Ten (Stories) to The Stars

by Raymond Z. Gallun

  "What's this rigamajig for, son?” Andy asked quietly. “What is it supposed to do?"

  The question wasn't much use. The kid just shook his head and began to whimper. Andy picked him up, then—a small, tight bundle of unrelated, resentful nerves and muscles. The barrier between himself and his boy seemed wider than ever.

  "Hurry up and spit it out!” Andy snapped in fresh anger, shaking the kid furiously.

  Jack didn't respond; but suddenly there was a tinkling sound on the floor. Something had fallen out of Jack's overall pocket. Instantly the boy became a squirming wildcat, almost impossible to hold. But Andy Matthews was far from feeble; and he was certainly determined, now, too.

  Still hanging onto the kid with one arm, he bent down to search for the dropped object. It wasn't hard to find, for it had fallen right by his shoe; and the bright metal of it glinted even in the semidarkness. He picked it up, and then set Jack on the floor. The boy immediately backed away, panting, his mop of yellow hair streaming down into his face. He seemed to wait for an opportunity to recover what he'd lost.

  "Now!” Andy said grimly, with a sort of triumph. “Maybe we'll find out something!"

  He took the object close to the window. It was a three inch cylinder, almost like a short, thick metal pencil; for it was tapered at one end. A flaky, ashy stuff, which still covered part of its burnished surface, came away in his palms. It was as though the thing had once been accidentally thrown into a furnace, or burned by the friction of a meteoric flight through the atmosphere.

  The tapered end of the cylinder could be detached, like a screw. Directly beneath this conical cap, there was a little spindle. Andy tugged at it avidly, drawing a tiny, scroll from its tubular container. Carefully, but with shaking fingers, he unrolled it sensing that here was a thing, the like of which he had never touched before. One side of the long, silky, metallic ribbon was coated with a fine glaze. Holding the smooth strip up to the dying light of day at the window, he squinted at it. But this effort to see was unnecessary, for the smooth surface was phosphorescent. It was divided into three little rectangles, one above the other, as in a postcard folder. Each rectangle was a picture, a photograph. They were luminous, like colored lantern-slide images, cast on a screen.

  Andy didn't have to be told that these were pictures from another world. He was no fool, and he knew that no Earthly stars were as sharp as those pictured in the uppermost photograph. No Earthly mountains were ever so rough and clear and lifeless. Hell, everybody read about things like this, once in a while, in the scientific magazines!

  But here it all was, now—true—an inescapable part of a mystery that had settled over his own life! The second picture revealed a shadowy cavern, full of machines and apparatus, in which must course fearful power. There were globular tanks, glowing red with the fiery chemicals inside them. There was a squat, complicated lump of metal which looked like some weird kind of dynamo.

  The third picture was of the interior of a great crystal sphere, or compartment, whose walls were rimed with patches of thin, lacy frost. Devices of various kinds crowded it too; but Andy scarcely noticed these at first, for at the center of its concave floor stood a shaggy, lonely figure, clad in white polar fur, which seemed a natural part of him. He was quite a little like a man. Over his immense shoulders wires were draped, originating from a boxlike apparatus, upon which his fur-tufted paws rested. The wires led to an odd metal helmet, which covered his head just above his great, bat-like ears.

  Through the transparent sides of the sphere, the same kind of terrain as that pictured in the first photograph could be seen; for the strange structure was built in the open. Hard, devil-mountains, and frigid, steady stars.

  Mounted on the sphere's top, and visible, too, through its crystalline substance, was a thing resembling the crude contraption that Jack had made, except that it was much larger, and of course far more finely made. And attached to it were heavy bars of coppery metal, which must carry a terrific load of current from somewhere below.

  Andy Matthews, looking at those colored, phosphorescent pictures, was a little dull just then, as far as feelings went. Wonder and fright had left him, momentarily—to be replaced by a semi-daze, which, however, seemed to sharpen and quicken his reason. Like a man in a death struggle, he had forgotten fear and wonder; he was devoting all his energies to understanding and defeating his enemy.

  Scattered factors in the puzzle that confronted him, fell together coherently with amazing swiftness. The furry figure in the third photograph was of course Jack's hidden friend. The helmet the being wore, and the wires and the dialed box attached to it, looked like advanced forms of radio equipment. Andy knew his radio. He'd been a ham when he was nineteen.... But this wasn't radio equipment. Jack had spoken of a special kind of machine for thought-transference. This must be it! The source of the weird dreams that Jack had experienced since his babyhood.

  Nor was the question of how Jack had come to possess the metal tube with the pictures in it so difficult to answer, now, either! With vivid, cold memory, Andy recalled what had happened to the splinter of wood he had tossed onto the glowing wires of Jack's contraption. Zip! And like a bullet it had gone through the roof! Doubtless it had continued on, up into the air, and away, through the vacuum abyss—toward this similar wheel-like apparatus on top of the globular compartment in the picture.

  There was that deep indentation in the upper surface of the wooden block at the center of Jack's rigamajig. Then there was that old-fashioned, double-throw switch. The power, acting across the void, could be turned around!

  It would have been simple for the kid to carry his machine out into the open, where it could work freely, with no roof in the way.

  Come to think of it, there were a lot of things missing around the place, now, Andy thought with a shudder. A new adjustable wrench. A spirit-level, a couple of radio tubes. And Jane had lost a tape measure. Andy knew what had become of these things. The monster would be fondling them, now. Probably they were treasures to him—curiosities. Like a man getting stuff from—Mars!

  But—God! What did the shaggy freak really want? What was he meddling with Jack for? What was his deeper purpose? How could anybody tell? Andy's cool, swift reasoning had taken on a new note now; for seeing what he faced emphasized his helplessness. He was up against a knowledge as old as a dead world, and as unreachable.

  Dully he rolled up the scroll of pictures, and put it back into the tube. He screwed the cap into place, and dropped the thing into his hip pocket.

  Andy wanted to act. But what was there to try? For a second a wild idea blazed in his brain; then was submerged by its futility. And he couldn't leave Jack out of his sight for a moment now. But it wasn't enough just to watch. Those howling nerves of his yelled for movement—for a means to drain away some of their straining, fighting energy.

  Andy's mind settled on just one thing—speed!

  "Come on, you!” he snarled at the boy who stared at him with that strange watchful, guarded look in his eyes—a look that wasn't Earthly—that belonged, in part, to a being beyond men. Andy knew that if his own mind was not actually read, his every act, at least, was watched, through his own son's eyes.

  Andy picked Jack up, and stumbled down the dark stair. The kid squirmed and fought; but Andy's own physical strength could win here, at least. He hurried to the garage. Working with his free hand, he got the door open. He got into the new car, dragging Jack after him. Jane was calling angrily from the house, again. Supper! Andy could almost have laughed mockingly at the triviality of such a thing as supper, now! As for Jane, he couldn't face her now. He had to protect her from what he knew. He couldn't tell her; he couldn't tell anyone! It wouldn't do any good anyway!

  With a fury that was part of his dark secret, he stamped on the starter. A minute later the car tore out of the driveway. Once he had the car on the road, Andy's foot jammed more fiercely down on the accelerator. Speed.... Faster.... Faster.... Going toward town. Going toward nowhere, really, unless it
was away from bewildering fact, and away from the brooding something that seemed to be in the air—that seemed to haunt the evening stars and the yellow harvest moon.

  The whizzing motion wasn't much relief; but Andy's teeth were gritted together. His foot, pushing the accelerator, was down as far as it would go now. Sixty.... Seventy.... Eighty. Ninety miles an hour...

  Under the tense, drawn anguish of Andy's mind, the crash was almost inevitable. It came on the Hensler Curve, when another car's lights blazed into view. Andy had to take to the ditch at terrific speed. The car under him did a crazy squelching skip on the steep embankment, hurtled and wobbled around sideways, and landed on its top....

  Queer, maybe; but Andy only got a wrenched wrist out of the bargain. The kid wasn't so lucky.

  Lost in a sort of mind-fog, Andy Matthews drove back to the farm in the milk truck. That was about midnight. Jane had come into town with the truck, and she was at the hospital, now, with Jack.

  Partly because he was dazed by what had happened, Andy had been able to ignore at first the almost hysterical accusations of his wife, and the veiled contempt under Doctor Weller's professional kindness:

  "Your boy can't last more than a few hours, Mr. Matthews. We did our best. The emergency operation was the only chance. But now that it's over, the boy's system can't stand the shock. I'm sorry."

  What the matter-of-fact old physician wanted to say of course, was that Andy was just another damn-fool driver, who had as good as murdered his own son.

  Still, Andy was able to ignore that accusation. They didn't know how he loved that kid of his. Or why the accident had happened. Andy had just one burning idea now—revenge. Revenge against that unearthly presence whom he felt was the author of all his misfortune.

  Otherwise he was like a dead thing, impervious to all feeling. It wasn't anger, exactly, that gripped him now. He'd gone beyond that. It was just fundamental need. Even grief seemed to have dissipated into a mist, against which was stamped the fiery blob that represented his scheme. He'd thought of it beforehand—and had rejected it as hopeless. He still thought it was hopeless—as hopeless as trying to kill an elephant with a popgun. But—well—there wasn't any other way at all...

  He got a couple of big thermos bottles from the kitchen pantry. Then he hurried outdoors, and to the woodshed. High up on the wall here, was a locked chest, where he kept special things. He'd expected to do some stump blasting in woodlot. Now he opened the chest, and took out a large bundle of cylindrical objects, wrapped in waxed paper.

  By the beam of a flashlight, he ripped the paper from each of the objects. Inside was an oily, yellowish, granulated stuff that looked a little bit like pale brown sugar.

  "Brown sugar, eh?” Andy thought craftily. Yeah, maybe it was a good idea to imagine it was something harmless, like brown sugar.

  He packed the stuff in the thermos bottles. Then he went to the tool room over the granary to get the peach box apparatus. He took it out into the night, and set it down at the farther end of the garden.

  There were streaky clouds in the sky, over-casting the moon. Andy was glad of that, at least. But—maybe his enemy knew his whole plan already. Andy was conscious of the gigantic learning he was pitted against. Maybe he'd be stricken dead in some strange way in the next moment. But he accepted this possibility without emotion.

  He grasped the handle of the double-throw switch lightly in his fingers, and swung it over—to the same position in which he had accidentally placed it when he had first found his son's contraption, and had learned of its strange propertied. That sleepy murmur began, and those green worms of turbid light started to creep along the radiating wires of the apparatus.

  He waited until the glow was on full—until the energy, groping across space, reached maximum. Meanwhile, as far as was possible, he kept his mind on things, which didn't quite concern his present task. He'd made plans to send Jack to college, when the time came, for instance. But that was all over, now....

  His hand lifted one of the loaded thermos bottles. It was best to have the stuff it contained insulated against cold and heat and against electric shock. That's why he had used those vacuum flasks.

  He tossed the thermos toward the glowing wires, while he stood defensively back. There was a soft, ringing sound. Mild static prickles raced over Andy's body, as the flask bounced upward, amid a play of cold, troubled flame. In a twinkling the missile was gone—vanished away in the direction of those clouds over the moon. A swift, but comparatively shockless start.

  Presently, the second thermos went the way of the first. Andy was dully surprised he'd gotten away with it.

  With the job over, now, Andy felt a wilted kind of relief. He got into the milk truck and drove back to town—to the hospital. There, with wide-eyed, tearless Jane beside him, he continued the vigil at Jack's bedside.... Jane didn't show any resentment now. She seemed glad to have Andy there with her. Jack belonged to them both; and though Andy hadn't told her anything about the dark mystery, she must have sensed how sorry he was.

  There was a funny kind of strain in the room that he felt right away, but couldn't place. It was mental. It seemed to take hold of one's mind, powerfully, incomprehensibly, expressing an indomitable will that must not—could not—be denied. “Live! Live! Live!” it seemed to beat out in an incessant, wordless, telepathic rhythm.

  Andy decided at last that it was only an illusion of this own tired brain, hoping for the impossible—that Jack would pull through. And so, with Jane in his arms, he sat in a chair, watching through the night. Some time after dawn they both fell asleep.

  Doctor Weller didn't wake them till nine in the morning. He'd already examined Jack several times.

  He looked quizzically at the child's parents, first one, then the other. His heavy brows knit in puzzlement.

  "I hardly believe it,” he said at last. “But the boy's better. His pulse is firmer and more even, and not so fast, that rib we had to dig out of his lung hasn't caused as much trouble as I thought."

  He almost grinned, then. “You folks must be psychic,” he went on conversationally. “Things like this happen once in a while, I've sometimes thought, though medical science never had enough evidence to back the idea up. But if you care a good deal for someone who is very sick, and insist in your mind that they must live, perhaps it helps. Maybe that's right. Maybe not. Anyway, keep on hoping, folks!"

  After the physician was gone, Jane threw her arms around her husband's neck, and wept. Andy stroked her silky blonde hair, and patted her shoulder. But already, behind his narrowed eyes, a weird suspicion was beginning to form. Psychic, he and Jane? Perhaps. But Andy was beginning to doubt—not the miracle itself—but its source. He fumbled into the hip pocket of the overalls he was still wearing. The metal tube, reminder of a personality possessing psychic powers far beyond the Earthly, was still there.

  Mister Weefles. Jack's dream pal.... All his folks were dead, Jack had said. The last of a race, that must mean. A shaggy, lonely giant on a world that had perished. Lonesome....

  Was that right? It could be right! Andy began to wonder if his first judgment hadn't been incorrect after all....

  He was looking beyond the veil of suspicion, which one must inevitably feel for anything strange and alien. He had read about the theories of evolution—how men would change when the Earth got older. Long natural fur, to keep out the increasing cold. Big chests and big lungs to breathe the thinning atmosphere, before it became actually necessary to withdraw to airtight caverns and habitations. Then perhaps the slow decadence of boredom and sterility, leading to extinction.

  And now, when the danger of death had come to his small companion, the monster seemed to be doing his best. He was standing there, in that glass globe, sending out healing waves with his telepathic apparatus....

  But those thermos bottles Andy Matthews had shot into space, were filled with stuff meant to kill.

  But after a moment Andy's suspicions and weariness were reawakened. Perhaps his second judgment
was not so sure, either. The shaggy giant could be a true friend—yes. But couldn't he, just as well have an ulterior motive in his efforts to save Jack? What if Jack happened to be an essential link in a chain of conquest—one that it had taken years to develop to the point of usefulness? Naturally, in that case, the furry enigma would want to preserve the boy's life, wouldn't he?

  It was almost a quandary, as dark as the myriad questions of the stars. But the clear truth was there in his pocket. The little tube of pictures. Oh, they scared a man when he first examined them—sure! Because they were so unfamiliar. But if you thought about them a little, you got a milder slant on their significance. They were like postcards sent to a kid nephew!

  Andy's suspicions wilted when he saw their ridiculousness. He got a new grasp on the nature of the unknown. The shaggy thing out there had lost the aspect of omnipotence, created for Andy by the fantastic circumstances under which he had first glimpsed the mystery with which his boy was involved....

  The monster was finite. And with all the rest of his kind gone, lonely. Maybe he'd worked and groped for years to find a companion—a means to reach another mind—one of the right form to receive and transmit thoughts readily. Jack hadn't been harmed through the years of contact—except by his own father!

  Andy's original stark fear had left him, to be replaced by a new worry. The aura of healing strain still clung in the room—evidence of terrific effort. And the monster was finite. Besides, he was bemused, now, by that tremendous concentration. Probably he would not be watching some of his instruments. While above his head, on the outside of the crystal sphere that enclosed him, was another apparatus. A wheel of rods. And across space were thermos bottles intended to destroy....