Godson of Almarlu: A Collection of Science Fiction Novellas

by Raymond Z. Gallun

  Jeff worked the lever that controlled the lock of one. The plug-like mass of the window folded inward. With tearing force, a thick spray of water and air rushed past the opening, producing a howling sound, like wind blowing across the mouth of a bottle, though infinitely louder. Mingled with it was the sibilant scream of the tempest, and a crackling rumble which must have originated in the tortured bowels of the Earth.

  Except for a few scattered drops which could do no damage, no moisture entered the chamber through the window. It was as though the speeding, inverted rain, aglow with slumberous lavender fire, was hurled on by too great a force to be deviated from its path.

  Jeff tried to make his mind a blank, so that he would not be conscious of the dreadful risks he was about to take. Then, drawing a deep breath through the smelly texture of the smock over his face, he got down on all fours and crept through the window.

  It was not even necessary for him to leap; in fact, no such opportunity was given him. Before he was fairly at the outer lip of the circular opening, he was caught up and torn from his perch as if some aerial henchman of Eolus had seized him. His injured shoulder was pumped severely against the metal sash of the window, and his legs collided with painful force against the same obstacle; then he was free in that phantasmal hell of icy spray, and slumberous, cold livid fire.

  No, he was not free, for he was shooting upward along the slanting path of energy as helplessly as a bit of steel sped through the loops of a helix by the magnetic force of the current passing through its spiral coils. The comparison was apt, for the power that propelled him at ever-mounting speed, would not be derived solely from the blast of wet air that rose around him. It was another enigma, entwined with the many mysteries of the lavender flame.

  HE HAD KNOWN that his adventure would be like this, informed by the subtle intimations that had broken their way across the line between his consciousness and subconsciousness. Yet there can be a great difference between knowing and realizing.

  Water, changing swiftly to ice, soaked his clothing and chilled his flesh. His wind was gone in spite of the protecting cloth over his face. His body was wabbling and gyrating crazily, until he wondered how it was that his senses endured the motion. And every second his velocity increased. Would he reach comparative safety aboard Dave’s plane, or would he perish in the terrific cold of space? A sinking terror fluttered in his heart; but after a moment it gave place to the calm of resignation.

  He could look about now, sanely, through slitted lids, almost closed to keep the spray from blinding him. Everything was a luminous, streaky haze inside that slanting bar of energy. In it, coursing with him, were cakes of ice, and smaller objects which must have been fish, sucked from their normal habitat by the vortex.

  It was perhaps odd that any part of his mind could think of Bessie, under existing circumstances. But he found that he could picture her now very clearly—tall, angular, austere, handsome in a majestic sort of way, and—caustic. She had laughed at his shortness, his fatness, and his Napoleonic pomposities. Always there had been in her gibes a hint of rancor-less benignancy that made them all the more irritating, because it seemed somehow to emphasize the impression that she regarded him as being nothing more than a dandy little money maker, trivial and ridiculous and a bit pathetic in every other respect.

  But now, for Jeff, there was a homely sweetness about the thought of her that gave his throat the tightness of a sob. He had called her “a darned old battle-ax” on more than one occasion; but now, with death threatening from every angle, he found that she meant more to him than anything else in life.

  But while his mind rambled thus, Jeff kept his attention centered, as well as he could, along that vast Jacob’s Ladder of un-Earthly magic that climbed into the void. Scarce daring to hope, he kept watch for Dave’s plane. Thus many seconds went by. It was colder now, for he was nearer to the emptiness of space, and most of the flying water about him had changed to finely divided ice crystals. He did not know whether he could remain conscious much longer.

  Presently, however, above him, and to his left, he glimpsed the bulletlike form of the ship he sought, showing like a dim shadow through the streaking, lavender-tinted blur. Its forward retarding rockets were spewing incandescent streams to check its speed, so that his hurtling body could catch up with it.

  Almost simultaneously he saw, beyond the limits of the energy beam, many hazy specks of white heat, which he knew marked the position of other active rockets—those of an approaching squadron of bombers, he supposed; but he gave this distressing circumstance little attention.

  AS IN A DREAM, Jeff saw Dave’s ship edge toward his line of flight. He wasn’t sure whether the movement his eyes perceived was real or just a vagary produced by his agonized wish that it be true. Drawn on by the mysterious propulsive force of the column of energy, he shot ahead until he was abreast of the plane. Its rockets now ceased to flame, and the two, the man and the ship, coursed on, close together.

  The financier saw the craft’s stubby wing tip slip inch by inch toward him, guided by the skillful manipulations of the pilot. The wing was within reach now, and Jeff grabbed at it automatically with freezing fingers. Then he began to edge his way inward toward the cabin.

  It was easier to do this than one might have expected; for Jeff was, in effect, quite weightless, with the force that propelled both him and the ship, supporting his body. Nevertheless, in fulfilling his aim, he expended almost the last dregs of his expiring energy. But the door of the cabin opened in time; a pair of muscular young arms clutched him and drew him inside.

  For several minutes after that, impressions were vague and fuzzy. He knew that he was panting heavily, and that Dave was rubbing his limbs in an effort to restore retarded circulation. He felt under him the reassuring reality of the plush upholstery of the plane’s interior.

  Dave talked to him. He made wild answers, saying things about a world of the past—a wrecked world called Almarlu which had once floated serenely between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, where, for untold eons there has existed nothing but a region of cosmic debris called the asteroid belt, or the path of minor planets.

  Coherence came to his faculties without any fine dividing line between the jangled and the sane.

  “What is this Almarlu, again, Uncle Jeff?” Dave asked. It was the first question which the older Scanlon remembered later to have clearly understood.

  Jeff looked at his nephew quizzically for a long moment. “Well,” he said at length, “it’s hardly possible that you’ll believe me; but—ah—you really don’t have to, of course. Almarlu is the planet where all life on Earth had its origin. Her people didn’t have time to escape when catastrophe came. But their science of—ah—biology was highly developed. So they created life spores, deriving them from their own flesh, and from the tissues of the various animals and plants of Almarlu. They put the spores in small projectiles and shot them to the still sterile Earth, where—ah—the spores became active, and through the well-known evolutive process, reached their present stage of development.

  “Before their world broke up to form the asteroids, the people of Almarlu devised a machine which—ah—through the ages would now and then influence terrestrial life, guiding it and protecting it to a certain extent—though not enough to make it the emasculated puppet of an ancient civilization.

  “I’m one of the tools of Almarlu, as maybe—ah—chaps such as Pasteur and Edison were, and as maybe the cave man who first made a flint spearhead, was. Everything I have done was indirectly the work of Almarlu. It was necessary if any one was to survive. Certain things were implanted in my mind when I was a baby; they came to the fore when it was time. More about Almarlu was revealed to me than to any of its previous godsons. So there you are, Dave. I’ve told you—ah—what you wanted to know.”

  JEFF’S NEPHEW didn’t speak for several seconds. He was glancing this way and that, through the windows of the plane’s cabin. The financier’s explanations were not so difficult to believe, i
f what was visible beyond those windows was true.

  The ship was clear of the atmosphere now; it had shot along that flaming path originating at the power station until it had entered the region of empty ether in which the planets float. All about it was the pearly haze of freezing air and of suspended ice crystals, borne on by the mysterious energy of the vortex, just as the plane itself was now being borne; for its motors had been stopped. Through that haze, the stars gleamed steadily; and ahead the great path continued on, tapering into the distance, to form a lavender dagger point directed straight at the pale face of Luna.

  Far to the right, receding now, was that tiny red invader of ill omen, gashed and smooth and vapor-wrapped, going on to keep its cometlike tryst with the Sun. But it had already sown its seeds of destruction on Earth, starting processes at her core which only a wizard of physics could have probed.

  “You’re expecting me to call you a liar, Uncle Jeff,” Dave Scanlon said; and his voice was vibrant in the strange new stillness that had come now that the motors were stopped. “But I’m not doing it. Because—because what has already happened is so extraordinary that what you say must be true, too!”

  “Thanks, kid,” Jeff acknowledged, knowing that the caustic cynicisms of Dave had been temporarily subdued.

  They looked back toward the Earth, a vast, bulging expanse beneath, the horrors that were taking place on its surface hidden by boiling clouds. And then they saw another craft—a huge bomber following the cylinder of flame and ice and air in their wake. Beyond the first were others, and mingled with them were several small planes which must have belonged to newspaper and news-disseminator reporters. The two Scanlons saw the faint beams of the leading bomber’s flame projectors stabbing in their direction.

  There was no time for comment. Dave leaped to the controls of his ship, and opened up both the motors and the rockets. Thus driven, the little plane raced swiftly away from its clumsy and somewhat less speedy pursuers.

  “Uh-huh,” Dave remarked. “Some of our friends who were going to blow up the plant—the ones that the vortex sucked in before they knew what was happening to them. They must have seen your getaway, and are still able to remember that Scanlons are to be brought in dead or alive.”

  Jeff said nothing, but his plump face looked weary and old.

  They did not speak for some time. Both were aware that the future held many uncertainties. But one thing was sure: Wherever they were taken, those warcraft crewed with angry, vengeful men, armed to the teeth, would not be far behind.

  “Do you see what I see, Uncle Jeff?” Dave questioned presently. “The face of the Moon is changing.”

  IT WAS TRUE. At one edge of the disk the old, familiar features were giving way to others which were new, but of the same character as those which they had replaced.

  And Jeff Scanlon remembered the meaning of the phenomenon, just as he had remembered other things which had been buried in the darker recesses of his mind.

  “Yes,” he said without excitement. “The Moon is beginning to turn more rapidly on its axis, so that now it no longer keeps just one face turned toward the Earth. It is like the armature of a great electric motor to which electricity is being fed. Invisible fingers of force are—ah—speeding it up, just as similar fingers of force are retarding the rotation of Earth. Energy is being transferred from one sphere to the other. Earth is the armature of the generator, revolving in an unseen force field established by the power plant; and the Moon is the armature of the motor, being turned by a force field of similar origin.”

  “I see,” was Dave’s only comment on the explanation, and it was matter-of-fact. “And now about ourselves. I gather that we’ve got some two hundred and thirty-nine thousand miles to travel. Won’t we smother out here in space? Won’t we freeze?”

  “No. Not yet, anyway,” Jeff replied. “There is air all around us, even if it is partly congealed. The hull of this ship has vacuum compartments to protect us against cold. Besides, the plant is still giving us plenty of power for heating purposes and so forth.”

  And so the two Scanlons tore on across space, following the path that Almarlu’s science had created. There was little to do but talk and listen to radio messages coming from various aircraft. As far as they were able to tell, all of the ground stations had gone out of action.

  One thing about the messages pleased them: Many people, driven by desperation were following Jeff’s advice. They were loading planes with supplies, and flying toward the Scanlon Tower. For some reason, perhaps associated with the lack of centrifugal strain due to the Earth’s rotation, the earthquakes were less violent in the polar regions than nearer the equator.

  Then, too, the tower, being located as it was, near the north pole, could send its beam continuously toward the Moon, unhampered by long periods during which the satellite was far beneath the horizon.

  But though refugees were preparing to use Jeff’s plant as an avenue of refuge, the chance he had given them did not lessen in the slightest the fury they felt toward him. For he was still the man whose blunderings or designed evil had brought about the destruction of their homes and property, and the deaths of their loved ones.

  The aspect of the future was black. Both Jeff and Dave knew that they were facing almost certain destruction, even granting that they could survive the inanimate dangers which lay in their path.

  V.

  FEODOR MOHARLEFF, wizard of physical science, inhaled and exhaled heavily through his slender beak of a nose. A long sprint over ground that heaved almost as tumultuously as the waves of the ocean had winded him. Besides, a fury that would have quickened the pulse and breath of any man surged within him.

  “The crime, Franz—the crime of this blundering dollar-chaser— In no tongue known to man are there words to express its blackness!” he said, his thin, austere face working with emotion.

  Franz, elderly laboratory assistant aboard the FMZ, small, scientific air cruiser owned by Moharleff, nodded impassively.

  “It is so, sir,” he replied. “But it is fortunate that we were able to rescue you from the crumbling wreckage of Minneapolis. You should be glad, sir, because if it hadn’t been—”

  “Glad?” Moharleff echoed, his bushy eyebrows arching upward. “If you had seen cracks open in the ground that engulfed streets and whole crowds of people, and if you had seen those cracks closing again like monster maws, and if you had heard the screams of the dying and had smelled the volcanic fumes and the odor of burned human flesh, you would never be glad again, Franz.”

  The great scientist leaned wearily against a workbench that extended along one wall of the cruiser’s laboratory. The craft was climbing swiftly through the chaotic atmosphere, after its daring swoop to the tiny landing area that was, or rather, had been, part of Moharleff’s suburban property.

  “I am sorry, Franz,” he said after a moment. “I am afraid that I have shown poor self-control. No one should allow himself to become so excited, even when he has as good a cause for anger as I have. But you will forgive me, I know. What new developments have you to report?”

  “Several,” the assistant responded. “First, the Earth has slowed still further on its axis. The day is now a full five minutes longer than normal. Observations of the Sun’s motion prove this.”

  Moharleff nodded, his thin lips compressed. “A continuation of the Scanlon blunder,” he commented. “That mad plant of his keeps on drawing power from the Earth’s rotation at an enormous rate, straining the planet’s crust and stirring up its internal fires. And the other developments?”

  “I have seen a small heavenly body, reddish in color, and apparently following a cometary path,” Franz replied. “It is receding now, but should still be visible to the naked eye. I noticed it before, but paid little attention to it because of the pressure of other things. An obscure astronomer, named, I believe, Moseley, claimed to have observed some such object with his telescope when all was yet well. My attention was drawn to the thing when I noticed a strange tidal effect
that the action of the Scanlon Tower did not seem to explain. It decreased the weight of objects very appreciably at the time of the visitor’s closest approach to the Earth. And there is a puzzling aftermath which I do not understand at all.”

  Moharleff’s eyes had narrowed with interest, and his shoulders were hunched. “Aftermath?” he questioned very softly. “What kind of an aftermath, Franz?”

  “A fluctuation in the weight of anything,” the old assistant replied. “It is a fluctuation that is as regular as the swinging of a pendulum. Here, I’ll show you!”

  FROM THE WORKBENCH he took up a spring balance, and attached to it a hundred-gram weight. Next he suspended the balance and the weight from a metal support above the bench.

  “A plane in flight is not the best place in which to attempt such an experiment as this, sir,” he said. “But our pilot has leveled off now and there should be little to interfere with this test. Watch!”

  Very slowly, as the two men observed, the weight and the pointer of the balance, moved downward, then up again, then down once more.

  “You see?” Franz questioned sharply after the several minutes necessary to complete the oscillation had passed. “If our nervous systems weren’t a little deadened by the jars and jolts we have recently been subjected to, I have no doubt that we could feel the change in the weight of our bodies.”

  “Hm-m, interesting,” Moharleff growled. “Only one thing that I can imagine could cause such a phenomenon: a regular shifting or swinging of the Earth’s center of gravity. At times it is nearer to us than at others, and when it is nearest our weight is greatest. We know from Newton that the gravitational force of a body is inversely proportional to the distance from its center of gravity.”