Wearily she crawled across to the thermometer and looked at it. It registered 143 degrees. It had dropped by two. Janet’s cracked lips parted in a smile of thankfulness for a moment.
Slowly, as she looked about her, Janet realized that she was struggling with impossible things. She had got to get help somehow. The thought of police did not worry her now. She would be roped in with Evelyn, of course, as an accessory, but her own conscience was clear. Evelyn was the killer, the one who had reason to be afraid.
Get out! Get back to London somehow! That was the answer. Janet swung round dizzily and headed for the bedroom door. Behind her, somewhere beneath her feet, a liquid circle of intolerable flame was burning. It gave her the light-headed impression of walking in space or across a floor of perfectly clear glass.
Janet entered the bedroom silently and Evelyn stirred a little and seemed to be listening for something. Then she squirmed up on the bed where the dead Mike lay beside her. She drew her slender bare legs over the bed edge and planted her feet on the floor.
“Oh, it’s you, Jan—” For some reason there was half a question in her voice.
“Yes.” Janet was glad Evelyn was more rational. Her fit of emotion seemed to have passed. “I—I couldn’t stick it out there in the living room. It’s terrifying when you’re trying to face it alone.”
“Are you trying to tell me? You’ve got Prayerbook, haven’t you? As much as the louse is worth, anyway.”
Janet did not answer. For some reason she wanted to cry, but she didn’t.
“Is—is it night, or day, or what?” Evelyn mumbled, and Janet, preoccupied, missed a certain significance in the question.
“It’s—it’s both.” Janet paused for a moment at her own unusual statement. “The sun hasn’t set, Eve, as you can see for yourself. It’s shining right through the ground!”
“So that’s it!” Evelyn rubbed impatient hands through her thick blonde hair. “Whoever heard of a sun shining at night? The world’s coming to an end, that’s what it is—just as Prayerbook said. Maybe there’s something in his psalm-smiting ideas after all. Sort of see the future, eh?”
“Maybe,” Janet whispered, and Evelyn gave her a curiously vacant look.
“What are you so damned quiet about? Can’t be the sun still getting you down, surely? You ought to have got used to it by now.”
“It’s not that, Evelyn. It’s Prayerbook. He’s—he’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
“I don’t know. He broke down and just dashed outside. I shouted after him but he didn’t come back. He never will now. I know that. I know he was tough, hard as rock, but he was something to swing onto. I feel so desperately lost without him.”
“Hard lines, kid. I’m sorry for you. I suppose he was your man after all—same as Mike was mine. Looks like the woman always pays, eh?”
Janet went over to the bed and sat down beside the other girl, putting an arm about her shoulders.
“Evelyn, we’ve got to get out and risk it. We just can’t stay here. We might stand a chance back in London. I’ll drive the car.”
“Don’t be an idiot!” Evelyn replied flatly. “That car must be that flaming hot it’d rip the skin from you if you tried it. Anyway, of you could get as far as starting the engine you’d probably have it burst into flames. Can’t take a risk like that. Anyway, what good would it do us to go back to London? We’d only be picked up.”
“What does that matter? Be better than this, anyway!”
Evelyn moved a languid arm. “You go on, kid, and run back to the city and the police. They won’t do much to you anyway: you’re too nice. But I’m stopping!”
Janet made no movement there and then. Evelyn hesitated as if making up her mind over something, then she got to her feet and staggered uncertainly from the bedroom into the living room, clutching tenaciously at the wall as she went. Janet watched her for a moment and then silently followed. At an angle beneath them, pouring up out of the void, was the unmasked and terrifying glare.
“I—I tried to sleep in that room,” Evelyn said, fumbling for a glass so clumsily that Janet helped her and placed it, with a small quantity of soda water in it, in her hand. “I couldn’t get away from the light, Jan. It soaked through me, through my eyelids. I tried everything. I think I fell asleep at last, worn out. I fell asleep looking at that hell-fired sun. Bit queer, eh? I never heard of anybody doing that outside maybe a Hindu ascetic.”
Evelyn gulped down the soda water, made a wry face, then shrugged her smooth, undraped shoulders. She was completely naked save for the decencies. “Doesn’t seem quite so hot as it was,” she commented, giving a dull look around her.
“It isn’t. The temperature dropped two degrees not so long ago. I haven’t looked since—but I will.” Janet hurried over to the thermometer and studied it. Her heart beat a little faster with relief. It had climbed down to 139 degrees.
“Well?” Evelyn asked her. “Any cooler?”
“Definitely. Five degrees lower than it was and still slowly dropping. I think we re through the worst—unless it comes back.”
“Wouldn’t be surprised,” Evelyn growled. Then after a moment or two’s silence she added, “Well, go on, Jan. Since it’s a shade cooler maybe you can snatch safety. Don’t bother about me. I’ll stay and fry if the fires catch up. If they don’t—well, who cares anyway?”
Janet was silent, debating the situation. Evelyn waited for a moment—then suddenly all her struggle for calmness broke down. She laughed desperately, the safety valve of emotion too long pent. The steaming silence rang with it. Janet seized her and forced her across the blazing abyss to a chair, nearly flinging her into it.
“Evelyn, stop it! Stop it!” Janet landed a stinging slap across the face. “Stop behaving like a child! Let’s get out of here—both of us! Grab some clothes and we’ll go.”
“No!” Evelyn shook her head stubbornly in between gusts of laughter. “I’m not going anywhere. I told you that—and I meant it!”
“Evelyn, stop talking like an idiot! We just can’t stay here—”
Janet stopped dead, conscious of the incredible. She waited, breathing hard, every nerve tautened to breaking point. She did not dare believe what she saw. The glare beneath her feet, that flaming brilliance ninety-three-million miles away, was dimming! Very slowly the effulgence was fading!
She blinked and rubbed her eyes, fearful for the moment that they were failing after the punishment they had endured. Finally she stumbled across to the cigarette lighter on the table by the open window. Striking the flint she gazed at the resultant steady flame. It was perfectly normal and bright. Nothing wrong with her sight then.
She waited again with a palpitating heart. The mad sun was smothering itself in seas of dark infinity beneath her feet. She could at last look upon it without hurt, see it fading into a red ball. Everybody on the “night” hemisphere was looking at it at that moment, aware that the hellish adventure with mad light-waves was at an end. Earth was swimming gradually free of the warp in space and normal laws were commencing to reassert themselves.
The last spark faded out of the underground sun. Black! The floor solid as it had always been. Outside—the blessed night.
Janet sucked in a deep breath and felt her eyes twitching as restful, normal darkness surrounded her. Picking up the cigarette lighter again she flicked it into flame in front of the thermometer. The mercury had dropped to 120 degrees. Heat radiation was reverting to normal as the last edges of the warp were crossed and Earth sailed out into normal space.
“Well, are you going or not?” Evelyn demanded from the gloom.
Janet gave a start and then frowned. The question was odd considering the enormity of the blessed thing that had just happened. “We’re both going now,” she said.
“Why now? My decision hasn’t changed a jot, Jan. I’m not going because of a glare—”
“The glare’s gone, Evelyn. The hell is over.”
There was silence—then a low, cho
ked laugh out of the night. “And I thought I’d fooled you, Jan! You little idiot! Don’t you see why I want to stay here and rot—or fry? With Mike in there, I’m no good any more! I’m stone blind! I fell asleep staring at the sun through my eyelids. I did it purposely! I said I wanted peace, and dark, and I got it! Well, maybe I deserve this. I’m finished, kid. You get out. You’re decent, and always were—”
Janet said nothing. Somehow she had half guessed it. The odd question Evelyn had asked: the way she had fumbled her drink—but she had to be taken away. She would be taken away—by force if need be. Janet was quite determined on that. “I’m going to get help,” she said, and turned to the doorway.
Here she paused for a moment, the quiet of the cooling bungalow disturbed only by Evelyn’s bitter sobbing. From far away lightning flashed over the grass fires and there came a menacing rumble of thunder as cool air surged into the ebbing blanket of heat that had tortured the world.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
British writer John Russell Fearn was born near Manchester, England, in 1908. As a child he devoured the science fiction of Wells and Verne, and was a voracious reader of the Boys’ Story Papers. He was also fascinated by the cinema, and first broke into print in 1931 with a series of articles in Film Weekly.
He then quickly sold his first novel, The Intelligence Gigantic, to the American magazine, Amazing Stories. Over the next fifteen years, writing under several pseudonyms, Fearn became one of the most prolific contributors to all of the leading US science fiction pulps, including such legendary publications as Astounding Stories, Startling Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, and Weird Tales.
During the late 1940s he diversified into writing novels for the UK market, and also created his famous superwoman character, The Golden Amazon, for the prestigious Canadian magazine, the Toronto Star Weekly. In the early 1950s in the UK, his fifty-two novels as “Vargo Statten” were bestsellers, most notably his novelization of the film, Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Apart from science fiction, he had equal success with westerns, romances, and detective fiction, writing an amazing total of 180 novels—most of them in a period of just ten years—before his early death in 1960. His work has been translated into nine languages, and continues to be reprinted and read worldwide.
BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY JOHN RUSSELL FEARN
1,000-Year Voyage: A Science Fiction Novel
The Crimson Rambler: A Crime Novel
Don’t Touch Me: A Crime Novel
The Empty Coffins: A Mystery of Horror
The Fourth Door: A Mystery Novel
From Afar: A Science Fiction Mystery
The G-Bomb: A Science Fiction Novel
Here and Now: A Science Fiction Novel
Into the Unknown: A Science Fiction Tale
The Man Who Was Not: A Crime Novel
One Way Out: A Crime Novel (with Philip Harbottle)
Shattering Glass: A Crime Novel
Slaves of Ijax: A Science Fiction Novel
The Space Warp: A Science Fiction Novel
What Happened to Hammond? A Scientific Mystery
The Space Warp Page 10