The Collected Stories

by Earl

  I was beaten. That thought hammered within my skull.

  They had broken my spirit. I came to that conclusion after staring up at a red star that winked soberly and seemed to nod in pity. There was my true home. I longed to go back to its canals and deserts. Harsh they might be, but not so harsh as the unfeeling inhabitants of this incredibly rich planet.

  I went to my rooms and started to pack.

  Angry voices swiftly approached my door. The boys burst in, led by Tom Blaine.

  “Murderer!” Tom yelled. “A man was strangled in town two hours ago, by a rope—or a tentacle! You looked murder at us this afternoon. Why did you kill him? Just general hate for the human race?”

  How fantastic it sounded, yet they weren’t mere boys, now. They were a blood-lusting mob. All their hate and misunderstanding for me had come to a head. I knew it was no use even to remonstrate.

  “Look, fellows! He was packing up to sneak away. He’s the killer, all right. Are you going to confess, Professor Zeerohs, or do we have to make you confess!”

  It was useless to resist their burly savagery and strong Earth muscles. They held me and ripped away the light metal braces supporting my legs. Then I was forced outside and prodded along. They made me walk up and down, back of the dormitory, in the light of subatomic torches.

  IT became sheer torture within an hour. Without the braces, my weak muscles sagged under my weight. Earth’s gravity more than doubled the normal strain.

  “Confess!” Tom snapped fiercely. “Then we’ll take you to the police.”

  I shook my head, as I had each time Tom demanded my confession. My one hopeless comfort was the prayer of an earthly prophet, who begged the First Cause to forgive his children, for they knew not what they did.

  For another hour, the terrible march kept up. I became a single mass of aching flesh. My bones seemed to be cracking and crumbling under the weight of the Universe. My mental anguish was still sharper, for the tide of hate beat against me like a surf.

  Where was Dean Graham? Then I remembered that he had gone to visit his relatives that evening. There was no one to help me, no one to stop these half-grown men who saw their chance to get rid of me. Only the winking red eye of Mars looked down in compassion for the suffering of a humble son. “Oscar’s coming!” warned a voice. Ponderously the robot approached, the night-light in his forehead shining. He made the rounds every night, like a mechanical watchman. As he eyed the halted procession, his patterned reflexes were obviously striving to figure out what its meaning could be.

  “Boys will go to the dormitory,” Ids microphonic voice boomed. “Against regulations to be out after ten o’clock.”

  “Oscar, you may go,” barked Tom Blaine.

  The robot didn’t budge. His selectors were set to obey only the voices of teachers and officials.

  “Oscar—” I began with a wild cry.

  A boy clamped his hand over my mouth. The last of my strength oozed from me, and I slumped to the ground. Though I was not unconscious, I knew my will would soon be insufficient to make me resist. The boys looked frightened.

  “Maybe we’ve gone too far,” one said nervously.

  “He deserves it,” shrilled Tom uneasily. “He’s a cowardly murderer!”

  “Tom!” Pete Miller came running up, from the direction of the town. “Just heard the news—the police caught the killer—a maniac with a rope,” He recoiled in alarm when he saw my sprawled form. “What did you do, fellows? He’s innocent, and he really isn’t such a bad old guy.”

  The boys glanced at one another with guilty eyes. Fervently I blessed young Miller for that statement.

  “Don’t be sentimental,” Tom Blaine said much too loudly. “Martians are cowards. My father says so. I’m glad we did this, anyway. It’ll drive him away for sure. We’d better beat it now.”

  The group melted away, leaving me on the ground. Oscar stalked forward and picked me up. Any fallen person must be helped up, according to his patterned mind. But his steel arms felt softer than Tom Blaine’s heartless accusation.

  THE class gasped almost in chorus the next morning, when their Martian professor entered quietly, as though nothing had happened the night before.

  “Examinations will continue,” I announced.

  It was small wonder that they looked surprised. First, that I had appeared at all, weak and spent by the night’s cruel ordeal. Second, that I had not given up and left. Third, that I hadn’t reported the episode to Dean Graham. The punishment would have been severe.

  Only I knew I was back because it would be cowardly to leave. Mentally and physically I was sick, but not beaten. Besides, I had heard young Miller insist that I was not such a bad, old guy, after all. It was like a well of cool water in a hot desert.

  Examinations began. Oscar entered, handed me a spacegram and clanked out again. Nervously I opened and read the message. My tentacles twitched uncontrollably at the ends, then curled around the chair arms and clung desperately. Everything vanished before my eyes except the hideous, shocking words of the spacegram.

  My world was ended. Mars or Earth—it made no difference. I could not go on. But existence must continue. I could not let this break me. Grimly I folded the paper and laid it aside.

  I looked with misted eyes at their lowered heads. I needed a friend as never before, but hostility and hatred were the only emotions they felt for me as I tuned to them one by one. They hated their teacher, though they knew him to be wise, humble, patient, as Martians are by nature.

  And I was beginning to hate them. They were forcing me to. Savagely I hoped they would all fail in their examinations.

  I switched back to young Miller, who was biting his pencil. Forehead beaded with sweat, he was having a difficult time. Thoughts were racing through his brain.

  Wanted so much to pass . . . enter Space Point . . . join the Space Patrol some day . . . Not enough time to study . . . job in spare time after school hours . . . help parents . . . In what year did the first explorer step on Neptune’s moon? Why, Nineteen-seventy-six! Funny how that came all of a sudden . . . Now what was the root for “planet,” in Martian? Why, jad, of course! It isn’t so hard after all . . .”

  Wish that old Martian wouldn’t stare at me as if he’s reading my mind . . . How many moons has Jupiter? Always get it mixed up with Saturn. Eighteen, six found by space ships! Funny, I’m so sure of myself . . . I’ll lick this exam yet . . . Dad’s going to be proud of me when I’m wearing that uniform. . . .

  I turned my eyes away from Miller’s happy face. A deserving boy, he would be a credit to the Space Patrol. Others had their troubles, not just I.

  Abruptly there was an interruption. Oscar came clanking in huriedly.

  “Dean Graham wishes all classes to file out on the campus, for a special event,” he boomed.

  The boys whispered in curiosity and left the classroom at my unsteady order. The campus was filled with the entire school faculty and enrollment. My group of senior classmen was allowed to stand directly in front of the bandstand. I felt weak and in need of support, but there was no one to give it to me.

  DEAN GRAHAM raised a hand. “A member of the Space Patrol is here,” he spoke, “having come from Space Point by rocket-strato for an important announcement. Major Dawson.”

  A tall, uniformed man, wearing the blue of the Space Patrol, stepped forward, acknowledging the assembly’s unrestrained cheer with a solemn nod. The Patrol is honored throughout the System for its gallant service to civilization,.

  “Many of you boys,” he said, “hope to enter Space Point some day, and join the Service. This bulletin, received an hour ago, will do honor to someone here.”

  He held up the paper and read aloud.

  “Captain Henry Blaine, in command of Patrol ship Greyhound, yesterday was wounded, in the daring rout of pirates off the Earth-Mars run.”

  All eyes turned to Tom Blaine, who was proud of the ceremony in honor of his father. The official held up a radium-coated medal—the Cross of Sp
ace, for extraordinary service to the forces of law and order in the Solar System. Dean Graham whispered in his ear. He nodded, stepping down from the rostrum and advancing.

  My gasp of surprise was deeper than those of the others as he brushed past Tom Blaine. Stopping before me, he pinned the glowing medal on my chest. Then he grasped my hand.

  “I think you’ll be proud to wear that all your life!” He turned, reading further from his bulletin. “Captain Blaine’s life was saved by a youthful Martian recruit, who leaped in front of him and took the full blast that wounded the Earthman. His name was—”

  I found myself watching Tom Blaine. He didn’t have to hear the name. He was staring at the spacegram he had stolen from my desk, but hadn’t had a chance to read till now. He had sensed my momentary agitation over it, and had hoped perhaps to use it against me. It read:

  WE DEEPLY REGRET TO INFORM YOU OF THE DEATH OF YOUR SON, KOL ZEEROHS, IN HEROIC SERVICE FOR THE SPACE PATROL.

  —THE HIGH COMMAND, SPACE PATROL.

  BUT now my weakness overwhelmed me. I was aware only of someone at my side, supporting me, as my knees threatened to buckle. It must have been Oscar.

  No—it was a human being!

  “Every one of us here,” Tom Blaine said, tightening his grip around me, “is your son now—if that will help a little. You’re staying of course, Professor. You couldn’t leave now if you tried.” We smiled at each other, and my thin hand was nearly crushed in his young, strong grasp. Yes, the teacher from Mars would stay.

  THE LIFE BEYOND

  A blinding flash—e terrific explosion—the atom-smasher disrupts in a blaze of glory; Hall and Kard are crushed beyond recognition! But the two great scientists find themselves undead—victims—of a strange, bodiless existence brought about by their ungodly experiments wielders of a Power not intended for Man—a Power to create unlimited Good—or Evil!

  CHAPTER ONE

  MYSTERIOUS AWAKENING

  PROFESSOR ERIC HALL’S dazed mind cleared slowly. “Well,” he thought, “I’m still alive. I thought that was the end. And I did seem to see the walls tumbling and the electron-discharge coming my way. Queer sensation, when it struck—exquisite pain that was half a frightful pleasure, in some mad way. I feel all right now, though, only I can’t see. I wonder what—”

  “So do I!”

  It was Dr. Kard’s voice!

  “I don’t see either. I feel—no, I don’t feel. I don’t feel anything! Good God! Are we both paralyzed and blind from the—from whatever happened?”

  “Maybe—maybe you’re right,” returned Hall, unhappily. “Still, how is it that we talk to each other by-thought? Telepathy, in plain words?”

  “What happened there at the last, Hall?” queried Kard. “Maybe we can figure this out, step by step. First of all, the electron blast blew the vitro-lite tube to vapor. Secondly, the explosion blew the laboratory apart, like a paper toy. Thirdly, the electron-discharge came our way, So what happened to us? Good Lord, we should have been killed!”

  “Yes, we should have been—on all three counts,” mused Hall. “It would be a miracle to escape.”

  “Would be?”

  “Would have been, I mean.”

  “What do you mean, Hall?”

  “I mean—I think we wore killed! We’re dead! At least our bodies died in that explosion.”

  There was silence between them for a moment.

  “And where are we—our minds?” ventured Kard.

  “Lord, I don’t know!” returned Professor Hall forlornly. “I wish I could see.”

  Then, as though this had been a command, he did see.

  It was as sudden as the lifting of a curtain. His view seemed to be one high above Earth, perhaps a mile. Fleecy clouds floated lazily nearby. The ground lay like a checkerboard, stretching interminably in all directions.

  Hall’s first reaction was a stab of fear, for he could see no part of an airplane or balloon that might be supporting him.

  “Heavens, I’ll fall!” he thought, and promptly felt himself dip downward.

  But at almost the same instant, his panic cleared. He thought, “If I didn’t fall before, hanging up here like a cloud, why should I know?”

  Simultaneously, he ceased falling. He had dropped no more than a few yards.

  Puzzled, he remained suspended, hardly daring to think further. He noticed now that his vision seemed curiously to include all directions, as though he had eyes in the back of him, at the top, and all over. He noticed also, just a few feet away, a strange sort of tenuous ball of vapor that was not like the clouds. It was spherical in shape and almost invisible. It looked like the ghost of a ball of smoke.

  But all this while, in a subconscious, surreptitious way, he had been trying to see something else—his body. Yet his all-encompassing vision could not detect the slightest sign of a leg or arm.

  “Well,” he sighed mentally, “there’s no use hoping any more. We have no bodies!”

  KARD had come to the same conclusion, also suddenly seeing and momentarily falling.

  “But where are you, Hall? And just what are you?”

  “I’m right here, Kard, right next to you. But I’m not the physical Professor Eric Hall you once knew. I’m just a cloud of—well, intelligence.”

  “Good Lord!” cried out the startled Dr. Kard, finding he could express surprise just as well with his thought-voice as he had before with his larynx. “You’re that globe of almost transparent mistiness a few feet away! And I’m the same to you, Hall?”

  “Yes.”

  There was silence again.

  “We’re like ghosts!” murmured Kard. “Is this the Life-After-Death?”

  “No,” rationalized Professor Hall. “Let’s remember we’re scientists—or were. It’s a crazy, unprecedented thing, but here we are, a mile in the air, having no bodies and existing only as mental wraiths. It’s like taking a dose of castor oil and liking it.”

  “But how do you explain it, Hall?” It did not seem so frightening, now that they had calmly accepted the bare fact of it. As scientists, they had always taken the strange and inexplicable things of the mysterious universe in their stride. Their mentalities, still as scientific in attitude as before, searched now only for the reason, since the fact was apparent.

  “I don’t know if I can,” returned Hall slowly. “The rule of science is casualty. The billion-volt discharge escaped from the gun, struck us. That was the cause. What was the effect?”

  “That’s easy,” returned Kard, half sneeringly. “Death! Only we didn’t die—completely. So, Professor Hall?” Dr. Kard was always jealous of Hall’s keen, analytical mind. It was the first sign that not only their intellects, but their basic natures as well, had been carried over into this new existence.

  For a moment, Hall was silent. Then he said, changing the subject, “I’ve been looking around and I think I see our laboratory down there—former laboratory. Let’s go down to it and look things over.”

  “Go down—but how?”

  “By wishing!” retorted Hall, without sarcasm, “I have an idea that—well, anyway, we wished, or willed ourselves to see and it worked, so let’s try this. Just make a sort of wish to be hovering over the laboratory. All set? Wish!”

  The next moment was utter confusion to the two disembodied scientists.

  They seemed caught in a terrific silent wind that they did not feel, but which nevertheless was there. A dim warning worked in Hall’s thoughts. He sensed a danger that made him shriek:

  “Stop! Dr. Kard, say stop!”

  Abruptly, after these self-imposed commands, they stopped. They were much nearer the ground.

  “It felt like someone gave us a tremendous push!” commented Kard, “Your form has changed, Hall—to something like a squeezed egg!”

  “Automatic streamlining,” hazarded the professor. “We were going through the air at a terrific rate, Whatever those globe-shapes of ours are made of, we were in danger of being pulled apart by air-resistance. At lease we�
��re sure of one thing, Kard, We’re not pure mentality. We have physical substance of one sort or other. We’ll have to go slower. Say 20 miles an hour. Let’s wish ourselves down to the lab at that speed.”

  As though Aladdin’s evil genii were their slave, their corresponding wish eased them through the air at the speed desired. Hall had a persistent conviction that if they had a speedometer, it would register exactly 20 miles an hour.

  Side by side, the two almost-invisible globes descended to Earth. Soon they were hovering over the ruin of their laboratory, well beyond the outskirts of the great industrial plant whose funds had financed the ill-fated project.

  It was mere debris. Bricks were scattered for a half mile. The powerhouse was a caved-in wreck, with pieces of smashed machinery scattered in all directions, The atomic-gun itself had split into two great halves, fifty feet apart.

  A large crowd had gathered, but the main area had been roped off. Police were shoving gawkers back. Several ambulances were parked nearby. Figures were walking and poking among the ruins. It was the usual scene of confusion around any disastrous occurrence.

  “It was a mighty big explosion all right,” Dr. Kard said mentally to his companion. “It must have happened only an hour or so ago. The metal of the gun is still smoking.”

  “Yes,” said Hall sadly. “The ruin of a great experiment. I’m still sure that a billion volts, properly controlled, will accomplish large-scale transmutation.”

  “But uncontrolled, as it was, it merely performed the transmutation of you and me into—well, it’s anybody’s guess,” Kard returned. “What do you suppose caused the failure of the apparatus?”

  “That isn’t important,” deprecated Hall. “Not to us any more. Look—they’re taking the bodies out of the power-house. MacKayne and his men. All three killed, too!”

  “By the way, where are our bodies?” queried Kard. “Let’s go closer—”

  The two mental wraiths, quite invisible to the people around, floated down and hovered over the ambulances. They saw the broken, twisted bodies of the three power-house men carried in stretchers to the vehicles and loaded in. Then two more stretchers appeared. The bodies in them were hardly recognizable. The skin had been charred black, and some crushing weight had flattened them ail out of shape.