Ten (Stories) to The Stars

by Raymond Z. Gallun

  “There’s just one thing for me to say to the world, Kerwin. There isn’t time, right at this moment, for complete explanations. But I think many people will anticipate my suggestion—that the army be withdrawn to a distance of half a mile from its present entrenchments. I do not think it will be attacked there. If we are given ten days to work—Miss Lyssa Arthurs, late of the Brenton Herald, and myself, Perry Wilcox—I think the trouble will be cleared up.”

  The little voice took on a sharper edge, as it addressed itself more directly to the financier: “You can turn around now, Kerwin. I guess it’s the end, huh? They’ve seen you, they’ve got your number. They’ve heard me talk. Maybe they’re wondering what it’s all about. Maybe they’re scared and uncertain. But one thing’s sure—you’re through. You’re a yellow fake, Kerwin.…”

  * * *

  Slowly the financier pivoted on rubbery legs. His now bulging eyes saw nothing but the great room, which was to have been the focus of his empire.

  Quivering with a horror that was part nameless and partly born of the knowledge that he was an exposed enemy of society who could never escape, Kerwin backed along the wall. He reached a window, and tugged at its fastenings for air.

  He gave a start as a low hiss sounded near him. Looking back, he saw a little dartlike thing, spitting blue flame, and swinging close. It had an ugly, alien look. He ducked it, screaming. With wild clawings in which no reason remained, except to escape that devilish, hissing unknown, he climbed to the window sill. There he toppled briefly, babbling:

  “I didn’t mean it! No! Don’t!”

  A moment later he pitched, with a wail of terror, toward the street far below.

  This time he hadn’t heard two faint tinkly voices, shouting a belated warning. Perry and Troubles hadn’t meant to frighten him to this extreme.

  The plane flew back, alighting before the microphone, and in the path of those television lenses. Two little doll-like beings descended from the craft. For ten minutes Perry Wilcox talked, telling what had happened; and the world saw and heard. Then he and his companion returned to the plane. With a hiss it flew toward the ventilator in the ceiling. And the city below, hummed in wonder.

  * * *

  There were some doubts, of course; but the big push was stopped. A week later, the army, watching from its new, rearward trenches, saw a sudden cessation of motion on the citadel they faced. Most of the gleaming Titans there, stood still in their tracks, as though frozen in the morning sunshine.

  Perry Wilcox and Lyssa Arthurs were pulled, inert, from the vat of green liquid by attendant robots left active for the purpose. They had submitted to the reversal of the process of decreased size, and now they were normal again. After an hour they awoke. They passed through the exit tunnel, and out into the open air. They climbed down the silent slopes beyond the ramparts.

  They reached the ragged, battered river flats, strewn with wreckage and dotted with silent metal giants. Then someone hailed them. A tank, piloted by a soldier, pulled close. Its turret opened, and a head was thrust out. Perry saw a new Windsor tie, new checkered shirt, a thin face, a bit blistered, and red hair, singed short—only, there was a bandage over the eyes.

  “Rod!” Perry gasped. “I thought—”

  Old Roderick Murgatroyd laughed. “I know,” he chuckled. “You thought Kerwin’s roustabouts lynched me. But when they stormed the hospital, I wasn’t there! Fooled ’em. Sneaked off. Then some newshounds cornered me. But never mind that! See! I’ve got my newsreel rig!” He was clutching the small camera strapped around his neck as he continued plaintively: “I want to take some pictures, Perry. Darn, I can’t wait for my eyes to get better! Show me what’s good. Path of Progress has made its greatest hit. We’ve got to carry on, Perry…”

  Wilcox’s face was suddenly pained. But he kept his voice brisk. “Sure we’ve got to carry on, Rod!” he enthused. “Hurry up and get out of that tin wagon! There’s at least a hundred battle automatons standing here around us!”

  “Hang the automatons,” said the old scientist, jumping down lithely with the guidance of Perry’s hand. “I want a picture of you, first!”

  “That means Troubles too, then,” Perry shot back. “I think you’ll be buying wedding presents before very long!”

  “Jupiter! That’s swell! Now, let’s see… Just where are you?”

  “Right here, Rod!” Lyssa said briskly, a small, unnoticeable catch in her gay tone. “Standing close together. Shoot!”

  They let him take his time, fumbling eagerly but clumsily with his camera. And from his enthusiasm they drew many thoughts. He was a little like the leader of those people from interstellar space, who had built themselves a lovely, forbidden paradise in the small—a paradise that native Earth men would never colonize, though there might soon be found many uses even for the ionic science that had made it possible. Exploration of places that full-size men could never reach. A miniature secret service, perhaps.

  The golden statue on the crest of the Pantheon, down there. Old Rod belonged to that same class—an idealist. Nor could Perry Wilcox scoff now, for he was one himself.

  In the silence, Rod Murgatroyd’s camera mechanism worked. In the background, above the scarred slope, smoke arose silently from the vent of a subterranean factory.

  This was old Rod’s moment of triumph. So Perry and Troubles could not tell him that his eyes were gone.

  The End

  1 Judging from the vat in which Perry and Troubles were reduced, the apparatus attached to it, and the sensations of being in that green fluid, it would seem that the process of reduction is partly electrical. Perhaps similar to electroplating—the drawing away of substance from one electrode, and its transfer, in the form of ions, to the opposite electrode. Each cell in Perry’s and Troubles’ bodies, and in their clothing, could have been reduced that way. This isn’t so startling when reduced to prime factors. The human body is simply chemicals. So are clothes. And life may be electrical in itself.—Ed.

  2 For a given shape and density of material, the smaller an object the higher the proportionate resistance it offers to the air. This is because, in relation to its bulk, a small object has a greater surface area than a large one. Hence, relatively more friction. Thus, in air, a mouse might be expected to fall slightly slower than a man.

  But this is not the most important reason why small objects are not as easily damaged by proportionate forces as large objects. Take the model of an ocean liner. It seems very firm and rigid. Build a full-size ship under the same specifications—same steel, same relative thicknesses and lengths. If it was possible to pick such a ship up from either end, it would be in danger of breaking in two under its own weight!

  Small objects are relatively stronger. In order to make a full-size ship as strong as its model, the strength of the materials used would have to be increased in proportion.—Ed.

  ***********************************

  Stepson of Space,

  by Raymond Z. Gallun

  Astonishing Stories Oct. 1940

  Short Story - 5687 words

  It was just an eight-year-old boy's "invention"—

  a peach crate, tin cans, and mysterious, odd-looking wires.

  But it worked, and Andy Matthews feared for the safety of his son!

  Scared? That was hardly the word. Andy Matthews’ bristly, dust-grimed cheeks felt stiff; and there was a sensation inside him as though his heart was trying to burst.

  He couldn't get it all at once. To do so, fortunately, would have been impossible. He only knew that there was something fearfully and incomprehensibly wrong about his eight-year-old son, Jack!

  Andy just stood there in the tool room over the granary, and stared, like a big, dumb ox, frightened, confused, pathetically grim, yet helpless. Oh, he would have died for his boy a hundred times over, if the danger was something he could really approach and fight. But this was different. It made him want to crawl into a dark corner with a loaded shotgun, and wait for a masked mystery to reveal
itself. But he knew right away that this wouldn't be any good either!

  The apparatus had looked so very harmless when he had first accidentally uncovered it. A peach box base. Tin cans nailed in a circle on top of it. A length of fine gauge wire from an old radio set was wrapped around each can, in a clumsy yet patiently involved design. The lengths of wire converged toward the center of the circle of cans, to form a kind of wheel-like net, each strand of which was stapled to a heavy central block of wood. The exposed upper surface of the latter bore a deep, elongated indentation, as though some object had struck it with terrific force. Except for an old fashioned double-throw electric switch, nailed to the side of the box, that was all.

  The thing looked like any of the various contraptions that kids pound together while playing inventor. Andy had chuckled fondly when he'd dragged the rigamajig out of its place of concealment, and had begun to fuss with the switch; for he remembered the hammering he had heard, here in the tool room every time he had come in from the fields. Jack had been working on his “invention” for almost all month.

  So Andy had been entirely unwarned. But when he had closed that switch, he had received the surprise of his life. His fingers had been a little off the insulated handle, and had touched the metal. Blue sparks had snapped across Andy's calloused palm. His whole body had recoiled under the staggering blow of a high-tension shock. It might have killed him, had he not stumbled backward.

  That was the point now—the reason for his fearful confusion—the focus of an incredibly incongruous mixture of facts. Jack was just eight. This rigamajig—peach-box, cans, and wires—was kid stuff. And yet the shock that had struck Andy was like the wallop of a high-voltage line! Nor was there any source, within half a mile or more, from which the contraption might draw power!

  The thought that he was perhaps the father of a child genius got Andy nowhere. Jack was smart, all right; but certainly no eight-year-old, no matter how brilliant his mind might be, could ever invent a miracle like this.

  The apparatus was still active there on the floor, for the switch was closed. A greenish fluorescence, like worms of turbid light, had crept along each of the radiating wire strands. In the brown shadows of the tool room, that soft witchfire burned wickedly, to the accompaniment of a low murmur, that seemed to threaten and predict unguessable developments. In the dusty air, there was a slight odor of scorched insulation.

  Moved by instinct, Andy Matthews picked up a small wooden splinter from the floor, and tossed it toward the apparatus.

  Even as the chip flew toward its goal, he regretted his impulsive act with a cold doubt as to its wisdom. He ducked and crouched back, as the splinter landed on those glowing wires.

  The splinter seemed hardly to touch the wires at all. But the cold emerald light flashed around it. Instantly it seemed to rebound, as if from rubber. Whisking speed increased to a point beyond the range of living retinas. There was a twanging, almost melodious note, and the chip was gone. But in the low-raftered roof above, there was a little hole, as neatly punctured as if made by the passage of a bullet. The splinter had been hurled fast enough to make that hole....

  Andy Matthews gulped with the strain of his tightened nerves. His big head, with its close-cropped black hair, swung this way and that, in bewildered belligerence. He hadn't been able to go to school much, but he'd read a lot, and he was shrewd. The kid had made the contraption, all right; but he couldn't have thought it out—alone! And who else was there?

  From the back porch of the farmhouse. Jane, Andy's pretty wife, was calling for him to come in to supper. But he hardly heard her. He hardly heard anything at all, as his brain fought with a mystery far beyond the knowledge of any person that he knew.

  But he wheeled about like a burglar, caught with the goods, when the door behind him opened.

  Jack stood in the entrance. He just stood there, not saying anything, his face lighted up by the green glow. He looked petulant and startled, sure of punishment.

  Andy had no idea at all what to say at first. But then love tangled with fear of the unknown to produce fury. Andy's teeth showed. His slitted eyes snapped. His voice, when he spoke, was a hoarse, unsteady growl.

  "Come here, you!” he commanded.

  Just for a moment the kid hesitated, his grey eyes vague and clouded in the green flicker. Then he came forward timidly, his scuffed shoes scraping in the untidy litter on the floor. He looked so pathetically little in his soiled overalls. Andy's heart longed to melt, as it always had, for his son. But this was no time to give way to sentiment.

  Andy clutched a small shoulder, and shook it violently, “What's this thing, here?” he snarled, pointing to the miracle beside them. “Who showed you how to make it? Come on! Out with it! Or, so help me, I'll break every bone in your body! Hurry up! Who showed you?"

  Again there was that timid hesitation, which required more violent shaking to dissipate; but the kid spoke at last:

  "Mister Weefles— He showed me."

  Whereat, Andy snorted in sheer, boiling exasperation. “Mister Weefles!” he growled. “Always Mister Weefles! That's no answer at all!” Andy swung a hard palm. With a sharp snap, it landed on the side of Jack's cheek.

  "Now will you tell me?” Andy roared.

  The kid didn't let out a whimper. That was maybe a little funny in itself. But then those grey eyes met Andy's levelly, and Andy felt a dim, deep consternation. There was something warning and hard and strange, looking out of those eyes. Something that wasn't his son!

  "I said, Mister Weefles,” the kid told his father quietly. “He hasn't got any name of his own, so I started calling him that long time ago."

  Andy had released his grip on the boy, and had moved back a step. The answer seemed to be nothing but pure, childhood fantasy. But its tone, and that level, warning stare, told a much different story. So Andy's mind seemed to tumble swiftly back through the years, to the time when Jack had been little more than a baby.

  Almost since be had first learned to talk, it had been the same. Always there had existed that shadowy individual, Mister Weefles.

  And remembered himself asking on many different occasions: “What did you do today, son?"

  And Jack's answer had so often been like this—"Oh! I was thinking about Mr. Weefles. I dreamed about him last night again. He's a nice old guy, he's awful lonesome and awful funny looking, and he knows an awful lot. Only lives all by himself. All his folks are dead..."

  A kid story, Andy had thought. Lots of imaginative youngsters made up dream worlds for themselves, and imaginary characters. So Andy had accepted the friend of his son as a matter of with tolerant humor.

  But now? In that green-lit, flickering light of the dusty tool room, a kid's unimportant legend had suddenly assumed an aspect of real danger!

  Andy Matthews began to sweat profusely. Mister Weefles was only a name his boy had given to something—true! Tin cans, wires, a peach box, an unknown source of terrific electric power; and the bullet-like flight of a splinter of wood, going—where? All this was plain evidence of its truth!

  Suddenly Jack moved forward toward the busy contraption on the floor. Andy gave a choked exclamation of warning, and made a grab to stop him. But then he only watched, with the intentness of a cat watching a mouse. Because Jack's movements were so skillful, so practiced, showing that he'd somehow been taught, and knew how to do—everything.

  His fingers touched the tip of the insulated handle of the switch. With an expert lightness of touch, he swung it open quickly. The turbid light that had enveloped the radial wires of the apparatus died out. A complete darkness, alleviated only by the evening afterglow from the window, settled over the cluttered room.

  But the sharp, muddled concern that screamed in Andy Matthews’ heart, could not be extinguished so easily.

  They faced each other again, then—father and son—as though across an abyss which seemed to separate them forever. But Andy Matthews’ anger was dissolved, now, by his overshadowing fear. He was ready to grope and
plead, in the hope that thus he might find a loose end—a tangible means of approach to the sinister presence that had enmeshed itself with his child's personality. His blood throbbed with frustrated, fighting courage.

  "Jack,” he husked into the gloom. “I'm your dad, boy. Tell me—about this pal of yours. Where does he live?"

  Once more there was a pause. Then, grudgingly and sullenly, the kid responded:

  "I don't know exactly.... Someplace.... a long way off.... It's a terrible scary kind of place...."

  "You only dream about it, and about Mister Weefles?” Andy persisted. “At night—when you're asleep?"

  "No, Dad,” Jack returned. “Sometimes him and all his stuff are there ... in the daytime, too. I just have to shut my eyes and I can almost see him. He's been getting plainer all the time because I've got more practice figuring out just what he thinks. And he's got a special kind of machine he uses, too.... Mostly it's the practice I got, though.... And he told me that there's something special about my brains, that makes them a lot easier to talk with than most folk's brains. He don't say anything to me out loud, really. He just thinks, and I think with him.... But he's an awful nice old guy ... sorta sad. I do what he wants. Just now he made me turn off—”

  There the kid stopped, sullenly, as though somehow he'd been warned not to talk further.

  Andy didn't press the point; but his quick, ragged, breathing came still faster, and he took hold of the kid's shoulder again. He pointed to the now-inactive peach box apparatus at their feet. The thing was newly constructed—an outgrowth rather than a cause of a queer mental contact. From what he had seen of its action, Andy concluded that its purpose had nothing to do with minds. It had catapulted that chip through the roof—