by W. J. Stuart
I said, “Doc left me a letter. In this.”
She said, “You must read it.”
She laid the cloth gently over Doc, covering his face.
I went to the writing table and sat on a corner of it. I opened the notebook and began to read . . .
II
“Dear John,” I read. “This letter may not be necessary. It is written in case I should make an error and let myself in for too much of the Gateway.
“You must understand that I haven’t been, and won’t be, trying to acquire any of the Krell knowledge or learning. There isn’t time, fascinating though it would be. What I am doing is to enlarge my intellectual capacity. It seems quite literally miraculous what effect this machine has upon one. Even after the very short (though repeated) sessions I have had, my comprehension, my grasp of matters of everything, has increased a thousandfold. Problems which seemed insoluble before are as simple as the alphabet!
“Here’s a physical analogy for you. Using the Gateway is to the mind like using some magical exerciser for the body which can increase your muscular force so much (and so quickly) that you find your lifting ability multiplied a hundred times after every minute you use the device. Before you used it, two hundred pounds seemed heavy. Afterwards, it’s a mere feather you can manipulate with one finger of one hand . . .
“That’s not very good, but it will have to serve. Because there may not be too much of what we call ‘time’.
“Now for our problems—your problems.
“Morbius, who I said didn’t strike me as a liar, told you one lie only. But it was epic in proportion. He stated, categorically, that he did not know the final aim of the Krell.
“He did. And it was his own aim too. Because he regards himself (megalomaniac that he is) as their rightful, their appointed successor.
“This aim is simple to state, but so large in conception that it needs contemplation to appreciate.
“It is to create life.
“Not to reproduce life by biological function—but to create it. Not from test-tube or seed-bed but basically. By the power of the mind.
“Has that sunk in, John?
“The Krell had the excuse of a long and brilliant (and therefore decadent) history behind them. They were reaching out for what I will call ‘ultimate worlds’ to conquer . . .
“But Morbius has no excuse except sickness. He is a sick man. Sick in the mind. And this sickness is the worst, the most deadly sickness. The greater the mind, the deadlier the sickness.
“Think, John. Think.
“To create life—life in any variation of form—by the power of the mind.
“If that is the aim (and it is!)—it is the aim of usurping the prerogative of the Ultimate Power—of The Builder of the Universe. Of God! . . .
“You will not want to believe that Morbius is working to this appalling end. But you have seen a concrete, positive proof—
“The animals. Altaira’s animals, which—so far as she can remember—weren’t here when she was ‘a very little girl,’ but then ‘just came’.
“They were experiments by Morbius. Experiments which served the secondary purpose of providing companionship and interest for his daughter.
“My autopsy on the little titi monkey should have shown me. It couldn’t have lived. But it did.
“It lived by the power of Morbius’ mind. Which had made it in the outward image of his thought, his memory.
“With my new understanding I know that there are not two divisions to every mind, as our psychologists still maintain, but three. When they speak of the ‘conscious’ and the ‘sub-conscious’ mind they are omitting what I call ‘mid-mind’.
“It is the ‘mid-mind’ which, so to speak, looks after matters first attended to by the ‘conscious mind,’ which then (deliberately or not) thrusts them backward either to be ‘forgotten’ or to make room for newer, more absorbing projects.
“Think about that. It will give you the answer to many questions you have thrust back into your ‘mid-mind’. Exempli gratia—Why the animals had the protective coloration to fit an Earth background rather than an Altairian; and why the tiger attacked Altaira after the consummation of your love for her . . .
“You have now read your groundwork. So back to the PRACTICAL you love so much—
“But with this preamble:
“The Krells, in the insolence of their success, tried to usurp the power of God. And were destroyed.
“Morbius, in the insolence bred by megalomania, has been, and is, working toward the same end. He has not yet reached the point where he will inevitably be destroyed. But he is approaching it.
“There is no record—there cannot be—of how the entire Krell race was wiped out. But I feel that I know.
“If the power of the ‘conscious’ mind is raised to such a pitch that Creation by it is possible, the potential power of the ‘sub-conscious’ mind should not be ignored.
“But the Krells, I am sure, ignored it. Their one weakness. They didn’t reckon upon what our psychologists call the ‘Id’—and the possibility that a creation, far the reverse of what the ‘conscious’ creation might be, could spring into being without the knowledge of either the ‘conscious’ or ‘mid-mind’.
“The dictionary tells us the Id in the psychological sense is “the fundamental mass of life tendencies, out of which the ego and the libido tendencies develop.” Which may mean, and in my present usage does mean, the mass of formless, bestial impulses, entirely self-centered, which are part of the basis of every thinking creature . . .
“Now, suppose the collective ‘conscious’ minds of a race to have developed to a pitch where the forbidden creation is an established or about to be established fact. What more logical than to suppose that, at the same time, the ‘sub-conscious’ mind—the Id—has developed to the point of autogenesis?
“The result? The letting loose, upon an unsuspecting and defenseless race of beings, of a horde of dread and insensate monsters! The most frightful monsters of all—the realized basenesses of their own natures! Monsters concrete and yet impalpable! Monsters with illimitable physical powers to rend and destroy but with no true physicality to be rent or destroyed themselves!
“An appalling thought, John. But one which I am already convinced is the true answer to the extinction of the Krell. And one which explains, too, dark passages in the life of Morbius upon this planet . . .
“I shall see more, know more, when I have been able to dare another sitting at the Gateway—”
III
The page of writing stopped there, in the middle. I turned it over and saw there was more. But the writing wasn’t neat any more. It was scrawled. It got wilder and wilder.
I felt a hand on my arm. I jumped. And looked up and saw it was Altaira who’d touched me.
I tried to smile, but I don’t think it worked.
Doc had gotten through to me all right. I might have taken a dose of that machine myself the way I understood. I put a hand up to my forehead and found it was clammy with sweat.
Altaira said, “What is it, John?” She looked at the notebook. “What is he telling you?”
I liked the way she said that. Not “What did he write you?” but “What is he telling you?”
But she sounded afraid. She was afraid.
I put my arm around her.
And Morbius walked in.
He stopped as he saw us. His face was—different. Lined. And pouched under the eyes. And his hair—I’ll swear there was twice as much white in it. His eyes were way back in his head, but they were the only things about him that looked alive. They looked too alive.
Altaira said, “Father!”
I got ready to take my arm away. But she didn’t want me to. She pressed against me.
Morbius looked at the couch. His mouth twisted and he went over and took hold of the top of the dark blanket and ripped it back from Doc’s face.
He stared at Doc’s face. He put out a hand and touched the temples, where the da
rk marks were.
He said, “The fool! The blind fool! Playing with things too big for him!”
Altaira moved a little away from me. She knew what I was going to do.
I stood up. I walked over to the couch. I shouldered past Morbius. I pulled the cover back over Doc’s face.
I turned around and looked at Morbius. I didn’t say anything.
He said, “And why are you here, Commander?”
I said, “To take you away. Back to Earth.” I kept my eyes on his face. “Whether you like it or not.”
“And Altaira?”
“She comes with me. She would in any case.” I hit the any.
He moved then. He went over to the desk and stood beside her. I started after him. But thought better of it and stayed where I was.
He looked down at her. He said, “Altaira! Would you go with this—with this man?”
She said, “Yes, Father.”
“Even if I refused to go with him? You would leave me here? Alone?”
She took a moment over that one. But she didn’t stop looking at him. She said, “Yes, Father. I would have to go.”
He was standing sideways to me. But even then I saw something happening to his face. Something behind it.
I could feel something happening, too. Something—outside. Outside him. Outside this whole place. But—but belonging to him, whatever it was.
It was a bad feeling. I went over to him and tapped him on the shoulder. I said, “Are you ready? To come to the ship?”
He turned as if I’d hit him. Altaira shrank away. He said, “Do you think you can make me go?” He pointed at the couch. “Haven’t you learned what happens to meddlers? Look at that fool there—or what’s left of him!”
I said, “That fool had you figured, Doctor Morbius.” It was all I could do not to hit him.
Behind him I saw Altaira turn suddenly and look at the window. But I hadn’t time to wonder about it.
I kept after Morbius. I said, “He found out what destroyed the Krells. He found what they were after. And you! And that you were lying about it!”
I picked Doc’s notebook up from the desk and opened it. I wished Altaira didn’t have to be there.
He tried to stop me reading, but I pushed him off. I read him what I wanted him to hear. Not all of it. But enough.
He was shaking as if he had ague. He said, “It’s—it’s madness! Insanity!”
I didn’t like his eyes. I got that outside-something feel again.
I said, “And he had more. I haven’t read it yet—”
Altaira screamed.
She was looking at the window again. I was beside her in a couple of jumps. She pointed. Out to the grove.
She said, “There’s—there’s something in the trees—” She turned and hid her face against my shoulder. She was shaking all over.
I looked through the glass. I didn’t see anything.
Then one of the biggest trees—broke.
It was snapped off a couple of feet from the ground.
It fell in the direction of the house. As if a hurricane had been blowing from behind it. But there wasn’t a leaf moving on the other trees. This one had been in the way. Of something. It was thirty feet high and at least six feet in diameter. And it had broken like a match stick.
But there was nothing else to see. To see—
I knew what it was. I thought I knew what it was. I had to be sure.
I opened the notebook again and found the scrawled end pages.
I heard Altaira say, “The shutters—the shutters!” She was whispering. Talking to herself. She ran out of the room. I heard her calling, “Robby—Robby, the shutters!”
I knew Morbius hadn’t moved to go after her. I knew Morbius was looking at me. Concentrating on me.
I started to read. There wasn’t much of it. The writing was so big.
There was a flicker in the light. Just a flicker—and I looked up.
The Krell-metal shutters were over the windows, closing out everything.
I dropped the notebook on the desk. Morbius was still staring at me. He hadn’t moved. I felt sick at my stomach now I knew. I wasn’t surprised—but it’s different when you know.
I pointed to the book. “There’s the whole story, Morbius. Doc got it. He killed himself doing it—but he got it. That first shock you gave yourself on the machine; that liberated something in you. You didn’t know it then, but you’d gotten half the effect of the Krell knowledge without the learning . . . You and your wife didn’t want to go back to Earth. But the rest of your party did. You knew that if they went back you wouldn’t have a chance to stay here and study by yourself. You wished they were all dead—”
He said, “Stop! Stop!” He was almost shouting.
I said, “You wished they were dead . . . And then they were! You killed them. Your Id killed them. It tore them to pieces. It ripped them apart as if they were rag dolls, Morbius. The way it did to my men tonight—”
He shouted, “Stop!”
I said, “You didn’t know then. But you went on learning, Morbius. And you found out. So it wasn’t in your subconscious any more. It was up there in your consciousness. But you pushed it away; rammed it back. And shut it up in what Doc calls your ‘mid-mind’. Where you put the things you want to forget—but don’t want to bury so deep you can’t use ‘em if you have to?”
He stood there. Staring at me.
Altaira came running in. She looked at him—and stopped. And put her hands over her face.
I said to him, “You hate me for taking your daughter. You hate your daughter for choosing me instead of you . . .”
There was a sound from the outside house. I can’t describe it. It wasn’t a voice. But it wasn’t anything else.
Altaira gasped. She was white as paper. She came at me in a little run. I put my arm around her. I could feel her trembling.
I heard the sound outside again. It was nearer.
I suddenly thought of that dream I’d had on the ship, when something kept breathing—soft and too big. Then I thought of young Grey. And how he’d heard, ‘something breathing, sir—something awful big!’ I remembered him screaming, just before he’d been stamped down into the sand . . .
The sound was right outside the window. But outside the shutters too. I thought, Thank God for the shutters . . .
I made myself look at Morbius. I had to look at him. I had to hold him.
I said to him, “That’s you outside, Morbius . . .”
The sound was louder now. It wasn’t the same sound—but it was made by the same thing. It wasn’t just breathing. It was—it was snuffling . . .
Morbius put his hands up to his head. The fingers seemed to be digging into his skull. I could see his face. There was a rumbling metallic noise. It vibrated. The whole house front seemed to be shaking . . . I said again, “That’s you, Morbius!” I said, “You killed your friends. You’ve killed my friends. Now you want to kill me—and your daughter. And your daughter, Morbius!”
The shaking stopped. There wasn’t a sound. It was worse than the breathing. Morbius said, “No—no!”
I knew I had to go on. I knew our only chance was to make him admit. Admit to himself. Admit to his Conscious.
I said, “It was in your mind—your mid-mind. You ‘forgot’ it. So you had to be asleep to release it. But you knew. It wasn’t deep in your subconscious. You knew! If you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have fought against sleeping the way you did.”
There was another rumbling of metal, and the shaking. It was from further along. From near the big door.
Suddenly Morbius ran—out into the living room. And then stopped. His body was bent over. He was twisting about. Like a man trying—I don’t know—like a man struggling to get free of something tying him.
I went after him. I had to. I dropped my arm from around Altaira and made the living room in a couple of jumps.
But she was right beside me. I felt her hand on my wrist—and found my DR pistol was in my hand.
The shaking came again. The whole house trembled. There was a rending clang from the shutters. The metal was being—torn.
The metallic screeching stopped. And something hit the big door from the outside. The wood groaned.
I started for Morbius—and then stopped when I saw Altaira running across the room behind him. She was making for the Robot. It was standing by the alcove. She spoke to it—and the light came on in its headpiece.
There was another crash against the door, and a noise of wood cracking. I thought Morbius was going to fall and grabbed him. I shouted something at him—I don’t know what.
Everything was happening at once. Altaira was pointing at the door as she said to the Robot, “Stop it—stop it getting in!” Morbius was fighting to get away from me. I could see the Robot over his shoulder—
The thing was jibbing—fighting an impossible order. Its lights were flashing crazily—and there was a whining sound coming from it. The way it had when it couldn’t use the DR on me that first day.
There was another blow on the door. It boomed like thunder.
I said to Morbius, “You can stop it! You’re the only one! Admit to yourself what it is! Admit it’s you!”
He shouted, “No—no!” again—up high, like a woman.
The Robot was a dead lump of metal. Altaira came running across to me. I yelled, “Back—into the study—” and started dragging at Morbius.
And the door fell in. We couldn’t see it—but there was no mistaking the sound.
Morbius was resisting me. But Altaira took his arm and he stopped. We rushed him into the study. I didn’t look behind me, but I could hear the breathing.
I dropped my hold on him and slid the door shut and snapped the lock. The sort of futile thing one does.
There was a crash on the door. The wood split. The breathing was loud.
Altaira was trying to get Morbius to the open archway in the rock. Now he was hanging back. I ran to them and got my arm around him and forced him to the arch and through it. He sagged against me, limp.
Altaira said, “John—how do we shut it—we have to shut it—”