The John Russell Fearn Science Fiction Megapack

by John Russell Fearn

  As I had fervently hoped, Eva Grantham was at home—but as usual, her father was away, in Europe this time, hunting for fossils.

  I kept well away from her as I followed her through the hall into the roomy, com­fortable library. She looked at me curi­ously, the light catching the gold of her hair, sharpening somewhat the anxiety in her blue eyes.

  “Ralph, what is it?” she asked quickly. “You haven’t been to see me for weeks—and now you have come you won’t speak. You didn’t even kiss me. What’s wrong? Are you ill—or what?”

  “Nothing like that,” I muttered. With a burning stare, I gazed around the opu­lent room with its curio cases against the walls. It seemed an odd thought to me then that I was seeing the familiar room for the last time. The best thing was to be bru­tally frank.

  “Eva, something’s happened,” I said slowly, looking at her steadily. “I’ve got to go away— No, don’t ask me why, please! I can’t give a reason. You’ll just have to trust me, that’s all.”

  “But you’re surely coming back?” she demanded, amazed.

  She stepped forward as she spoke. I saw her frown as I took a guarded step back­wards. I could not dare let her touch me. She halted, eyeing me.

  “Look here, what is wrong?” she de­manded. “You can’t deceive me, Ralph. What have you done, if anything? I’ve the right to know.”

  ‘I’ve done nothing,” I said flatly. “It’s just that I have got to leave town—and quickly. Someday, perhaps, I’ll come back…”

  I hesitated, looked at her young, sweet face gazing at me. I felt a mighty struggle, an intense bitterness at my fate, pass through me.

  “Goodbye,” I said, as curtly as I could, and turned for the door.

  But I never reached it. Before I realized what had happened, Eva had run forward and seized my hand imploringly.

  “Don’t,” I screamed hoarsely. “Don’t touch me—!”

  God! Shall I ever forget that moment! I saw her tear-dimmed eyes suddenly sharpen with pain. Her slender body stif­fened— Then with a savage, frantic move­ment, I swept her backwards, tore free that prisoning handclasp. She slammed vio­lently into the slender cases against the wall, collapsed motionless amidst a shower of glass.

  For what must have been a full minute, I stood staring down on her fallen body. She was not cut… I was powerless to help because I dared not touch her in case life was still within her. I had, I knew, unwittingly done the very thing I had sought to avoid; I had driven at least two hundred volts of electricity through her…

  Shaking, weeping so much that my vision was blurred, I thudded to my knees and leaned my ear towards her heart. I could not hear it beating. Nor was there any apparent life in her ashy face.

  Mutely I stared at the shattered case, at the bits of stony metal lying about the carpet.

  “Dead,” I whispered at last. “Oh, God, I killed her! The only thing in life I loved…”

  I screamed at and reviled all creation. I do not know how long it was before I sobered up a little. Shaking, I got to my feet. I turned and ran blindly for the french windows, hurled them open and raced like a madman into the darkness.

  I forgot everything. I must run, and run, and run… I was an outcast—a mur­derer!

  * * * *

  By no conceivable effort can I possibly recall what happened to me after I fled Eva Grantham’s home. I lost all track of my own personality and wandered like a dream-man in places which I can only recall as blurred and unreal. I believe weeks elapsed. At the end of that time, I felt the compelling urge of something that was not the real me, but which dominated me, nevertheless. I became, quite against my will, a dynamic personality about whom the whole of America was soon talking.

  My methods were strange, inhumanly logical, surprising even me though I was the perpetrator. From a point in New York which I knew would effectually defy all efforts at location, I gathered to myself all the former big shots of the criminal world, and they—incredible though it seemed to my squashed inner personality, obeyed all my orders without question.

  I had unquestionably become a master criminal, but with rather different ideas to the average criminal genius. I did far more than just destroy if my orders were dis­obeyed. I started to gain a hold over eco­nomic conditions, cornered markets, clamped down an invisible but ruthless hand on the freedom of the American peo­ple. My influence was everywhere, steadily growing, subtly taking over control of this and that business with a total disregard for the ruin and suffering occasioned thereby.

  In a month I had gained a pretty good percentage of power in most walks of life, and my ability to destroy by the strange electric powers governing my body made my agents fanatically loyal to me… America began to appreciate that I was going to turn the country inside out before long unless they found a means of finding my whereabouts. That, somehow, amused me immensely.

  From what I learned over the radio, Tarp Gregory was apparently the only man who knew the real truth—who knew that the Unseen Dictator—as I had come to be known—was really me, Ralph Davis… But not the Davis who had worried over his strange electrical powers. Here, declared Tarp Gregory, was a man who was relentlessly bent on mastering the world, who inevitably would do so unless a clev­erer mind could defeat the aim.

  Somehow I got the idea that Tarp was not sure of himself, that he needed mpre facts before giving the real troth. Strange indeed, that I should be as anxious to know the truth as anybody… Why had all this happened to me? What was it that was driving me on night and day to greater and more inhuman conquests?

  In an endeavor to trace my experiences from the beginning, I set about writing this history at odd moments. The tale is not yet told. When at last it is, maybe it will become clear that I was in no way to blame…

  It was inevitable that America should get to wondering what was going to happen next. Deputations to the White House demanded that something be done, that the powers that be get to work and apprehend the hidden genius strangling the life blood of a nation.

  Congress, though, could do nothing. Neither could the law. I had tightened my hold; then, just as Americans were begin­ning to wonder where it was all going to end, there came a sudden change in events. An opposer to my regime appeared—or at least was known to be in existence! And this time it was a woman…a woman of in­human fearlessness, I was told, but moti­vated by ideals similar to my own. She too wanted world control, and would go to any lengths to get it.

  At first I was contemptuous, but that un­known woman had a way with her. I found myself compelled to listen to her demands. You see, she had powers just as powerful as my own. She too was electric in her makeup! Between us, we had a continent paralyzed. We had both cornered every market and launched parallel schemes for the absolute control of the Americas. For that very reason neither of us could move. It was stalemate.

  I was debating the advisability of co­operating with this woman, when to my sur­prise I found that the morning papers all carried one glaring headline:

  THE TWIN DICTATORS MUST MEET!

  The context told me nothing I did not already know, but that same evening Tarp Gregory followed things up with a radio speech. I sat in my hidden abode listening to his fervent words…

  “In the interests of humanity, of Amer­ica, of the world itself, these two soulless dictators must meet!” he cried, in a fervent voice. “We demand it! And if they are listening to me now—the man dictator most of all—I say this to him…”

  I looked up in sudden interest at the loudspeaker.

  “Ralph, this is your old friend Tarp speaking. I’m still trying to help you. You shouldn’t have run out on me like you did. I have your whole case doped out and know exactly what has gone wrong with you. Listen… This woman who has risen against you is no stranger. She’s Eva Grantham! Meet her—I beg of you!”

  That news brought me to my feet. For a long time, I stood fighting with that other self of mine, then for a while at least, Ralph Davis got the upper hand. I grabbed hat and c
oat, left my abode by the secret entrance and stalked out into the night. Naturally, not one of the thousands of peo­ple I passed, at a discreet distance, knew who I was.… Only one thought was mastering my brain at that moment—to find out what was wrong with me.

  I reached Tarp’s apartment without much trouble, saw the amazed look in his eyes as he himself opened the apartment door. Quietly, I waved him back. He nodded understandingly, watched me from a little distance as I walked slowly to the center of the room.

  “I heard your radio speech,” I said, try­ing to bring some tone of friendliness into my harsh voice. “I’ve risked a good deal to come here and find out the truth…”

  Tarp smiled faintly, straddled a chair at the other end of the room. He sat look­ing at me for a long time. “If I didn’t know the facts about you, I’d say you were a different man,” he said quietly. “Anyway, here’s the low down.… When you left me I got to wondering where you’d go. I fancied you’d first pay a visit to Eva Grantham’s, so I hied myself there. I found the place empty of servants with the windows of the library swinging wide. Dr. Grantham is away in Europe, as you know…”

  “I killed Eva Grantham,” I said stonily.

  Tarp shook his head. “No you didn’t, Ralph. In the library I found lots of clues. A case against the wall was smashed, glass lay on the floor and on the hard rubberoid of the surrounding shelves. Pieces of gray metal were strewn about the carpet. Amongst those metal fragments I found the case’s identification card and it read— ‘Section of Brimstone Pool Meteorite, 1941.’ Among other things I found your hat. Hastily left on the library desk. Skipping the whole thing, I also found that the carpet had rubberoid underneath it…

  “I pieced things together,” Tarp went on slowly. “You went to see Eva. You touched her, and Eva dropped under the terrific shock. You imagined you had killed her, but you were wrong. The rubberoid under carpet would absorb a great deal of the current. She was stunned. You couldn’t investigate for fear of making things worse. You fled. But in that library where you’d left Eva, there was a section of the identical meteorite that had effected you in the first place. Apparently, when Eva fell, she smashed open the case containing it. It broke apart along smooth, formerly hidden seams. Out of it there emerged a small creature similar to the one that had bitten you in the Pool, but of the opposite electric charge—negative! The thing bit Eva and she absorbed it. She recovered. Her less strong constitution reacted far more quickly than yours. As I see it, she must have dis­missed the servants, then she left home filled with sudden mighty ideas, was moti­vated by schemes similar to yours…”

  “But what bit Eva and me?” I demanded.

  “In the first place, a meteorite came from a world unknown. It was not an ordinary meteorite, but some kind of space-machine. Inside it were two beings whom I can only assume were pure force—a type of life we cannot comprehend, though at root we too are motivated force. Anyway, male and female in these beings was expressed by what to us would be plus and minus electric signs. They were positive and negative…

  “I believe something went wrong when they landed,” Tarp mused. “The meteorite—spaceship—exploded, but one of the creatures, the positive one I believe, es­caped. It found a habitat in Brimstone Pool. It was, I imagine, extremely minute. You went into that Pool. The creature not only bit you—it assimilated itself into your system.

  “By degrees that powerful positive charge was absorbed by you, in step-up stages, and with it was bound to come a certain percentage of the mind or brain force of this incredibly intelligent little be­ing. You became obsessed with ideas that were not your own, that had formerly be­longed to the creature you had absorbed!

  “The same thing happened to Eva when the mate escaped from the rest of the meteorite in the Grantham library… Now do you understand?”

  I nodded very slowly. “Yes, Tarp—I understand. And I need her as she needs me. Nothing can keep us apart…yet that very meeting will bring destruction,” I finished, pondering.

  “It will destroy both of you.” Tarp said steadily. “Positive and negative will meet each other and cancel out in free energy. It is either that, Ralph, or this perpetual striving for a something you do not under­stand, together with the fight against Eva’s irresistible electric attraction. You wanted each other when you were normal. If you take each other now you can both be assured the world will be a better place without you…”

  I got slowly to my feet. “You’ll find the records of my entire experiences at my headquarters,” I said quietly, and added the exact situation for his benefit alone…

  * * * *

  I write these words upon my return from Tarp. I have issued a request to Eva that we should meet. We shall, in an hour’s time, at a place well away from people and buildings, in case the explosion of our unity should produce far-reaching havoc.

  I am not sorry I am going to die—per­haps start again. Nor, I believe, is Eva, who is now in possession of the facts… But I have added certain facts to Tarp’s analysis that I know, from the knowledge the being I have assimilated, to be correct. I state it here—

  Originally, the beings were pioneers of their race. They planned to come to our world as the most likely place for starting life anew. Mischance upon arrival separ­ated them. They entered living flesh to gain sustenance, but died in so doing be­cause of the toxics therein, but not before they had passed on their grim heritage to the recipients. Normally, I understand, the unity of positive and negative in their own correct environment brings not a cancellation but a surge of energy, which becomes a new creature. But, housed in the fleshy structure of Eva and me, unity will bring cancellation… Possibly these two did not mate in space because of lack of room for more than one or two off­spring…

  I wonder, as I write these last lines, what Dr. Grantham will think of it all. I believe he is hurrying home from Europe. He will learn of the strangest marriage in earthly history…

  But my tale is told. And the hour is up.

  MARTIAN AVENGER

  A baby born of two worlds was this Martian, but even after thousands of years, he remembered that revenge was his mission on Earth.

  CHAPTER I

  The Cell Cluster from Mars

  “Mr. Halworthy is in the laboratory, Miss Crawford. Working late, I guess.”

  Vera Crawford nodded her thanks as the old Institute janitor resumed his mop and pail. She strode on purpose­fully down the white enameled corridor, finally flung open the green door at the far end.

  “Who the hell’s opened that door?” demanded Halworthy’s irate voice. “I don’t want any cold air in here, and— Why hello, Vera!”

  The scientist broke off in surprised greeting as he came round a bench piled up with bottles and paraphernalia. Young, good looking after a fashion, his blue eyes became rather sheepish as he found the girl accusingly regarding him.

  “Are you aware, Lance Halworthy, that you had an appointment with me tonight for the television theater?” she asked bitterly. “It may interest you to know I’ve got feet as cold as icebergs from waiting down town for you!”

  “I forgot all about it,” he said solemnly. “Yes—seriously I did. I’m engaged on such an important experiment—”

  “Experiment! When do I ever hear any other excuse?” The girl came for­ward and rubbed her chilled hands over the electric stove. Then as Lance said nothing further she turned a curious pair of brown eyes upon him. “Well, what is it?” she asked resignedly. “Might as well give me some reason for your neglect. And it had better be a good one else I’ll think twice about marrying you when the time comes!”

  The threat was wasted on Lance. He merely smiled, took her arm, and led the way to a square case of glass bound around on three of its sides with strange­ly fashioned machines. There were tubes that contained a rose colored fluid, thermostatic heating devices, thermom­eters, and then a wired apparatus con­taining a spotless, wafer-thin piece of metal which beat to and fro with metro­nomic rhythm. Somehow, it resem
bled a heart.

  Vera only glanced at these details: they were merely laboratory technique, Most of her attention was concentrated on an object repulsively like a large blood red worm, its substance shot through with veins of darker hue. It lay inside the case curled up in a semi­circle, palpitating steadily.

  Vera looked up sharply, vaguely hor­rified. “What are you trying to do? Cultivate a new species of snake?”

  “Nothing like that,” Lance laughed. “That thing came from Mars, and it’s been entrusted to me by the Space Navi­gation Company. So you see I’m on an important job.”

  “But I thought explorers had proven Mars dead long ago?”

  “That’s so, but Valmerlik, who takes a delight in probing into places where ordinary space explorers have more sense than look, came across six pre­served cell clusters buried near one of the Martian cases—hidden in an under­ground chamber which had unquestionably been made by intelligent means. Five of the cell clusters aggregates were useless: the Martian air, though mighty thin, had somehow gotten through to them and rotted them. The sixth cluster was in perfect condition, and here it is. We were stuck to know what to do, so we finally took the only course and fer­tilized it artificially on earth here. This is the result: life has begun. The cells have formed and produced fusion. Thanks to all this artificial incubation those cells are growing into a living thing…”

  “Then—then it’s a Martian?” the girl whispered, fascinated.

  “Not entirely. It’s a hybrid, born of two worlds. Martian life cells fertilized by earth sperm. Naturally, we can only reproduce the chemical substances we know on our own planet. We’ve no means of knowing what a Martian sperm would be like… Call it a half breed.”