The Arthur Leo Zagat Science Fiction Megapack

by Arthur Leo Zagat

  “What are you going to do, dear?”

  “Smash up every bit of the hellish devices so that never again can anyone use them to menace civilization. I want to destroy every vestige of that product of distorted genius, and then forget even the little I know of its working!”

  “But wait just a minute, John. Think first of those poor slaves whom we saw last night. They are still under the spell. If you destroy the apparatus now, they will remain forever in its power. Why not bring them back here first and release them?”

  “You are right, dear heart. And now that I stop to think, only one of the old devil’s inventions is essentially evil. It would be a shame to destroy that marvelous transportation device—that at least is of tremendous value.

  “Now let me see, there are the keys which will bring back those poor lost souls. ‘Turn this way’—he said.” And Dunton operated the switches he had pointed out.

  “Now let’s get down into the garden. Good clean air will be most welcome after that cell, and all we have gone through in this horrible place.”

  Again they entered the gorgeous garden. Beauty had been there before, but an evil beauty. Now the bright morning sun illumined a flowery fairyland whose fresh colors bespoke the beauty of Nature’s loveliness.

  “Look there, dear—they are coming.”

  Over the snowy caps of the towering peaks that rimmed the gardens, now appeared, one after another, what seemed huge birds. High in that illimitable blue they soared, then in great swooping spirals they descended. From every point of the compass they came, till the garden was again peopled with a throng of men of every race. Again they walked the garden with their lack-luster eyes.

  * * * *

  When the sky was clear again, Dunton ascended again to the great hall. He found a sliding panel through which he could see the garden.

  “How am I going to release them?” he pondered. He walked over to the tubes which he knew produced the nerve-vibration. Only two were glowing, the same two which had been lit when first he had beheld them.

  “Hmm, perhaps these control the vibrations. I’ll chance it!” Picking up the ebony chair he had intended to use before, he sent it crashing through the glass of the two tubes. Then he leaped back to his lookout. Far below him he could see the crowd of men. But no longer were they moving about aimlessly, mechanically. Most were still, as if in bewilderment, but even from that great height the American could determine that there was no mechanical stiffness about the gestures of those who were not still.

  Hastily he descended to the garden. It was true. Bewildered, wondering where they were and how they had been brought there, the erstwhile robots were human once again!

  Little remains to be told. After the explanation of what had occurred to them had finally penetrated the astounded minds of the freed ones, they aided Dunton with a will in obliterating that part of the lama’s apparatus which produced and controlled the nerve-vibrations. It was unanimously decided that the unbelievable tale should not be told to the world, and it was also voted that the transportation rays be not used until their operation had been thoroughly studied by qualified scientists.

  The experience of the explorer stood all in good stead in organizing and conducting the return to civilization. Major Blakely’s astonished joy at the recovery of his long-lost daughter need not be described, as need not the simple ceremony which united the American explorer and the maiden.

  One incident is, however, worthy of mention. As the long cavalcade struggled over the summit of a pass through the mountains guarding the gardens of the Tower of Evil, John and Leila intoned the immemorial phrase which every Tibetan voices as he reaches the highest point of his journey from one side of a mountain range to the other. Never had that phrase been more appropriate:—

  “Lha Gvalo! De Tamche Pham.”

  (The Gods win! The demons are defeated!)

  THE MENACE FROM ANDROMEDA

  Written with Nat Schachner

  With a puzzled frown, Donald Standish looked up from the photographic plates in front of him to the patch of dark blue heaven visible through the half-opened dome of the Mt. Wilson observatory. There floated the enigmatic nebula of Andromeda—the huge telescope probing directly toward it—as if to pluck out the very secret of its being. He arose, and paced the confines of the huge room. Under thirty, clean cut in features, he had already earned an enviable reputation as an astronomer, which had won him a coveted place in the world-famous observatory. From the very beginning, the great nebula had exercised a peculiar fascination over him. In some inexplicable way Standish had always felt that there lay the secret of the universe waiting for him in the role of a Perseus to deliver and bring forth.

  In truth, many other contemplative observers had speculated about that faint, dusty patch of light sprawled athwart the enchained and enchanted body of the legendary daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia. For centuries men had pondered in vain, seeking the nature of the faint light-cloud which so persistently evaded their probings. It was not until recently, with the great advance in the manufacture and use of precision instruments and telephoto lenses, that the astounding truth had been revealed to startled astronomers—this faint glimmer in the skies is a great island universe of stars; far beyond the confines of our own galaxy—millions on millions of suns and attendant planets, careening through the outermost reaches of space-time, so inconceivably remote that a ray of light traveling 186,000 miles per second would take nearly a million years to reach the earth.

  Standish turned once more to the sheaf of photographs. Yes—there was no doubt about it, the faint pin-prick of light labeled on the sky charts as 12478, which he had himself named Alcoreth, showed an unmistakable increase in brightness in this most recent of his photographs.

  For over a year, on every clear night, he had photographed the great nebula. The minute pin-pricks of light, representing huge stars, had been laboriously ticketed and compared. This queer behavior on the part of Alcoreth, hitherto a placid, ordinary star, aroused his interest.

  “Something interesting happening to the constellation of that old lady,” Donald remarked to himself, meditatively stroking his chin. “I’d better turn the prisms on her and see what’s going on in her innards to account for it.”

  Deftly he adjusted the great spectroscope, and swung it on the errant orb. As he gazed, a startled “Whew” escaped him. These were not the spectral lines and bands customarily associated with hot gaseous stars in eruption.

  “This is becoming more interesting—better verify it,” he thought. Quickly he took out his series of comparison spectra. None of them checked with this spectrum.

  Again he arose, and paced the room. This was evidently not a burning sun. Apparently it was a relatively cold mass. What then was it? Was it shining by reflected light? But, he argued with himself, there was no sun within billions of miles to produce such a vast outpouring of reflected light. There must be some other cause for its luminosity. Excitedly Standish paced about. Luminescence—phosphorescence. This must be a world composed of some radio-active mineral! He strode back to the spectroscope. No, these were not the characteristic lines of any radio-active mineral known to science. Again he took up his restless pacing. The word phosphorescence brought to his mind pictures of the fields at night alive with the darting sparks of fireflies—of the forests, and the glow of rotting fungus and decaying wood—of the tropic seas under the Southern Cross, criss-crossed with pallid witch-fires.

  He stopped in his tracks. By George, that was it! Life forms—protoplasm—under certain conditions would become strongly luminescent. But no—that was too fantastic for serious consideration. And yet—and yet. Try as he would to dismiss the thought from his mind, it occurred again and again, until it obsessed him. He must check it, and that this very minute.

  In the course of his researches, Standish had discovered that by causing the light of luminous protoplasm to pass through a series of gases, the spectroscope was capable of resolving the constituent elements. As yet
the process was a guarded secret, but the material was at hand.

  With trembling hands the astronomer set up four thin walled transparent chambers, put into each a definite quantity of a rare gas—different for each chamber—attached them in series to the great spectroscope in such a fashion that the light from Alcoreth passed through them, before reaching the prisms that would cause it to yield up its secret.

  “What an idiot I am to waste my time on such a crazy idea!” he scoffed aloud, at the same time looking around guiltily. “It’s damn foolish, all right, but what’s the odds. Let’s take a look-see.” He inserted a comparison spectrograph of the organic elements, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, sulphur and phosphorus—the essentials of life as we know it on this planet.

  With elaborate carelessness, hardly masking his inner trepidation, he gazed into the aperture. The spectrum appeared. A quick look, a longer one, then a concentrated stare—a feverish scribbling of calculations—then he arose with a mighty shout, that echoed from the great white dome. “Eureka, I have found it!” The cry of Archimedes on making his famous discovery. The impossible was true. The life elements were all present on that distant star, and what was infinitely more, its spectrum showed the peculiar arrangement of lines and bands which his research had shown was invariably associated with living protoplasm.

  His immediate impulse was to broadcast his discovery to the scientific world. But then a thought sobered him. So fantastic a theory would never be accepted unless supported by impregnable proof. Premature publication, and he would become a laughing-stock. No, he must wait until his spectroscopic research was perfected. In the meantime, keep on observing this strange new world.

  For three weeks he took innumerable photographs, barely pausing for sleep and food. The star increased in brightness, then tiny streamers shot forth intermittently, then slowly it waned. From a fifteenth magnitude star it passed gradually down the scale, till finally a last plate failed to show any trace of it. Alcoreth was gone, and with her, Standish’s hope of everlasting fame.

  The astronomer was in despair. How now could he convince the scoffers that he had witnessed the impossible—a world of living protoplasm! His proof was gone.

  Yet, when he pondered over it—it did not seem impossible. Life—protoplasm—was only a particular combination of five or six elements. These elements are found throughout the universe. Was it inherently impossible, or even wildly improbable, for these elements to combine in some other world to form living matter, just as on our own earth various elements combined to form the rocks that constitute the structure of the world?

  So Standish argued, and thought wistfully of Douglas Cameron, his chum of college days, now a research worker on cancer in an isolated laboratory in the fastnesses of Colorado. He thought of Douglas and his sister and assistant Mary. Those two would listen to his tale of discovery. How he wished Mary was with him now! Well, another month and she would be with him always, his wife and helpmate. He could see her now, the laughing eyes, tilted nose, puckered lips. She was fair to look upon, his Mary, but wiry and strong, and behind that clear brow was a brain which made her fit sister to one scientist and wife to another.

  “Well, to work again,” he sighed, and continued the search for living worlds.

  * * * *

  Alcoreth heaved herself in long undulations that caused a plashing of luminous vibration in the surrounding ether. For Alcoreth was hungry. Eons of slow starvation stretched everlastingly ahead. Already huge vacuoles were dotting her interior, as the plasmic matter shrank and shriveled away. The food supply was disappearing—no more did rocky crags of green and purple hue rise above Alcoreth’s bosom. Only the inner core of minerals remained—and that was wearing dangerously thin over vast Alcorethean fires.

  Never to be forgotten was that frightful time when, questing for food to still the retching hunger, she had greedily absorbed too large a section of life reaching bottom rock, and torn through the thin layer.

  In an instant, the devastating flames had leaped and seared through the protoplasmic tissue. The very thought of it caused vast shudders to course through Alcoreth. For ages, the hellish fire spewed and roared—devouring, incinerating—bringing the tortures of the damned to her viscid frame. In agony, she heaved and twisted, but to no avail. Her sister spheres gazed on in helpless pity, but could render no aid. That final period—when annihilation seemed imminent—and almost welcome—a slipping of the rocky substratum had miraculously closed the gap, and once again imprisoned the ravaging fires. Slowly, painfully, and with difficulty, Alcoreth recreated sufficient plasma to cover the wounded surfaces; but her marvelous powers of reproduction were lessened. Since that fateful time, she only nibbled gingerly at the food rocks, and the pangs of hunger grew and grew.

  Message after message for assistance was sent on ethereal vibration to her sister spheres in that vast universe, and ever and anon some being kindlier than the rest would disrupt a fragment of the precious mineral, and cast it meteor-like through space towards the starving world. But these were mere sops. Alcoreth foresaw the inevitable. Already had protoplasmic worlds come to the end of their food supply, and either broken through to the central fires, and flamed through space like blazing torches to imponderable dust; or, cannibal-like, devoured their own substance—until the last pitiful bit of plasmic intelligence curled up on itself and died.

  Alcoreth was determined to avoid either of these fates. But how? For an eon her highly developed intelligence, diffused throughout her structure, brooded over the problem. Speculatively she vibrated in unison with the etheric waves from the galaxy of the Milky Way, of which Earth was so minute a member. A quiver ran through her—causing a strange luminescence to run riot over the surface of her body. The solution was found—desperate, fantastic—failure meant annihilation—but then, so eventually did the present state. So Alcoreth set to work to do what was needful for the great adventure.

  In this strange universe, electrons and protons had whirled just as naturally into the rhythmic forms of life—protoplasm—primitive plasm, as in our universe they had danced into the common rocks and minerals. Here, the first bits of plasma were causal in their beginnings; taking sustenance out of the abundant mineral elements; slowly and laboriously evolving and growing more and more complex through differentiation of structure and function; and culminating in highly complex man. There the cooling mist of electrons patterned overwhelmingly into diffused plasm, with enough of other elements to create a normal food supply. Each world was a living entity; there was no necessity for differentiation of parts; intelligence was inherent and diffused throughout the entire mass, just as is found in the primitive unicellular animals and plants on earth.

  The early forms of terrestrial life were able to absorb and digest mineral matter directly. In the universe of Andromeda, evolution had advanced further in that direction. Solid rock was ingested and digested rapidly and easily. Through eons of time, the vast inchoate consciousness of the mass developed into a highly energized intelligence, that could grasp intuitively problems far beyond our highest flights—and could communicate with other life-worlds by etheric vibrations. Mental states were marked by tremendous luminosity over the surface of the plasma, which in turn set the ether into rapid vibration.

  Alcoreth was busily at work. All over her body, she was rolling up into globules of protoplasm. The surfaces of these hardened into cell walls or cysts. Alcoreth was now dissociated into countless trillions of spores—as we call them. Each spore was in itself a unit of life, in a state of suspended animation; capable of resisting the frigid cold of space; capable of existing thus through countless ages; and expanding into life anew under favorable conditions.

  Clerk Maxwell, the great English physicist, toward the latter part of the nineteenth century, proved that light had a definite propulsive force, and that particles of matter, if minute enough, could be propelled through the ether with tremendous velocities by the electromagnetic rays of light. Svante August Arrhenius, the eminent
Swedish biologist, used this discovery as a basis for bold speculation. Was it not possible—he argued—for minute spores of life to pass through interstellar space from world to world, and germinate anew on barren, uninhabited worlds?

  All this Alcoreth knew as elemental truths. If only some of her spores could land on some far-off world, unaccountably and strangely formed of mineral matter solely—there to burgeon and grow with lightning-like rapidity in the midst of such plenty—what a marvelous rebirth! For inherent in each spore was the intelligence of the mass, and Alcoreth would exist anew in the alien universe.

  Finally all was in readiness. The time for the perilous emprise had come! The teeming aggregate of spores concentrated their mighty intelligence. They heaved and swelled. Weird radiances played over their surfaces. Huge luminous masses propelled themselves into space. Cloud after cloud of spore forms tore themselves loose, and shot forward. The tremendous journey was begun! Never in all the history of the universe was there a stranger migration!

  Criss-crossing the illimitable void were innumerable light vibrations. Instantly the spores were scattered in all directions, caught up by onrushing waves, carried along with the speed of light, scurrying towards the uttermost confines of space-time.

  On—on—through the illimitable void! Ages—eons—thousands and hundreds of thousands of light years—never ceasing—never slackening in their headlong flight! Past mighty suns—past strange planets—past pale nebulosities—past pallid shapes of interspatial denizens—past rushing comets with hair afire—past meteors, debris of uncounted worlds—on—on! Whole universes waxed great and waned to pin pricks in the darkling void! On! On!

  The Milky Way—a bend of light waves past the Sun—the earth planet loomed vast—a gravitational pull was exerted—and a cloud of spores had reached the end of their tremendous flight. Slowly through the warm air they settled and floated and dropped to the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.