The John Russell Fearn Science Fiction Megapack

by John Russell Fearn

  The tears were wet on her lashes as she looked at me. Her lips were quivering.

  “You—you didn’t do anything.” She shook her head slowly. “Everybody’s so kind to me—that’s why it’s so awful! I don’t know why I’m unhappy, but I am. Oh, Jeff, I’m so dreadfully frightened—so alone—and I don’t know why!”

  For a long time she sat with her head buried on my shoulder, crying and talking by turns. I held her to me, frowning and wondering. At last I spoke.

  “You’re simply suffering from the transition to this life from your old one. Nothing more. It happens sometimes even when only moving from one town to another… We call it nostalgia. That means home-sickness, a longing for one’s own people and birthplace.”

  “Yes, perhaps that’s it,” she, whispered, looking at me again. “I do so want to be happy with you, Jeff, because I love you so, and your world, terrify­ing though it is sometimes… I’ll try to like it, to understand it—somehow. I am your wife and you’ve the right to expect me to behave as such, instead of like a spoilt baby—I’ll try! I really will!”

  “Of course you will…” I stroked her silvery hair gently. “And the best way to forget yourself is to use those gifts you have. You must write and paint and play… That will bring you in contact with others. There’ll be no more loneliness, no more longings. In time you’ll settle down.”

  “Yes,” she said, low voice. “In time, dear one…”

  * * * *

  Certainly Lucia made a tremendous effort after her attack of nostalgia. She apparently be­came happier and immersed herself in the three arts over which she had such complete command. When I returned home from the city in the evenings I would either find her painting a genuine masterpiece on a giant canvas in the quiet room she had taken over for a studio, or else she would be sitting writing. At other times I encountered the crashing chords of the grand piano, rolling out some fantastic, breath-taking diapason of melody. How she could play!

  To a great extent these pursuits seemed to calm her. Her talents soon brought her into constant de­mand among friends and public alike. Her paint­ings attracted the notice of wealthy buyers and netted her a small fortune. On the other hand, her writing was so startlingly arresting that, without any effort, she wrote three best sellers in a row in the space of two months!

  Yet the money she made, making my own finances seem like a child’s savings by comparison, failed to interest her in the least. She smiled, she was lovable, ethereal—fascinating, yet somehow her eyes were always looking far away.

  Then Miranti, the great Italian impresario, chanced to be at a gathering to which Lucia and I had been invited. He heard her play and went into ecstasies. Almost without realising it, she was launched on a musical career. Naturally, my business tying me, I saw less of her than hitherto, but on those occasions when she did come home I found her unspoiled by success—still like a fairy, a gossamer-being, becoming, I felt sure, even more fragile than when she had first attracted my notice in the wastes of Venus. Her eyes seemed larger and her face smaller. There was a touch of the languid in her movements, too, which I couldn’t altogether understand.

  Then one evening, when she was away on a con­cert tour at the other end of the country, old Dr. Baythorp turned up. He was just back from a Mars-Venus trip, as taciturn and solid as ever, with his evil-smelling pipe more aggressive than usual.

  Over the drinks in the lounge he looked at me critically.

  “You married a brilliant woman, Jeff,” he commented. “Seems to have made herself famous.”

  “How can she help but do so?” I smiled with the pride natural to a husband who has a clever wife. “She’s a genius, Doc—a genius with the heart of a child. It’s odd, really, to think of a girl with so fantastic and wild a soul having such lavish gifts.”

  “Fantastic and wild is right,” he said, studying his drink. “I wonder if you have noticed something—well, odd, about her three gifts?”

  “Odd?”

  “I heard her most recent concert—made a point of it. She played her own compositions. They’re astounding, soul-moving, but they are reflections of spirit and heart. She’s a prisoner, lad, a soul drown­ing in a constricting world! Into her music she pours all the longing and futility she feels herself. Her fingers bring into magic actuality the Half-Way Mountains, the overpowering jungles, the hot winds of Venus. They are in her mind all the time. She’s on Earth, I know, and she’s your wife, but—her real being is on the world where she was born. Remember… I warned you of that.”

  “She’s happy enough,” I said, thinking.

  “Is she?” Baythorp looked at me frankly. “Have you studied her paintings in the gallery? I have. They’re fantastic—overloaded with tumbled concepts, the expressions once again of a fettered soul. And her books! Stories of people struggling vainly for existence against impossible odds. In every way, lad, she shows that she is fighting a losing battle against herself… For your sake she is trying to prove herself mistress over an intolerable situation. But it won’t work out. It never can work out. I believe two people of different worlds can never be entirely one in the sense that is really implied by marriage.”

  “Doc, I think you’re off your course,” I said, smiling. “I know that Lucia is— Pardon me.” I broke off as the visiphone rang.

  I went over to it and to my surprise it was the manager of the concert hall on long distance. His voice, reedy with miles, spoke the most incredible words.

  “…I think it would be as well if you’d come right away, Mr. Haslam. I hardly like to say this, but your wife is—is hopelessly intoxicated! She can’t play. Else she is ill, but I’d say…drunk.”

  The rest of his words blurred off so that I hardly heard them. I think I said I’d come immediately. Then, as I was putting the visiphone back I saw Doc. Baythorp’s expectant face.

  “Lucia is … intoxicated,” I managed to say mechanically.

  He looked at me, seemed to reflect, then he put down his glass and rose from the chair.

  “Where is she? The Avalon Concert Hall?”

  “Yes, at the other end of the country. I can get a ’plane.”

  “Then I’ll come with you. Probably I can help.”

  So we flew through the night and landed at our destination sometime after midnight. A much harassed manager who had awaited our coming showed us into a dressing room, where we found Lucia stretched full length on a couch, dressed in her concert gown. She was playing with a lace handkerchief and giggling to herself ever and again.

  “Lucia, what on earth’s the matter?” I knelt beside her, put an arm behind her shoulders and raised her up.

  “Nothin’ in the world,” she shrugged, running her words into one another. “Just that, for the fi’st time I’m really happy…”

  Doc. Baythorp leaned forward, studying her keenly.

  “They wouldn’t let me play,” she went on, sigh­ing. “An’ jus’ when I felt in the mood too—”

  “She isn’t intoxicated, Jeff,” Baythorp interrupted sharply. “Offhand I’d say she’s—gassed. No smell of drink, either.

  “Gassed!” I stared at him. “But how can she be—?”

  “Let’s get her home,” he said.

  I nodded and Lucia got to her feet, but almost instantly her knees gave way. She would have fallen full length on the floor had I not caught her. I scooped up her light body in my arms and bore her outside to the waiting taxi.

  She still giggled to herself as we were whisked to the airport, and now and again she broke into snatches of song. To me all this was distressing—embarrassing even, but to Doc. Baythorp it seemed to be a matter of profound interest. He kept his eyes on her, his professional instincts aroused. All I noticed was Lucia’s dead white face—as it always was—and the unusual brightness of her yellow eyes. The pupils had dilated so much they had nearly swallowed the irises. * * * *

  When we got her home Baythorp saw that she went straight to bed. I didn’t stay while he made his examination, preferr
ing instead to walk up and down the lounge and wait for him. When finally he reappeared his face was troubled.

  “Well?” I asked him in a hushed voice.

  “I was right.” He tapped his fingers restlessly on the table top. “She’s gassed. Atmospheric gas, I mean. Just as an aviator who goes too high suffers from mental blackout and intoxication from lowered air pressure, so your wife has got the same thing. It has taken several weeks in her case to make itself noticeable, because the change is produced by an alteration in the bloodstream, there being less oxygen in it than there normally should be for a Venusian. The result is extreme giddiness and all the symptoms of intoxication. You see, Jeff, the air of Venus is about twelve and a half per cent, denser than Earth’s, and that poor girl is just realising it!”

  “Then what happens now?” I asked, my mouth dry.

  “I’ve given her an injection which will gradually balance the missing oxygen ingredient in her blood­stream. She will then become normal again—but if she is to stay on Earth with you she will have to take an injection without fail every twenty-four hours. If at any time she fails to do so coma and death may result.”

  I was silent, stunned by the thought of her being chained for evermore to a preventative against death.

  “In the bedroom you’ll find the injector and the stuff itself,” Baythorp said. “It’s up to you to see that my orders are carried out. In case you don’t know it, lad, Lucia is a white mouse—the first inhabitant of another world to come to Earth. From her sufferings we can learn what to avoid in future.”

  She isn’t going to suffer!” I snapped. “She deserves all that is best and beautiful in life, and she’s going to get them. As soon as she’s better I’ll take her back to Venus where she belongs.”

  He sighed. “You can try… The chances are that her heart and constitution are weakened a good deal. You see, at a lesser air pressure the heart works more swiftly, as hers must have been doing ever since she arrived here. That may account for her incredible genius, which is far in excess of what it was on Venus. The faster the flow of blood through the brain the more stimulated the brain is… I really think that space travel on top of her present physical trouble would—”

  Baythorp stopped and shrugged. “Don’t think of it yet, anyway. We’ll see how she goes on. I’ll be in the city for a fortnight before I’m due off again. If anything goes wrong send for me right away—the Apex Hotel.”

  I hardly heard him leave. All I was conscious of at that moment was my own damnable selfishness and Lucia’s superb courage. For weeks, as Bay­thorp had said, she must have been battling against impossible odds, trying to fit herself into a foreign environment. And I had kept her beside me. Why? Because I loved her, because I was proud of her, because I liked Earth better than Venus—because I had been too infernally egotistical to realise that, torn from her home planet, she was like a tropical flower trying to acclimatise itself to frost.

  I went upstairs and found her lying flat on her back in bed, staring at the ceiling. On the little table were the injector and bottle of fluid Baythorp had made up.

  “Lucia…” I caught at her limp hand. “Lucia, sweetheart, this is all my fault. I should have realised…”

  She turned her face slowly towards me, smiling wistfully.

  “It isn’t anybody’s fault, Jeff.” Her voice was gentle and unaccusing. “Dr. Baythorp told me everything—why it is that I feel as though every­thing is whizzing round me like a Half-Way Moun­tain cyclone. Something to do with atmospheric pressure… Yours is a terrible world, dearest.”

  She closed her eyes and I saw the wet glint of tears on her long lashes.

  Sitting down on the bed beside her, I didn’t speak again. I remained holding her hand until she fell into a restful sleep—then I moved over to a chair and for the rest of that night I kept on the alert to attend to her slightest wish.

  * * * *

  Dr. Baythorp’s antidote did the trick. When she awoke Lucia was normal, as far as her intoxica­tion was concerned anyway—but she seemed spirit­less and she remained unsmiling.

  Naturally I had my business to attend to, but the only thought in my mind was for her, and I re­turned home early in the evening. I found her coiled up on the window seat in the lounge, ghostly and silent, her great yellow eyes gazing out across the lawn. As I came in she turned and I could tell her smile was only produced by sheer effort.

  “Everything all right?” I asked, trying to sound cheerful.

  She shook her head, and with a shock I noticed that the sheen had gone from her silvery hair. It was dull…drab.

  “Come and look at what I’ve done,” she whispered, taking my hand—and, wonderingly, I followed her into the room she used as a studio. With a tired wave of her arm she indicated one of her giant canvases. I stared at it unbelievingly. It was an incredible chaos of flowing paint streaks and eye-wrenching hues.

  “I—I tried to paint one of my own home land­scapes, just as I have so often done,” she said. “But this is how it came out… I can’t paint any more, Jeff!”

  “But—why not?” I studied her white face stupidly.

  “I don’t know. I’ve forgotten. My power of conception has gone. Besides, I— Look here, too!”

  She picked up a manuscript from the table and I glanced through it. The words were a jumble of meaningless nonsense. I let it fall from my hand to the table again.

  “Jeff, what’s the matter with me?” Her voice rose in sudden wild terror and her arms went about my neck in a desperate longing for protection. Troubled, I lifted her gently and bore her back into the lounge to the window seat.

  “It’ll pass,” I kept on saying to her—without realising why I said it. “It’s a hangover from last night, that’s all.”

  She looked at me seriously. “Dearest, do you really think that, or do you know, in your heart of hearts, that—” She stopped, forcing back tears; then she got off the window seat and went over to the piano. “I still have this,” she said, and began playing an unearthly melody which she had herself composed, ‘Breeze Across the Foothills,’ that abandoned, soul-stirring music which epitomised the wild glory of the foothills of Venus where she had been born and raised, until I—

  Half way through the piece she stopped, pressed a hand to her forehead and got up from the stool uncertainly. Immediately I was at her side.

  “You’re out of bed too soon,” I murmured. “Come along back upstairs.…”

  She nodded weakly and again she was in my arms. She lay so heavily, so tiredly, I had a hard struggle to stifle back the gnawing fear at my heart. I knew I was watching her slide down the scale of life with diabolical swiftness, and I could do nothing to stop it!

  The moment I had her in bed again I sent for Baythorp. He came from the city right away, and this time his examination took half an hour. When we faced each other downstairs he shook his head.

  “Jeff, lad, if only you’d listened to me!” His voice was bitter. “This time the sun is the prime cause of the trouble. On Venus the sun never gets through and at least two of its radiations—which we experience all the time and are therefore immune against—are masked. On Earth here Lucia has had them beating down on her for over three months during this hot summer. The result is the same as if we had been exposed to naked cosmic rays… It’s affected her brain, hence her inability to paint or write anymore.”

  “Doc, you don’t mean she’s going to—”

  “You can’t defeat Nature, Jeff,” he said moodily.

  “Not die!” I shrieked. “No—!”

  I raced out of the room and up the stairs. Lucia turned her head as I came in. I saw it now—the naked cruelty of approaching death on her wan face. Her eyes were wistful, still without reproach.

  “I’m an awful nuisance, Jeff, aren’t I?” she murmured.

  “Lucia, we can’t be separated like this! Nature can’t do that to us! We love each other so…”

  I put my arms round her, held her tight. Her slender little body ha
rdly stirred in my arms.

  “Jeff…” Her voice was dim and far away. “Jeff, I’m a white mouse, aren’t I? Dr. Baythorp said so. Other Venusian women won’t go through this hell. I’m blazing the trail for them. It’s been worth it—if only to know your love for me. But oh, dearest, how I long for home, for my beloved wild landscape, the great trees, the flowers, the hot winds, the soft daylight and moonless nights. Per­haps I’ll be there again—soon.”

  I could not speak. My voice was choked.

  “Jeff, open the window, please. I—I can’t breathe properly…”

  I stumbled over to it and swung it wide. It was nearing twilight now. A warm breeze set the cur­tains flowing.

  “Play to me…” I could hardly hear Lucia’s voice as she lay with her eyes closed. “Play ‘Breeze Across the Foothills’ please!”

  “Yes.” I whispered. “All right.”

  I went downstairs blindly and to the piano. Doc. Baythorp stood looking at me morosely. I could hardly see the music score for tears, and I am not a good player either—but for Lucia’s sake I did my best. For ten minutes I sent those wild, unearthly chords crashing through the house. Then I could stand it no longer.

  In the dead silence after the last note had echoed away I fled from the room and upstairs.

  “Lucia!” I cried, bursting in on her. “Did you hear it—?”

  She was silent. A wistful smile was fixed on her small mouth. Her eyes were wide open, unblinking. Stupidly I followed their direction towards the open window, where the curtains stirred restlessly.

  Over the sunset was a star, a glowing planet, bril­liant and alone.

  KNOWLEDGE WITHOUT LEARNING

  He could read people’s minds; could take their knowledge from them. But it made life very complicated.

  I was still at school when I discovered I had the gift. I won scholarships I had really no con­ceivable right to win. On prize day I was given the works of obscure authors for my phenomenal brilliance in mathematics, physics, composition and other fields too numerous to mention.