The John Russell Fearn Science Fiction Megapack

by John Russell Fearn

  “Of course, but— Dammit, man, you’re not serious?”

  “I said I believed what I wrote—and I’m going to prove it. I wrote of a man from Tibet who ruled the world by application of logic. I had to study up a good deal about Tibet to get my facts straight, therefore I shall play a similar role in real life. I know just what a man from Tibet ought to do… I make only two stipulations, gentlemen. In the story there were three assistants. I reserve the right to have three—friends whom I know I can trust. The other clause is that, while I am building up my world-control act, not one of you must communicate with me or give me away. You will find how I am going on rapidly enough from the media… What do you say?”

  “Well it’s fantastic and can’t possibly work, but I’m willing,” Landhurst chuckled. “Rule a world without force, starting from scratch, and you’ll get a hundred thousand from me.”

  “And plenty of publicity besides for future use,” Harrigan smiled. “That may be useful when I start writing in a big way… All right, Mr. Beddows, it’s up to you to draw up the agreement. I’ll prove to you that there’s one born every minute…suckers, I mean, not agreements.”

  The Fantasy Club hardly knew whether to take Harrigan seriously or not. In any case the fact remained that he had the agreement completed, and Landhurst retained a copy of it. The next day Harrigan was missing from the Club.

  As a matter of fact he called on his three friends scattered around London, then went to a junk dealer’s and bought a second-hand steam boiler very cheaply. This he had removed to a small firm of engineers with whom he left definite and rather unusual instructions. Being a small firm and anxious for orders they raised no objections.

  After that for nearly a week, Harrigan spent a great deal of time in the basement beneath his apartment—much to the amazement of his landlady, dabbling with chemicals, printing film, reading thick textbooks, and producing weird smells from gluey looking chemicals. This landlady, peering once down the steps, caught sight of him like some ultra-modern Faust. Once she could not be sure if it was him at all. Catching a glimpse of a dead-white face lined with a multitude of creases, she fled for her life…

  Just the same it was still the normal Harrigan who came up the steps from the cellar with an amused grin on his calmly impudent face.

  “Mr. Harrigan…” The landlady emerged from the rear regions, wrapped up in a huge apron and a good deal of wrath. “Mr. Harrigan, what have you been doing down in my nice clean basement?”

  “Only laying plans for ruling the world, Mrs. Brown.”

  Fortunately, Mrs. Brown, as Harrigan well knew was one of those beings whose orbit centred exclusively round a kitchen. She was blessed with a total absence of imagination.

  “You can’t rule the world from my basement, young man!” she declared firmly. And what is more—”

  “Mrs. Brown—please!” Harrigan held up his band solemnly. “My mind is full of four dimensional ideas: I beg of you not to disturb them. Like this…see.” He held out his handkerchief four square and showed the doubting woman both sides. Finally he gave it to her to hold tautly. She obeyed, watched as he drove his fist through the linen and took the shreds from her.

  “Deliberate waste!” she sniffed. “I never saw—”

  “Shake it out,” Harrigan suggested, beaming on her.

  She snatched the shreds from him and shook hard, stared incredulously as a perfect handkerchief came into view.

  “Fourth dimension,” Harrigan explained solemnly. “Now you know!”

  Whistling, he turned to the door of his room.

  * * * *

  Exactly a fortnight after Harrigan had made his wager with Landhurst, Londoners were distinctly surprised to behold one morning, on their way to business, a gathering of people in Hyde Park. They were congregated round a battered cylinder of metal, sealed at both ends, with portholes of densely thick opaque glass on each side. The mass of metal lay unpicturesquely in the midst of trees and flowerbeds, had smashed down the railings leading to the road and to all appearances had dropped with considerable force.

  At eight in the morning the crowd numbered about two hundred: by noon there were thousands. Despite the efforts of the police, traffic was held up in the main street and the park swarmed with the ordinary folk as well as newshounds, press photographers, television and movie experts. Then there were warnings to keep away from the cylinder as at 12.30 weird clankings came from inside it. At 12.45 the clankings ceased and a sealed operculum opened in the top. A deathlike hush fell on the massed watchers.

  Through the opening in the top a head began to emerge slowly—a head of flowing white hair.

  Then beneath it there became visible an even whiter face, chiseled by a myriad of wrinkles and giving the impression of unguessable antiquity. The eyes, pale blue and inscrutable, gave the impression of keen intelligence and still youthful reasoning… By degrees the whole figure emerged, attired in a long white garment with backflung cowl, rather reminiscent of a monk’s cassock…

  At last Douglas Harrigan extracted himself completely and stood up on the old steam boiler—brought hither during the night by truck and rolled from the roadway through the railings—surveying the crowd.

  “Peace!” he said gravely, raising his arm.

  A murmur passed round the people.

  “Say, who in blazes is he?”

  “Looks like a Druid to me… You know those fellers in nightshirts.”

  Harrigan rubbed his ear gently, the better to adjust the minute electrical pick-up therein.

  Then he said:

  “There are among you those who believe I am a Druid… No, I am not a Druid. I am a Tibetan, most high scientist of the Lamas of Tibet. Unhappily, by a mistake in judgment, my space machine dropped here instead of in the Himalayas; a mistake caused by a miscalculation as I returned from Mars…”

  “Mars!” went up a gasp.

  “Yes; Mars…” Harrigan’s ghastly white face wrinkled in sudden contemplation. “I learned so much…the power of a race with whom we have yet to reckon… I had intended returning to Tibet with warnings of what I saw on Mars—but the fates willed me here. I am prepared to believe that they did so in order that I might show you of the western world what lies before you…”

  “Say, that was nice of the fates!” observed a laconic voice. Hodder, chief feature writer to the Clarion, was standing immediately below the cylinder. “How is it that you talk English so well, Mr. Tibetan?”

  “What is mere language when you have mastery of thought?” Harrigan sighed.

  Hodder was not convinced. His rat-like eyes searched the cylinder with ruthless care.

  “For a man with the mastery of thought you made a horrible mess of your landing!” he shouted up. “Mistook England for the Himalayas! Don’t hand me that! Anyway, this thing here is a steam boiler!”

  Harrigan’s eyes narrowed a little. The hatchet face of the journalist was irritating beyond measure. He looked like—and was—the world’s prize snooper.

  “I have yet to see a steam boiler with port-holes, young man,” Harrigan said at last with due gravity—and earned himself a laugh. “This ship is battered and scarred from cosmic brick-bats,” he went on. “If, as I understand is often the case with Westerners, you doubt my veracity, please come up and look through the ship for yourself… All of you come and look! We of Tibet are natural masters of science and occultism, there is sometimes the necessity to convince the doubters of the west. Pray come up…”

  Ladders were produced. The newspapermen and cameramen came first and the bulk of the people afterwards, together with one or two rather baffled police officers. One by one they lowered themselves into the cylinder’s peculiar inside. There was nothing visible save a small bed rivetted to the floor and one lead packing case. The porthole glasses were of the variety which permit a view from inside while none can be obtained from outside.

  Hodder swung round with a malicious grin, notebook in hand, to find Harrigan behind him, a smile on his wr
inkled, ancient face.

  “This is a trick!” Hodder said bluntly, writing briefly on his pad. “This piece of old iron couldn’t fly anywhere—let alone Mars! No rocket tubes, no machinery, no control board, not even a map! What’s the big idea?” He thrust his book back in his pocket aggressively.

  Harrigan gave a patient sigh. “You poor, ignorant western people! Have you not heard of how we of Tibet sit in the glaciers and by mind force alone cause the ice to melt around us? This ship was driven through the cosmos by mind power. Matter is subservient to mind.”

  “You mean you lay on that bed and concentrated?” Hodder snapped.

  “I do. I could even have gone without a ship if necessary—I could have hurled myself through the void like a petrified image—but I realised I might need to carry evidence back with me from Mars. Besides, I needed such a mundane thing as a camera to reveal the truth of my assertions. In that packing case there is the film and equipment. I could hardly have carried those without a ship.”

  “No gravity in space,” Hodder observed acidly. “So I’m told.”

  “Truly—but there is gravity on Earth and Mars to be overcome at the initial levitation…”

  Hodder cocked his eye on the cases, scraped his jaw with a forefinger.

  “I don’t understand why you came here instead of Tibet, even now,” he said. “Why don’t you move on to Tibet right now and prove you’re okay?”

  Harrigan shrugged. “If you wish it…” He closed his eyes and said quietly. “We will go at this very moment. Prepare…”

  “Hey, wait a minute—!” somebody shouted in sudden alarm. “We’re here too, don’t forget! We can’t go to Tibet. We’ve got businesses to look after!”

  “Why, of course!” Harrigan opened his eyes with a sudden start. “I had overlooked that… Perhaps—some other time. Besides, now I am here I feel that you are entitled to explanations since I have upset the normal routine of your city.”

  “Don’t worry—you’ll get plenty of publicity,” Hodder said cryptically. “In fact maybe more than you bargained for! I’ve got it all down in this notebook of mine.” He patted his pocket wherein lay the book. “Everything you have said; everything I have seen. I’m going to reason things out for myself.”

  “So? You match your mind against mine?”

  Harrigan stood looking at the reporter steadily for a moment, then he said briefly, “My friend, if you probe too far you will find yourself in the same condition as your notes! Just look what you have written…”

  “Huh? Meaning what?” Hodder tugged his book out of his pocket, flipped it open—then he started violently. When he had thrust it away it had been half full of observations, both relating to Harrigan and other matters long past, but now the book was completely blank. Not a single page had a note on it. Yet it was still his book, with the Claríon stamped clearly across the front.

  “How the heck—?” He stared blankly as the others crowded round him.

  “Such a pity,” Harrigan sighed. “Mind over matter, of course. I did it just as a warning, my friend. Do not probe into a science you can never hope to understand…”

  “Perhaps,” Hodder said slowly, his lips tightening, “I do understand! In any event I’ll go to any lengths to prove what I’m thinking…”

  But nobody was taking any notice of him. They were too busy following the the ‘Mystic’ to the airlock again…

  CHAPTER II

  Martian invasion

  Harrigan the Tibetan hit the headlines to no uncertain effect that evening. So far, his peculiar manner and dispassionate calmness, together with an inherent ability to twist conversation to his own advantage, had made quite an impression on the body of people at large. The papers gave the reactions of the masses exactly, complete with photographs of the Druid-like visitor in his long white cassock. Some said he was three hundred years old—a master scientist, an exponent of the occult, cleverer than anything the western world had ever known. Hodder got into a row with his editor through taking the opposite view to the rest of the papers. Hodder summed up his conclusions in a leader article, which, after a statement of the main facts, concluded with this:

  “This being claims he comes from Tibet, has visited Mars, and hurled a cylinder of metal across space by the force of mind alone. This represents a kind of mind power utterly foreign to us. Are we supposed to credit it? Are we, as rational beings, expected to credit that even a Tibetan can do such a thing?

  “Why did he arrive here? It was no accident! He came for a purpose—and a man with such knowledge as he claims will not be content with purely enlightening us. No; he will try to dominate us instead. He had spoken of a warning he brings us. What is this warning? If, on the other hand, he is a fake—as this writer fully believes—then he is treating the great British public as a bunch of fools and ought to be locked up! He has spoken of films. We demand to see them! This writer is firmly convinced that this so-called man from Tibet is a fake and will go to endless trouble to prove it. Watch this column from now on!”

  Most of the readers were offended at the idea that they were a bunch of fools. It is a man’s or woman’s personal right to be proud of his or her own judgment… Harrigan himself, reading the notice in the privacy of his hotel—whither an admiring but uncertain body of civic authorities had whirled him—only smiled tautly and wondered what they were thinking at the Fantasy Club. After pondering for a while he started on the second stage of his scheme and demanded that in view of Hodder’s Insulting suggestions, a cinema should be appropriated for the exclusive purpose of permitting him to show his film of Martian life, and issuing at the same time a grave personal warning to the world.

  The authorities arranged for his request to be granted the following night at the largest cinema in the metropolis, summarily cutting short the current hit. Not that the public minded. A first hand film of life on another world, personally commentated by a mystic from Tibet, would be infinitely better than the droolings of a Hollywood blonde.

  Mob law reigned in the Strand the following night. Searchlights swept the sky; skysigns blazed out the one word of the film’s title— ‘Mars!’ Men and women, rich and poor trampled on one another in street and gilded foyer. No premiere had ever given the authorities so much trouble… In the best seats secured at fabulous prices, were all the members of the Fantasy Club. In the front row downstairs, travelling case on his knee, was Bob Shepherd, Harrigan’s closest friend and associate. A big blond fellow, he sat with a satisfied and rather mysterious grin on his face watching the house filling up around him.

  In another part of the house was the Press, Hodder to the forefront with a cold, cynical grin on his vinegary features. His grin vanished and he became intent when at last the hubbub died down and the time arrived to commence. The curtains swept aside to reveal Harrigan, in his usual queer monk-like disguise, standing full in the spotlight, a microphone before him on its stand.

  “Ladies and gentlemen…” Harrigan paused as a deathlike hush descended. “Ladies and gentlemen, because my real name is practically unpronounceable, it is better perhaps that you continue to refer to me through your press and among yourselves as ‘The Tibetan.’ I have been subjected to a great deal of criticism since I accidentally arrived here instead of my homeland. At home I would be understood and be acknowledged for what I am—the first man to conquer the void, a master of science and the occult, and one worthy to become the ultimate high Lama of my sect. To become that demands powers of the supernatural and scientific that you of the west cannot even guess at.… Later, I will show you what I mean. First there are other things of import—my experiences on Mars, for instance…”

  The lights dimmed and Harrigan moved aside, taking the microphone with him. Upon the screen there appeared a colour picture of a vast desert, stretching as far as the eyes could behold. Slowly the view changed revealing a vision of dead canal bottom strewn with vegetation along its banks.

  “That,” said Harrigan slowly, “is quite a representative ex
ample of what all Mars’ surface is like. Now here are some samples of the life that Mars possesses on its surface. Mars is not, as some believe, totally dead. It has air of sorts, thin—but sufficient for some forms of life. Like these… I was enabled to photograph without difficulty since I can either live in air or master the conditions to live without it— Observe!”

  The scene faded into an astounding picture of monstrous slug-like beings crawling along a rocky defile, backed by a sandy cliff to the rear. Suddenly the white-garbed figure of Harrigan appeared beside them, incredibly dwarfed.

  “From that you may see the comparison in sizes,” he observed. “The camera was automatic and went on turning…”

  A woman screamed somewhere in the audience as the stalked eyes of one of the slugs turned to look at the unseen camera. Harrigan’s minute figure turned and ran for safety.

  “That particular creature caught my scent,” Harrigan said, as the scene faded. “I found the visible surface of Mars populated by these queer creatures who apparently live on the canal products—on the vegetation, that is. They have only one abysmal intellect. Because of their profusion, however, I fancied that if there were any intelligent scientists on Mars they had probably moved themselves either underground or into another dimension out of reach of the creatures and of course hidden from prying eyes. I found nothing below surface—but in the fourth dimension, into which I can pass with ease, I found this! And here there lies menace in plenty!”

  Even the hardboiled and suspicious Hodder gasped a little at what followed. The scenes were weird and unearthly. The picture showed a city shimmering with unearthly yet beautiful living colours—a city that was somehow within a city, and the whole mass of leaning edifices with vast bases and foreshortened summits. It was the kind of scene to make a trick camera turn handsprings. At the base of the buildings were people, but they came and went magically—stepping out of a demarcation of nothing into visibility, then walked back into nothing!