“Well?”
“Disobedience, sir, following deliberate statements intended to insult the Presence and his Council.”
“Both?” The eyes slitted.
“The man, sir— Eward Hilto. The woman, Lyra Garfane, agreed but tried to stop the man’s remarks. I thought it unnecessary to report direct to the Presence, so brought them to you.”
“Naturally the Presence must not be disturbed with such trifles. Very well, you know the rules. Space-death for the man; one week in solitary for the woman. That’s all.”
“You can’t do it!” Eward burst out desperately, dumbfounded at the callousness of the situation. “You just can’t! We’ve got to have a fair trial! I demand to see the Presence—”
“Take them out!” The centremost man returned to working on his papers.
The guard was far too strong to overpower. He whirled the pair outside as if they were children, then pressed a button in the wall and waited for a moment. When two more guards came up he thrust the struggling, kicking girl into their grip.
“Eward!” she screamed frantically. “Eward! Oh, God—!”
Her voice faded as she was half down the passage in the direction of the prison cells. Eward stood staring bleakly after her, then his dazed eyes turned back to the levelled gun of the guard.
“Move!” came the cold command.
Eward turned very slowly, fists clenched. Thoughts were tumbling through his mind—horrifying thoughts which he could not properly marshal. A week in solitary darkness for Lyra: death for himself! To be fired from that heinous space-gun without protection, without anything—a human projectile into space to meet instant destruction.
“No!” he screamed suddenly. “I’ll not go! You can’t do it to me—!”
“Keep going!” the guard snapped, and shoved him along brutally until at last he found himself in the projection room facing that devilish contrivance which had come to be looked upon as the guillotine of this day and age, though not half so swift in its effect.
Eward struggled with the ferocity of a madman as he was bound with manacles to the firing mechanism. He screamed threats, insults and abuse, all without avail. Then he subsided into mute horror as he saw the vent at the end of the machine’s chute gaping open—wide to the starry black of the night sky.
“Treason is its own reward,” the guard said stonily. Then he drew himself up and raised an arm aloft, muttering mechanically, “The Presence is just! All honour to the Presence!” His hand dropped and slammed home a switch. He watched Eward’s helpless body hurtle like a thunderbolt up the chute, impelled by irresistible force, until he vanished from sight at the end.
* * * *
Lyra Garfane knew better than to ask for reprieve. The officials of the city, and the Presence least of all, never granted mercy and never recanted. So she took the only other course, submitted to her sentence, and for a week lay in a pitch-dark cell, thinking and grieving by turns, only stirring to eat the food brought at regular intervals.
As she lay on her hard bed, accompanied by the eternal muffled thunder of the city, strange thoughts chased through her mind—thoughts which somehow she could not reconcile with any voluntary desire. She was acutely conscious of the death of Eward. She saw him pass into space. All around her she felt space’s crushing cold, saw the friendless, blazing stars and icy moon.
Time and again her attempts to sleep were disturbed by this vision; until after a day or two it was replaced by another one. She saw Earth with its teeming cities and busy seas, saw London in particular, pyramidical in design—pyramids of windows and in each window shone a light. Beacon-towers, mammoth aircraft, endless people, ceaseless industry. And over it all brooded one on whom no worker had ever gazed—the Presence. Him she could not see distinctly.
Indeed, she wondered why she should see these things at all, when never in her life had she had the opportunity to see anything beyond this drab quarter of the workers. Yet somehow, deep within her, she knew that what she saw was absolutely correct.
Only when she was finally released from solitary into the blinding light of day did the visions become dim, and finally ceased altogether. She returned to her work as a machine-minder, crushed and beaten in spirit, mourning the death of Eward. He had become known amongst his loyal friends as the man who had dared too much.
A dulled mind is of little use for concentration upon a complex machine. Lyra found this out. It was two weeks after her release from solitary: her thoughts had wandered to the dead Eward—then suddenly a fearful wrenching pain at her hands brought her back to agonised reality. She screamed and tore frantically at fingers already in the grip of whirling cogs. Fingers, hands, arms, crushing bone. The workroom spun in a mist of pain and disappeared…
Lyra came out of the darkness again with an aching head and immovable arms. Little by little she recognised the white cot of the hospital, the clean, fresh smell which always hung about the place. Before her was the face Eward had seen when he had recovered—Elman Dalmer, the chif surgeon.
“All right,” he murmured, patting her shoulder gently. “You’ll do fine now. Crushed hands and broken arms…” He smiled. “Soon put you right with our modern surgery, my dear. You should have been more alert.”
Lyra licked her dry lips. “I—I was thinking…”
“Of Eward Hilto?”
Lyra nodded slowly and closed her eyes to compress bitter tears. The master-surgeon patted her head gently.
“Poor child,” he sympathised; then more cheerfully: “But don’t worry. I am the master of this department and my orders are inviolate. I have decided that you need extra special care, and you know what that means.”
The girl reopened her eyes. “That—that I become a patient in your private sanatorium?”
“More than that. Until I see fit to release you, you will become my ward. Nobody save me knows the extent of your injuries, or even their nature. I have hinted at non-existent internal complications which will take months to heal…” Dalmer paused, his rugged old face still smiling. “I know the circumstances of Eward Hilto’s death,” he added softly. “I know the ruthless treatment which was meted out to him and you. I am an Earthman, remember, and my heart goes out to you, my dear. So young. So much you could do…”
He broke off, shrugged. “It’s settled then. You shall become my ward. Later I’ll try and use my influence to get you out of that infernal workers’ department. Now try and sleep.”
Lyra could only smile her thanks. Movement was impossible and words were inadequate. With eyes that were still moist she watched Dalmer get to his feet from beside her and resume his normal hospital routine.
And he was as good as his word, and of course his authority went unquestioned. In two weeks, her hands and arms healed, Lyra left the hospital—but she did not return to work. Under special orders a private car took her to Dalmer’s luxurious home in the influential quarter of the city, and here she was handed over to a matron.
Even so, Lyra could not fully understand it all. It was too unbelievable, too good to be true that Dalmer, for all his well-known humanitarian aims, should make such immense efforts to single her out for comfort and happiness. Her own rooms, good food, every want attended to… Incredible!
She spent the first day in an atmosphere approaching what she imagined heaven must be like—then when night had settled on the vast city there came a knock on her door and Dalmer himself entered, smiling, dressed in ordinary civilian clothes.
“Everything all right?” he asked, pulling up a chair.
“Nothing could disturb me, sir, if it were not for a memory,” Lyra answered. “The memory of Eward, horribly killed…”
Dalmer said nothing. Lyra looked at him steadily.
“Why do you do these things for me? Don’t think I’m not grateful: I am indeed, but I do wonder!”
“Of course you do, but you can rest assured I didn’t pick you out of thousands of unhappy souls purely for sentimental reasons. I had a definite purp
ose, and part of it I’ll make clear this very night.” Dalmer got to his feet. “Put on a wrap and come with me. I’ve something special to show you.”
Lyra looked her surprise for a moment, then she obeyed and preceded the surgeon out of the cosy room. He walked by her side down the spacious corridor, led the way down the broad staircase, and so to a panel which slid aside in the wall. Together they stepped into a brightly-lighted, cold laboratory.
“Surprised?” Dalmer murmured as Lyra gazed in astonishment.
“Well—yes. I don’t understand how—”
“My private workshop.” Dalmer motioned to the machines. “The work of a lifetime, known only to a trusted few, myself, and now you. Unless—” He paused, pondering.
“Unless what, sir?”
“Unless those infernal Venusian scientists have tracked me down with their instruments… They know so much!”
Turning, he led the way to a maze of machines until they came to a screen of ground glass supported within four huge magnets. In silence Lyra watched Dalmer finger an array of switches. By degrees the screen came to life until finally there was a view of the blackness of space, smudged with one grey speck. After a moment the speck came nearer as controls were adjusted.
“X-ray telescope,” Dalmer said briefly.
Lyra hardly heard him. Her attention was concentrated on that grey speck and her heart was thudding. For that speck was a man! A stone-grey man, crystallised, his clothes merging with his flesh. He was motionless, lying on his back in the depths of space, apparently in an orbit between Earth and moon. His arms were straight at his sides, his eyes closed. A phantom of a man—Eward Hilto!
“Eward!” Lyra whispered. “But—but it can’t be! Space would burst him apart—”
“Not so,” Dalmer murmured. “No breath in his body and no pressure outside. His body remains intact. So does his brain! Out there in space is Eward Hilto, the man who wanted to avenge this Godless Age, and if the fates permit he shall!”
Dalmer snapped another electrical machine into action. The tensity of electrical forces gathered in the laboratory. Lyra felt hcr limbs tingling. Fascinated, she watched the play of nameless forces, the lavender glow from a bar projector reaching to the roof.
“Stimulus!” Dalmer breathed. “Stimulus! Life current! Energy to bring the spark of life into that floating body, to give power to that superhuman brain—”
“Superhuman!” Lyra echoed.
“In time you’ll see why. Watch, as this power hurtles over the gulf of space to him—”
Lyra watched fixedly, her eyes wide. The figure of Eward Hilto had stirred! Then she swung round in alarm at a sudden tearing noise. Instantly Dalmer switched off his apparatus and turned to face a cordon of uniformed men as they marched into the laboratory, taking care to avoid the hot edges of the secret door their flame-guns had blasted open.
“You’re under arrest, Dalmer!” Lyra recognised the guard who had once arrested her. “And this girl too, since she’s with you. We’ve had both of you watched, and you’re obviously tied up with Eward Hilto, who was put to death. If you won’t tell us anything, Dalmer, the girl will. Now get out of here, both of you.”
Without a word, Dalmer and Lyra obeyed, eventually finding themselves in the prison’s dreary reaches—one special department thereof. Before she realised what was happening Lyra found herself thrust into a device closely resembling a modern version of the horrific Iron Maiden.
“Now,” the guard said calmly, fastening the clamps about the girl, “you had better realise that unless you tell us everything we want to know concerning Dalmer and his activities, this instrument will break your limbs one by one—”
“I’ll tell you all you want to know,” Dalmer broke in, his voice heavy with weariness. “I’ll…”
He paused, chiefly because the guard was not listening. In fact none of them were. They were staring at something grey and indeterminate moving out of the shadows.
“What the hell is it?” one of the other guards demanded, an edge of fear in his voice.
The object became clearer, the figure of a man of stone-grey, as though he were covered in chain mail. His eyes stared with baleful hypnosis. Though he did not speak his thoughts battered into captives and captors alike.
“I have come—to avenge!”
His two hands rose. What happened was not clear, but the bolts and bars of the terrible torture instrument flew apart like cotton and dropped the fainting girl to the floor.
“And to such as you—this” came the thought.
The guards swung to run, but from the upraised hands there darted streamers of electric energy which brought the guards to their knees. Their writhing bodies were stabbed through and through, bringing instant death. Then the vision was gone, as though it had never been—but the foundation stone in a reign of terror for the Venusian dominators had begun. A Grey Avenger in the form of Eward Hilto smote down without warning or question.
Ships of war were mysteriously destroyed overnight. Armament dumps in the city became useless. One by one the sub-Controllers acting for the Presence died horribly. And then the Presence himself was struck down. With his passing, hell broke loose over the world in revolution, the workers finding that the Grey Avenger was always working with them. Even when victory was assured, the Grey Avenger did not depart. He appeared again in the secret laboratory owned by Dalmer. Lyra stood gazing at the grey, terrifying being who had been the man she had loved. But Dalmer merely looked thoughtful and moved a switch on the board behind him.
For a. moment a faint expression crept over the grey, inexorable visage—then Eward abruptly relaxed and crashed to the floor.
“Wait!” Dalmer ordered as the girl moved forward. “Leave him. My apparatus will lift him. He has the cold of space about him and that would be fatal to either of us.”
Lyra nodded and stood aside as a cradle device deposited Eward on the long table. Dalmer went to work with thermostatic instruments and then started on an operation in which the girl found herself compelled to assist. She saw scales removed and flesh grafted in place of them, saw the skull trepanned and brain surgery at its best. It seemed an endless task, but at last it was finished.
But even then weeks had to elapse before Eward Hilto opened his eyes and looked about him. From then on he recovered rapidly, until at last he was able to hear the reason for the strange memories which plagued him; and the girl too heard the explanation of countless things which puzzled her…
* * * *
“In the first place,” Dalmer said, seated in an armchair in a corner of the bedroom, “when I operated on you for that blow over the head with a paralyser-beam I trepanned a portion of your skull as well, fixing inside a metal connection between the normal and subconscious areas of your brain. That, by medical law, gave you a complete brain. Normally we use a fifth of our brains; the rest is there for development in the course of evolution. Also, I did something else.…
“I infused into your bloodstream a substance which I knew would so harden your body and heart that neither could be destroyed in your rush into outer space. I knew, of course, that you would receive the death penalty. Clear so far?”
“So far,” Eward assented. “What then?”
“I took a gamble with the cosmos. I knew that with that drug your body and brain would be intact though you yourself would be dead. I knew too that if your brain could be brought back to life you would be capable of tremendous powers, as also would be your body. I knew also that if the cosmos is what science claims it to be—the very structure of infinite power and thought itself—you would unquestionably, once revived, come under the influence of the thought-sea around you. I relied on the original theory of Jeans that the ether is mind, a theory proven to the hilt by later scientists.
“After you had finally reached a position where the gravities of moon and Earth held you in a neutral field, I sent across space a radiation corresponding to the one which begot life on this Earth in the first instance
. My judgment was right, for it infused life back into your still-undamaged body. Shock alone had been the cause of your first death. Life returned. Little by little your body built itself up to stand spatial conditions, even as a man can stand increasingly powerful electric charges by slow acclimatisation. It was the law of adaptability, of course. You became a man of space.
“But with that return came knowledge and the remembrance of your fate. To your knowledge was added the even greater knowledge of the cosmos itself. An infinite knowledge of dimensions, powers, radiations—things denied to ordinary mortals. Further, your body was a medium for these forces and radiations, as a bulb is the medium for electric light. You could allow tremendous force to pass through you without harm, because with a mind like yours you mastered them, not they you…
“The Twelve Brain Computer made things easier for you. It made the plans of the Presence twelve times clearer to you. With your power to pass through solids and any dimension you accomplished the destruction of those beings you so bitterly hated, saved the girl you loved and the man who protected her—myself. Again because of your love for Lyra you returned to this laboratory when your work was done. I closed a switch to send forth a current powerful enough to heterodyne your powers for a moment. In that brief period I hastily trepanned and broke your brain connection. The rest was simply a matter of restoration to normal by synthetic grafting and so forth…”
“Then,” Lyra said slowly, “the thoughts I kept getting whilst I was in solitary were from Eward?”
“Of course. His mind was not dead. Mind cannot die.”
Eward pondered through an interval. “Slowly the memory of it is fading,” he muttered. “For a while I was a god, impelled only by vengeance. But now— You said you planned it all?”
“For twenty years and more,” Dalmer admitted. “I could not go into space because somebody was needed to control the instruments and only I had that knowledge. I waited for the right man to come. There came an accident with a paralyser-beam—and you.”
The John Russell Fearn Science Fiction Megapack Page 28