three weeks later would come the Great Change.
A comparison of notes indicated that their connection had been complete and perfect at all times. It struck a sort of wonder in their minds to think that two humans, separated by hundreds of miles, could converse freely with but a slight mental effort.
Radio was much the same, but required ponderous apparatus and much attention. With the psychophones, communication was magically simple.
Professor Thode was elated at the success in this first step toward applied telepathy, but Bilte noticed before he had been back long that the elderly scientist seemed pre-occupied. Even while comparing notes and commenting on the different phases of the experiment, the professor’s attention wandered erratically.
“What is it professor?” asked Bilte finally, pushing the written pages aside.
Professor Thode started and then motioned for them to go into the laboratory. Striding to the set with which they had first received outside thought waves, he snapped the on-switch. He made no motion to alter the tuning.
Suddenly it came, a loud “voice”—yet it was not a voice as those other thought pickups had been. It seemed to be more of an emotion that had somehow been converted into a psychowave. No actual word-thoughts were distinguishable, yet the general meaning of the message became clearer as the amplified emanations continued to radiate from the set.
Bilte looked in amazement at the professor as he felt his heart pump faster and his muscles unconsciously tighten.
“Just what is it?” he asked, perplexed. “It isn’t really a definite message. It seems more like a—an emotion! As if we had tuned in the incoherent thoughts of an enraged man!”
“Whatever it is,” murmured the professor, “it comes in from at least a hundred different psycho-wave-lengths, like a chain station! And there’s something ominous, threatening about it!”
They stared at each other silently for a moment.
“Just what do you think it means?” whispered Bilte.
Withholding an answer, the professor pointed to the panel board. A fine needle, delicately balanced on a sharp agate pivot, reposed there in a hollow formed by a group of beryllium coils.
“I’ve constructed a psycho-sensitive unit,” explained the professor, “which will point to the source of any psychowave when connected to the big set. Watch.”
As soon as the mysterious message began again to emanate from the set, the sensitized needle flicked back and forth in wide gyrations. When it gradually subsided it pointed out of the window across the blue of the Pacific.
“Which means,” said the old scientist, “that the source of the radiation lies somewhere out in the Pacific—or across it, in Asia. With the power with which it comes in, supposing it to be at least a thousand miles away, the source must be a greatly energized one. Obviously, no single human mind could produce such a powerful thought-emanation without some sort of amplification.”
“You mean,” gasped Bilte, “that someone else has—has accomplished what we have and—”
PROFESSOR THODE nodded reluctantly.
“Either that, or it may be the combined mass radiation of a group of people.” His eyes narrowed strangely. “Mass psychology directed toward one goal—almost mass hypnotism. This psycho-message that we receive so powerfully and on so many different wave-lengths may be the fighting spirit of a nation, feeding and constantly renewing itself on military propaganda! You will notice that the needle pointed directly west—directly toward Japan!” Then he stirred himself at Bilte’s incredulous stare.
“Yes, far-fetched I know, Fred. Either of the two possibilities has me intrigued. I couldn’t rest without knowing the true answer. Therefore, we’ll track down the source of this super-powerful psycho-radiation!” Aboard an ocean liner speeding toward Japan, the two experimenters became daily more excited as the needle never failed to point westward to the land of flowers and sloe-eyed people. It was a half day before docking that they made a final test. They watched the swinging needle come to a rigid halt.
The professor uttered a surprised exclamation and bent lower over the needle.
“Good Lord! It isn’t pointing to Japan now, at least not to Japan proper. It lines up—” he hastily unfolded a map of the Japanese archipelago—“with the first of the Kurile Islands!” He sat down weakly. “That then precludes my theory.”
Bilte fidgeted uneasily.
“Well, if it isn’t the mass mind-delusion of a great number of people, and since it can’t be the emanation of one single mind, it m
ust be a mechanically amplified psycho-radiation.” He shuddered a bit. “The nearer we draw to the source, the more I feel a sort of involuntary animosity—a dissatisfaction with lots of things.”
Professor Thode nodded.
“I feel it too—rolling waves beating at our subconscious minds, stirring our fighting blood, just like fanfares of martial music! Foreign correspondents have mentioned that strange feeling of restlessness and militarism, as though all the nation were bathed in the fiery breath of Mars, god of war; as in Central Europe in 1913 and 1914. The breath of Mars—”
The professor’s voice suddenly hardened.
“Suppose a Japanese scientist stumbled on psycho-phenomena in his research, and progressed with it as far or farther than we, to the point where amplification of psycho-waves is possible. Suppose he decided to conceal his discovery from the world, and instead pervert it to evil use—to the purpose of stirring his people to conquest! That man could have set up to the north where our needle points, a powerful thought amplifier with which to accomplish that purpose!”
“Very possible,” agreed Bilte gloomily. “But how could he—this hypothetical Machiavelli—control his emanations so that only the Japanese people were subject to their influence?”
“He wouldn’t have to control them. The most direct and powerful of them would saturate Japan and the east coast of Asia, which is under Japanese dominance anyway. To the north and east and south, the radiations would go a long way before impinging upon large groups of other races. In fact, it may be those tailings of the original radiations that have so stirred Europe today, and placed it on the brink of another fearful internal war.”
It was perhaps at this point that the two men began to realize that they had stumbled onto things of major importance.