by Earl
“And that,” whispered Kard, “is us!”
“What’s left of us!” murmured Hall forlornly.
THEY could not hear sound, but they had already noticed that they could detect thought in the people around. The white-robed coroner superintending the business shook his head sadly as his assistants unceremoniously shoved the bodies into the car that would take them to the morgue.
“They’re sure dead!” he said aloud, as though passing his medical opinion.
“That’s what you think!” said Dr. Kard in his psychic-voice.
The doctor glanced suspiciously at his assistants.
“Who said that?” he demanded. “This is hardly the time for levity.” The assistants looked at him blankly.
“Doctor, do you believe in ghosts?” radiated Kard maliciously, hovering just over the man’s head.
The doctor turned a little pale, glanced uneasily around, then shouted orders for the cars to leave. Policemen cleared a lane among the pressing crowds and the last mortal remains of Professor Eric Hall and Dr. Phil Kard were borne away from the spot at which they had met death—or something strikingly similar.
This is depressing,” said Hall. “Let’s go. Twenty miles an hour, a mile high.”
With the ease of magic, they arose above the scene of recent catastrophe, climbing toward the lacy clouds. There was no effort to it, no definable action on their part. They simply willed themselves upward, at a certain Speed, and the wish became accomplishment.
As they rose from warmer air to cooler in the heights, the two globes became surrounded with a misty halo that gradually deepened. Soon they were, milky-white.
“Water is condensing within us,” said Kard, puzzled. “Little droplets of water are forming all around us, and at the bottom—if we have bottoms—big drops are collecting and dripping off. What—”
“That’s it!” broke in Hall. “That confirms my guesses.”
“Well?”
“This is the well-known principle of condensation—change from a vapor to a liquid state. While we were down below in the warm air, our globes occluded water vapor. Now, while passing colder strata, the vapor condensed.”
“Elementary,” scoffed Dr. Kard.
“What promotes condensation, though? Dust, or any small particles, such as—electrons! Our physical bodies may be going to dust, but we—here—aren’t dust. We’re electrons, two clouds of them.”
“Electrons!” snapped Kard dubiously. “Just—just electrons?”
“Why not?” replied Hall with growing assurance. “It isn’t so amazing. That’s why we’re so weightless, and practically invisible. I figure it this way. The billion-volt discharge of electrons struck us, flowed over and through our bodies—through every cell. Trillions upon countless trillions of electrons poured into our nervous systems and our brains. Somehow, these electrons took up the pattern of our brains, minds, neural systems, personalities—they are all bound up in one, like a plate taking the impress of a die. As this new electron-pattern, we rode the concussion wave of the explosion and were blown a mile high, where we later regained consciousness.”
Kard digested that.
“Sounds logical,” he admitted, faintly jealous again. “But what about our seeing, and telepathy, and this strange process of wishing ourselves somewhere, and arriving without effort?”
“I have a vague idea—well, no, I don’t really know,” admitted Hall, “We’ll have to figure those things out later. Look, the sun is setting.”
From their aerial perch, the sunset was a magnificent sight. The two sentient globes watched as slowly changing hues splashed over the canvas of the sky. An infinite variety of color paraded down the corridor of night after the marching sun, colors that both of them suddenly realized they had never seen before.
“If you ask me,” said Kard, “we’re seeing by the entire electro-magnetic scale, instead of just with ordinary light—infra-red, ultra-violet, and all the way up the scale to cosmic-rays.”
“I believe you’re right,” mused Hall. “Everything is new in this new—ah—world—ah—excuse me! I’d swear I just yawned!”
“I had the same sensation a minute ago. But how can we yawn, without mouths?”
“We’re yawning mentally!” hazarded the professor. “Every physical reflex has its mental counterpart. Our subconscious minds evidently don’t quite realize that our bodies are gone. I think there’s no help for it but to try some sleep. It’s no wonder we’re tired, though. We had hardly any decent sleep for a. week, preparing for the experiment. It’s night now. Good night, Kard.”
“But how will we know we’re safe?” objected Kard. “We might fall while asleep.”
“We won’t,” assured Hall. “We have no weight to speak of. When we first regained our senses and thought we were going to fall, it was because we had commanded ourselves to, in the very fear of it.”
“Still,” said Kard worriedly, “I don’t quite like the idea of just dropping off to sleep up here, hanging on the rough side of nothing. It seems—well, spooky.”
“There’s no danger,” insisted Hall. “Stop worrying. What can harm us up here, a mile high? Meteors? One chance in a billion. A windstorm? If one comes, we’ll move with it.”
“What about birds. If one flapped its way through us—”
“Birds rarely fly a mile high. Now go to sleep. I’m tired.”
Kard, himself strangely weary, decided the professor was right and closed his eyes by the simple expedient of willing himself not to see. He was almost startled by the abrupt way in which utter blackness blotted out the stars overhead, and the earth lights below. A pleasant lethargy stole over them, and they fell soundly asleep.
As the night wore on, the two mentalities that had once been clothed in flesh and bones floated aimlessly a mile above ground,—as fast asleep as any in beds below.
CHAPTER TWO
VISITIATION TO EARTH
WHEN they awoke, in daylight again, they found it raining. Large drops of water pelted through them, as though they were sieves. They felt no discomfort.
Jagged lances of lightning crackled across the sky, from cloud to cloud. Suddenly they saw a brilliant light leap straight for them. They tried to duck but knew it was useless. When the lightning bolt struck, a brilliant pyrotechnic of violet sparks surrounded the two globes. But all they felt was an electrical tingle over their outer surfaces and a peculiar feeling of being stuffed with something. Nothing else happened, though they had been struck by lightning powerful enough to kill ten men.
“Did you see what happened?” laughed Professor Hall. “A lightning bolt is simply a stream of electrons, at a potential of 15 or 20 million volts. It so happens we represent a potential of electrons at a billion volts. So when the bolt struck us, it just drained away and petered out. We electrocuted the lightning flash!”
It was calm and clear higher, where they went later. They were in the stratosphere—no wind or clouds. Far below the storm raged itself out and began to die away.
“Hall, it may be my imagination, but I seem to be breathing with difficulty, only I know I’m not breathing!”
“It’s another of our buried reflexes,” said Hall. “Like our yawning. Our subconscious mind is warning our body that the air is rarefied. But we have no bodies. Notice that we don’t feel hungry—because the lightning bolt kindly fed us its electrons. That was the sensation of being stuffed that we felt.”
There was silence between them for a while. They watched the clouds of storm dispel. The world became bathed in the warm wash of sunlight. The bright dot of an airplane winged its way over the land like a metallic bee.
Earth lay below them, the earth they had once lived and moved in. Something akin to a deep sigh came from the invisible depths of the two globes.
“You know, Hall,” said Kard slowly, “I’m just thinking. We’re probably doomed to this sort of existence for li—for a long time.”
“Yes.”
“It’s appalling in a way, to
think of it.”
“Yes.”
“We had friends, relatives below there—activities and occupations—something to do! A complete life cycle that made up our daily lives. But now it’s like a new world, with us. How are we going to keep ourselves occupied? What are we going to do? What lies ahead of us—dreary years of ghostly wandering over the world in which we no longer belong? Endless hours of thinking, thinking—”
“Don’t get morbid,” admonished Hall, breaking in. “Here we are, and we’ll have to make the best of it. However, I don’t think we’ll be able to break the ties entirely that bind us to our former lives. I have a suggestion to make right now, in that line. I have a wife—a widow!—and three children down there in the world. I’m going to visit them. You have someone to go to, also.”
“Visit them?—as the next thing to ghosts? And then what?”
“Well, I don’t know. But I’m going down there, Kard. I must see them.”
“I have no wife,” said Kard thoughtfully. “However, I’ll drop in on my brother. Let’s go down. Forty miles an hour.”
SHIMMERING like globular jellyfish, that had somehow been transferred to an aerial life, they dropped downward. Nothing was spoken between them. Each was filled with his own thoughts of unfulfilled destiny. When they were hovering over their laboratory site, among whose ruins workmen were already clearing away the debris, Professor Hall said:
“We’ll meet here again at noon.”
“Right, professor.”
The globe of Dr. Kard moved toward the west side of town, vanishing in the air. Alone, Professor Hall rose and then swept toward the city’s north side, in whose surburban district he had lived for twenty years. High above the rooftops he went, observing the morning bustle. Nearing his home, he followed the line of familiar streets, trying to realize that he would never again traverse them in the flesh.
He heard the babble of voices from below, but paid no attention till he heard, mentally, the cry of a newsboy; “Extra! Read all about the big explosion—”
Curiosity getting the better of him, Hall descended and, by hovering over the stand, was able to read the account.
“GIANT ATOMIC-GUN EXLODES!
FIVE KILLED!”
Below, the account began:
“The huge atom-smasher with which Professor Eric Hall hoped to do amazing things, under the sponsorship of Universal Alloys, Inc., yesterday exploded, completely wrecking the laboratory. The noise could be heard for ten miles, and many windows at the south side of town were shattered by waves of concussion. Professor Hall, world renowned scientist, and his four assistants were instantly killed. Their bodies will be on view at the Deering Chapel at ten o’clock.”
With mixed feelings, the professor left the stand and once more took up the journey.
As he saw his bungalow home approaching a strange nostalgia stabbed through him. It was only yesterday that he had stepped from that door. His wife had kissed him and admonished him to “be careful with that big machine.” His three children had waved to him from the upstairs window, faces pressed against the pane.
They always tumbled out of bed to see him go, though it was early when he left that morning.
He circled the house slowly.
At last an open window offered entry. He found the rooms still and tomb-like. In the parlor he came upon a group of relatives seated in chairs and divans, conversing in whispers. They had long faces, though many were not genuine. Hall heard himself discussed and praised highly. Yet many of these people had always considered him a stuffy, dingy, uncompanionable sort of person; that he knew.
Then in the corner he saw his three children, sitting very stiff and straight, a little bewildered. Their eyes were red from recent tears. With a soundless cry, Professor Hall moved toward them.
Then he stopped, abruptly remembering.
It was him they were mourning! He was dead, to them. He could not kiss those chubby little faces, or toddle them on his knees any more. He hovered over them for a while, and though he could not shed tears, he was weeping.
The group became restless. Eyes were glancing furtively about.
“I—I have a strange feeling that Eric is in this room with us!” said one, shivering a bit. Others nodded their heads. Some of them looked straight at the globe of Professor Hall, but apparently could not make out its dim outline in the darkened room. The smallest of the three children, however, suddenly cried out, “Daddy!”
It was looking directly at the globe.
Feeling like a lost soul, Professor Hall hastily left the room. They would not understand if he talked to them by telepathy and told the story. He floated toward the back of the house, down the hall past the kitchen to the bedroom that had been his and his wife’s. Here he found the door almost closed. From beyond came the sound of heartbroken sobbing.
Professor Hall experimentally willed his globe-shape to flatten out. It did. He slipped into the room as a large flattened disk no more than an inch thick, and on the other side of the door he once again assumed the spherical form.
He found his wife lying face down on the bed, tears flowing steadily. He hovered over her for a minute, thinking of the happy married life they had had for so many years. Involuntarily, he cried out to her, from within himself.
The woman on the bed choked on a sob and turned slowly around. Her attitude became alert. She held her head as though listening, and sat up.
“Eric!” she said softly, puzzled, but not frightened. “Eric, are you here? I seem to feel you near me!”
For a moment, he had a strong temptation to talk to her by telepathy, and try to comfort her. But he conquered it. It would do no good, he reasoned, and might make her hysterical. It was better for her to think of him as dead than to know that he was some sort of undead wraith wandering over the world. With an effort of will that was anguish, he tore himself away, slipped through the door, and left the house by the same window he had entered.
He willed himself high into the air and then halted, thinking.
How ironic it all was! He wasn’t really dead, and yet to those people and to all the world he was. They would bury his body and come to forget him. All the while he would be as alive as they, but only as a bodiless, thinking entity. Then a strange thought struck him—when would he die? It was a question for which he knew no scientific answer. He hoped it was soon. He dreaded looking into an empty future. . . .
AT noon, Professor Hall was waiting above the ruins of the laboratory. At last Dr. Kard showed up, approaching slowly. Hall immediately sensed that he was nervous, shaken. Incoherent thoughts seemed to emanate from him, as though he had gone through some unnerving experience.
Kard’s greetings were a poor attempt at nonchalance.
“What is it, Kard? Something has shaken you—what happened?”
“Oh, nothing.” But his mental agitation finally got the better of him and Kard burst out in rapid psychic-speech. “I may as well tell you. I had meant to keep it from you, Hall, but I swear it was accidental. I—I just killed a man—my brother!”
“Tell me about it,” said the professor quietly, though it startled him no little.
“Well, I went to my brother’s home, where I had lived with him and his family for the last five years, you know. I found him alone in a room, preparing my insurance policy so that he could turn it in and collect.
He was my closest living relative and therefore my beneficiary.
“That part was all right. But as I hovered over him, I read his thoughts, which is a power you know we have. There never was much love lost between us, I’ll admit, but the coldblooded way he thought of my death—well, I distinctly heard him think that he was glad the ‘skinflint grouch was dead!’ He went on to remind himself that we had always argued over money matters, politics, and everything else—not one solitary regret, mind you, that his brother was gone! “I tell you, Hall, I just began boiling over, I gave him a chance to think better thoughts of me, but in all that fifteen minutes I waited, it wa
s only the meanest things he could dig out of his memory. He called me overbearing, stubborn, conceited and all such things. In his unconcealed mind—little knowing I was there reading if—he told himself over and over it was a fine thing that I had been killed. And he gloated—he positively gloated—over the money he was getting from the insurance company!”
Kard’s psychic-voice trembled in rage even now. Then he went on reluctantly.
“You see that I had provocation enough, Hall, to want to—to kill him? And yet, I didn’t really want to. I don’t know exactly what happened. All I know clearly is that I was very, very angry and rushed at him, forgetting that I was just an intangible globe. I think my object was to put my fingers around his throat and choke him for a while. Only I had no fingers.
“Well, my globe touched him while I was in this violent fit of anger. I rebounded a bit. Then suddenly a huge flash of electricity struck him. It seemed to come from me! The next moment my brother’s body lay on the floor—charred, lifeless! I stared for a moment, dazed at what had happened. But when the door opened and his wife came in to investigate the strange noises she had heard, I fled.
“After that I went high into the air and sort of paced up and down on a cloud. Of course, such a thing is bound to shake a person, I realized I had killed my brother and was sorry. But now—”
Dr. Kard’s mental attitude suddenly became cheerful, as if telling the story to the professor had given him relief. “But now, somehow, I’m not—”
Then, abruptly, Kard cut off his thoughts. “What’s done is done,” he finished non-committally.
“Too bad,” commented the professor, shocked at what he had heard. “But it’s not really your fault. I’m sure you had no premeditated thought of harm toward your brother, so morally you aren’t guilty. You—”
“Let’s not discuss the ethics of it,” muttered Kard half frigidly. “The thing is—how do you figure it out scientifically, his death at my contact?”