by Ray Bradbury
All that he was afraid of was that it would rain. Of course, he knew that he could carry an umbrella, but that seemed, somehow, to be hardly suitable.
When the next evening came, he found that all of his fears had been useless. It was not only clear, it was a wonderful night. A strong wind had cleared the atmosphere; it was warm; there was hardly a breath stirring at ten o'clock, and the moonlight was so strong that it was almost possible to see the print on a newspaper.
Mrs. Smith unconsciously helped her husband in his plans by going to bed early. In fact, she was sound asleep by nine. The baby had been asleep for several hours. Smith tiptoed into their bedroom, took the new suit, moth bag and all, and tiptoed into the baby's room. There he rapidly and as quietly as he could, changed suits. He was glad to see how well the coat and vest fitted him. On his way to the balcony he had to pass the little crib. He paused a moment, even touched the little girl's hand. She had always been a wonder to him—he never fully understood just how it was that she had come into his life—but at night, as she slept, she was almost a miracle. For a long minute he hung over the crib, to satisfy himself that she was breathing. And the love that passed between them in some way recalled another love, and he thought of his wife, of what had been, of their early hopes and ambitions and how, gradually, one by one those holies had slowly been blasted, and now, at the age of nearly fifty, he was still a salesman of ribbons and laces. He quietly walked to her bedside—she was still a pretty woman—and he realized, as never before, just what she had meant to him and what she had done for him and sacrificed for him in all those years of their married life. And in addition, she had somehow found that little new love of his, the charming Dresden china baby, Angelica. Yes, he was lucky to have her as his wife.
He bent over and kissed her hair and then, sighing, passed through the door, out on the gallery, where his soaring invention awaited him. He sat down in the chair and started to fasten the straps. Everything was all ready. He had only to press the starting button—
And the baby cried.
SMITH sat still; perhaps she would go to sleep; but she cried again.
A woman's clear voice came to his straining ears :
"Robert, can you take care of the baby? She has cried twice now and I am sure that she needs attention. I am so sleepy, and I know you are still dressed."
"I will attend to her as soon as I can," Smith replied. He unstrapped himself and went into the nursery. Sure enough Angelica needed help. With skillful, loving hands, he quietly cared for her, talking little nonsense verses to her as he did so, in the hope that she would not become wide-awake. But she did. When he left her crib, her little whimperings told him that she wanted him. She even sat up in bed and the next moment was standing up, ready to play.
He tried to persuade her to lie down. He told her that papa was building a flying machine and if she was a good girl, he would let her ride in it, like a bird some day. He had made this promise to her before, and it had always put her to sleep, but this time it only seemed to make her more excited.
"Angie fly birdie," she insisted.
Sighing, Robert Smith took his daughter out of the crib, and then the wonderful thought came to him that it would be a fine thing to take her with him. He could hold her in one arm and manage all the buttons with the other hand. He carried Angelica out on the balcony and reseated himself in the chair. It was a little hard to strap himself in, but he finally did so, and he even found enough strap left over to put around the baby.
She enjoyed it all.
"Angelica," whispered the gray-haired man, "your father is a flying fool and so is his little baby."
"Angie fly birdie," she cooed.
Robert Smith shut his eyes. At last he had come to the parting of the ways. Here was freedom and adventure. His heart began to beat faster; he held the baby so tight that she began to whimper—then he pressed the starter button.
And waited.
Nothing happened—not a thing was different—sickened with disappointment, he realized that nothing would happen. Somewhere there had been a mistake.
As he sat there, the little girl went to sleep. Tired of waiting, anaesthetized by the fresh air, perhaps a little cold, she had cuddled close to her father and gone to sleep. Almost as in a dream, Robert Smith unstrapped himself and carried his sleeping daughter to her crib. She simply relaxed and kept on sleeping.
Then Smith undressed—he put his new suit back in the moth bag and hung it up—and then he prepared for bed. Somehow, his wife awoke. It was a rather unusual thing for her to do this, and Smith did not understand it till she started to talk to him.
"You know, Robert, a most unusual thing happened this week, and I have been trying to find time and the right occasion to tell you about it. You know how I planned and saved for that new suit, and how proud I was to think that at last you were going to have one tailormade instead of a hand-me-down. Well, when that suit came, I examined it carefully, and it had the most peculiar wire threaded through it, long pieces. I worked and worked at it and finally got it all out, and I took it to a dealer in old metals and he said he would give a dollar a pound for it, and it weighed just five pounds. So, there I had five dollars, and I spent it for stockings for you. I bought you six pairs, and they are guaranteed to be hole-proof. You needed some new stockings. I have tried to darn them as carefully as I could, but I really don't see how you could wear them, being on your feet the way you are all day. Now, how can you explain that wire in that new suit? I called up the tailor and I believe he was puzzled himself; at least, he acted so."
"It certainly is odd," answered her husband. "But I am glad you bought me the new stockings. You sew too much. Did you buy me striped or colored ones?"
"No. I thought for your ribbon and lace work it would be better to have black ones. Do you know, I am wide-awake? I want to talk. I was reading today about a man's claiming that some day men would float through the air. What do you think of that?"
"I think that any man who wanted to do a thing like that would be a flying fool!" said Robert Smith slowly. Then he forced himself to go to sleep, for the next day he would be busy, selling ribbons and laces.
ARMAGEDDON-2419 A.D.
By Philip Francis Nowlan
Illustrated by FRANK R. PAUL
THE August, 1928, issue of Amazing Stories was beyond question one of the most important not only in its history but in the history of science fiction. That would have been the case if it had only presented to the science fiction public a new author named Edward Elmer Smith with the first installment of "The Skylark of Space." But its immortality was assured by introducing Anthony "Buck" Rogers to the world in a 25,000 word novelet titled "Armageddon-2419," by Philip Francis Nowlan.
Few people, either in or out of science fiction, know that "Buck" Rogers was born in Amazing Stories. Fewer still are aware that the first artist to cartoon the famous future Americans and soldiers of Han was Frank R. Paul. Breaking its policy Amazing Stories ran, in addition to two full-size illustrations, three cartoon panels which may even have given Nowlan the idea of submitting the entire package to a comic strip syndicate.
When "Buck Rogers in the Twenty Fifth Century" appeared as a comic strip in the daily newspapers in 1929 it created a sensation and added a new phrase to the language. Phil Nowlan wrote the continuity about the famous characters of Buck Rogers, Wilma Deering, Dr. Huer, and Killer Kane, along with their disintegrators, jumping belts, inertron, and paralysis rays, and made them familiar to millions of people in this country and abroad. The daily adventures on radio thrilled many more. The popularity of the strip began to decline in the late thirties under the competition of Flash Gordon, Brick Bradford and other imitators. When Phil Nowlan severed his connection with the strip there was a steady loss of readership. Today, though the strip still appears in some papers, few people are aware it still exists. When Nowlan left the strip in 1939 he resumed his writing of magazine science fiction; but he died in early 1940.
"Buck Rogers"
is a synonym for the world of tomorrow, future invention and the spirit of science fiction. In past years the phrase "that Buck Rogers stuff" had a derisive ring to it, but more recently atom bombs and earth satellites have changed all that.
The strangest part about this entire story is that the original Buck Rogers' stories in Amazing Stories were in no sense juveniles. They were serious, adult works based on the most plausible science of the time. They have an aura of accurate prophecy about them that cannot be erased. "Armageddon-2419" precisely described the bazooka, the jet plane, walkie-talkie for warfare, the infra-red ray gun for fighting at night, as well as dozens of other advances that are not here yet but are on their way.
The perceptive Hugo Gernsback, then editor and publisher of Amazing called his shots as accurately on the quality of his stories as he did on future invention. Of "Armageddon-2419" he said: "We have rarely printed a story in this magazine that for scientific interest as well as suspense could hold its own with this particular story. We prophesy that this story will become more valuable as the years go by. It certainly holds a number of interesting prophecies, many of which, no doubt, will come true. For wealth of science it will be hard to beat for some time to come. It is one of those rare stories that will bear reading and re-reading many times."
Here, once more, is a real scientifiction story plus. It is a story which will make the heart of many readers leap with joy.
We have rarely printed a story in this magazine that for scientific interest, as well as suspense, could hold its own with this particular story. We prophesy that this story will become more valuable as the years go by. It certainly holds a number of interesting prophecies, of which no doubt, many will come true. For wealth of science, it will be hard to beat for some time to come. It is one of those rare stories that will bear reading and re-reading many times.
This story has impressed us so favorably, that we hope the author may be induced to write a sequel to it soon.
FOREWORD
ELSEWHERE I have set down, for whatever interest they have in this, the 25th Century, my personal recollections of the 20th Century.
Now it occurs to me that my memoirs of the 25th Century may have an equal interest 500 years from now—particularly in view of that unique perspective from which I have seen the 25th Century, entering it as I did, in one leap across a gap of 492 years.
This statement requires elucidation. There are still many in the world who are not familiar with my unique experience. Five centuries from now there may be many more, especially if civilization is fated to endure any worse convulsions than those which have occurred between 1975 A.D. and the present time.
I should state therefore, that I, Anthony Rogers, am, so far as I know, the only man alive whose normal span of eighty-one years of life has been spread over a period of 573 years. To be precise, I lived the first twenty-nine years of my life between 1898 and 1927; the other fifty-two since 2419. The gap between these two, a period of nearly five hundred years, I spent in a state of suspended animation, free from the ravages of katabolic processes, and without any apparent effect on my physical or mental faculties.
When I began my long sleep, man had just begun his real conquest of the air in a sudden series of transoceanic flights in airplanes driven by internal combustion motors. He had barely begun to speculate on the possibilities of harnessing sub-atomic forces, and had made no further practical penetration into the field of ethereal pulsations than the primitive radio and television of that day. The United States of America was the most powerful nation in the world, its political, financial, industrial and scientific influence being supreme; and in the arts also it was rapidly climbing into leadership.
I awoke to find the America I knew a total wreck—to find Americans a hunted race in their own land, hiding in the dense forests that covered the shattered and leveled ruins of their once magnificent cities, desperately preserving, and struggling to develop in their secret retreats, the remnants of their culture and science—and the undying flame of their sturdy independence.
World domination was in the hands of Mongolians and the center of world power lay in inland China, with Americans one of the few races of mankind unsubdued—and it must be admitted in fairness to the truth, not worth the trouble of subduing in the eyes of the Han Airlords who ruled North America as titular tributaries of the Most Magnificent.
For they needed not the forests in which the Americans lived, nor the resources of the vast territories these forests covered. With the perfection to which they had reduced the synthetic production of necessities and luxuries, their remarkable development of scientific processes and mechanical accomplishment of work, they had no economic need for the forests, and no economic desire for the enslaved labor of an unruly race.
They had all they needed for their magnificently luxurious and degraded scheme of civilization, within the walls of the fifteen cities of sparkling glass they had flung skyward on the sites of ancient American centers, into the bowels of the earth underneath them, and with relatively small surrounding areas of agriculture.
Complete domination of the air rendered communication between these centers a matter of ease and safety. Occasional destructive raids on the waste lands were considered all that was necessary to keep the "wild" Americans on the run within the shelter of their forests, and prevent their becoming a menace to the Han civilization.
But nearly three hundred years of easily maintained security, the last century of which had been nearly sterile in scientific, social and economic progress, had softened and devitalized the Hans.
It had likewise developed, beneath the protecting foliage of the forest, the growth of a vigorous new American civilization, remarkable in the mobility and flexibility of its organization, in its conquest of almost insuperable obstacles, in the development and guarding of its industrial and scientific resources, all in anticipation of that "Day of Hope" to which it had been looking forward for generations, when it would be strong enough to burst from the green chrysalis of the forests, soar into the upper air lanes and destroy the yellow incubus.
At the time I awoke, the "Day of Hope" was almost at hand. I shall not attempt to set forth a detailed history of the Second War of Independence, for that has been recorded already by better historians than I am. Instead I shall confine myself largely to the part I was fortunate enough to play in this struggle and in the events leading up to it.
It all resulted from my interest in radioactive gases. During the latter part of 1927 my company, the American Radioactive Gas Corporation, had been keeping me busy investigating reports of unusual phenomena observed in certain abandoned coal mines near the Wyoming Valley, in Pennsylvania.
With two assistants and a complete equipment of scientific instruments, I began the exploration of a deserted working in a mountainous district, where several weeks before, a number of mining engineers had reported traces of carnotite [1] and what they believed to be radioactive gases. Their report was not without foundation, it was apparent from the outset, for in our examination of the upper levels of the mine, our instruments indicated a vigorous radioactivity.
[1] A hydrovanadate of uranium, and other metals; used as a source of radium compounds.
On the morning of December 15th, we descended to one of the lowest levels. To our surprise, we found no water there. Obviously it had drained off through some break in the strata. We noticed too that the rock in the side walls of the shaft was soft, evidently due to the radioactivity, and pieces crumbled under foot rather easily. We made our way cautiously down the shaft, when suddenly the rotted timbers above us gave way.
I jumped ahead, barely escaping the avalanche of coal and soft rock, but my companions, who were several paces behind me, were buried under it, and undoubtedly met instant death.
I was trapped. Return was impossible. With my electric torch I explored the shaft to its end, but could find no other way out. The air became increasingly difficult to breathe, probably from the rapid accumulation of the radioactiv
e gas. In a little while my senses reeled and I lost consciousness.
When I awoke, there was a cool and refreshing circulation of air in the shaft. I had no thought that I had been unconscious more than a few hours, although it seems that the radioactive gas had kept me in a state of suspended animation for something like 500 years. My awakening, I figured out later, had been due to some shifting of the strata which reopened the shaft and cleared the atmosphere in the working. This must have been the case, for I was able to struggle back up the shaft over a pile of debris, and stagger up the long incline to the mouth of the mine, where an entirely different world, overgrown with a vast forest and no visible sign of human habitation, met my eyes.
I shall pass over the days of mental agony that followed in my attempt to grasp the meaning of it all. There were times when I felt that I was on the verge of insanity. I roamed the unfamiliar forest like a lost soul. Had it not been for the necessity of improvising traps and crude clubs with which to slay my food, I believe I should have gone mad.
Suffice it to say, however, that I survived this psychic crisis. I shall begin my narrative proper with my first contact with Americans of the year 2419 A.D.
CHAPTER I
Floating Men
MY FIRST glimpse of a human being of the 25th Century was obtained through a portion of woodland where the trees were thinly scattered, with a dense forest beyond.
I had been wandering along aimlessly, and hopelessly, musing over my strange fate, when I noticed a figure that cautiously backed out of the dense growth across the glade. I was about to call out joyfully, but there was something furtive about the figure that prevented me. The boy's attention (for it seemed to be a lad of fifteen or sixteen) was centered tensely on the heavy growth of trees from which he had just emerged.