“All right,” Maxted assented. “But one or other of us will remain on guard outside. I don’t feel any too happy after that village idiot has been prowling about....”
* * * *
Contrary to Maxted’s fears, however, Idiot Jake did not present himself again during the night, or during the next day—Sunday. And by the time evening came both men were too absorbed in the alien plant-woman’s slow explanation of profound secrets to give any thought to Idiot Jake.
For two hours Cia talked and gave mathematical formulae, which Maxted wrote down laboriously in his notebook. In that two hours he learned, through figures anyway, the secrets of new metals and the many different essentials necessary in a ship designed to cross interstellar space. He learned how atomic force could be extracted and controlled with complete safety and the calculations necessary for the trajectory across space to Cia’s solar system. These and many more Cia gave him, until his head began to ache with the thoughts being instilled inside it.
Yes, upon those sheets of paper, which Maxted finally set aside on the bench were secrets which could lay the foundations of an interstellar empire.
Then, suddenly, just as the long effort to understand each other was over, there was a violent explosive crack from one of the windows. A heavy piece of tree branch came hurtling inwards in a shower of glass.
“What the devil!” Maxted swung round angrily and for a moment there was a vision of Idiot Jake’s vindictively grinning face. Then he dashed out of sight and vanished in the darkness of the grounds.
Maxted took three swift strides towards the shattered window, only to pause as Cia gave a desperate, despairing cry and Belling shouted in horror.
Something was happening to the plant-woman. Her head was drooping, her face suffused with an expression of indescribable anguish. Her soft copper-tinted flesh was turning gray and forming into dry and dusty scales.
“It’s the cold, sir!” Belling shouted, seizing Maxtcd’s arm. “It’s killing her! The temperature’s gone down—”
Maxted made a slow, stupid movement, unable to decide what he ought to do. In any case, it was too late now. The night air streaming into the conservatory was charged with frost and under its withering breath the strange being of a superheated world wilted until she looked as if she had been soaked in liquid air. She began to take on a brittle, crystallized aspect.
“Cia!” Maxted gasped, clutching her hand, then he stared in horror as it snapped off in his grip like a rotten branch.
“She’s dead, sir,” Belling whispered, white-faced. “She’s as brittle as a carrot—”
He paused and both he and Maxted swung round as a police officer came striding in through the shattered window, followed by a surging mass of the village populace and—in the background—the drooling Idiot Jake.
“Now, sir!” Police Constable Adams looked round the conservatory curiously, then at the frozen gray image that had been a woman. “Now, sir, what’s all this ’ere about you ’aving a woman in ’ere? Always sat in the same place? I’ve heard all about it.”
“From that idiot, Jake, eh?” Maxted asked bitterly. “Or from these villagers?” and he looked sourly at them as they formed in a curious semi-circle.
“I ’eard of a woman being ill-treated in ’ere, sir,” P.C. Adams said. “I considered it my duty to h’investigate.”
“Sheer imagination, constable, on the part of Jake,” Maxted said, trying hard to keep his temper. “I found him on my property last night and kicked him out. Tonight he smashes a window for revenge and spreads a trumped-up tale. And you’ve no authority to break in on me like this, either!”
“Sorry, sir.” Adams began to look uncomfortable. “I just thought I’d better—”
“We all saw that woman!” one of the villagers piped up. “An’ we heard her voice, too. She were a fine singer, she were.”
Maxted gave a weary smile.
“The voice, let me assure you, was from an instrument I am working upon. As for the woman—well, can’t a man fashion a statue to place among his flowers? Look for yourselves!”
He pointed to the dead, granite-like Cia. P.C. Adams looked at her, touched her hard shoulders, brooded over the solidly frozen tendrils in the soil as though he wondered what they were—then he put his notebook away and touched his helmet.
“Sorry, sir; been a mistake somewhere. I’ll say goodnight. Outside, you people! Outside!”
When at last they had all gone Maxted relaxed and rubbed his forehead.
“We might have got in a nasty mess, Belling. We never thought of conventions.... Poor Cia! Obviously she froze to death before she had a chance to adapt herself into spore form or protect herself against the cold. Damn Idiot Jake! Damn him!”
“At least we have the secrets, sir,” Belling said. “Over on the bench there is our passport to another—”
He stopped dead. Maxted caught his look of consternation and gazed as well. There was no sign of papers or notebook anywhere.
* * * *
The following morning it was calm and sunny. Two distracted men had searched all night and failed to find the secrets that could link two worlds.
On the bridge over the Bollin Brook Idiot Jake sat and hummed to himself, a bundle of papers in each tattered pocket. As he watched the torn strips flutter down and float away the world seemed to him to be laughing. Perhaps it was—ironically.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
British writer John Russell Fearn was born near Manchester, England, in 1908. As a child he devoured the science fiction of Wells and Verne, and was a voracious reader of the Boys’ Story Papers. He was also fascinated by the cinema, and first broke into print in 1931 with a series of articles in Film Weekly.
He then quickly sold his first novel, The Intelligence Gigantic, to the American magazine, Amazing Stories. Over the next fifteen years, writing under several pseudonyms, Fearn became one of the most prolific contributors to all of the leading US science fiction pulps, including such legendary publications as Astounding Stories, Startling Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, and Weird Tales.
During the late 1940s he diversified into writing novels for the UK market, and also created his famous superwoman character, The Golden Amazon, for the prestigious Canadian magazine, the Toronto Star Weekly. In the early 1950s in the UK, his fifty-two novels as “Vargo Statten” were bestsellers, most notably his novelization of the film, Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Apart from science fiction, he had equal success with westerns, romances, and detective fiction, writing an amazing total of 180 novels—most of them in a period of just ten years—before his early death in 1960. His work has been translated into nine languages, and continues to be reprinted and read worldwide.
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