There was a thunderous roar before they had taken twenty steps. They were knocked from their feet.
Water and mud rained down on them. Water and mud, and something else—fragments of pallid pinkish substance that struck down on them like clammy hands, to plop off onto the ground, and to begin at once, with queer, humping movements, to slide back to the boiling, half-emptied pond.
Alive, but not alive! Frightful, blind growth, as vital and indestructible as the living, primal ooze!
“No death for it but utter annihilation,” muttered Sharpe. “But it will be weeks before any of the pieces can become dangerously big. Long before that we’ll have the place burned out with acid.”
The two got up slowly. Sharpe looked at the professor for a long time.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Weidbold. “But it can’t be true. It can’t! By all the laws of biology it can’t—”
“Professor,” said Sharpe, “it was about ten years ago that your discharged servant got back at you by dumping that laboratory stuff into the pool, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” said the old man, his lips twitching.
“Among the stuff was a lot of sodium, potassium, and calcium salts, and probably a barrel of sugar,” guessed Sharpe.
“Y-yes,” admitted Weidbold.
“Now, while I was here ten years ago you cut off a bit of that chicken-heart muscle you’ve kept living and pulsing for sixteen years in a solution of potassium, calcium, sodium, and sugar. I remember that distinctly. You’ve cut off several bits; otherwise the stuff would outgrow the nourishment-capacity of the case. What happened to that fragment?”
“I—it got lost, or something.”
“It’s conceivable that it was among the stuff your servant dumped into the pond, isn’t it?”
“Such a fantastic accident,” mumbled Weidbold.
“All accidents are fantastic,” said Sharpe curtly. “That’s why they call them accidents. It’s conceivable—isn’t it?”
Weidbold nodded.
“And in this warm, life-filled pond,” Sharpe pursued relentlessly, “the tiny bit of muscle substance flourished. It absorbed the chemicals freakishly dumped in with it, and finally all the small life. Then it began to reach out for more food in its voracious growth.”
“I tell you it’s impossible!” almost shrieked the professor. “It could not live outside a laboratory! Ask any scientist—”
“I’d prefer to ask Raeburn’s cow or your dog,” Sharpe cut in dryly.
Weidbold spread his hands in a defeated gesture. “Gordon,” he said in a different tone, “I’m an old man. I have neither the money nor the energy to move to another part of the country and set up my laboratory all over again—which I’d have to do if the people around here believed that some experiment in my laboratory really was responsible for—this. Now—you see how impossible it is that a tiny bit of flesh from the heart of a dead chicken could grow to a thing like—like that, don’t you?”
Sharpe watched the last of the small pink fragments fold over on itself on its way to the water of Greer’s Pond, the little fragment slipped sluggishly under the green scum of the surface.
“We’ll say it’s impossible,” he conceded at last.
Wanderer of Time - John Russell Fearn
Introduction
Fearn was born at Worsley in Manchester on Friday 5 June 1908, but spent most of his life in Blackpool. He developed an early interest in the cinema, which he kept all his life, and this led to his first published pieces in Film Weekly.
He discovered Amazing Stories in 1931, and with the knowledge that such an outlet existed for his fertile imagination, he despatched The Intelligence Gigantic to the magazine where it was serialized from the June 1933 issue. But Fearn really hit his stride with the Tremaine Astounding Stories and the call for ‘thought variants’. Starting with ‘The Man Who Stopped the Dust’ (March 1934), Fearn followed with a host of brilliantly conceived, startlingly original sf stories such as ‘Brain of Light’ (May 1934),‘He Never Slept’ (June 1934) and ‘Before Earth Came’ (July 1934). When Britain’s pioneer sf magazine Scoops appeared in 1934, Fearn was amongst its contributors, and naturally when Walter Gillings began Tales of Wonder there, too, was Fearn.
Fearn later forsook his ‘thought-variant’ style in favour of fast action stories. This brought him the disrespect of many readers, and his name is now just grouped among the bunch of countless second-rate writers who proliferated in the magazines during the 1940s. Such opinion has become exaggerated with time. One has only to read the letter columns of the magazines publishing Fearn’s work to find how many admired and enjoyed them. Since much appeared under the aliases of Thornton Ayre and Polton Cross readers were not always aware at whom they directed praise.
In the late 1940s Fearn virtually deserted the American market with the later exception of a series about the Golden Amazon that he wrote for the Canadian paper Star Weekly. Instead he concentrated on the British market, especially the booming paperback field, and thus was born the Vargo Statten period of which more will be written in the next volume. Fearn continued to write until his death as a result of a heart attack in September 1960, since when he has all but faded into oblivion. I am glad to have the opportunity of reviving his name with this story, which was one of Fearn’s own favourites.
The Story
Professor Hardwick once delivered a learned lecture to a group of earnest students.
‘Time does not exist in actual fact,’ Professor Hardwick had said. ‘It is simply the term science applies to a condition of space which it does not fully comprehend. We know that there has been a Past, and can prove it: we also know that there is a Future, but we cannot prove it. Therein lies the need for the term ‘Time”, in order that an insurmountable difficulty may become resolved into common understanding.’
This excerpt from his paper – a pedantic observation without doubt – had prompted Blake Carson, spare-time dabbler in physics, to think further. Much further. He had heard Hardwick make that statement five years ago. Now Hardwick was dead, but every observation he had ever made, every treatise he had written, had been absorbed to the full by the young physicist. Between the ages of twenty-five and thirty he had plowed through the deeper works of Einstein, Eddington, and Jeans to boot.
‘Time,’ Blake Carson observed, to his little laboratory, when the five years had gone by, ‘definitely does not exist! It is a concept engendered by the limitations of a physical body. And a physical body, according to Eddington and Jeans, is the outward manifestation of thought itself. Change the thought and you change the body in like proportion. You believe you know the past. So adjust your mind to the situation and there is no reason why you shouldn’t know the future.’
Two years later he added an amendment.
Time is a circle, in which thought itself and all its creations go in an everlasting cycle, repeating the process without end. Therefore, if we have in a remote past done the same things we are doing now, it is logical to assume that some hangover of memory may be left behind – a hangover from the past which, from the present standpoint, will be in the future, so far back is it in the time circle.
‘The medium for thought is the brain. Therefore, any hangover must be in the brain. Find that, and you have the key to future time. All you will actually do will be to awake a memory of the remote past.’
From this conception there sprouted in Blake Carson’s laboratory a complicated mass of apparatus contrived from hard earned savings and erected in spare time. Again and again he built and rebuilt, tested and experimented, finally got assistance from two other young men with ideas similar to his own. They did not fully understand his theory but his enthusiasm certainly impressed them.
At last he had things exactly as he wanted them, summoned his two friends one Saturday evening and waved a hand to his apparatus.
Dick Glenbury was shock-haired, ruddy faced, and blue-eyed – a man of impulses, honesty, and dependable concentration. Hart Cran
shaw was the exact opposite – sallow-skinned, always unruffled, black haired. A brilliant physicist, confirmed cynic, with only his great intelligence to save him from being a complete bore.
‘Boys, I have it,’ Blake Carson declared with enthusiasm, grey eyes gleaming. ‘You know my theory regarding the hangover. This’ – he motioned to the apparatus – ‘is the Probe.’
‘You don’t mean you intend to use all this stuff on your brain to probe for the right spot, do you?’ Dick Glenbury demanded.
‘That is the idea, yes.’
‘When you’ve done this, what then?’ Cranshaw asked, sticking to the practical side, as usual.
‘Tell you better when I know something,’ Carson grinned. ‘Right now I want you to follow out instructions.’
He seated himself in the chair immediately under the wilderness of odd looking lenses, lamps, and tubes. Following directions Glenbury busied himself with the switchboard. One projector gave forth a violet ray which enveloped Blake Carson’s head completely.
Opposite him, so he could see it clearly, a square and numbered screen came into life and gave a perfect silhouette, X-ray wise, of his skull. It differed only from X-ray in that the convolutions of the brain were clearly shown with more vividity than any other part.
‘There,’ Carson gasped abruptly. ‘Look in Section Nine, Square Five. There’s a black oval mark – a blind spot. No registration at all. That is a hangover.’
He pressed a switch on the chair arm.
‘Taking a photograph,’ he explained. Then giving the order to cut off the entire apparatus, he got to his feet. Within a few minutes the self-developing tank produced a finished print. He handed it round in obvious delight.
‘So what?’ Cranshaw growled, his sallow face mystified. ‘Now you have got a blind spot what good does it do you? All this is way outside the physics I ever learned. You still can’t see the future.’ This last was added with some impatience.
‘But I shall.’ Carson’s voice was tense. ‘You notice that that blind spot is exactly where we might expect it to be? In the subconscious area. To get a clear knowledge of what the spot contains there is only one method to use.’
‘Yeah,’ Glenbury said grimly. ‘A surgeon should link up the blank portion with the active portion of your brain by means of a nerve. And would that be a ticklish business.’
‘I don’t need a surgeon,’ Carson said. ‘Why a real nerve? A nerve is only a fleshly means of carrying minute electrical sensation. A small electric device can do it as well In other words an external mechanical nerve.’
He turned aside and brought forth an object not unlike a stethoscope. At both ends were suction caps and small dry batteries. Between the caps was a length of strong cable.
‘A brain gives off minute electric charges – anybody knows that,’ Carson resumed. ‘This mechanical device can accomplish the thing through the skull bone. Thereby the blind spot and normal brain area would be linked. At least that’s how I figure it.’
‘Well, all right,’ Dick Glenbury said, with an uneasy glance at Hart Cranshaw. ‘To me it sounds like a novel way of committing suicide.’
‘Like suffocating in your own waste,’ Cranshaw agreed.
‘If you weren’t so fact-bound you’d see my point,’ Blake snorted. ‘Anyway, I’m going to try it.’
Again he switched on his brain-reading equipment, studied the screen and the photograph for a moment, then he clamped one end of the artificial nerve device onto his skull. The other suction cup he moved indecisively about his head, positioning it by watching it on the screen. Time and again he fished round the blind spot, finally pressed the cap home.
A sensation of crawling sickness passed through him as though his body were being slowly turned inside out. His laboratory, the tense faces of Glenbury and Cranshaw misted mysteriously and were gone. Images as though reflected from disturbed water rippled through his brain.
An inchoate mass of impressions slammed suddenly into his consciousness. There were scurrying people superimposed on ragged cliffs, against which plunged foaming seas. From the cliffs there seemed to spout the towers of an unknown, remote, incomparably beautiful city catching the light of an unseen sun. Machines – people – mists. A thundering, grinding pain …
He opened his eyes suddenly to find himself sprawled on the laboratory floor with brandy scorching his throat.
‘Of all the darned, tomfool experiments,’ Dick Glenbury exploded. ‘You went out like a light after the first few minutes.’
‘I told you it was no use,’ Cranshaw snorted. ‘The laws of physics are against this kind of thing. Time is locked up –’
‘No, Hart, it isn’t.’ Carson stirred on the floor and rubbed his aching head. ‘Definitely it isn’t,’ he insisted.
Getting to his feet he stared before him dreamily.
‘I saw the future!’ he whispered. ‘It wasn’t anything clear – but it must have been the future. There was a city such as we have never imagined. Everything was cross sectioned, like a montage. The reason for that was my own inaccuracy with the artificial nerve. Next time I’ll do better.’
‘Next time,’ Cranshaw echoed. ‘You’re going on with this risk? It might even kill you before you’re through.’
‘Perhaps,’ Carson admitted, in a quiet voice. He shrugged. ‘Pioneers have often paid dearly for their discoveries. But I have a key. I’m going on, boys, until it swings wide open.’
For months afterwards Blake Carson became absorbed in his experiments. He gave up his ordinary work, lived on what savings he had and went tooth and nail after his discovery.
At first he was elated by the precision and accuracy with which he could achieve results. Then as days passed both Hart Cranshaw and Dick Glenbury noticed that an odd change had come over him, for he seemed morose, afraid of letting some statement or other escape him.
‘What is it, Blake?’ Dick Glenbury insisted one evening, when he had arrived for the latest report on progress. ‘You’re different. Something is on your mind. You can surely tell me, your best friend.’
As Blake Carson smiled, Glenbury suddenly noticed how tired he looked,
‘Which doesn’t include Hart, eh?’ Carson asked.
‘I didn’t mean that exactly. But he is a bit cold blooded when it comes to truths. What’s wrong?’
‘I have discovered when I am to die,’ Blake Carson said soberly.
‘So what? We all die sometime.’ Dick Glenbury stopped uneasily. There was a strange look on Blake Carson’s worn face.
‘Yes, we all die sometime, of course, but I shall go one month hence. On April fourteenth. And I shall die in the electric chair for first degree murder.’
Dick Glenbury stared, appalled. ‘What! You, a murderer? Why, it’s utterly – say, that artificial nerve has gone cockeyed.’
‘I’m afraid not, Dick,’ answered Carson. ‘I realize now, that death ends this particular phase of existence on this plane. The views of the future which I have seen refer to some other plane way beyond this, the plane where successive deaths would ultimately carry me. With death, all association with things here is broken.’
‘I still don’t believe murder is ahead of you,’ Dick Glenbury said.
‘None the less I shall die as a convicted murderer,’ Carson went on, his voice harsh. ‘The man who gets me into this approaching mess and who will have the perfect alibi is – Hart Cranshaw.’
‘Hart? You mean he is going to commit a murder deliberately and blame you for it?’
‘Without doubt. We know already that he is interested now in this invention of mine; we know too that he realises he has a blind spot in his brain, just as everybody else has. Hart, cold blooded and calculating, sees the value of this invention to gain power and control for himself. Stock markets, gambling speculations, history before it appears. He could even rule the world. He will steal the secret from me and rid himself of the only two men in the world who know of his villainy.’
‘The only two men?’ repeate
d Glenbury. ‘You mean I, also, will be slain?’
‘Yes.’ Blake Carson’s voice had a far away sound….
‘But this can’t happen,’ Glenbury shouted huskily. ‘I’m not going to – to be murdered just to further the aims of, Hart Cranshaw. Like blazes I am. You forget, Blake – forewarned is forearmed. We can defeat this.’ His voice became eager. ‘Now that we know about it, we can take steps to block him.’
‘No,’ Carson interrupted. I’’ve had many weeks to think this over, Dick – weeks that have nearly driven me mad as I realised the truth. The law of time is inexorable. It must happen! Don’t you even yet realize that all I have seen is only an infinitely remote memory from a past time, over which moments we are passing again? All this has happened before. You will be murdered as surely as I knew you would come here tonight, and I shall die convicted of that murder.’
Dick Glenbury’s face had gone the colour of putty. ‘When does it happen?’
‘At exactly nine minutes after eleven tonight – here.’ Carson paused and gripped Glenbury’s shoulders tightly. ‘Stars above, Dick, can’t you realize how all this hurts me, how frightful it is for me to have to tell it all to you. It’s only because I know you’re a hundred percent that I spoke at all.’
‘Yes – I know.’ Glenbury sank weakly into a chair. For a moment or two his mind wandered. Next he found that his frozen gaze was fixed on the electric clock. It was exactly forty minutes past ten.
‘At ten to eleven – ten minutes, that is – Hart will come here,’ Carson resumed. ‘His first words will be – “Sorry I’m late, boys, but I got held up at an Extraordinary Board Meeting.” An argument will follow, then murder. Everything is clear up to the moment of my death. After that Hart is extinguished from my future. The vision of life continuing in a plane different from this one is something I have pondered pretty deeply.’
My Best Science Fiction Story Page 20