The Collected Stories

by Earl

  In dead silence. Stoddard took the relics out and banded them to Jackson, There was a large, cleared space on the floor of the warehouse, and Jackson carefully laid the items in neat row’s.

  The two young archeologists were panting in sweat in their hurry. But they were breathless from more than their labors. Through them tingled the thrill of entering the spirit-haunted tomb of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh. Or it was like finding the fossil hones of some hitherto unknown species of mankind. Or die wreck of a spaceship or flying saucer. All these things and more.

  The treasures were books with metallic leaves, printed in an unknown language. There were photographs with a vividly three-dimensional illusion. There were samples of plastic clothing that seemed utterly rip-proof, stronger titan steel yet lighter than down.

  Item by item piled up, unbelievably.

  “All the paraphernalia of a magnificent civilization more advanced than ours,” Stoddard gloated. “Well, Jackson? Is this still a spurious hoax spawned in the twisted mind of a guy playing it for laughs?”

  “Why not?” Jackson returned stubbornly, but with an uncertain air. “I want positive proof to the contrary.”

  “You’ve got it,” Stoddard sang, holding up photographs of startling detail. “Scenes on other worlds! One of these has a canal, like Mars would have. They had space ships and interplanetary travel. When have you been to Mars lately, Jackson?”

  “Hollywood,” said Jackson, “can make better sets than those. Those scenes prove nothing—not to me.”

  Stoddard let out a triumphant yell, as he took out what appeared to be a small mechanical model of a spaceship. He touched a liny stud on its side. It hissed and leaped out of his hand.

  It spun up toward the warehouse rafters at blazing speed. Then it turned as if sensing the roof against which it might crash, swooped down like a boomerang, and wheeled in wide circles over their heads. Finally it slowed down and came to a hall . . .

  In mid-air!

  “Fill be a Neanderthal!” Stoddard gasped. “Do you know what that is. Jackson? Nothing less than an anti-gravity motor. Look, there it hangs in thin air!”

  “Anti-gravity?” Jackson gulped.

  Stoddard had no mercy. “Oh nonsense. Jackson. Your version of the truth is that some crackpot spent a million dollars to develop anti-gravity, and then stuck it in this time Capsule so he could laugh up his sleeve at us.”

  Jackson broke down. “You win, Stoddard. I withdraw my sadly shattered hoax theory. But what’s your theory? Did the Egyptians have such a miracle of science? Or the Dravidiaus? The early Mongols? Or any dead civilization we ever heard of?”

  “No, none we ever heard of.” agreed Stoddard. “If only we could pin it down . . . Ah!” He pulled something else out of the time capsule, “This gadget is unmistakably a movie projector

  It was shaped like a modified movie projector of compact size, lint with no connecting cord. “How do we rim it?” Jackson puzzled. “How do we feed it current?”

  Stoddard pondered and then pretended to kick himself. “What asses we are. Everything else is self-contained. so this must he. it probably has its own built-in power system, too. I press this button.”

  With a buzz, the machine came to life, casting pictures before their eyes, in dazzling grandeur.”

  “How do you like that?” Stoddard grunted. “We don’t even need a screen. It builds images in thin air.”

  They watched in silent wonder. It was all like fairyland. Arabian Nights. Alice in Wonderland. Magic.

  The scenes were fantastic, of towering cities spanned with a network of spidery ramps, of stratosphere rocket liners, and robot workers, and spaceships cleaving among the stars.

  Jackson spoke in a hush. “Stoddard! It’s all like a dream. It can’t be real!”

  Stoddard glared hack with a laugh, hut then his face became serious. “I feel like somebody hit me on the head too. It’s all so incredible and yet—listen. A voice!”

  A man’s face appeared in the mid-air “screen,” His clothing was odd: he had a flowing mantle at his shoulders, lie wore a jaunty feathered hat. He was evidently a commentator, speaking in rapid-fire accents, no doubt telling of his own amazing civilization. They listened for a long moment.

  “What is it?” demanded Jackson, impatiently. “Don’t hold out on me, you idiot. Is it ancient Greek? Phoenician? Syrian? What?”

  But Stoddard’s face was stunned, more stunned than at any time before, as he strained to understand the staccato voice.

  “No. It’s just—just gibberish, Jackson.”

  “What—even to you?” Jackson was truly startled, “But you’re a dead-language expert. You could even recognize spoken Sanskrit, the granddaddy of all language, couldn’t you?”

  “Yes.” admitted Stoddard matter-of-factly, without conceit. “Even if it were Sanskrit spoken with a lisp by a Neanderthal man with an Irish accent. I should understand a word here and there, no matter what fossil language it is. It’s the root words that count. But I don’t understand a thing, Jackson. Not a syllable. Not one syllable, Jackson.”

  Jackson spoke quietly, in awe.

  “That makes it completely fantastic.”

  “You can say that again,” exploded Stoddard, pacing the floor. “Sit down. Jackson. There’s only one answer to this. There was an Ice Age circa 25,000 B.C., wasn’t there? If a civilization existed before, that, it would have been wiped from the memory of man. Therefore, I submit that the voice we hear was first recorded more than 250 centuries ago!”

  “Impossible,” spat Jackson instantly. “Civilization on Earth that long ago? That’s in the never-never category of Atlantis and Mu anti all such unproved rot.”

  Stoddard spread his hands.

  “That’s the only possible answer, Jackson. Just think, we’ve stumbled on something sensational. Something that will blast the roof off of archeology and all related sciences, here in staid old 1953. What else can it lie hut a Pre-Ice-Age civilization?”

  “Impossible,” said Jackson again. “Impossible.”

  “Is that the only stupid word you know?” Stoddard sneered. “Why couldn’t there have been such a civilization, ground under by the lee Age glaciers?”

  “Impossible,” Jackson reiterated firmly. “Let’s he sensible, Stoddard. It just doesn’t fit. We’ve found evidence of Neanderthal and Heidelberg and Piltdown man, and other such rudimentary cultures as far back as 500.000 years ago. How could this inconceivable, grade A culture pop out of a clear blue sky in the middle of that Stone Age era? It’s like finding out they used the atom bomb in Medieval times.”

  “All right,” Stoddard improvised. “Then it was prior to 500,000 B.C.”

  “Impossible,” Jackson frowned. “How ridiculous can you get? We’ve found fossil bones of dinosaurs from millions and millions of years ago, perfectly preserved. Why not fossil remains of that hypothetical race and civilization? Again it fits like a square peg in a round hole—like the hole in your head.”

  Stoddard skipped the chance for a brisk and delightful exchange of insults. He was desperate now. “So it’s a civilization that wiped itself out with atom bombs for instance—leaving absolutely no traces.”

  “Again impossible—” Jackson snorted. “Even if you turn all cities into junk with bombs, who takes away the junk? Impossible.”

  “If you say that word once more—”

  “Inconceivable, then,” Jackson drawled, with mock fright. “You’re a flaw less idiot. Stoddard, talking like that. If they ever dig up your fossil skeleton in the future, how will they ever explain the wooden skull they find? Once and for all. it’s inconceivable-incomprehensible—incredible—unconscionable—take your pick of synonyms for impossible—for any past civilization to vanish from this Earth without a trace.” Stoddard looked at the bronze capsule, glinting in its own mocking radiance, almost with hale now. “I wish we’d never found the thing,” he growled. “Do they take good care of you in insane asylums? What is the answer to this riddle?”

/>   Jackson ventured no answer. Site was sunk in deep perplexity.

  “The worst of it is,” sighed Stoddard, “there goes our bubble of fame—poof! And we were going to amaze Beatty—and the world—with our brilliant deduction of the time capsule’s origin! We might as well give up and turn in.”

  It was close to dawn now.

  But Jackson, face aglow with inspiration, now fiddled with the movie projector. “This stud. I guess that turns it bark to the beginning. And this other stud—”

  Soon, the formerly heard enigmatic voice filled the air again, but at a lower pitch, almost in a dragging drawl.

  Stoddard sat bolt upright, face thunderstruck. “Listen, Jackson. I can understand him now’—vaguely, that is. What did you do besides starting the film from the beginning?”

  Jackson was excited now. “Just on a hunch, I slowed down the gadgets with this other stud. The pictures are in slow-motion now. And the voice-yes. now we can make out some words.”

  They listened patiently for a long while. Stoddard shook his head, not getting enough of it to make sense. But Jackson seemed to understand it.

  “What’s it all about?” pleaded Stoddard. “Do you get the drift of it?”

  Jackson nodded, speaking in a low, tense voice.

  “It’s a queer story. Stoddard. The queerest story ever told since the creation. Use your imagination to fill in the gaps. Think once—picture a great and glorious civilization such as the one that buried this time capsule. Think of them coining to the end of the road. That’s the commentator’s reference, as I got it, to some kind of blight. A frightful blight that wiped out their race, one person after another.”

  Jackson paused, and went on sadly. “Even their superb science couldn’t halt the blight. They faced oblivion. A blank future, in which their world would he lifeless—barren—for the blight attacked all living things, all animals and plants. Their world was stripped, denuded of all life. Tragic . . . horrible . . . ghastly.”

  It was a moment before Jackson could go on.

  “But they wanted to leave a record. They wanted someone to know about them. Their place in history. Their niche in the universe. They didn’t want to pass on into eternity without leaving some marker behind. Yet it would do them no good to just bury a time capsule on their world, for a future age to see. Because—the cosmic irony of it all!—there would be no future age! Don’t you get it now, Stoddard?”

  “Yes,” breathed Stoddard. “Sure I get it. They were from another world!”

  He stopped as if startled at his own words, then went on in an excited rush. “They couldn’t bury a time capsule on their own world, because there would he no future beings to dig it up. So they migrated through space—those pitiful few that were left after the ravages of the blight—and buried it here on earth. That accounts for the lack of remains of their civilization—it never existed here. And did you notice when the speaker turned his head once? It bulged. They had maybe 25 per cent bigger brain capacity than we. Obviously not homo sapiens, hut people from another world, with no future ahead. That’s perfect now—perfect!”

  “Perfect,” agreed Jackson wearily. “Perfect rot. Their language—why did I understand it, as well as I understand you? Those people were humans with larger craniums.”

  Stoddard held his breath.

  Jackson spoke slowly, measuring each word carefully. knowing in awe that it was the most dramatic revelation of all time.

  “All previous time capsules were buried for a future age to find. But with their superb science, using time-machine mechanisms, these humans sent their capsules into the past.”

  Jackson finished in a whisper.

  “That time capsule is from our own human race, changed only by evolution—from One Million A.D.—from the future!”

  Stoddard gasped.

  Two thoughts hit him like jolts of lightning. “A time capsule—literally.” Then his voice turned grim and sad. “The human race ends there . . . a million years from now . . . finis . . . Here lies the last man . . .”

  He recovered himself and grabbed Jackson in his arms, embracingly. “Jackson, you genius! We shake the world after all. But how did you suspect it was future English, streamlined and speeded-up. as in all evolution of language?”

  “My stupid Darling,” said Helen, “Haven’t you ever heard of feminine intuition?”

  THE COSMIC BLINKER

  Though the military considerations of a station in space have been emphasised by scientists, probably with the hope that such an angle might facilitate funds for such a project, one of the greatest benefits to accrue from successful establishment of a space station or an ultimate base on the moon would be the advantages of establishing an astronomical observatory. The effectiveness of our present telescopes would be increased manyfold, once outside the deep ocean of the earth’s atmosphere. The new clarity of observation would unveil many of the universe’s greatest mysteries—but, just as surely, add still greater mysteries to take their place. Binder tells, with considerable imagination, the story of a variable star that didn’t conform.

  “MYSTERY of the ages,” muttered Robert Oxman, senior astronomer, coming out of the darkroom with a damp plate.

  Paul Darby turned from his dials. “Yon mean that variable in M-81?”

  It was quite an unnecessary question, for that was all the old man ever talked about these days.

  “What is it doing now, sir?”

  “Cutting up capers as usual,” said Oxman bitterly, swallowing a white pill. “And giving me ulcers. There’s no rhyme or reason to its behavior. It just doesn’t fit in the scheme of things.”

  He looked up out of the huge steelophane dome, through its clearness, at the piercing stars swimming in space. The unwinking stars. Here, at the Lunar Observatory, were the ideal conditions for observing the outer universe. A hundred yards away the Giant Eye hummed, keeping on target with the majestic revolution of the sun-sprinkled vault above.

  The target had shifted now, hut before it had been M-81, the spiral galaxy some two million light-years away. And within the myriads of M-81 pulsed one star, brighter and dimmer, ceaselessly. A Cepheid variable, but standing by itself in its unorthodox data.

  “Mystery of the ages,” Oxman gritted again.

  Other staff astronomers at nearby desks exchanged grins with one another. As long as they could remember, old Oxman had harped on that worn dirge. Assigned to Cepheids some forty years ago, the topmost living expert on them, Oxman had spat out that phrase day in and day out. Always in baffled dismay. His tall gaunt figure jerked with the words. His wrinkled eyes held weary frustration.

  “See here,” said Stanhope of red giants, whose desk was nearest. “You’re making too much of a thing out of this, Oxman. A mountain out of a molehill.”

  “You think so?” Oxman snapped peevishly. “Mind you, this thing has been going on for five thousand years. Since the 20th century! I’m the last of a long line of astronomers—hundreds of them—who observed Old Unfaithful, wracked their brains over it, and never came up with any explanation.” He glared. “Tell me, have you any red giant mystery unsolved for five thousand years?”

  Stanhope subsided with a sigh and turned back to his own work.

  Paul Darby, young and new to the staff, was more receptive. “Old Unfaithful,” he chuckled. “Guess that name fits all right.”

  “Like a glove,” nodded Oxman, sourly. “That Cepheid was first spotted by the old-time 200-inch Palomar scope, hack in 1950. From that day to this—five thousand and forty years later—it was watched constantly. We have mountains of photographs of it. A hundred trained minds puzzled over it, generation after generation. A mystery that spans time from the 20th to the 70th century—unsolved!”

  Then, apologetically, “Sorry, I must be boring you, Paul, like all the others—”

  “Please go on, sir,” Darby invited quickly, with a spark of pity for the old man. “I haven’t heard the full story of Old Unfaithful. Besides, I have time to kill while Brains wr
estles with his homework.”

  Darby grinned and patted his machine. He was the technician handling the electronic brain that digested all the observatory’s cosmic equations. “Brains” clacked and hissed beside him, working madly at the moment on a complex problem of red shifts. While his ingenious mechanical partner labored, Darby was at leisure. He waited with willing ears.

  Oxman leaned back in his chair, nesting his hands, and the words tumbled out of him as if relieving an ache inside him.

  “There are many kinds of variable stars. But you see they all dim and brighten at regular intervals. Their periods may range widely from a half-day to five hundred days. Their luminosity may jump and fall as much as nine magnitudes. Their spectrums may vary from red giants to white dwarfs. But they all have constant, unchanging patterns of their own, regular as clockwork. All of them. And after a thousand years they’ll still be doing the same thing. You can depend on them, as . . . well, as they do on Old Faithful, that geyser down home in Yellowstone Park.”

  “But Old Unfaithful,” Darby asked, “has never repeated his pattern, not even in five thousand years?”

  “Never,” snapped Oxman, almost with a growl. “Not once. He’s got a new bag of tricks every time an old fool like me takes a squint at him. No pattern—and it’s really quite impossible, you know. It throws all our well-ordered theories of the universe out the garbage chute. It cracks the very foundations of the cosmos, as we know it.”

  Stanhope turned from his desk with a snort. He pointed up at the unmoving vault of stars. “I don’t see the universe falling apart,” he jibed, grinning. “Looks quite stable to me.”

  Oxman tried to ignore him but winced visibly. Darby hastily filled the gap. “But I don’t quite see. Why is it impossible for a variable to have no pattern?”

  “Because,” spat Oxman in tones tinged with high blood-pressure, “it’s the only fool star in the entire macrocosmos that we never fitted into any theory. Think once. There are maybe a billion galaxies out there. All of them contain Cepheids, red giants and white dwarfs, nebular clouds, coalsacs, and star clusters, multiple suns, dead companions, red shifts, and so on down the line. But one theory covers all red giants in all galaxies. One theory covers all novas in all galaxies. Without fail. There are never any renegade exceptions. And of the billions of Cepheids we’ve catalogued, in the billion galaxies, they all fit theory perfectly.”