by Anthology
Forrester doubled up his fist as Mars tried to rise, and came down again with all the force he could muster, squarely on his opponent's neck.
There was a satisfyingly loud crack, audible, even in the roar of the burning forest. Mars collapsed to the ground, smothering small fires beneath his bulk. Forrester leaped on top of him and grabbed his head, beard with one hand and hair with the other. He twisted and the War God screamed in agony. Forrester relaxed the pressure.
"All right, now," he said through clenched teeth. "Your neck's broken, and all I've got to do is twist enough to sever your spinal column. You'll be crippled for as long as Vulcan has--maybe longer."
Mars shrieked again. "I yield! I yield!"
Forrester held on. "Not just yet you don't," he said grimly. "I want some information, and I'm going to get it out of you if I have to wring them out vertebra by vertebra."
Mars tried to buck. Forrester twisted again and the War God subsided, breathing hard. At last he muttered: "What do you want to know?"
"Why did you and the other Gods leave Earth for three thousand years? And where did you come from in the first place? I want the real reason, chum." He applied a little pressure, just as a reminder.
"I'll tell you!" Mars screamed. "I'll tell you!"
And as the roaring flames crackled in the Amazon forest, the agonized Mars began to talk.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Zeus, Venus, Diana and Forrester sat in the Court of the Gods, listening to a large, blue-skinned individual with bright red eyes and two long white fangs coming from a lipless mouth. The eyes were like a cat's, with slitted pupils, and the general expression on the individual's face was one of feral hatred and bestial madness. However, as he had explained, he was not responsible for the arrangement of his features. He was, he kept saying, only interested in the general welfare. What was more, it was his business to be interested. He was, as a matter of fact, a cop: Bor Mellistos, of the Interstellar Police.
"My rank," he had told them mildly, "is about the equivalent of your Detective Inspector."
"Technically," he was saying now, "you are all four guilty of being accessories--as I understand your local law phrases it. However--"
He smiled. It made him look unbelievably horrible. Forrester tried not to pay any attention to it.
"However," he went on, "in view of the fact that none of you could possibly have known that you were, in fact, accessories--that is, that you were dealing with a criminal group, if you understand me--plus the fact that Mr. Forrester, as soon as he did discover the facts, called us at once through the power machine--I feel that we can overlook your part in the matter."
Venus frowned. "Wait a minute. I'm not sure I understand this at all. What crime are the Gods supposed to have committed?"
"Not crime, miss," Bor Mellistos said. His eyes twinkled. Forrester gulped and turned away. "Crimes. Misuse of a neural power machine, for one--and the domination and enslavement of a less advanced intelligent culture for another. Both those are very serious crimes."
"Less advanced culture?" Forrester said. "You mean us?"
"I'm afraid so, sir," Bor Mellistos said. "You see, all the members of my culture are attuned to the power nodes of one neural machine or another, but this power is not meant to be misused. We have been searching for this group for a long time now."
"And you first got wind of them on Earth about three thousand years ago?"
"A little more than that, actually," Bor Mellistos said, "if you don't mind the correction."
"Not at all," Forrester said, looking at the fangs of the Detective Inspector.
"We were alerted after the radiations had been coming in for some time. The search for this group wasn't nearly as urgent then."
"And that's why they had to go into hiding?" Diana asked.
"Correct, miss," Bor Mellistos said. "The only one we managed to catch was the woman calling herself Aphrodite, or Venus." He looked at the substitute Venus. "That's the one you replaced, miss."
"How did you catch her?" Forrester pursued.
"Well," Bor Mellistos said, turning a faint shade of orange with embarrassment, "she was--ah--engaged in a secret liaison with a mortal at the time. Knowing that two of the other gentlemen would be furious with her if they discovered this fact--"
"Mars and Vulcan," Forrester supplied.
"Quite correct, sir," Bor Mellistos said. "Knowing, as I say, that they would be furious, she had taken special pains to hide herself. When the alarm reached the others that we were coming, they could not warn her. As a result, when she returned to Mount Olympus, we were waiting for her."
"Serves her right!" Zeus said with indignation.
Bor Mellistos said: "Quite," very politely.
"And then," Forrester said, "you patrolled this place for a while."
Bor Mellistos nodded. "We left about three hundred years ago, finally deciding that they had gone elsewhere. By the way, do you know where they were hiding all this time?"
"My guess," Diana said, "is that they were here on Earth, of course."
"Naturally, miss," Bor Mellistos said. "But where?"
Zeus shrugged. "All sorts of places. I ran a tailor shop myself, pressing and cleaning. I understand that Poseidon and Pluto entered freak shows--they were fine attractions, too. Pan lived mostly in the forests, doing well enough for himself running wild. Diana and Athena ran a small hairdressing studio in Queens. And Venus--"
"Please," Venus interrupted.
"Perfectly honorable profession," Zeus objected. "One of the oldest. Perhaps the very oldest. And I don't see why--"
"Please!" Venus insisted.
Zeus shut up with a little sigh.
"At any rate," Bor Mellistos said, "that's the story up to date. And now there's only the question of the Overseer positions. Would you like to fill them?"
"Who?" Venus asked. "Us?"
"Well," Bor Mellistos said, "you have the experience. And we do need someone to take over. You see, three thousand years ago your technical attainments were not large. There was little need for an Overseer. Now, however, you are nearly at the stage where you will be invited to join the Galactic Federation. And we must make sure you do not do any irreparable harm to yourselves during the next few years."
"Well," Forrester said, "how could we--"
"If you'll permit me, sir," Bor Mellistos said, "I can explain. You would work much as the so-called Gods did--but with no publicity, and a greater sense of responsibility, if you understand me. Earth would never know you were there."
"I'd have to--stay away from mortals?" Forrester asked.
"Exactly," Bor Mellistos said.
Well, Forrester thought, it had its compensations. In the three days that the Detective Inspector had been on Earth, Forrester had had time to think and to find out some things. Gerda, for instance, was getting married to Alvin Sherdlap. Forrester wondered what kind of love would let a woman choose a name like Gerda Sherdlap, and decided it was better not to think about it.
What did he have to go back to? History classes? Students? Even students like Maya Wilson?
Well, he was sure he could do better than that. He looked at Diana and became even surer.
"The remaining eleven Overseers," Bor Mellistos was saying, "will be along shortly. You will then be able to draw fully on the machine. You need merely follow world events and make sure that any--ah--regrettably final decisions are not made. Your actions will, of course, be very much undercover."
Forrester nodded. "This mass arrest of the Gods is going to cause an upheaval all by itself."
"Quite true, sir. But that will be worked out. I'm afraid I don't really know the details, but doubtless the other eleven who are coming will inform you more thoroughly on that score."
Forrester sighed. "About the Gods--what kind of punishment will they receive?"
"Well, sir," Bor Mellistos said, "it varies. Vulcan, for instance--the person who called himself Vulcan, or Hephaestus--will probably get off with a lighter sentence
than the others. He was a mechanic, brought along under some duress to service the machine. But the sentences will be severe, you may be sure. Very severe."
Forrester didn't feel like asking any more questions about that. There was a pause. He looked at Diana again, and she looked back at him.
"Do you accept?" Bor Mellistos said.
Forrester and the others nodded.
Bor Mellistos said: "Very well. In that case, I will inform the other eleven Overseers already picked that they will be met by you here, on Mount Olympus, and that--"
But Forrester wasn't listening.
He had begun whistling, very softly.
The song he was whistling was Tenting Tonight.
* * *
Contents
THE LORD OF DEATH AND THE QUEEN OF LIFE
By Homer Eon Flint
PART I
THE DISCOVERY
I
THE SKY CUBE
The doctor, who was easily the most musical of the four men, sang in a cheerful baritone:
"The owl and the pussy-cat went to sea In a beautiful, pea-green boat."
The geologist, who had held down the lower end of a quartet in his university days, growled an accompaniment under his breath as he blithely peeled the potatoes. Occasionally a high-pitched note or two came from the direction of the engineer; he could not spare much wind while clambering about the machinery, oil-can in hand. The architect, alone, ignored the famous tune.
"What I can't understand, Smith," he insisted, "is how you draw the electricity from the ether into this car without blasting us all to cinders."
The engineer squinted through an opal glass shutter into one of the tunnels, through which the anti-gravitation current was pouring. "If you didn't know any more about buildings than you do about machinery, Jackson," he grunted, because of his squatting position, "I'd hate to live in one of your houses!"
The architect smiled grimly. "You're living in one of 'em right now, Smith," said he; "that is, if you call this car a house."
Smith straightened up. He was an unimportant-looking man, of medium height and build, and bearing a mild, good-humored expression. Nobody would ever look at him twice, would ever guess that his skull concealed an unusually complete knowledge of electricity, mechanisms, and such practical matters.
"I told you yesterday, Jackson," he said, "that the air surrounding the earth is chock full of electricity. And--"
"And that the higher we go, the more juice," added the other, remembering. "As much as to say that it is the atmosphere, then, that protects the earth from the surrounding voltage."
The engineer nodded. "Occasionally it breaks through, anyhow, in the form of lightning. Now, in order to control that current, and prevent it from turning this machine, and us, into ashes, all we do is to pass the juice through a cylinder of highly compressed air, fixed in this wall. By varying the pressure and dampness within the cylinder, we can regulate the flow."
The builder nodded rapidly. "All right. But why doesn't the electricity affect the walls themselves? I thought they were made of steel."
The engineer glanced through the dead-light at the reddish disk of the Earth, hazy and indistinct at a distance of forty million miles. "It isn't steel; it's a non-magnetic alloy. Besides, there's a layer of crystalline sulphur between the alloy and the vacuum space."
"The vacuum is what keeps out the cold, isn't it?" Jackson knew, but he asked in order to learn more.
"Keeps out the sun's heat, too. The outer shell is pretty blamed hot on that side, just as hot as it is cold on the shady side." Smith seated himself beside a huge electrical machine, a rotary converter which he next indicated with a jerk of his thumb. "But you don't want to forget that the juice outside is no use to us, the way it is. We have to change it.
"It's neither positive nor negative; it's just neutral. So we separate it into two parts; and all we have to do, when we want to get away from the earth or any other magnetic-sphere, is to aim a bunch of positive current at the corresponding pole of the planet, or negative current at the other pole. Like poles repel, you know."
"Listens easy," commented Jackson. "Too easy."
"Well, it isn't exactly as simple as all that. Takes a lot of apparatus, all told," and the engineer looked about the room, his glance resting fondly on his beloved machinery.
The big room, fifty feet square, was almost filled with machines; some reached nearly to the ceiling, the same distance above. In fact, the interior of the "cube," as that form of sky-car was known, had very little waste space. The living quarters of the four men who occupied it had to be fitted in wherever there happened to be room. The architect's own berth was sandwiched in between two huge dynamos.
He was thinking hard. "I see now why you have such a lot of adjustments for those tunnels," meaning the six square tubes which opened into the ether through the six walls of the room. "You've got to point the juice pretty accurately."
"I should say so." Smith led the way to a window, and the two shaded their eyes from the lights within while they gazed at the ashy glow of Mercury, toward which they were traveling. "I've got to adjust the current so as to point exactly toward his northern half." Smith might have added that a continual stream of repelling current was still directed toward the earth, and another toward the sun, away over to their right; both to prevent being drawn off their course.
"And how fast are we going?"
"Four or five times as fast as mother earth: between eighty and ninety miles per second. It's easy to get up speed out here, of course, where there's no air resistance."
Another voice broke in. The geologist had finished his potatoes, and a savory smell was already issuing from the frying pan. Years spent in the wilderness had made the geologist a good cook, and doubly welcome as a member of the expedition.
"We ought to get there tomorrow, then," he said eagerly. Indoor life did not appeal to him, even under such exciting circumstances. He peered at Mercury through his binoculars. "Beginning to show up fine now."
The builder improved upon Van Emmon's example by setting up the car's biggest telescope, a four-inch tube of unusual excellence. All three pronounced the planet, which was three-fourths "full" as they viewed it, as having pretty much the appearance of the moon.
"Wonder why there's always been so much mystery about Mercury?" pondered the architect invitingly. "Looks as though the big five-foot telescope on Mt. Wilson would have shown everything."
"Ask doc," suggested Smith, diplomatically. Jackson turned and hailed the little man on the other side of the car. He looked up absently from the scientific apparatus with which he had been making a test of the room's chemically purified air, then he stepped to the oxygen tanks and closed the flow a trifle, referring to his figures in the severely exact manner of his craft. He crossed to the group.
"Mercury is so close to the sun," he answered the architect's question, "he's always been hard to observe. For a long time the astronomers couldn't even agree that he always keeps the same face toward the sun, like the moon toward the earth."
"Then his day is as long as his year?"
"Eighty-eight of our days; yes."
"Continual sunlight! He can't be inhabited, then?" The architect knew very little about the planets. He had been included in the party because, along with his professional knowledge, he possessed remarkable ability as an amateur antiquarian. He knew as much about the doings of the ancients as the average man knows of baseball.
Dr. Kinney shook his head. "Not at present, certainly."
Instantly Jackson was alert. "Then perhaps there were people there at one time!"
"Why not?" the doctor put it lightly. "There's little or no atmosphere there now, of course, but that's not saying there never has been. Even if he is such a little planet--less than three thousand, smaller than the moon--he must have had plenty of air and water at one time, the same as the Earth."
"What's become of the air?" Van Emmon wanted to know. Kinney eyed him in reproach. He said:
"You ought to know. Mercury has only two-fifths as much gravitation as the earth; a man weighing a hundred and fifty back home would be only a sixty-pounder there. And you can't expect stuff as light as air to stay forever on a planet with no more pull than that, when the sun is on the job only thirty-six millions miles away."
"About a third as far as from the Earth to the sun," commented the engineer. "By George, it must be hot!"
"On the sunlit side, yes," said Kinney. "On the dark side it is as cold as space itself--four hundred and sixty below, Fahrenheit."
They considered this in silence for some minutes. The builder went to another window and looked at Venus, at that time about sixty million miles distant, on the far side of the sun. They were intending to visit "Earth's twin sister" on their return. After a while he came back to the group, ready with another question:
"If Mercury ever was inhabited, then his day wasn't as long as it is now, was it?"
"No," said the doctor. "In all probability he once had a day the same length as ours. Mercury is a comparatively old planet, you know; being smaller, he cooled off earlier than the earth, and has been more affected by the pull of the sun. But it's been a mighty long time since he had a day like ours; before the earth was cool enough to live on, probably."
"But since Mercury was made out of the same batch of material--" prompted the geologist.
"No reason, then, why life shouldn't have existed there in the past!" exclaimed the architect, his eyes sparkling with the instinct of the born antiquarian. He glanced up eagerly as the doctor coughed apologetically and said:
"Don't forget that, even if Mercury is part baked and part frozen, there must be a region in between which is neither." He picked up a small globe from the table and ran a finger completely around it from pole to pole. "So. There must be a narrow band of country where the sun is only partly above the horizon, and where the climate is temperate."
"Then--" the architect almost shouted in his excitement, an excitement only slightly greater than that of the other two--"then, if there were people on Mercury at one time--"