by Earl
“Just in time,” York muttered. He looked over his static machine thoughtfully, incredulously. It was a fused mass! When they were back, Vuldane explained.
“We tried that too. The hypno-beasts are canny. Their technique is simple. They pour a massed hypno-force at the scrambler, overload it, and burn it out. We tried generators with world-moving power. They burned them all out. When will you begin to realize, Anton York, that this is a thousand-year, job? We’ve planned it as such. It is not something that you can toss off overnight.”
York looked stricken.
“I’m sorry,” said Vuldane simple and sincerely, before leaving.
York looked at Vera. Not a shred of hope remained.
“Think of it, Vera,” he said hollowly. “Our race was doomed as far back as the nineteenth century, when the Korians came to take an Earth culture back with them. Even before you and I were born, our people were doomed unknowingly. I destroyed fifty Immortals, and Mason Chard, and fought the Three Eternals, to save civilization. I was even ready to sacrifice myself. And all the time, another race in another universe had put their finger on us and marked us for oblivion. Our whole life and effort, all my superscience and guidance of Earth, has been a mockery, a cosmic joke, a jest of the gods.”
Vera soothed him in ways she had learned through two thousand years of association. His weary head sought refuge in her lap. His bloodshot eyes closed for the first time in six months.
“All mockery,” he said bitterly. “I’ve had the thought of going back to Earth and destroying it, so that oblivion for them will be quicker and more merciful. Lighting an atomic fire on all the planets—It would be swift.”
“No, Tony. That would be pure spite against the Korians. Whatever they’ve been forced to do, they are a highly civilized, deserving race.”
“Fire!” York jerked erect, repeating his own word. A dawning look came over his face. “Fighting fire with fire! Vera, maybe that’s the answer. Instead of fighting them with our weapons, why not fight them with theirs?”
Sleep forgotten, hope reborn, York became twice the dynamo of activity he had been before.
“Time is short—six months. I have to measure the wave-length of the hypno-force, and then duplicate it.”
Six months. Six months in which York explored the psycho-magnetic scale. Earth’s scientists had taken two centuries to piece out the electro-magnetic scale. York condensed the same amount of research into a six-month snap of the fingers.
In the electro-magnetic scale were the octaves of radio waves, infra-red, visible light, ultra-violet, X-rays, gamma rays and cosmic rays.
In the psycho-magnetic range, York found the octaves of telepathy, clairvoyance, sixth-sense, hunch, hallucination, dreams. Far down the scale, like the elusive cosmic rays, he found the hypnotic range.
These super-penetrative radiations of hypnotism he measured with all the accuracy of an astro-physicist studying a spectrograph. They were so incredibly fine that York hazily understood them to slip through the interstices of the ether itself, as cosmic rays slipped through the planetary atoms.
“Now I know exactly what the hypno-force is,” York stated. “Vuldane, did you measure them? Try to build a projector?”
For the first time, Vuldane shook his head.
“This is a great achievement, York. But I’m afraid you can’t build a projector. Not a mechanical one. Evolution produced the projector—an organic brain—after millions of years. You won’t duplicate that in the time left, even the full thousand years.”
York saw the logic of it. Then a strange look came into his eye.
“No. But I already have the projector.” He tapped his own forehead. “All I have to do is find the way to increase its powers to equal the brain projectors of the hypno-beasts!”
“Good luck,” said Vuldane again.
His sympathetic smile, as he left, told of no hope for the outcome.
Precious time slipped by.
York worked entirely from the biological angle. With a super X-ray, he went minutely over the brain of one of the captive hypno-beasts, studying its cells. What principle in them allowed the host to pour limitless energy into producing hypnotic-rays? When he found it and analyzed it, his face was grave.
“It’s a strange new hormone,” he told Vera. “Introduced into any other brain, it will give that brain super-hypnotism or kill it! I must have an experimental guinea-pig with an intelligent brain. And how much time is there?”
“None, Tony,” Vera answered softly. “The first fleet already left for Earth. Vuldane came and told me last week, leaving me to tell you. But, Tony—” She touched his hand. “There is still a chance. And I’m your guinea pig!”
York looked at her for a long moment.
“You are willing, Vera, for the sake of humanity? Success or—death?”
She nodded firmly.
York distilled a few drops of the new hormone. It would either do what he hoped, or kill. He injected at the base of Vera’s brain. Then he watched, with eyes that burned with hope and dread. Vera went into a coma. Her skin became cold. Her heart stopped. York stood quietly, fighting for control.
An hour later, death drew back. Vera’s super-vitality rallied and life returned. She sat up, smiling. York said nothing. Words meant nothing now. Silently he led her to the test chamber, before a group of starved hypno-beasts. He locked her in. They surrounded her, eyeing her and closing in. Vera went rigid. Their eager tentacles stretched for her soft white neck.
York turned away, shuddering. Failure, after all!
Suddenly, within the chamber, the situation changed. As though an invisible blast had blown them back, the hypno-beasts fell away from Vera.
She stood up, her eyes blazing. One by one the Beasts rolled over and went rigid, in complete hypnosis.
Vuldane, when they faced him, was skeptical.
“I can’t do anything about it, York. I can’t recall the ships sent to bring the first of your people. We have little time as it is to start our grand plan. I can’t take a chance on your hypothetical anti-hypnosis hormone.”
“Make this test,” York demanded. “Send a shipful of your men to the Beast system, after they have been given my hormone injection. Command them to land among the thickest of the Beast communities and stay for ten hours. If they don’t come back, I won’t be able to fight your plan.”
Vuldane agreed. York injected the men, rescuing them from the deathlike effects by heroic doses of drugs. The ship left.
Waiting for its return was a refinement of torture that ground York’s nerves to shreds. Ten hours stumbled by like his entire lifetime.
“Tony—look!”
The ship appeared. The Korians leaped out, eagerly telling their story of withstanding mass hypnotism for ten hours, and hypnotizing a ring of Beasts in turn.
Vuldane turned to York.
“You have saved your people, Anton York. It is a monumental achievement. I will recall the first fleet immediately. All the culture races will be returned to their worlds. I cannot express my joy and relief that we are not forced to sacrifice your race. You may go back to your people now, and tell them they are saved.”
York shook his head. A strange look rested in his eyes, for this was the strangest thing of all the past episode.
“No. It is a story they would hardly believe. The only evidence for it would be the vanishment of a thousand people from Fort Mojave in eighteen-eighty-eight. That trifling event has long been forgotten and most likely unrecorded. Humanity was saved, without knowing it was doomed. That will have to remain my secret.”
Vera nodded. It was a chapter of the mythology of Anton York that would never be written for the eyes of the Earth. It was the secret of Anton York.
Epilogue
Back on Earth, before the two colossi of diamond on Mount Everest, the yearly commemoration ceremony paeaned to its sad denouement.
“Anton York, benefactor of humanity, is dead!”
VIA MERCURY
E
xpedition Number One Dares the Fiery Menace of the Solar System’s Inferno-Where All the Horrors; of Hell Stalk Earth’s Puny Spawn!
HELLO, Earth!
Mercury Expedition Number One reporting by etherline code radio, Operator Gillway at the keys. Fifty-fifth day since leaving Earth.
Karsen, our rocket man, found it easy to plan our landing from the Martian data. Mercury’s gravity is a little less than Mars’, about two-fifths of Earth’s. Tarnay, at the pilot board, spiraled us down on a broad flat stretch of smooth material that looks like cooled lava. We haven’t stepped out yet, till we see about temperature and air.
Well, here we are on Mercury, the smallest of the nine planets. Two of Jupiter’s moons—Ganymede and Callisto—are actually larger, Markers tells us. And Saturn’s satellite, Titan, is as large. Mercury also has the distinction of being nearest to the Sun, only thirty-six million miles away on the average. We have our Sunward ports shuttered, otherwise we’d be blinded.
The view from our other ports shows a world not only utterly weird, but decidedly inhospitable—tumbled, flinty rock fields, a jagged mountain range off to the side, smooth lava plateaus. No signs of life, not even a tuft of moss or a single hardy cactus. Only rock, of a thousand varieties. The horizon is short, but evidently Mercury is a barren rock. We expected that, but hoped against it.
We hardly know whether to be glad we’re here. Fifty-five days in black, monotonous space is bad enough. But the Mercury environment looks just as unpleasant.
However, we’re here for scientific studies. In four months, when Mercury swings swiftly around the Sun and again catches up with slower Earth, we’ll leave. I think we’re looking forward to that already.
Within five minutes of our landing, Captain Atwell called us together.
“Men,” he said, “I’m determined this time not to let some little thing maroon us and take lives, as on Mars and Venus. We’re going to plan ahead cautiously. Keep on bur toes, understand?”
We all nodded. Besides Captain Atwell, three of us are veterans of the Mars and Venus Expeditions—Parletti, Markers and myself. Two are veterans of the Venus Expedition alone—Tarnay and Karsen. Four are new men, to make up our full ten—Robertson, von Zell, Ling and Swinerton—official archeologist, chemist, physicist and biologist respectively.
Captain Atwell really spoke to the four new, unseasoned men. Sensing this, Ling spoke for them.
“We will be careful, Captain.” And then, in his soft voice, he added: “Honorable Chinese proverb say, ‘Fool see danger but laugh—last time’.”
Just received the message from Mars Expedition Number Two, relayed through Earth. Thanks for your congratulations, Mars. And for giving us all the credit for your safe landing there, through our pioneering. We’re glad to have done our bit.
Will resume tomorrow. Batteries low from space flight.
FIFTY-SIXTH Day.
Chemist von Zell found a thin atmosphere outside our ship. We had been speculating all through the space trip whether there would be any more than on the Moon. Since there is, Markers’ theory probably holds. On the Night. Side are vast amounts of frozen gases, circulating somewhat on the Day Side.
We are in the Twilight Zone, of course, named that in imaginative literature for the past century. Mercury does not rotate. It is a unique experience for us. One side eternally faces the blazing Sun. The other has been shrouded in darkness for countless ages. The narrow strip in between, where supernal day blends into absolute night, is in perpetual dusk. It is the only possible zone we could have landed in. At our left is hell-heat, at our right, frightful cold.
We stepped out today, with air helmets. Mercury’s air is unbreathable, loaded with hot, poisonous vapors. Captain Atwell has had the unparalleled honor of being the first human to set foot on three planets—Mars, Venus and Mercury. He deserves it, as I think our precious chronicles have proved. He planted the Earth flag in loose shale.
Ling had warned us in advance of the temperature, one hundred and seventy-seven degrees, Fahrenheit. But so dry and wispy is the atmosphere that we felt no extreme discomfort. We wore white suits of light cloth, to keep the burning rays off our skins.
We tested our jumping powers, finding we could easily soar up twenty feet. The new members got more of a kick out of it than we veterans. We had had the first thrill of light gravity on Mars.
The visors of our helmets are equipped with darkened glass, cutting down the glare. We were able to look briefly at the Sun. It is a gigantic yellow-red globe, hanging half below the horizon. It dangles there motionlessly, as it has for eons of time. It grips you to think that nothing here has changed, while on Earth all evolution took place.
“It is like realizing at last what eternity means!” Ling put it. His tiny voice, through the helmet radio, was solemn.
But we were wrong. There is change. While we watched, we saw an astounding phenomenon. A range of mountains between us and the Sun is slowly melting down! Yes, the tips gradually ran down the slopes as a watery tide. But it wasn’t water. It was lead, Parletti told us—metallic lead, melting under the Sun’s fierce heat. Luckily only slanting, weaker rays come to us in the Twilight Zone.
PARLETTI expanded his theory.
There has been little weathering on Mercury, with its wispy atmosphere. Most metallic deposits are in virgin form, just as they cooled millions of years ago. Lead melted here, beyond the edge of the Twilight Zone. Out farther, the blistered Day Side must be a literal inferno of molten metal lakes of bismuth, tin, gallium and all the easily melting metals.
Parletti estimates peak temperatures as seven hundred degrees out there. We can’t think of exploring it. Man might never explore Mercury’s exposed Day Side, except perhaps in specially equipped ships. Mercury, then, according to Parletti’s explanation, is not mainly rock, but a vast store house of metal!
Tarnay suddenly let out a yelp. And then we all felt it. The solid ground under our feet was heaving. What we had thought was rock was metal, and it was beginning to melt.
Captain Atwell herded us into the ship. With a blast of the rear rockets, we rolled fifty miles-toward the Night Side. Looking back, we saw the section we had quitted slowly heave, bubble, and finally move sluggishly away, seeking its level. We were safe where we were. Cooling drafts of air from the Night Side protected us. The plateau was probably gallium, a metal melting at less than the boiling point of water.
That was our first day’s experience on Mercury. We began to wonder if we could ever feel safe. At any moment the metal ground under our feet might turn to liquid and flow away.
FIFTY-SEVENTH Day.
Last night—our arbitrary “night” of twelve hours—it hailed. And the hail was composed of metallic bismuth. Parletti and Markers sat down to figure out what it meant. After an all-day discussion, and octant reading of the Sun, they explained. Mercury has a libration. That is, it wobbles a little. It presents a little more than half its face to the Sun during one revolution. Because of this rocking back and forth, the Twilight Zone shifts constantly.
Each forty-four days, half the revolution period, the Zone crawls a hundred miles Sunward, then a hundred miles spaceward. But there is an overlap of ten miles. So this narrow ten-mile strip was the safest area, unaffected by the advancing heat and the returning cold.
Parletti assured us we were now in that strip of safety. We could stay here four months, without danger of something melting under our feet, or the alternate cold wave. Bismuth vapor from the blistered mountains blew toward the Night Side. Meeting cooler air, it precipitated. It was no different, in principle, than the rains of water on Earth.
Captain Atwell heaved a sigh of relief. We could stay, after all, in that ten-mile strip without constantly fleeing from molten floods. Here we buried our fuel, as originally planned. We found a depression nearby and stacked our drums in it. We covered it with a tarpaulin, and then with loose clumps of the metal rocks.
Don’t picture Mercury’s surface as smooth sheets of metal. There ar
e, after all, plenty of non-metals. These have combined with some of the metals, forming detached lumps and gravels, mostly ovides and sulfides.
Finally our cached fuel supply was safe from all accident, and particularly from heat. We had worked all day, but hardly felt it in the light gravity. Our skins, wherever exposed, are more deeply browned than ever, though we took the precautionary tanning periods out in space before arriving.
Thanks for the special musical program. It came through clear as a bell. My seleno-cells charge easily, in this constant sunlight, even better than on Mars. I’ve shut off the Sun power mirror entirely, having more current than I need.
FIFTY-EIGHTH Day.
We are not attempting to set up any camp outside the ship. We will be here only four months, and can stand the cramped ship quarters for that short time. On Mars and Venus, facing respectively two years and fourteen months of stay, we needed roomier habitations.
Our position seems secure. We have food, water and tanked air supplies for more than the four months. Captain Atwell has given the signal to go ahead with scientific studies.
Parletti has been wandering within a radius of a mile, with his indefatigable pick, shovel and electroscope. On Mars he found gold-impregnated sand, on Venus, radioactive deposits. Here he comes back with a knapsack loaded with gold, platinum, thallium, and all the precious metals. They lie around for the picking. Mercury, he predicts, will eventually become the mining center of interplanetary exploitation.
Markers has set up his telescope and is searching for long-speculated Vulcan, the planet that might have an orbit closer than Mercury. Trying all sorts of glare filters, he is methodically sweeping the area around the Sun. If he finds it, he says he will be more surprised than anyone. He is trying to prove it isn’t there, once and for all.
Tarnay and Karsen, in collaboration, are taking seismographic records of Mercury’s crust. They are sending sonic signals down, and interpreting them in terms of density strata. They are trying to account for the libration by proving one hemisphere heavier than the other, since there are no ocean tides.