The John Russell Fearn Science Fiction Megapack

by John Russell Fearn

  MYSTERY AMNESIA.

  The report drew a significant parallel between the bus driver and engine driver and stoker. That was all right. The part that was so alarming was that which referred to me. Yes—to me!

  “…and the police are anxious to discover if there is some connection between a Mr. Henry Parker—who today saved the 10.12 local by his timely action—and the recent strange happenings. This man Parker, it appears, was present on both the bus and train which met with mishaps. The coincidence is considered of value by the authorities…”

  And so on. Things were getting awkward all right. It wasn’t so easy as I had thought to go about stealing knowledge out of people’s brains. And there was another thing, too. I had put such tremendous effort into absorbing knowledge from the bus and engine drivers that I seemed to have stimu­lated that queer kink in my brain. Anyway, I found myself instantly and automatically absorbing the knowledge of anybody within five feet of me… I left that café worriedly, knowing exactly how to be a waiter or a cashier.

  It was obvious that I dared not go to my rooms. The police would be around there looking for me, and I could not explain my kink to them very con­vincingly. While I roamed the city I was not likely to be apprehended. Damned ticklish.

  I marched along in the evening sunshine, picking up the most surprising knowledge as I travelled, cluttering up my mind with all manner of useless—or at any rate unwanted—knowledge. I found that by the time I had drifted into Hyde Park to sit down and think things over I knew how to be a stock­broker, a street cleaner, a mannequin, a dress designer, a banker, an actor and an auctioneer—as well as my earlier vocations. It filled me with cold horror when I came to think how many people had lost their occupations because of me.

  Talk about a human magnet! For that was what I was, and the knowledge of the rest of them was steel filing drawn to my brain. I knew all their private lives—I could have blackmailed the banker and the actor with absolute security had I wanted. All this because I wanted to test out a job! It gave me a bad attack of nerves trying to foresee where I was going to finish up.

  From being anxious to find a normal job, my desires swung right round to wanting to escape as far as possible from everybody. I had no wish to go on like this, disrupting the private and innermost thoughts of everybody I came across. I had got to travel—somewhere. I might become a sailor… That seemed a good idea. All I had got to do was find a seaman, use up his knowledge and set out for somewhere—anywhere. Tropics or Arctic, it was all the same.

  * * * *

  About midnight I found myself some­where in the East End dock world, amidst an atmo­sphere that smelt of sea water, tar and thick ropes. Heavy mist had dropped on the calmness of the summer night, for which I was thankful. Pulling my hat well down over my eyes to escape any possible recognition, I plunged into the nearest dive I could find and sat down at a table amidst a fog of thick tobacco smoke, cheap drink and strong language.

  One or two men glanced at me, but that was all the attention I seemed to merit. I ordered a drink, sat with my back to a massive blue-jerseyed seaman and started my absorption act while he went wet round the lips over the faded blonde on the opposite side of his table.

  The man’s mind was a curious mixture of rolling oceans and obscenity. His background was cluttered up with endless fights, strong drink, storms and engine rooms. I realised by degrees that he was a stoker. That turned me against him. If I had got to go to sea I intended doing it above decks, not below… So I tackled a fellow two tables away, who, from his stripes, I judged to be a first mate.

  He was quite an admirable sort of specimen, full of notions of hard work, and he had a good back­ground. Only trouble was that he drank too much. But from his befuddled mind I learned all a first mate should know—and a good deal more besides—the name of his ship, the pier at which it was anchored. The ship—the Mary Lancer—would leave on the tide at 11.00 the next morning. He had not seen the vessel yet: only just signed up, I gathered. Suppose I went instead of him? I could be Martin Ward just as well as he could. Without his papers he would be helpless…

  I waited, smoking, and watched him through my eyelashes. At last his drinking put him to sleep. Nobody took any notice of him sprawling across the table except me. It was simple to go over and clap a hand in apparent friendly greeting across his shoulder; even simpler to extract his papers from an inside pocket at the same time.

  Ten minutes later I was out on the docks again. At length I found a doss-house, crept inside and paid my money, relaxed on a hard bed. My disturbing experiences put me to sleep in double quick time. At the crack of dawn I was off again, had a shave and a haircut, hired a first mate’s uniform and sat down to breakfast in an obscure café at exactly 8.30.

  Then my treasured plans for escape suffered a sudden recession. The morning paper, presumably left by somebody before me, was at the end of the form on which I sat. The main words caught my eye—and headlines at that!

  UNEMPLOYED SEARCH FOR KNOWLEDGE STEALER

  “Dozens of unemployed men and women, to­gether with the police, spent most of last even­ing and all of last night searching for Henry Parker, to whose efforts—probably hypnotic—they ascribe their loss of knowledge of how to do their work. Drivers, financiers, bankers, mannequins, waiters and others are all searching in their different fields—the higher ones using influential contacts and the lower ones aiding the police. Where is Henry Parker? He is an enemy of society and must be found! More, he is lunatic! This paper will pay £500 to anybody giving information leading to his ap­prehension, dead or alive. Henry Parker is about 5 feet 9 inches tall, dark, clean shaven, with vacant light blue eyes… He is offered protection if he will give himself up to the police for subsequent medical examination.”

  The sooner I was aboard the Mary Lancer, the better I would like it.

  I hurried through my breakfast and went off for Pier 8, but before I reached it, I halted at the sight of a familiar figure in first mate’s uniform talking earnestly to a weather-beaten individual whom I judged to be the Captain of the dirty tramp boat. The first mate was Martin Ward, whose papers I had stolen. Evidently I had not obliterated the memory of how to get to the ship from his mind, anyway.

  What was more, he had a morning paper in his hand and was slapping it savagely, talking heatedly and saying something about hoping God would come down and swipe him if he wasn’t right.

  I dared not advance. My seagoing notions evaporated. I felt a lot of metaphorical nets tightening around me… Where the devil was I going to hide from the eyes of those seeking me?

  I thought fast. In my first mate’s uniform, I would not be easily recognised. But to whom could I turn? I felt like a murderer on the run.

  Suddenly I remembered June Cranby. Of course! She would give me some protection: she had said as much. Instantly I swung round, pulling my cap peak well over my eyes, and headed away to the nearest bus stop. Fortunately I got a bus which was almost empty: I was far enough away from the other passengers to stop me absorbing their knowledge anyway. I lifted all the conductor’s knowledge, however, and could feel his eyes on me in rank suspicion when I reached my stop. I had to stop the bus myself by ringing the bell: he did not even know where it was.

  I could still feel his eyes watching me as I ran down the main street, and so to June Cranby’s apartments. Everywhere, it seemed, was suddenly studded with watching eyes.

  The maid opened the flat door, looked deeply puzzled as I stole all her secrets, and left her standing with her mouth open as I raced past her. There was June Cranby in the window, having her breakfast, looking rather less forbidding than usual in a negligée.

  She started to her feet in surprise when she pene­trated my naval disguise.

  “Mr. Parker!

  “Keep your distance, Miss Cranby!” I insisted, thanking Heaven the room was long enough to pre­vent me absorbing all her deeper knowledge on top of what I already knew concerning her. “I want help—and quickly. You’ve seen the morn
ing papers?”

  “I know you’re on the run, yes,” she admitted quietly. “I’m really sorry, Mr. Parker. If only you had taken my advice sooner I could have got you out of the mess. Now you have started something pretty bad.”

  I suppose we looked odd, seated at opposite ends of the room, calling to each other, while the maid stood in silent bewilderment and glanced at each of us in turn.

  “You don’t know what’s the matter with yourself, do you?” June Cranby asked me briefly.

  I shook my head wearily. “Hanged if I do! I wish to God I were normal…”

  “You can be, but it will necessitate an opera­tion. You are in the class of people who have x-ray eyesight, bifocal vision, adding machine minds, photographic brains, and so forth. In technical lan­guage, your brain is linked up with nerve fibres be­tween the frontal and temporal lobes. The fissure of Sylvius is the one thing which stops an ordinary brain—as yet—from performing instant telepathy and taking knowledge direct from another person’s brain. If there is a connection across the fissure of Sylvius, as there must be in your case, desire and realisation happen simultaneously. First it demands an effort—then, like breathing, it becomes auto­matic and you just cannot help soaking up thought waves. That’s what is wrong with you—but a brain operation can save you. The connection across the fissure can be severed. And if you’re interested I know just the right man for the job—Dr. Hall Storton, the brain specialist…”

  “For which he would want hundreds of pounds, eh?” I asked bitterly. “I just can’t do it…”

  “But I can,” she said quietly. “I can write a whole textbook concerning your brain which would be a best seller in the medical world. I can only do it if you will consent to the operation, so that I can be sure my judgment is correct. I’ll make the operation fee fifty times over. Now, what do you say?”

  I nodded miserably. “All right, then. Heaven knows how I’ll finish up—but I’ll try it…”

  “Good!” She turned to the bureau and threw over a writing pad and pencil. She said: “Write down in detail all the things that have happened to you. Take your time: you are safe enough here. I’ll have a talk with Dr. Storton on the ’phone while you do it.”

  I took up the pencil and started to write. This manuscript is the sequel.

  WORLDS WITHIN

  A menace created by a scientist’s ambitions—wherein a sub-atomic universe reveals its power to expand.

  The vast interior of the Martian hall of science was droning with the sound of eager voices, rising up to the mighty vaulted roof with its vitriex-filtered glass to seize its in fullest measure the life-giving radiations of the red planet’s distant Sun.

  Tier upon tier, fifty in all, rose the serried lines of Martians—immense, red-skinned creatures, unclothed, queer body scales rising and falling evenly as they absorbed the essential solar radiations, Creatures almost fantastic in appear­ance, and yet masters of science and all it had to offer, staring now with huge, faceted eyes toward the shining metal floor of the colossal place, and at the complicated apparatus and dais that graced its extreme center. Mouths were open, talking rapidly, revealing triple rows of dangerous, backward-slanting teeth.

  The hour of experiment had arrived. Every scientist of the red planet was present, anxiously waiting.

  Then suddenly the talking died away; there came the solemn hush of respect and interest. With a slow and measured tread, Vaspus, master of the red planet, marched into view from the tremendous central doorway, accompanied, as ever, by Lothan, his chief adviser, and Ithos, attendant scientist.

  The master’s faceted eyes glanced over the tremendous assembly as he walked; he inclined his big, scaly head slightly at the murmur of salutations directed to­ward him. Then, with the same impar­tial dignity, he gained the dais amidst the machinery and raised a powerful seven-fingered hand for silence. Imme­diately dead calm descended. Lothan and Ithos stood to one side.

  Vaspus adjusted the minute micro­phone before him and spoke quietly.

  “Fellow scientists, I have assembled you all here today for a very definite purpose: to behold a recent achievement in science. For a considerable time—in fact, ever since we arrived on this planet from our own doomed world of Aries— I have been irritated by the fact that we should have to die, and also that we do not use in our lifetime one tenth of the intelligence of which we are capable.”

  Vaspus paused for a moment, studied his attentive listeners, then resumed.

  “Let us first take the problem of age. We all suffer from katabolism; the cells of our bodies break down perpetually. These we build up with food, nutriments, solar rays—but in the end we find the breakdown is swifter than any process of anabolism we can devise. That, in its turn, is linked inevitably with fading mentality. In its last efforts, at the point of extreme age, to repair the perpetual waste the blood stream flows less readily to the brain. Concentration becomes er­ratic. Often on the verge of a masterful discovery we find senility has us in its grip. We die. Our normal life span of three hundred years is pitifully short in which to wrest the ultimate secrets of the cosmos.”

  The multitude gave a murmur of as­sent.

  “Therefore, to the end of defeating death and of giving us bodies that can live eternally, I have devised this ma­chine,” the master went on, motioning to the apparatus grouped about him. “We have long known that cosmic ra­diations are solely responsible for the creation of life; but, hard though we have labored, we have never been suc­cessful in releasing life in inert proto­plasmic elements. Since that is so, we shall, for the time being, have to accept that defeat with good grace. But out of the struggle there emerges one great truth: if we cannot create life, we can at least forestall death!

  “With this machine I generate cosmic rays, called such for want of a better name. You may be aware of the exact nature of creating these radiations. Nor­mally they occur at the explosion of a supernova in galaxial space, the result­ing explosion generating hundreds of millions of electron volts. Recently such an occurrence happened in the constella­tion known as Ramino. Actually, of course, that event took place seven mil­lion years ago, the light only just reach­ing us. Our instruments were able to pick up the radiations and revealed a generation of nearly seven million elec­tron volts.

  “Knowing from our calculations that this would happen, we devised, in our laboratories, machinery capable of trapping these brief radiations, directed them upon seedlings, permitting differ­ent quantities of the radiation to seep through. The lesser the quantity of cosmic rays—measuring, incidentally, one tenth of a million millionth of a centi­meter—the more the seedlings were stimulated; the greater the quantity, the more they were sterilized—proving, be­yond doubt, that between the great and small doses there lies one—and only one—fixed degree wherein actual life is pos­sible. Presumably, when life first be­gan to spawn in this universe, when life first came to our own world of Aries, it was created by this one particular wave length, which has since been too strong or too weak to create further life.

  “I repeat: we have tried to utilize these radiations to produce life, but there is something missing. No matter what percentage of power we use, we cannot excite living energy into inert chemi­cals; the reason is probably because the conditions of this planet are not condu­cive to life. It is so different to our lost, beloved Aries.” For a moment the ruler’s voice quavered slightly, then he went on again. “I shall, therefore, use it to prevent senility and decay, for it has been definitely proven that it operates perfectly on flesh that is already living, arrests katabolism completely. Within these spheres”—he indicated two gigan­tic reinforced metal globes—“highly energized blocks of metal will be disin­tegrated into free energy, allowed to re­lease radiation that is precisely identical to cosmic rays, automatically adjusted to the required power by those triple rec­tifiers you see in the background. It is only owing to the untiring diligence of Lothan that this machinery has become possible.”

  The adviser bo
wed his scaly head; an odd light was in his huge eyes as he looked up again.

  Steadily, Vaspus continued. “I shall place myself between the two spheres, absolutely in line with the invisible radi­ation that will stream from one to the other. Earthing and neutralizing de­vices clamped to my feet and thence di-rected to insulating machinery will save me from being blasted into infinity and will instead allow my body to be charged with cosmic radiation, arresting for some hundred years or more all possi­ble chance of senility. In another cen­tury it will become necessary to undergo the same treatment again. If it is a suc­cess, my friends, we know that we have defeated age and death—may continue our researches to eternity.”

  “As always, you have courage, mas­ter,” murmured Lothan smoothly.

  Vaspus turned to him. “Courage? It is not a question of courage, my friend, when the machinery has been tested and proved accurate. Let the ex­periment proceed! I, as ruler, shall be the first to test it.”

  The assembled Martians became tense, every eye fixed upon their master as he calmly stepped into the complicated, ma­chinery-cluttered area between the two immense generating globes. In solemn, absorbed silence the audience watched heavily insulated clamps fastened about his thick, scaly ankles, the massive, dou­ble-covered earthing wires leading back to the complex neutralizing plant. With calm patience Vaspus waited, then at last raised his queerly fashioned hand for the experiment to commence.

  The safety lights in the glass roof, burning night and day, suddenly dimmed at the terrific drain on the city’s power resources; incalculable volts of electrical energy were created by the suddenly whining dynamos, rising up from a low and steady hum to a shrieking, ear-splitting din. Electrodes protruding from each of the massive spheres gath­ered the power unto themselves; strange, gas-filled tubes connected to them be­gan to writhe internally with incredibly brilliant lavender light.