World of the Gods

by Pel Torro

  WORLD OF THE GODS

  Lionel Fanthorpe and Patricia Fanthorpe

  writing as

  Pel Torro

  www.sfgateway.com

  Enter the SF Gateway …

  In the last years of the twentieth century (as Wells might have put it), Gollancz, Britain’s oldest and most distinguished science fiction imprint, created the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series. Dedicated to re-publishing the English language’s finest works of SF and Fantasy, most of which were languishing out of print at the time, they were – and remain – landmark lists, consummately fulfilling the original mission statement:

  ‘SF MASTERWORKS is a library of the greatest SF ever written, chosen with the help of today’s leading SF writers and editors. These books show that genuinely innovative SF is as exciting today as when it was first written.’

  Now, as we move inexorably into the twenty-first century, we are delighted to be widening our remit even more. The realities of commercial publishing are such that vast troves of classic SF & Fantasy are almost certainly destined never again to see print. Until very recently, this meant that anyone interested in reading any of these books would have been confined to scouring second-hand bookshops. The advent of digital publishing has changed that paradigm for ever.

  The technology now exists to enable us to make available, for the first time, the entire backlists of an incredibly wide range of classic and modern SF and fantasy authors. Our plan is, at its simplest, to use this technology to build on the success of the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series and to go even further.

  Welcome to the new home of Science Fiction & Fantasy. Welcome to the most comprehensive electronic library of classic SFF titles ever assembled.

  Welcome to the SF Gateway.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Gateway Introduction

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Website

  Also by Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe

  About the Authors

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Expulsion

  THE Council of the International Scientific Society were in very serious session. There were grave faces on both sides of the tribunal. It is not an easy thing to judge one’s fellow men. In a field as vast and as important as the field of science faulty judgement can mean the end of a man’s career: can be the professional death sentence, and none of the Council was willing to be over-harsh. On the other hand, this was the 22nd century, and science had fantastic power in its grasp. Science had unlocked doors which had previously been barred to all human endeavour, and science had a duty to the Man-in-the Street, just as the Man-in-the-Street, the ordinary, decent, honest citizen has a duty towards the blind, and the weak, the halt, and the maimed, and the poor, and the helpless, the fatherless and the widows, and the mentally incapable; so the scientist owes that same debt to the Man-in-the-Street. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” asked Cain. And humanity has gone on asking that question ever since.

  The answer, in terms of ethics, is undoubtedly “Yes.” Every man is his brother’s keeper, and for his brother’s safety, his brother’s welfare and his brother’s happiness he shall answer to himself, his conscience and his God. Science and the scientists were very definitely humanity’s keepers. In their hands were the means both of destruction and of a glorious new life. They could make society a thing of joy and beauty and plenty, or they could turn it into a crumbling, smoking waste… It was up to them, the Royal International Council of Scientists to see that no weak link forged its way into their chain, and Anzar was on trial.

  What kind of link was Anzar?

  Although the entire Council, or the younger and more energetic members of the Council had to admit that on so important an occasion as this expulsion trial, they had appointed an inner tribunal to do the actual questioning, and to reach a decision which the remainder of the men, now sitting in the spectators gallery would ratify afterwards by a show-of-hands vote. Or, should they feel the occasion warranted it, by a secret ballot. The most outstanding of the characters was Anzar himself.

  He was a short giant of a man, with an enormous head and a gigantic black beard. His face was not unlike the face of an Assyrian bull. The complexion was florid, the beard blue-black and spade-shaped, descending over his broad barrel of a chest. The shoulders were wide, almost unbelievably wide. The man was a pocket Hercules.

  He had the intellect of an Einstein, the shoulders of a Goliath but despite the tremendous reach of his fantastic brain, or the reach that he claimed for his fantastic brain—his body was stunted, and made him look, somehow grotesque. Yet, it was not a humorous grotesqueness. There was nothing at all humorous about Anzar.

  Facing him, on the extreme left of the Tribunal, was Rorsh. Rorsh was a tall, thin, immaculate Russian, who smoked black cigarettes through a long amber holder, and surveyed the world through tinted glasses.

  Otto Koftmann the German was as round as a barrel, as German as Dachshunds and sauerkraut. He wore a loudly checked suit of an out-dated pattern, and his bullet head was surmounted by a crop of short Prussian hair.

  Heimer Dorkel was an American of the loudest and least impressive type yet. For all his gum-chewing and his flamboyant ties, his flashy jackets and his abominable taste in socks, and his blue suede shoes, Heimer Dorkel possessed one of the finest scientific brains in the Western world. On the right of Dorkel sat Erdek. Erdek was Swedish, and his favourite expression was “By Jimmy”. He was almost so Swedish that he looked like a character out of a novel, rather than a real Swedish scientist. But despite his apparent asininity, there was nothing ordinary or everyday or stereotyped about the Swede. Erdek had a place on the Council because of his brain. There was no other reason. Claude Fotheringay was so English that he sported a black bowler and carried an umbrella. He could have been one of the sweating City Brigade, whose lives are bounded by the 8.15 to Town, and the 4.25 home, but he was not one of that Brigade. He had the typical Englishman’s conservative regard for English dress, but otherwise his mind was as new and as original as tomorrow’s paper. Claude Fotheringay was a libel on so fine a personality, but being an Englishman he felt there was something somehow underhand and shady about changing one’s name, even if it was the sort of name that belonged in a dustbin, or around the neck of a pet monkey. They had given him hell at school, but it had also developed his character—no boy of spirit can go through his school days with a name like Claude Fotheringay without scraping his knuckles on several chins, and bloodying several noses… On Claude’s right sat Jock MacIntyre, he was dour, and silent, but none the less brilliant. He had sandy hair, a sandy moustache and a sandy complexion.

  William Evans, on his right, was the Welsh delegate, he was short, dark and curly. His hair curled, his eyebrows curled, his moustache curled, if he’d grown a beard that would have curled. Wherever William Evans went he seemed to curl. When he sat down he curled into a chair; when he got into his car he curled behind the wheel.

  Riley O’Rorke was a blue-eyed dare-devil. His eyes were blue-grey and little devils danced in them. He was as Irish as the Blarney Stone and the shamrock. As harum-scarum and devil-may-care as Errol Flynn, and yet at the same time, his erratic genius had very often arrived at solutions when problems had been beyond his more staid and sober colleagues.

  That was the tribunal, and a more varied mixture of scientific specimens and human specimens would have been difficult to encounter any
where.

  Rorsh, for a start, with his black cigarettes, and his tinted glasses was a character on his own. He would have been quite enough on his own to make the tribunal seem spectacular and outstanding, but Rorsh was not by any means the entire Committee. Koftmann, so German that he looked like a caricature. Dorkel, flashiest of Americans. Erdek, quiet, stereotyped Swede, Claude Fotheringay the bowlered brollied Englishman, Jock MacIntyre dour and sandy, as true a son of Scotland as Rob Roy or Roderick Dhu themselves. Williams Evans, short, dark and wriggling, as lithe and as Gaelic as David of the White Rock. Then Riley O’Rorke, the laughing, young, Errol Flynn of a scientist.

  Anzar looked at them from under shaggy, beetling brows and wondered what their decision would be. They had been conferring together for several minutes.

  It was O’Rorke who suddenly came up with the first practical suggestion, a shot in the dark.

  “You know, fellow scientists” he said, in his broad easy-flowing brogue, “the great thing as I see it is that we are a Tribunal, but we might just as well be a ruddy quiz game. You know, I’ve heard it said about committees that the product of a committee is in opposing ratio to the amount of brain on that committee.”

  “Yes, I can understand that” said Evans, “What do you propose that we do then, however?”

  Riley O’Rorke smiled at him.

  “Well, it’s like this, William my friend, there’s only one answer as I can see it. Only one answer at all, at all. I said just now that we might as well be a quiz programme, well, let’s ask the man some simple quiz questions. Let’s have a scientific quiz, to decide whether or not he’s worthy to be expelled from the Council of Scientists, and have his work put outside the pale—let’s find out just how much he knows.” He leant forward in his chair and looked at Anzar, “Professor Anzar, would you be willing to have your general scientific basis knowledge tested? Then if we’re satisfied that your grounding in orthodox science is solid and reliable you can go on and expound to us in your own way the ideas which seem to have been causing all the friction between you and the scientific bodies of late.”

  For the first time since the tribunal had begun, Anzar spoke, he surveyed the Tribunal disdainfully.

  “I doubt if any of you are capable of asking any questions which I shall find interesting, let alone any questions which I couldn’t answer,” he said thickly.

  His voice had an accent, but that accent was indeterminate. Impossible to fix with any degree of certainty. Anzar was a long-standing member of the International Council, but his origins had always been shrouded in something of a mystery.

  Some even went so far as to say he was not of earth, but he had always claimed that he was. Still, in these early days of space travel it was impossible to tell whether a man was what he said he was, or whether he was from one of the other inhabitable planets of the solar system.

  There had even been whispers of late that aliens were coming in from another star system, possibly that of Sirius. Experiments were also going on with faster than light drives, and it was just possible that somebody as brilliant as Anzar, or as brilliant as Anzar claimed to be, had got ahead of his fellow savants, but that was all pure conjecture.

  There was a deathly hush as the assembly of scientists waited to find out whether or no Anzar would be willing to submit to their tests.

  “Give us a definite answer now,” said the Irishman.

  “Ja!” said Otto Koftmann, “Das ist vot ve vant, ve vant eine kleine definite answer.”

  Anzar looked from the big, square headed German towards the lean, athletic, rakish, devil-may-care Irishman, with a mixture of disdain and amusement.

  “Well, if you really wish to question me,” he said. “I suppose I’d better humour you. What kind of questions do you intend to ask?”

  “Well we all represent different fields of science, now,” said the Irishman. “So if every man asks you a question which is relevant to his own particular field, and if you can score, shall we say, seventy per cent?”

  “Seventy per cent?” said Anzar disdainfully. “The kind of questions that you puerile minds can ask—good gracious! I’ll submit to your test on one condition—if I fail to answer any and every question which you can ask I shall myself resign. I shall no longer consider myself fit to be regarded as a scientist of any calibre at all.”

  “We will accept that condition,” said Claude Fotheringay, suddenly joining in the conversation.”

  “I will begin,” said Rorsh. “What do you understand by the term chromatic aberration?”

  There was a second’s hesitation.

  “Is that the entire question?” asked Anzar.

  “That is the question,” answered Rorsh.

  “Childish,” said the black bearded scientist, “Chromatic aberration is the formation by a lens of an image with coloured fringes, due to their refractive index.”

  “Can you expound that a little,” pressed Rorsh.

  “You are correct——”

  “Of course I’m correct,” flung back Anzar. “I can repeat what I have said, formation by a lens of an image with coloured fringes, due to the refractive index of glass being different for light of different colours. I thought you’d have understood what the refractive index was. The light is thus dispersed into a coloured band, and the effect is corrected by the use of achromatic lenses. I think that’s simple enough now for a kindergarten child to understand!”

  “I am satisfied,” said Rorsh coldly. “Herr Koftmann, perhaps you would like to say something about this?”

  “O jah, I have a question,” said the German. “Vos issen das absolute of thermo-dynamic temperature?”

  “Is that your entire question?” said Anzar scornfully.

  “Well, absolute thermo-dynamic temperature, of course, is temperature which is measured on the absolute or Kelvin Scale. This scale, as everybody should know, is quite independent of the physical properties of any material substance. It is normally defined in the terms of the heat exchanges in an ideal Carnot cycle. On this scale the temperature interval between the ice point and the steam point is defined to be one hundred degrees so that the magnitude of the degrees is the same as on the Centigrade scale. This scale leads to concept of absolute zero temperature. Now in order to convert on the Centigrade scale to degrees absolute, all that has to be done is to add 273.”

  “I, too, am satisfied,” said the German.

  Dorkel was a chemist primarily, he was many other things as well, but it was as a chemist that he specialised. He leaned forward, and in his thick, trans-Atlantic accent he asked:

  “Can you give me the full name and the chemical formula for acetone? Can you give me a definition of the liquid and its uses?”

  “That is the easiest question I have had so far,” said Anzar. “The real name of acetone is dimethyl ketone. Its chemical formula is CH 3 CO CH3. It is an inflammable liquid, it is colourless, it has a pleasant smell, its boiling point is 56.5 C. It is chiefly used as a solvent in the production of cellulose acetate rayon. Do you want to know any more about it?”

  “I pass,” said Homer Dorkel with a rueful grin. “What about you, Erdek? Can you think of something for him?”

  “I am thinking,” replied the Swede, and suddenly snapped his fingers. “I think I have one which you will not find easy, to put it mildly,” he went on “You are, of course, familiar with electrolysis?”

  “I refuse to answer kindergarten questions,” said Anzar.

  “My question is not about straightforward electrolysis” said the Swede.

  “Ah—so you have been thinking,” jibed Anzar sarcastically. “I was almost certain I could hear a strange grinding noise.” Some of the council could not repress flickering grins that were attempting to find their way to their faces.

  “I want you to define Debye and Huckel’s theory of it.”

  “That is quite simple,” replied Anzar. “It shows that you have a little more originality than the three members who spoke before. The theory attempts to p
rovide an explanation for the phenomena of electrolysis itself.… It was put forward in order to overcome certain difficulties which arise in the normal standard interpretation of phenomena on the classical theory of electrolytic dissociation. It is assumed that strong electrolyte is completely dissociated, and that the increase in equivalent conductivity which is observed with dilution, is due, not to an increase in the fraction ionised, but rather to a much greater increase in the mobility of the ions, which is due to the decrease of electrostatic forces. Do I make myself clear, gentlemen?” He had rattled off the definition as easily as though he were reading it from a scientific text book.… He had a phenomenal memory, a phenomenal grasp of nearly every scientific subject. He looked towards Fotheringay. “Your turn, I believe?”

  “Yes,” agreed Claude, “it is.” Fotheringay’s main reputation had been established as a geographer, and a geophysicist. He decided to ask a specialised question in his own field.

  “What do you understand, Professor Anzar, by the secular variation of magnetic declination?”

  “I did not quite hear you,” said Anzar, “Please speak a little louder, Mr. Fotheringay.”

  “Certainly,” said Claude clearly. I wonder if I’ve got him, he was thinking to himself. “What do you understand by the secular variation of magnetic declination? Is that clear enough for you, Mr. Professor Anzar?” He said with unnecessary loudness.

  “Yes, thank you,” replied the black-bearded grotesque. “Well, what I would say in answer to your question, Mr. Fotheringay is this.” He rolled the name round his tongue as though he enjoyed dragging it out to its fullest extent, exhibiting it, to the ears of the listening scientists. There was a muffled snigger from one or two places towards the back of the hall. Fotheringay looked at them murderously … the sniggering subsided.

  “As I was about to say, Mr. Fotheringay.” Anzar again rolled the word out, making the most of every syllable, but this time there was no sniggering laughter. “If the earth’s magnetic Pole is considered to rotate round the geographical north pole completing a cycle every 960 years the representation of the steady variation of magnetic declination, known as the secular variation, will obviously be seen. Let me quote you a simple example. Two hundred years ago the magnetic declination in London was westerly, but over the last two hundred years it has decreased, till at the beginning of the present century it was zero. Does that satisfy you Mr. Foth-er-in-gay?” He spat out the name as though it was a long and complicated Bohemian oath. MacIntyre the dour Scot had been thinking in deep silence, since the questioning had begun. He ran a hand through his thinning sandy hair, while the other tugged at the end of his straggling, ginger moustache.