The John Russell Fearn Science Fiction Megapack

by John Russell Fearn

  “I suppose I could graft…” Gillibrand meditated; then he looked up. “I’ll advise you in the morning. I must think.”

  “Okay, but if anybody else turns up I shan’t hold it for you.”

  Gillibrand swung to the door, and then he turned back.

  “You make it too irresistible, Captain,” he decided, tugging out his chequebook. “I’ll take it…”

  Tyme took the cheque whilst Barrett wrapped up the pot. With a beaming smile Gillibrand hurried out, holding his precious prize against him.

  “Hell!” Tyme gave a sniff like a vacuum cleaner. “Open the window! The place smells all perfume. Well, Barrett my lad, that makes a tidy sum to date, and I don’t think there’s anything more to sell.”

  “I still think something might be done about Miss Verity, sir.” Barrett pondered for a moment. “She’s got exclusive rights to copy your topee without it costing her anything beyond a roll of the eyes. I think by the exercise of legal strategy I could make her pay something. Have I your permission?”

  “Go to it! Once that’s finished we’re taking off on another expedition.”

  * * * *

  When Tyme had dressed and arrived for breakfast next morning he found everything ready on the table, together with a brief note. Barrett had departed to execute ‘legal strategy.’ Tyme started on his eggs, glancing at the morning paper—then he forgot all about the eggs in a sudden rush of fury.

  The paper—the ‘Voice’—had the headline devoted to reporter Taylor’s article:

  WHY DOES MARK TYME MARK TIME?

  Wading through a resume of the Captain’s fêting since his arrival back on Earth, the article went on with vitriolic bitterness to explain how Taylor had been kicked out the previous night. Taylor averred, just within the law of libel, that the Captain was a fraud, that he was a guest of the ratepayers and had openly insulted and double-crossed the citizens in return.

  Matters like fizzwater, where he could be sure of a return, he had been eager to pursue—but where it meant him giving money for advancement, as in the case of the World Enlightenment League—he had threatened violence. And what sort of a trick was he trying to play on poor, innocent Monica Verity, a young girl who just worshipped him? Curious how Taylor had amnesia regarding Monica’s true profession.

  The article concluded:

  “And we have got to know why Márk Tyme continues to mark time. We are not keeping him if he is anxious to start on another expedition. The least a hero can do is be civil.”

  Tyme swallowed rage and breakfast together. Then he snatched up the telephone and spent a busy fifteen minutes contacting the rest of his associates. In each case he got a similar answer. None of them was ready to follow out his orders and leave for space again in two days. They wanted a month’s rest and enjoyment before they would be at his service once more.

  It was not surprising then that Barrett found a very disgusted he-man when he returned, rather sheepishly, around lunchtime.

  “Well?” Tyme looked up despondently.

  “I regret, sir, that I have to report failure.” Barrett looked crestfallen. “I saw a solicitor, but it seems you have no chance of forcing. Miss Verity to pay anything for the use of your hat. That endorsement you signed was sufficient legal guarantee of your approval of the whole thing. I’m deeply sorry, sir.”

  “Oh, forget it,” Tyme growled. “Like the rest of ’em she’s a twister. They’re rotten, Barrett! Everybody’s rotten. The bigger you are the more you get soaked. Even our own boys aren’t anxious to take orders any more. I wanted to get away from Earth in a couple of days: they demand a month.”

  “Frankly, sir, I can’t blame them. However, if you wish I will have the ship loaded up with five years’ provisions and give the necessary orders for fuel manufacture. We can afford it now. We may as well be ready.”

  “Yes, you’d better do that.” Tyme lighted a cigarette moodily, then swinging round he snatched up the ‘Voice’ and ripped it savagely to shreds, finally flinging himself into a chair to brood over the ‘delights’ of being a conquering hero…

  And if Taylor had sought to stir up public opinion against Tyme by his leader—which was followed by others of greater violence in the ensuing days—he certainly succeeded. Tyme found himself left alone in the Administration Building. The officials were perfectly polite, but they left no doubt of the fact that they would not object to the vacation of the suite. Which only served to make Tyme all the more determined to stay—at least for a month, until he could collect his crew.

  Certainly he was convinced that fame was not worth having. He kept to his rooms most of the time, only seeing people who desired to add his name to advertisements. For such privileges he demanded stunning fees—and got them. He began to appear in all kinds of magazines, advertising anything from shoes to skyscrapers… He noted too, with a kind of detached interest, the furore being caused by the arrival of Venusfizz and topee hats simultaneously. In the smart magazines his endorsement of topee hats appeared with shameless frequency. He read too that because Monica’s firm possessed the original design it seemed likely that dozens of lesser designers would nose-dive into bankruptcy if the craze for topee hats did not let up.

  Tyme began to receive shoals of impassioned entreaties urging him to give other designers the topee concession—to which he refused because he was legally bound. In the case of Venus-fizz he was faced with a different problem. Manufacturers of fizzwater, distillers, and brewers rose to heated action. The ‘Voice’ published the glaring facts that Mark Tyme had deliberately ruined the drink trade of the world. He had sold a secret to Vanhart of the International Beverage Corporation. Vanhart was likely to make millions out of it, and because of the drug-like effect of the drink, would continue to do so ad infinitum. Yet, by legal statute, Tyme had no right to sell his formula without first getting the consent of the Board of Beverages.

  Far from having the assent of this body, he did not even know it existed. Before he realized what had happened he found a summons slapped in his hand; and an hour later he got a second one. The hat designers had found a clause whereby they could sue him for fraudulent conversion of trade rights. That was what they called it, anyway…

  “And this,” Tyme bellowed, waving the summonses in the air, “is gratitude! First one, then the other. But they won’t get away with it, Barrett! If they want me that badly they can chase me into space. I’m having nothing to do with it! These cases will take all the money I’ve made! I’m going to make the boys see reason and leave early. You’d better come with me.”

  He slammed on his topee and led the way to the door. Barrett followed discreetly behind him. Glaring as he strode along, Tyme went down the main street amidst the shoppers and walkers, thumbs latched by habit in the edges of his revolver belt. He ignored the looks cast towards him.

  “We’ll try Chris first,” he decided. “No use talking to ’em by ’phone. They only understand one language!” And he clenched a hair-matted fist.

  He stopped at the traffic lights, waiting for them to change, but before it came he was aware of a wild confusion to his left. It was followed by a smashing of glass and the shriek of a man.

  “What the devil—?” His hands flew to his guns and his eyes slitted—then he turned and raced with Barrett and the pedestrians along the pavement until they reached a battered shop front. Women screamed, men shouted, police blew whistles. Tyme slid to a stop and gave Barrett an astounded look.

  Thrusting through the broken window, the struggling form of a man in its tendrils, was a titanic green arm—the arm of a plant, its buds shaped like dumb-bells. Even as the baffled people watched, the arm grew.

  “It’s Gillibrand!” Barrett gasped in horror, as the suspended man raised a limp and sweating face. “The plant you sold him. Earthly soil—!” Barrett stopped, looking at the name “Gillibrand” over the broken window.

  “Hell!” Tyme whispered, watching the twining green. The thing must have grown like the devil in the passing d
ays. Then at that moment Gillibrand caught sight of him and gave a shriek:

  “He sold me this! Captain Tyme! It’s a mad plant—been growing ever since I put it in the conservatory! Can’t kill it—”

  Gillibrand finished with a shriek as the sappy branch holding him snapped precipitately and dropped him with a resounding thud onto the pavement—but like dense ivy speeded up a hundred times the rope-like arm of vegetation began crawling steadily up the building block, exuding a sickening odour of acacia.

  The people were now regarding Tyme with grim eyes. The police too prepared themselves and tugged out their guns—but in that instant Tyme’s hands flashed to his own weapons and he levelled them.

  “All right,” he said bitterly, Barrett behind him. “Come one step towards me and I’ll blast the living daylights out of you! I mean it! How the heck was I to know the weed would do that? I knew it grew fast, but not that fast. You can’t blame me for it any more than you can blame me for bringing new drinks and new hats to public notice—”

  “You’ve been a pest ever since you came back, Tyme,” one of the officers snapped. “It’s our job to run you in.”

  “Try it!” Tyme grinned. “I’m finished, you hear? Finished!”

  He backed away as he spoke and said briefly to Barrett: “The airport. Only half-a-mile away. Got to run for it.”

  “But the rest of the boys, sir?”

  “Forget ’em. We’ll manage. Return later maybe. You loaded up with provisions and fuel?”

  “Yes. I—”

  ‘Right! Let’s go!”

  Tyme swung suddenly, plunging into the midst of the crowd behind him with such force that they bowled backwards before the onrush. By the time they had recovered their balance he was streaking like a track runner down the sidewalk, able to move at demoniacal speed through long practice. He whirled Barrett alongside him.

  Twisting and dodging, ignoring the blaring of traffic as he tore across main streets, the hero of Venus pelted like the wind away from the yelling throngs pursuing him. He was not even panting by the time he and Barrett had plunged to the airfield. Barrett was not panting, either: he was half dead.

  Without a pause Tyne went straight on, reached the airlock of his spaceship, and twisted the combination screws. He hurled Barrett through the opening, then clambering after him as the yelling crowd surged onto the airfield. A police officer’s gun charge struck the massive door futilely as it closed.

  One flick of the buttons and the rockets roared into life. Instantly the crowd pressed back before the blasting, searing discharge. Within the ship, Tyme stood looking down on the people as he hurtled the vessel into the clouds.

  “Appear in court!” he breathed venomously. “Responsible for a mad tree! I’ve been made a sucker all along the line. Forced to leave all my money behind too—not that anybody can touch it. One day I may collect… The conquering hero! It’s the last time I’ll try and be a prophet in my own country, Barrett.”

  Barrett nodded slowly, recovering himself. “I agree with you, sir. Though it will be difficult without a full crew, I do believe the solitude of space is preferable to the solitude of a cell.”

  HE WALKED ON AIR

  The conquest of gravity should have brought riches—instead it brought death!

  Jarvis Downing, research scientist, quietly faced Doctor Adam Henderson, the world’s greatest brain-specialist.

  “I’m going to need your assistance soon, Henderson,” Downing remarked quietly, then began to slowly pace the great library. “I’ve overtaxed myself through the years, and now something’s happened to my brain. I saw a specialist today.”

  “Yes?” The pale, unsentimental eyes of Henderson turned to follow his pacing friend.

  “I have an incipient tumour on the right frontal lobe of my brain. Only one man dare remove it—you, of course.”

  “I see,” the specialist said slowly, and studied his cigar.

  Suddenly Downing ceased pacing. “Henderson, do you think, if you operated, that I might live after it?”

  “If you don’t, my reputation will be in pieces,” the surgeon replied quietly. “You have little to fear; I have operated with considerable success so far. Of course, there is always…”

  “If there’s the slightest doubt about my recovery I feel I ought to confide in you the details of a discovery I have made, in order that my secret may not be lost to the world.”

  “Certainly there is always a risk,” the brain specialist admitted. “Why not confide in me in any case? We’re old friends. You can tell me anything with absolute confidence; I won’t breathe a word to a soul.”

  “I know.” Downing nodded, simply—in fact, too simply. Even through ten years of close acquaintance he had not fully pierced that strange diverse and even treacherous inner nature of his medical friend. Doctor Adam Henderson was not all he seemed on the surface; a streak of cruelty, and an inveterate desire for gambling, had more than once threatened to undermine his career. Only his amazing brilliance and the utilization of an alias had kept him at the pinnacle of fame as a brain-surgeon.

  Diwning was a different type. Quiet, unassuming, oblivious to all glory, his main object in life the exploration into little known science. He had already amassed a considerable fortune by the medium of his inventions. Henderson, always in the hope that something would be discovered that would perhaps net him a fortune as well, had clung to Downing like a leech through the years—so far without any benefit…

  “I’ve made a really remarkable discovery.” Downing began reminiscently, seating himself. “I’ve found how to stop the action of gravitation. “It’s a metal—Vonium, I call it; highly radioactive.”

  “So you’ve added another element to the Periodic Table, then? That’s a rather out of my line, Downing. I know little of radioactive minerals.”

  “In a way, it was an accident which led me to discover it. I was endeavouring, by firing neutrons into uranium atoms—to bring about a new metal—but instead of a transmutation into some new and inert metal, I brought about a substance, which instantly flew to the top of the vacuum-tube in which I was making the experiment! The top, mind you! The substance proved to be extremely radioactive, and in due course turned back into uranium. Once that happened it fell again to the base of the vacuum-tube.”

  “Well?” Henderson asked, as a momentary silence settled on the inventor.

  “I repeated the experiment and made a thorough investigation, finally arriving at the cause of this peculiar defiance of gravitation… You’ve heard of radiation?”

  “Who hasn’t?”

  “I mean, do you really understand its relationship to radioactivity? For instance, all radioactive substances emit radiation in the form of y-rays, and material particles in the form of alpha and beta rays are shot off, these latter being, of course, the protons and electrons of the original atom. Now, y-rays are not material particles; they’re merely radiation of a very special kind. Note the word ‘radiation’ Henderson, for that is the secret. Radiation from a normally radioactive substance is amazingly weak, of course, its wavelength being about the order of one ten thousand millionth of an inch, or about the hundred thousandth part of the wavelength of visible light.”

  “Figures don’t impress me, Downing; I like visible proof.”

  “Wait a minute; I have to explain it this way. I have shown how weak normal radiation is; yet even so that radiation had been proved by various scientists to possess a faint recoiling power; that is to say it has a slight, measurable mass, just as has light itself in a stronger form. This new element has a diffusion of energy that exceeds anything hitherto known to science. The radiation of the y-rays is strong enough to actually repulse the metal itself against the power of gravitation. You understand?”

  The surgeon’s pale eyes were brighter now. “I see what you mean. Radio-activity is so extremely rapid that the y-rays are emitted with infinitely greater power than in a normal radioactive substance, causing the metal concerned to recede under its
own power from gravitational force?”

  “There you have it in a nutshell. Of course, extreme radioactivity of that kind limits the life of Vonium to one of extreme shortness; its weight vanishes as radiation goes on, naturally—that is law. Then it returns to the original element, uranium.”

  “But surely, if the stuff is such a repulsor of gravitation, it would hang in the middle of the tube, not at the top, by reason of it exerting an equal repulsive pressure on all sides?”

  “It would seem natural at first thought,” Downing agreed, “but you must not forget that the mass of the vacuum walls, as compared to the mass of the earth—the floor—is immeasurably slight. Vonium releases itself from the strongest attraction, which is earth itself; hence it goes upward until it meets the first obstacle—in this case the top of the vacuum-tube. I haven’t tried releasing it yet. I suppose it would go into space in a perfectly straight line so long as its life lasted—except where it repulsed itself from stellar bodies. One thing I do know; it won’t stop down!”

  “It sounds too remarkable to be true,” the surgeon said thoughtfully. “I wish I knew more of atomic science.”

  “So far, the world has never known a substance which can repulse itself by its own radiations, but that doesn’t preclude its existence. I’ve found it. Energy and radiation are one and the same, Henderson. Anything that goes forward has a thrust backwards—recoil.”

  “And now what?” Henderson asked. “Space travel, I suppose?”

  The inventor shook his head. “Not to commence with. There are thousands of other uses for the stuff, here on earth—such as in the erection of high buildings. Once I’ve got the stuff under proper control men can have boots made of the stuff, within lead-casings because of the harmful radiations, and then they can walk literally on air. Calculation will show when the stuff will revert back to inert metal… There are cranes, too, which can be replaced with Vonium. Sufficient quantities will lift any weight on earth. Uranium isn’t particularly difficult to secure these days, and the transmutation task is fairly simple. I’m sure boots are the simplest things to begin with.”