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McILVAINE'S STAR
By August Derleth
_McIlvaine sat down to his machine, turned the complexknobs, and a message flamed across the void._]
_Old Thaddeus McIlvaine discovered a dark star and took it for his own. Thus he inherited a dark destiny--or did he?_
"Call them what you like," said Tex Harrigan. "Lost people or strayed,crackpots or warped geniuses--I know enough of them to fill an entiredepartment of queer people. I've been a reporter long enough to have runinto quite a few of them."
"For example?" I said, recognizing Harrigan's mellowness.
"Take Thaddeus McIlvaine," said Harrigan.
"I never heard of him."
"I suppose not," said Harrigan. "But I knew him. He was an eccentric oldfellow who had a modest income--enough to keep up his hobbies, whichwere three: he played cards and chess at a tavern called Bixby's onNorth Clark Street; he was an amateur astronomer; and he had the fixedidea that there was life somewhere outside this planet and that it waspossible to communicate with other beings--but unlike most others, hetried it constantly with the queer machinery he had rigged up.
"Well, now, this old fellow had a trio of cronies with whom he played onoccasion down at Bixby's. He had no one else to confide in. He kept themup with his progress among the stars and his communication with otherlife in the cosmos beyond our own, and they made a great joke out of it,from all I could gather. I suppose, because he had no one else to talkto, McIlvaine took it without complaint. Well, as I said, I never heardof him until one morning the city editor--it was old Bill Hendersonthen--called me in and said, 'Harrigan, we just got a lead on a fellownamed Thaddeus McIlvaine who claims to have discovered a new star.Amateur astronomer up North Clark. Find him and get a story.' So I setout to track him down...."
* * * * *
It was a great moment for Thaddeus McIlvaine. He sat down among hisfriends almost portentously, adjusted his spectacles, and peered overthem in his usual manner, half way between a querulous oldster and areproachful schoolmaster.
"I've done it," he said quietly.
"Aye, and what?" asked Alexander testily.
"I discovered a new star."
"Oh," said Leopold flatly. "A cinder in your eye."
"It lies just off Arcturus," McIlvaine went on, "and it would appear tobe coming closer."
"Give it my love," said Richardson with a wry smile. "Have you named ityet? Or don't the discoverers of new stars name them any more?McIlvaine's Star--that's a good name for it. Hard a port of Arcturus,with special displays on windy nights."
McIlvaine only smiled. "It's a dark star," he said presently. "Itdoesn't have light." He spoke almost apologetically, as if somehow hehad disappointed his friends. "I'm going to try and communicate withit."
"That's the ticket," said Alexander.
"Cut for deal," said Leopold.
That was how the news about McIlvaine's Star was received by hiscronies. Afterward, after McIlvaine had dutifully played several gamesof euchre, Richardson conceived the idea of telephoning the _Globe_ toannounce McIlvaine's discovery.
* * * * *
"The old fellow took himself seriously," Harrigan went on. "And yet hewas so damned mousy about it. I mean, you got the impression that he hadbeen trying for so long that now he hardly believed in his star himselfany longer. But there it was. He had a long, detailed story of itsdiscovery, which was an accident, as those things usually are. Theyhappen all the time, and his story sounded convincing enough. Just thesame, you didn't feel that he really had anything. I took down notes, ofcourse; that was routine. I got a picture of the old man, with never anidea we'd be using it.
"To tell the truth, I carried my notes around with me for a day or sobefore it occurred to me that it wouldn't do any harm to put a call into Yerkes Observatory up in Wisconsin. So I did, and they confirmedMcIlvaine's Star. The _Globe_ had the story, did it up in fine style.
"It was two weeks before we heard from McIlvaine again...."
* * * * *
That night McIlvaine was more than usually diffident. He was not like aman bearing a message of considerable importance to himself. He slippedinto Bixby's, got a glass of beer, and approached the table where hisfriends sat, almost with trepidation.
"It's a nice evening for May," he said quietly.
Richardson grunted.
Leopold said, "By the way, Mac, whatever became of that star of yours?The one the papers wrote up."
"I think," said McIlvaine cautiously, "I'm quite sure--I have got intouch with them. Only," his brow wrinkled and furrowed, "I can'tunderstand their language."
"Ah," said Richardson with an edge to his voice, "the thing for you todo is to tell them that's your star, and they'll have to speak Englishfrom now on, so you can understand them. Why, next thing we know, you'llbe getting yourself a rocket or a space-ship and going over to that starto set yourself up as king or something."
"King Thaddeus the First," said Alexander loftily. "All youstar-dwellers may kiss the royal foot."
"That would be unsanitary, I think," said McIlvaine, frowning.
Poor McIlvaine! They made him the butt of their jests for over an hourbefore he took himself off to his quarters, where he sat himself downbefore his telescope and found his star once more, almost huge enough toblot out Arcturus, but not quite, since it was moving away from thatamber star now.
McIlvaine's star was certainly much closer to the Earth than it hadbeen.
He tried once again to contact it with his home-made radio, and onceagain he received a succession of strange, rhythmic noises which hecould not doubt were speech of some kind or other--a rasping, gratingspeech, to be sure, utterly unlike the speech of McIlvaine's own kind.It rose and fell, became impatient, urgent, despairing--McIlvaine sensedall this and strove mightily to understand.
He sat there for perhaps two hours when he received the distantimpression that someone was talking to him in his own language. Butthere was no longer any sound on the radio. He could not understand whathad taken place, but in a few moments he received the clear convictionthat the inhabitants of his star had managed to discover the basicelements of his language by the simple process of reading his mind, andwere now prepared to talk with him.
What manner of creatures inhabited Earth? they wished to know.
McIlvaine told them. He visualized one of his own kind and tried to puthim into words. It was difficult, since he could not rid himself of theconviction that his interlocutors might be utterly alien.
They had no conception of man and doubted man's existence on any otherstar. There were plant-people on Venus, ant-people on Andromeda,six-legged and four-armed beings which were equal parts mineral andvegetable on Betelguese--but nothing resembling man. "You are evidentlyalone of your kind in the cosmos," said his interstellar correspondent.
"And what about you?" cried McIlvaine with unaccustomed heat.
Silence was his only answer, but presently he conceived a mental imagewhich was remarkable for its vividness. But the image was of nothing hehad ever seen before--of thousands upon thousands of miniature beings,utterly alien to man; they resembled amphibious insects, with thin,elongated heads, large eyes, and antennae set upon a scaled, four-leggedbody, with rudimentary beetle-like wings. Curiously, they seemedageless; he could detect no difference among them--all appeared to bethe same age.
"We are not, but we rejuvenate regularly," said the creature with whomhe corresponded in this strange manner.
Did they have names? McIlvaine wondered.
"I am Guru," said the star's inha
bitant. "You are McIlvaine."
And the civilization of their star?
Instantly he saw in his mind's eye vast cities, which rose from beneatha surface which appeared to bear no vegetation recognizable to any humaneye, in a terrain which seemed to be desert, of monolithic buildings,which were windowless and had openings only of sufficient size to permitthe free passage of its dwarfed dwellers. Within the buildings wasevidence of a great and old civilization....
* * * * *
"You see, McIlvaine really believed all this. What an imagination theman had! Of course, the boys at Bixby's gave him a bad time; I don'tknow how he stood it, but he did. And he
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