The Collected Stories

by Earl

  “One more question,” York said. “Have the coast lines of the Atlantic changed at all in those ten years?”

  Suddenly a sharp note of worry sprang into the director’s voice.

  “Yes! It’s a disturbing fact that the entire coast line of western Europe is sinking at an unprecedented rate. Already, relatively, the water level has climbed a foot. Many coast lands will soon be threatened by inundation.

  “The effect isn’t local, however. The coasts of America are lowering also. And in the Pacific, the same thing is happening. There, too, a vast area of bubbles exists. We scientists have taken up the problem seriously. We don’t know what this may lead to, if it keeps up, but we are making plans to dyke all sea coasts.”

  “Thanks.”

  YORK snapped off the radio abruptly. He stared unseeingly out of a port.

  “If this keeps up,” he murmured, “dykes won’t help a bit. Coasts sinking! Is it a natural event—or otherwise!”

  Vera looked at him queerly.

  “Of course it’s a natural event, Tony,” she commented. “The gods of Fate play strange tricks. Perhaps Jove, dissatisfied with the present civilization, is trying to destroy it with Neptune’s weapons. That’s just the way myths grow, Tony, trying to explain—” She stopped and gasped as her husband suddenly whirled, snapped his fingers, and dived for the pilot board as though their lives depended on it.

  “Tony, have you gone crazy?”

  “No, but I could kick myself!”

  York sent the ship scuttling at the highest rate of speed safe in an atmosphere. His direction was east.

  “I bow again to feminine intuition,” he resumed. “We’re going to Mount Olympus, Vera, to visit the gods! There’s just a chance that those two lost souls were not mad. They did predict a geological upheaval. And then that man’s dying words—”

  “About the Three Eternals, Mount Olympus?” Vera cried. “Then Tony, maybe there’s danger!”

  But York did not answer. His face was set with a glowing anticipation as he drove for what he hoped would be the solution to a mystery as great as any he had ever encountered.

  The globular ship raced over the southern coasts of Europe, over the Mediterranean, past what had formerly been Spain, France, Italy and Albania. It turned south a little into the mountainous interior of Greece. Finally the misty summit of Mount Olympus loomed ahead.

  “Do you really expect to find something here?” asked Vera as they approached. “After all, it’s just a Greek myth, dating from five thousand years ago, about Jove and the other gods.”

  York smiled peculiarly.

  “Vera, we are myths too, a few centuries after each visit to Earth!”

  Presently they were floating over the peak of Mount Olympus. They gazed down searchingly. As with other mountain tops, it was a scene of jagged rocks, scraggly growths, and dark hollows here and there tufted with snow.

  “I hardly know what to look for, but nothing is there out of the ordinary,” said Vera, almost in relief. “Besides, the president of the council said they had searched and found nothing.”

  “Look!” York pointed. “That large hollow to the left. Notice the shimmer over it?” He trained his periscope screen. “Can’t clarify it. It looks almost as though—something is behind that shimmering mist!”

  Vera grasped his arm. “Please, Tony, be careful!”

  He lowered the ship cautiously until it was no more than a hundred yards over the strange, quiescent mist that did not stir in the wind. Still nothing could be distinguished beyond it save vague shadows and lights. Switching on his electro-protective screen, out of caution, York descended slowly till he had almost touched the layer of concealment.

  A FEW more feet the ship sank, then stopped abruptly.

  York and Vera looked at each other. No tangible barrier opposed them; only the queer, glittering, impenetrable mist. Experimentally, York put more power into his engine. His ship pressed against the weird obstruction until the hull creaked, but not one more inch was gained.

  York eased up, muttering.

  Then, with a suddenness that made them start, a powerful telepathic voice beat into their brains.

  “Who is it seeks the presence of the Eternal Three?”

  Glancing significantly at Vera, York answered, by the telepathy he had developed and used so many times before in space.

  “Anton York, the Immortal!”

  “Descend!”

  Coincident with the word, the shimmering mist beneath their ship’s keel vanished. Below was revealed the full extent of the hollow, desolate save for a huge marble building in its center. It was of ancient Grecian style, and the stone was stained with great age.

  “Those two men were here!” gasped Vera. “They told the truth, Tony, do you suppose everything else they said—”

  York shook his head non-committally.

  CHAPTER IV

  “Atlantis Shall Rise Again”

  ANTON YORK landed the ship before the edifice, leaving his electro-screen on.

  When the telepathic voice invited him to step into the building, York politely declined. Instead he snapped on his televisor, requesting them to do the same, if they had such an instrument.

  A moment later it proved they had and his screen became spangled with whirling lights that finally crystalized into the image of an ornately furnished room in which sat three men.

  York and Vera looked at them closely.

  Their rich, velvety togas were of a strange, unknown style. Their features, though strictly human, were a strange blend of Oriental and Nordic qualities. In age, they all seemed at the prime of life. But most of all it was noticeable that their eyes glowed with that same strange light that was in York’s and Vera’s—the sign of immortality!

  “We have been expecting you, Anton York,” said one of the three, still using the universal language of telepathy. “Ever since your arrival in the Solar System, we knew you would hear of us. How did it happen?”

  York told of meeting the derelict ship, and the resurrected man’s words.

  “He said you had threatened destruction of civilization!” he concluded challengingly.

  The spokesman smiled frostily.

  “Yes, I believe we did tell them the story. Briefly, some months ago, they were flying over Mount Olympus in an airplane. Its motors failed and they smashed up on our roof of protective mist. As a whim, we nursed their lives. As a further whim, we told him the story you heard. We wanted to see if it would drive them mad. But we lost interest in them quickly, sent them away. We have lived a long, long time. Nothing in the world of mortals interests us any more.”

  Something of rage arose in York at the calm, cold way the man spoke of other humans.

  “You had no right to toy with two human lives!” he cried hotly.

  The Eternal shrugged.

  “We have lived a long, long time,” he repeated. “Conceptions of right and wrong melt into one another through the centuries.”

  York was about to reply angrily again when Vera touched his arm.

  “Don’t argue with them, Tony—no use!” she whispered rapidly, consciously willing her broadcast thoughts blank. “Find out all you can about them instead.”

  York pressed her hand, spoke to the trio of cold-faced men.

  “Just how long have you lived?”

  Again the icy, disdainful smiles from all three of them.

  “You have lived how long, Anton York—some two thousand years since you were inoculated with the radiogen-renewing serum? We, too, were given such an elixir of youth to keep up eternally at our prime, but that was—twenty thousand years ago!”

  THE incredible statement left both York and Vera numb for a moment. These three had lived for almost an astronomical age!

  “It can’t be true!” stammered Vera. “It can’t!”

  “It is true, however,” assured the Eternals. “For twenty thousand years we three have lived and breathed. You wonder how we could have filled in our time. Most of it has be
en spent in space, as you two have spent your time. We have roamed endless distances, seen uncounted other worlds of other suns.

  “However, at first it intrigued us to do certain things in the Solar System. We laughed to ourselves, Anton York, when we saw you moving asteroids and giving Jupiter rings. For you were simply carrying on what we had dropped in boredom. We were the ones who made Saturn’s rings! And we had blown up the planet revolving between Mars and Jupiter, testing our powers, to make the present day asteroids.

  “Venus originally had a moon which we moved to a new orbit. It is called Mercury now. Mercury; in mythology, is the wandering god—or the wandering planet. We named all the planets.

  “But these things lost their novelty after a time. We did no more. Wandering through the void and observing other worlds and civilizations occupied much more of our time. That eventually palled also. Immortality has its penalty of ennui, as you will notice, too, when you have lived a little longer and seen the ashes of futility behind the fires of life.

  “In the past five thousand years we have stayed on Earth, finding its pageantry at least interesting as anything else in the Universe. We have been in mankind’s history, even as you have been. We, not the primitive Egyptians, build the great Cheops Pyramid, though they copied it with theirs. It is our marker to show the slow passing of time in a swifter scale. Each century the light of a fixed star moves a little along the scale at the back of a passageway. ‘Fixed’ star! Even the stars have moved, in our time!

  “We caused the Noachin Flood, inadvertently, when we split once solid Gibraltar, filling the Mediterranean basin. For a time, during the great Grecian Era, we mingled somewhat with mortals, giving rise to their famous mythology. Our science deeds and seeming miracles, in various roles, impressed them as the doings of a race of gods.

  “And other things we have done. But these things, too, have ceased to interest us. In the past three thousand years we have done little but sigh and wonder if perhaps suicide would not be preferable to the slow-poison of ennui. Even your rise two thousand years ago, Anton York, and your exploits of a thousand years ago, failed to intrigue us more than casually. We have utterly lost that strange but important human ability to care about anything!”

  SUDDENLY York and Vera saw in their Cy eyes the haunting lassitude of spirit that obsessed them. They were three incredibly old men—despite their young bodies—who had tasted life to the full and could no longer wring but one drop of stimulation. Mentally, they had already died.

  ANTON YORK drew a long breath. At all times he, too, even in his comparatively short two thousand years of existence, had wondered how long it would be before there would be nothing new to him—nothing further to lure his interest. Then he shook off the dull spell. One must not think of such things too much.

  “From what land do you come, preceding recorded human history?” he asked, anticipating the answer;

  “Atlantis,” was the reply from the Three Eternals. “At that time Atlantis in the Atlantic Ocean and Lemuria in the Pacific were two great continents. Their civilizations touched heights never since exceeded. But they warred incessantly, and it was to lead to their mutual destruction.

  “We three had been great scientists of that time. We discovered the secret of immortality, partook of it. Also conquering gravity, as did you, we went out into space for a time. When we came back, Atlantis and Mu lay under the oceans, and new lands had risen! Atlantis, in trying to undermine Mu with giant atomic-power machines, touched off a fault in Earth’s crust, leading to worldwide holocaust.

  “Thus, we three found ourselves orphaned from the world we had known. Our magnificent cities and glorious monuments lay under the ocean ooze. Strangely, that is the only thing that can now stir our hearts—thought of that ancient glory. A nostalgia that has survived twenty thousand years—and has grown stronger!”

  York’s nerves became tense.

  “Yes?” he prompted.

  A slight glow came into their faces as their spokesman went on. His psychic voice vibrated strongly.

  “Thus we have decided to bring up our homeland of Atlantis, from its briny grave. Resurrect it, rehabilitate it, restore some semblance of its former grandeur. A long, tedious task, perhaps, but one we will truly enjoy.” A fanatic light came into his eyes. “Sentimentality is the one human emotion we have not lost. We cherish a memory. It can be molded into reality. Atlantis must rise again!”

  York, and his wife looked at one another. That accounted for the bubbles over the South Atlantic. The ocean floor ooze, disturbed after long ages of quiescence, was giving up its occluded gases.

  “How is it being done?” queried York, feigning deep curiosity, and nothing more.

  “It is simple. We made a long study of Earth’s crust, through seismological data. Any major geologic disturbance is linked to others. They form a chain. By setting them off in the proper order, any desired end result can be obtained. Exploding a certain small island in the Atlantic, we started waves of concussion in the thin, unstable crust. The slow, irresistible forces existing in the plastic layer beneath the crust were awakened. They will culminate by pushing the floor of the Atlantic and Pacific up above water level.

  “This was started ten years ago. Perhaps in another century or so, the process will be completed. We are in no hurry. Then we will begin our great reconstruction of Atlantean glory!”

  “Can the process be stopped?” asked York; wondering if they would answer.

  It may have been a mocking light that shone from their eyes as the reply came.

  “Yes, by a suitable counter wave in the crust, to neutralize the first.”

  YORK snapped himself alert. He had heard all he wanted to hear. His telepathic radiations almost crackled as he said: “And in the meantime, Earth’s billions of people will go to their doom!”

  “That is unfortunate.” The Eternal shrugged. “However, some few will be chosen and saved to repopulate the new Atlantis. The rest must die simply because they will have no place in our new world. All the old lands will not sink, but for a time, as the process approaches its climax, there will be violent earthquakes and storms that will decimate most of them.”

  “It’s the most cold-blooded scheme ever thought of by man!” raged York, his self-control breaking. “You must not go on with it!”

  The Three Eternals in the visi-screen looked annoyed, then faintly amused.

  “Who will stop us? You?”

  “Yes!” returned York grimly. “I give you fair warning. I have a weapon whose activity you have probably seen wielded. In ten seconds, if you do not agree to reverse your geological process, I’ll use it!”

  “You are brave, Anton York, but foolishly so,” the answer came back imperturbably. “We have illimitable power, we three.”

  “One!” interposed York, in answer.

  With his protective screen on full power, York trained his weapon’s snout at the marble building and counted tensely. The Eternal triumvirate sat there disdainfully, as though unaware of danger. One of them idly reached over to a panel and flipped a small switch. York’s clammy finger tightened at the count of nine, squeezed at ten.

  The ravening burst of energy that sprang from his gun expended itself harmlessly against an invisible screen surrounding the marble temple. Beyond it, rocks and trees shriveled into a soot-black mist that drifted upward like vagrant smoke. The weapon’s force was that of subgamma and ultra-sound waves, able to shatter molecules to black shreds.

  York desperately rammed on full power, never before used, and left it for a full minute. The opposing screen did not weaken in the slightest. York gasped. Even his own screen, he knew, would not have withstood that hell fury for that long. The Three Eternals, in the visi-screen, smiled scoffingly.

  Sensing his own danger, York leaped for the controls. But at the same moment, some paralyzing force gripped his body, held him rigid. One of the Eternals was manipulating controls on his panel.

  “Rash one!” came the telepathic taunt. “W
e have more command of natural forces that you could dream of! We are masters of twenty thousand years of science. Anton York, you have declared war on us. We should annihilate you on the spot, as we could easily do. But it would be beneath our dignity to destroy that which cannot harm us. Therefore, go with your life. But never again test our patience and strength!”

  ANTON YORK’S ship eased off the ground, in the grip of some intangible force. Suddenly it was flung upward, as though by a Titan’s hand. York and Vera were thrown into a heap in a corner of their cabin, but the paralysis left them. York grasped a hand rail, half dragged himself toward the pilot board and quickly righted the ship. Then he helped Vera to her feet.

  York said nothing but his face burned with humiliation. They had been cast away as though they had been vermin. He looked down as the ship floated at even keel. The shimmering mist lay over the hollow, hiding its three eternal inhabitants. Hiding a menace supreme!

  York knew it was no use to continue aggression openly. His gamma-sonic weapon—never before unsuccessful—had failed to pierce the defense of the Three Immortals. Even the furies of atomic power were a lesser force. The Three were impregnable. If York was a god in his powers, they were super-gods.

  “What can we do against them?” wailed Vera. “Against twenty thousand years of science?”

  York sent his ship away from Mount Olympus. He did not attempt to answer a question that had no immediate answer. But a bleak look had come into his eyes—the reflection of a super-mind wrestling with a super-problem.

  CHAPTER V

  Far Beneath Earth’s Surface

  DURING the next year, the crews and passengers of various ocean liners and huge transoceanic aircraft sighted York’s globular ship, here and there. At times it hovered motionlessly over water. At other times over islands. Several times it was seen at the docks of Sol City, picking up certain apparatus that the council had had manufactured at York’s orders. No one knew, not even the councillors, what the instruments were for.