“Let me be a woman, Cyril,” she said with a smile. “Let me say I want to do something because— Not because of this or that but just because.”
The captain was smiling himself when he left her to return to his bridge and give the necessary orders for the preparation of the Achilles. The landing craft assigned to the physicists was the only one in the round-house dock at the moment. The others were still out exploring the terrain of Bootes IV.
***
IT WAS Lydia herself, smiling a smile of reassurance at a nervous Dr. Navarro, who pressed the button on the Achilles. Leon, she thought, had a right to his jitters. The idea of unleashing the overdrive for such a brief distance of a little over a billion miles was frightening.
“Take it easy, Le—” she began. Then abruptly her smile faded. Already the white light was flashing. In the visicreen before them a vast surface was coming into clear focus, less than a mile beneath them.
The Spaniard, his face white, was profaning under his breath. The planet was still a planet of life. Canals in near-geometric patterns marked the boundaries of cultivated land whose greens and grays and yellows checkerboarded the terrain. Here and there, where the canals intersected, were tiny artificial structures in small clusters or in larger ones. In the middle distance rose the bulbish towers of some utterly alien city.
“Great heavens!” exclaimed Dr. Gray in horror as she pressed other buttons with the speed of desperation under control. Her hair was awry from the quick rake of her fingers, and her cigarette dangled unnoticed from her lower lip.
It was a planet of life, yes—but of life in the very process of annihilation. A great plume of multicolored, billowing smoke rose above the city, and smaller plumes rose here and there from some of the more isolated structures below them. Nowhere, even as they drew within a few score feet of the ground, did anything move in an attempt to put out the holocaust.
They came to rest on a broad, paved level expanse whose edged ramps sloped off underground, whose level surface was dotted with ships reminiscent of the model Lydia had found in the museum of the city of Bootes IV. Even as they stepped from the Achilles a gush of evil-smelling smoke poured out of one of the ramp entrances, to be followed by the flicker of flame. In their alarm, they had not stopped to check the atmosphere. The obvious similarity of Bootes XII to Bootes IV had been reassurance enough.
“What struck the poor devils?” said one of the crewmen. The half dozen of them, two men and four women, had followed Lydia and Navarro from the auxiliary ship. No one answered the question. They were all dumb, with horror.
More than space and air craft covered the area. Alone and in tangled little heaps of horror, the bodies of what must minutes before have been living, creatures littered the metal-paved surface around them. They were the twin-pelvised beings of Bootes IV, and they were not pretty to behold.
Their single heads had faces that were almost humanoid, and without exception they wore expressions of agony and horror beyond belief. Even as they stood there, unable to move, the exposed flesh of one of the corpses began to turn visibly black. It was Lydia who snapped out of it first.
“Get stereographs,” she commanded. “Quickly!”
Two members of the crew darted back into the Achilles for the tridimensional color camera. Lydia gave them curt directions when they had it set up, then walked a little way to study the body of a strange seven-legged beast which lay close to one of the larger figures, as if in nearness it could find protection from the horror which had struck so suddenly and with such terrifying global finality.
“It’s here!” shouted Dr. Navarro suddenly. “We’ve caught up with it!” And then, looking into Lydia’s eyes, hysteria seemed to leave him. The thing he had feared most had happened—he and the plague had met. There was nothing more to be done. He ran a hand over his face and achieved an unsteady sort of smile.
“Very well, Lydia,” he said, “Let’s be about our business.”
“That was very brave of you, Leon,” said the physicist, when they were out of earshot of the others.
Dr. Navarro winced and shook his head.
“I’m not afraid of what I can see,” he told her.
Their hands touched briefly and then, a trifle self-consciously, they walked on toward a strange structure, like a half melon resting on its round portion. It seemed to be the chief building of the port. At any rate, it was the largest.
A small fire was raging in its entrance hall but they were easily able to extinguish it before it spread. There were alien bodies everywhere, of course, but they forced themselves to ignore them and go on about their appointed tasks. They had anthropologists with them who would collect the specimens required by Dr. Duchesne for her studies of alien life forms.
It was here, in an egg-shaped room of the bizarre structure, that Dr. Navarro found his Rosetta Stone. Better than a stone, it was a semi-incandescent globe in the center of the room, in which the same set of tridimensional images flashed no matter from what angle it was viewed. The faintest of whines accompanied the moving images. Dr. Navarro, got very busy with his portable equipment,
“It checks,” he whispered, a half hour later. “Most of it is supersonic but it checks with the material we found on Bootes Four. The pauses fit the breaks in the ideographs. We can use the automatic phonoscanner on it when we get back to the ship.”
But Lydia was not listening. Her eyes were fixed upon the scenes which were being unrolled before her. She supposed the. device was something like those used in the theaters back on Earth. Its ability to project at any angle without distortion was superior to that of the projectors of Earth. Its colors and images were just about as sharp, once the watcher grew used to the globe effect.
But for once, its technical features did not interest Lydia. For as she looked on she realized that, beyond doubt, she was seeing some sort of visibroadcast of what was happening around them right now, or had happened shortly before. Suddenly there was a faint click and the globe went blank.
“Oh, no!” she cried, and her distress was echoed by Navarro.
But then, after the briefest of pauses, the pictures began to unroll once more, with a tridimensional clarity that seemed to remove them from the imagery of a projector.
She saw herself looking at an alien city that was yet strangely, familiar.” She gave a little cry and clutched Leon’s arm, glanced at him briefly to meet his nod.” He too had recognized the scene. It was, almost beyond question, the great city on Bootes IV which they had explored a scant Earth month earlier.
But it was the city with a difference. The mighty towers were not mere skeletons, nor were the inhabitants. The structures were clothed with some sort of shimmering surface of many colors and the beings, for all of their strange double structure, moved busily about their affairs. It was a pleasant world.
***
ABRUPTLY, this scene came to an end—almost as did the world it depicted. The next shots, while excellent, were evidently, taken from afar, perhaps by some telescopic arrangement. They showed Bootes IV in its death agonies—a mass of flames, explosions and death, much like the planet upon which Lydia and Navarro and the crew of the Achilles were now resting.”
“It’s pestilence, all fight,” said Lydia. “There is no sign of violence. They all die and then their atomic fires, untended, blaze up and consume them.”
“Look!” exclaimed Leon, pointing toward the globe with a shaking finger.
“Great heavens!” countered Lydia. “It’s us!”
They saw the thousand-foot ball of the Milky Way, like some shiny child’s toy, settle slowly on the distant inner planet, check rockets blasting to bring it gently down.
For a while then the images were less easy to understand, as they concerned affairs, on Bootes XII. But it was evident that vast preparations were being made to resist whatever came, to abandon planet at a moment’s notice.
And then unmistakable clarity returned. Incredibly, the two scientists found themselves looking at Terra. A picto
graphic depiction of the Solar System brought them sunlight in the heavens, was before them, its beautiful bluish green shining from reflected sunlight in the heavens, was before them, its continents clearly outlined in their dear, familiar contours.
It seemed to Lydia that the faint sound-effects. which accompanied the image grew, louder, faintly threatening, at this point. Evidently Navarro noticed it too, for he hurried back to his instruments and lingered over them, making quick adjustments with his long and delicately formed fingers.
The next visualization was of Mars, long dead, then of cloud-wrapped Venus. Some cloud-piercing device stripped her of her covering and a miraculous science that could reach across light years brought them close to the surface where dead things were shown, dead things and a human settlement, with its space ship, its communications devices, all its complex machinery.
“It’s terrifying!” said Leon, his attention once more on the screen. “The creatures seem to have had us spotted all the way.”
“Evidently,” said Lydia. Her voice was dry, close to cracking, but she did not notice it, nor that Leon regarded her with something akin to alarm.
A deep understanding was being born within her—understanding and a sudden terrible fear. She waited, knowing what the next set of images would portray but hoping against hope, like the silly human creature she was, that they would not come. Her broad forehead was beaded with perspiration.
It came—the system of Proxima Centauri, the planetwide holocausts, the landings of the Milky Way, the expeditions of the auxiliary ships. They had the record complete—complete in all the ghastliness which the members of the expedition had not been able or willing to face. Everywhere they went was death and ruin.
“It’s funny they didn’t stop us, with all this stuff,” said Leon, nodding toward the globe and it’s remorseless images. “You’d think that—”
“Don’t you see?” Lydia almost shouted. “Don’t you understand? They couldn’t!
Whenever they tried to, they were dead!”
She was close to hysteria. In her the dreams of a thousand generations were being consumed—dreams of friendly contact with alien races on alien stars—of combined supracivilizations of the noble road to a starwide commonwealth.
“What do you mean?” Leon countered stupidly.
Outside of his linguistics and semantics, she thought, he wasn’t too bright. To her it was bitterly plain.
“What do you mean?” she mimicked, caught herself. “Sorry, Leon. It’s too awful! I guess I blew my top for a moment.” Her voice was normal. “It isn’t very pleasant to find that the plague is—us!”
He stared at her for a moment, uncomprehending, and then understanding grew and horror with it.
“But how?” he asked, his voice rising. “How?”
“We’ll, find out,” she said bitterly. “We of Earth are clever. We caught up with it here. Remember, it’s the first time we’ve actually been able to reach a world on overdrive—thanks to them.” She nodded toward the screen. “Before, it’s taken time.”
She laughed without mirth, looking a little sick. “Mars—we must have finished them off long ago. We’re deadly, Leon, I tell you. Maybe we transmit our deadliness along the beams we send forth. We got to Venus—Venus died. Can’t you see? It’s been the same everywhere. It always will be. We carry death!”
“What are you going to do?” he asked, still grappling with the problem. She looked at him, slapped the pocket of her coverall, shrugged wearily.
“Do?” she said. “Do?” She laughed again. “Leon, have you got a cigarette?”
WHY I SELECTED DR. GRIMSHAW’S SANITARIUM
To begin with, I don’t think it’s a particularly brilliant story. It’s better now than when first published (because I have revised it) but still not out of the top drawer. The reason I select it is that for originality of theme and for logical interweaving of all the parts, it is the best one I have written within the restrictions of length the editors have laid down. The reason I find it something less than perfect is that it was written back in the pre-historic days of science fiction, when there was only one magazine in the field; and because science fiction as a whole has gone a long way since then.
It is being written by people who know a whole lot more about writing than we did in the old days (that’s why it was necessary to revise this story)—that is, about things like dialog, the way to convey information, emphasis and movement. It is also being written by people who know a whole lot more about science; and I am not sure that all the effects of this are good.
I am afraid that science fiction is developing a kind of shorthand of its own, so that it is in danger of being understood by only a few people. Say “space-suit” to someone who doesn’t spend all his time on sci-f, and he won’t know what on Earth you’re talking about, for instance. Still less will he understand “de-gravitator.”
I think the first job the science fiction writer of today faces is that of taking an occasional look back to the old days when we had to explain everything to readers who never heard of science fiction; and this is one of the reasons why Dr. Grimshaw’s Sanitarium is offered here now.
FLETCHER PRATT
Dr. Grimshaw’s Sanitarium - Fletcher Pratt
A Private Prison, Detective John Doherty Found, Where They Actually Made Little Ones Out of Big Ones!
Note by the editors: The following manuscript represents either a hoax or the true explanation of the Grimshaw Sanitarium scandal. If a hoax, it is an extraordinarily good one, since it fits all the exterior facts of that case. On the other hand, there is not the slightest evidence that the central statement with regard to Dr. Grimshaw’s experiments has any basis whatever in fact, and experimenters who have attempted to reproduce his results have been uniformly unsuccessful.
Under the circumstances, the editors have decided to present this manuscript to the public in the form in which it was deciphered. What is your opinion?
For the benefit of readers who are not familiar with the Grimshaw case, the known facts are these:
Dr. Adelbert Grimshaw, a physician of German extraction, opened a private sanitarium for nervous cases at Gowanda, near the State Hospital for the Insane. It was a very select institution, catering to wealthy patients, but Dr. Grimshaw had a considerable charity ward in which indigent feebleminded patients were cared for.
Dr. Grimshaw’s success was from the first phenomenal. Well-attested cases of complete recovery from both dementia praecox and paranoia are recorded from his institution, and at the time the extraordinarily high death-rate was not noticed.
The Grimshaw Sanitarium scandal was precipitated by the case of Harlan Ward. This young man, the heir of the automobile manufacturer, after being graduated from college, embarked on an extensive post-graduate course in the speakeasy technique of the period, and in 1927 was committed to Dr. Grimshaw’s Sanitarium as an alcoholic. He was discharged as cured some eight months later, but about a year after the discharge was caught in a dope raid, and returned to the institution as an addict. While his wife and parents were in Europe they received a cablegram from Dr. Grimshaw announcing Harlan Ward’s death.
On returning to the United States, they made arrangements for the removal of the body from its temporary resting-place in the Trinity (Episcopal) Chapel of Gowanda to the family vault at Short Hills, Long Island. While passing through New York City, the hearse carrying the casket was struck by another car. The hearse was overturned and the casket broken. Instead of the body, it proved to contain an ingeniously constructed dummy stuffed with sand, dressed in Harlan Ward’s clothes, and with the face represented by a well-made wax mask. *
There was an immediate investigation, in the course of which exhumation orders were issued for several other patients who had died at Dr. Grimshaw’s Sanitarium. In every case the body was similarly missing, and a sand-stuffed dummy with a mask face was found in the coffin. None of the bodies has ever been discovered. The death certificates in all these cases bore the s
ignature of Dr. Grimshaw himself.
By the time investigation reached this stage, he had disappeared, and efforts to trace him have so far been unsuccessful. His assistant, Dr. Benjamin Voyna, was apprehended however, and the State Police succeeded in piecing together enough of the partially-destroyed papers of the sanitarium to show that Grimshaw and Voyna had been the distributing centers of a drug ring which for some time had given much trouble to the authorities. Several patients at the sanitarium were found to be addicts although they had originally been committed for other reasons, and there is very little doubt that Harlan Ward was one of these.
The peculiarity of the drug cases was that the addicts exhibited none of the symptoms of the well-known narcotics. Dr. Voyna obstinately refused to tell what drug had been used, and before his arrest, succeeded in destroying whatever supplies he had, so that the question of the specific drug remains unsolved to this day.
Of the other facts uncovered by the investigation there is only one that has any real bearing on the authenticity of the manuscript here presented. It was found that Dr. Grimshaw had been engaged in the business of supplying circus sideshows with midgets. All these midgets were at best morons, and some of them so feeble-minded as to be unable to dress themselves. Grimshaw supplied them against cash payments on a basis that constituted genuine human slavery; and most of them were drug addicts.
Dr. Voyna ultimately received a sentence of five years, the heaviest allowable for dope peddling under United States law. If Grimshaw is ever found, it is doubtful whether any other charge can be substantiated against him. He undoubtedly caused the disappearance, if not the death, of many persons, but there is nothing on which to base a kidnapping charge, and for a charge of murder, the production of a corpus delicti, or evidence that someone has been murdered, is necessary.
The manuscript is said to have been found in Grimshaw’s Sanitarium when it was raided by the State Troopers. One of the troopers, while, searching the main living room of the sanitarium, found three gelatine capsules in a corner of the fireplace—or says he found them there. They appeared to be of no particular importance; he dropped them in his pocket and forgot about them.
My Best Science Fiction Story Page 36