Of this, as far as Rigilus could see, there was very little doubt, so without any more hesitation he began to gather together all the materials for the actual construction of the machine that Merva had designed.
During this time they saw but little of their old colleagues, except at the generally accepted meal times. A system of shifts and reliefs had of course been arranged so that somebody or other was always moving about the ship constantly on guard in case of the arrival of some sudden meteorite which might cause irreparable disaster to the ship, or on the other hand there might be some form of cosmic life which would make itself apparent and would need destroying. For, although the party aboard the ship—with the exception of Rigilus and Merva—knew that they would never see a planet again, they still did not wish to die prematurely through the advent of the unexpected. Hence the constant guard against the possibility of sudden disaster.... But nothing ever happened.
In this time the Earthly Solar System had become so remote that it had disappeared altogether and the Sun was little better than a pinpoint star in far off infinity. Ahead, the enormous galaxies of the Universe never seemed to come any nearer so stupendous was their distance away. The ship flew on and on, consuming hardly any power since it was still maintaining the same velocity it had achieved when the engine was cut off.
And so the circumscribed little world flew onwards, carrying with it ten souls who were entirely, or almost entirely, content with their lot and looking forward to the arrival of their children ere very long, and two others who were plotting and planning to defeat the ravages of time that they might live a thousand years. In the passage of months Rigilus had had to a great extent come round to Merva’s way of thinking in regard to this and the interest of building and testing the equipment for life energy had to a great extent alleviated the crushing sense of monotony which had been ruling him. For this reason, if for none other, he was very much the man of action he had been when ruler of the Earth and the Solar System.
But if either Rigilus or Merva imagined that their scientific or constructional work had entirely escaped the notice of their colleagues they were quite mistaken. The ever-watchful Randos, who was more or less considered to be the self-appointed leader of those outside Rigilus and Merva, had more often than not asked himself what the strange device was in the laboratory upon which Rigilus and Merva spent so much time.
Neither of them were aware that whilst they had been absent during their sleeping periods Randos had made it his business to very carefully examine the apparatus until he had arrived at a very definite conclusion as to its purpose. He could not be absolutely certain that it was intended for the storage of life-energy, but being a scientist of fair ability he could at least form a theory. Nor did he consider that it was out of place for him to question Rigilus and Merva outright.
He did so in the most casual manner, arriving in the laboratory one morning—‘morning’ being entirely governed by the chronometer, since in space there was nothing but eternal night and starshine. Both Rigilus and | Merva were at work upon the apparatus in question when Randos presented himself, and they could tell immediately from the grimness of his expression something of extreme moment was on his mind.
“I assume,” he asked, as Rigilus and Merva looked at him in surprise, “that no regulation has been made to prevent me or anybody eke entering this laboratory?”
“No regulation at all,” Rigilus assented; “you are quite welcome my friend. Naturally you must have something with which to pass the time.”
“It’s not a matter of that,” Randos looked about him quickly. “I have my own particular hobbies with which I am able to while away the endless hours…. It just so happens that I am particularly interested in that apparatus upon which you and your wife are engaged.”
“What concern is it of yours?” Merva asked him shortly, staring at him with her wide green eyes.
“It is my concern because I cannot possibly see any reason for building an electrical apparatus when we have around us every kind of equipment we can possibly need.”
“In other words,” Merva asked, “just plain curiosity, is that it?”
“Frankly, yes.” Randos looked at her squarely. “I am not an absolute novice in understanding scientific equipment and it is perfectly obvious that equipment is intended for the absorption of energy. At first I thought that perhaps you were intending to absorb cosmic energy, the only type of energy in existence in this far flung quarter of space. Certainly it could not be solar energy that you are intending to tamper with. Then when I came to study the apparatus more closely I could see that it was not built for absorbing the immense voltage which cosmic energy would take; that suggests to me that there is only one other form of energy that it could be intended to deal with—Life energy.”
Rigilus came forward slowly. “From the sound of things, my friend, you have spent quite a lot of time in this laboratory when my wife and I have not been present.”
“Is there any particular law against that?”
“No; but I would appreciate it if you would confine yourself to your own particular hobbies and leave the activities of my wife and myself alone.”
“That I am quite prepared to do, but I cannot help but feel from the urgent resentment which has suddenly come into your manner that you are both engaged upon some kind of apparatus which does not bode very well for the rest of us.”
“Stop being so ridiculous,” Merva answered, coldly.
“Is there any reason,” Randos asked, ignoring her and looking straight at Rigilus, “why this apparatus you are working on cannot be explained to the rest of us? Why has it been kept a secret for so long? It is obviously an equipment of very extreme intricacy, and since it is intended for life energy, there can only be one set of human beings for whom it is intended—children. Life energy, according to the researches of past scientists, and indeed our own laboratory technicians, does not exist in any individual after the age of ten years. Could it be,” Randos asked deliberately, his mouth hardening, “that you are aiming at some particularly ingenious scientific trick which will only reveal itself when our children are born?”
“I do not propose to answer any questions,” Rigilus said, curtly, “and I would be glad if you will leave us immediately!”
Randos smiled rather tautly, inclined his head and departed. The moment he had gone Merva turned quickly, her eyes glittering as she looked at Rigilus.
“That man is dangerous, Rigilus. He knows far too much. You must take the necessary steps to have him silenced. We underestimated his capabilities as a scientific analyst, and evidently he knows as much about life energies as we do. He is liable to spread any sort of story amongst the others and once that happens we can expect trouble, and the only way we can defeat trouble is to smash it halfway.”
“By doing what?” Rigilus asked, moodily. “You don’t suppose that I can suddenly go into their midst, single Randos out and kill him, do you?”
“No, I don’t see any necessity for anything quite so blatant as that,” Merva agreed, “but there is certainly nothing to prevent his meeting with an accident, and quickly, too, before he can talk too much. He always has been a man with an enquiring turn of mind and if he has too much to say it will mean ten against us and that will take a good deal of handling. You’ll have to act at once!”
Rigilus hesitated, plainly uncertain. Merva looked at him steadily, waiting, then as he made no move she made a quick gesture of annoyance.
“This isn’t a matter that can wait, Rigilus! Since you won’t act—I shall—and now!”
She wasted no further time. Hurrying from the laboratory she overtook Randos who was moving at a languid pace along the immense corridor that ran through the heart of the vessel. He turned as Merva came hurrying up and looked at her in sardonic inquiry.
“Is there something I can do for the wife of the Ruler?” he asked, cynically.
Immediately Merva’s mood changed from that to which everyone was accustomed. Instead she s
witched on extreme plaintiveness that even the wily Randos could not entirely resist.
“I feel that I owe you an apology, Randos,” Merva said. “I was downright rude to you back in the laboratory there, considering you were only asking a perfectly normal question. My husband and I have been working so hard on that apparatus that it has made us rather less courteous than usual. I do hope that you will forgive me.”
Randos merely shrugged and waited for the next.
“Since you asked so many questions,” Merva continued, “you are entitled to the answers and I feel that I am the best one to give them to you since the idea of building a machine to capture life energy is mine. Would you care to step into the sub-laboratory for a moment where I can explain more fully?”
Randos nodded, not for a moment expecting anything.
Upon which Merva turned to the nearby doorway that led on to a contiguous region of the main laboratory and stepped into the great instrument-lined space beyond,
Randos following behind her and looked about him with interest. He had already been in here before and knew pretty well all the apparatus contained therein. How any of it could apply to the life energy equipment that was in the main laboratory he had yet to discover.
“The one thing which you must understand,” Merva said, seriously, “is that the life energy equipment which we are now building has nothing whatever to do with the children which you and the other men and their wives are expecting to bring amongst us shortly. It is concerned entirely with the progeny of Rigilus and myself. Our idea is to capture some of this life energy and by its means we can perhaps extend the so-called normal span of our lives to double or treble the accepted amount.”
“At least I thank you for telling me,” Randos said, gravely. “I do feel though that you are making an extreme mistake in attempting to tamper with an energy which Nature alone gives.”
“It is quite possible that we are wrong in our calculations,” Merva admitted, “but we cannot possibly determine that until we have experimented. Certainly we will see that nobody comes to any harm because of our endeavours.
“In here,” she continued, moving to one of the machines, “is a subsidiary equipment which we have perfected and which no doubt in your travels around you have already seen!”
Randos shook his head as he looked around him. “Even if I have seen it I have not recognized it. Which one is it?”
Merva pointed to a squat, many-dialled apparatus upon the top of which were electro-magnetic devices.
“This is it,” she said, simply, switching a button so that the apparatus hummed steadily, “and with it in action you can see for yourself exactly how we propose to absorb the energy. That is, of course, the whole business on a very small scale, but at least it will give you the idea.”
Randos nodded interestedly and stepped forward. Merva seemed to consider something carefully and then nodded towards a massive switch on the apparatus.
“Actually this is a job for two to handle,” she explained. “You pull that switch down and I’ll move this lever here and then we have the first stage of the theoretical experiment complete.”
Randos did exactly as he was ordered and pulled the switch. Immediately Merva moved the lever she had referred to from left to right with savage vigour. The result was that Randos gave a tremendous gasp of anguish as a colossal electrical current surged through him, flashing from the soles of his boots, along the metal floor on which he was standing. Even Merva herself caught some of the electrical impact and was flung backwards to land heavily on her face some feet away. When at length she felt sufficiently recovered, she sat up and looked about her to behold Randos sprawled helplessly on the floor in front of the softly humming machine.
“Unfortunate,” she commented to herself, rising, “but very necessary.”
With that she left the machine running, walked in a wide circle round the fallen Randos and so out into the corridor again and back to the laboratory. Rigilus looked at her enquiringly as she entered and he could not help the feeling of emotional disturbance that passed through him as he studied the unholy smile on her face.
“I think,” she said, catching his glance, “that Randos will not disturb us again, and to the best of my knowledge there is nobody else scientific enough amongst our colleagues to even have the vaguest idea what we are driving at.”
“What have you done to Randos?” Rigilus demanded, catching Merva’s shoulders and shaking her fiercely.
“Eliminated him,” she answered coldly, snatching herself free, “and I’ll thank you to keep your hands off me Rigilus!”
Rigilus dropped his hands and looked at her steadily from beneath his tufted eyebrows.
“Just what did you do? I may as well know.”
“I had the fool pull down the main switch on one of the electrical storage generators. I rather feared he would suspect the trick but he didn’t. He did exactly as I told him and the second the main switch was on and the potential lever released he naturally got the full voltage and that was that! It will look as though he went into the laboratory and set the thing going for himself, not taking the necessary precautions to save himself from electrocution.”
Rigilus tightened his lips.
“You certainly mean to enforce your will by whatever means you can, don’t you, Merva?”
She nodded calmly. “Certainly I do. And there will probably have to be quite a few accidents before we have the children of these fools entirely in our hands. I am quite prepared for that and if you do not like what I am doing, Rigilus, it is possible that even you might run into trouble.”
Rigilus stared at her for a moment and then laughed shortly.
“You against me? Don’t be absurd my dear. I would very soon discover any machinations which you might plan against me.”
“So you imagine,” she retorted. “There is one thing which you must understand, Rigilus, and that is, that I am determined this plan of vengeance shall be executed no matter who tries to prevent it. I’ve had the feeling all along that you are no longer so keen on the plan as you were and for that reason I must see to it that you do not lose your enthusiasm. If you do and it is left entirely to me to carry the plan through then at least you can die feeling that your mission has been left in good hands.”
CHAPTER THREE
MERVA STRIKES
THE death of Randos was accepted without question as an accident for the simple reason that it never occurred to the more simple minded members forming the rest of the banished ones that neither Rigilus or Merva would descend to the level of murder, for murder was one of the most outmoded of crimes long since destroyed in the civilisation of Earth by the concentrated work of medical specialists and psychiatric experts.
The only one who did have the vaguest suspicion and yet could not do anything about it was Randos’ wife, but even she was disarmed by the immense superficial sympathy which Merva poured upon her and at last even she came to think that the whole business must have been an accident so splendidly did Merva play her delusive part.
Certainly nobody else asked any questions about the life energy equipment, even though none of them was prevented from studying it during the times when Merva and Rigilus were off duty and thereby unable to guard the laboratory....
And the weeks and the months passed by. With the life energy machine now completed there were no further experiments for Merva and Rigilus to engage upon. There was nothing they could do but wait until the slow maturity of the few children that had been born in the past few days had reached a reasonable maximum thereby enabling them to become suitable subjects for the transmission of life current.
There also came a further hiatus in the life of Merva herself when her own child was born. It proved to be a son, with the green eyes and black hair of his mother. Rigilus was not sure whether he was pleased by the event or not. He felt somehow that if necessary his ruthless wife would not hesitate to sacrifice her own child to the ideal of revenge if necessity compelled it. But this was somet
hing far too early to decide as yet, so he behaved just as any father might when at length Merva was up and about again and the recipient of congratulations from the remainder of the banished people.
Merva herself seemed somewhat changed after the birth of her son in that her manner was less harsh and indeed even sympathetic at times. What Rigilus did not grasp in his masculine bluntness was that Merva was merely lulling everybody else in the ship into a sense of false security—giving them a totally wrong impression of her character—so that the life energy experiment when it was finally conducted would seem not to attach so much to her, as a mother herself, as to Rigilus. Merva well knew that Rigilus had been the first to expound the plan of vengeance and had made each of his colleagues register that vow before departing from Earth, that they would implement the plan of revenge that he had outlined. It would therefore not seem unusual when the children of the colleagues were subjected to the life energy experiment that he was the prime mover in the whole scheme.
If there was any trouble—as Merva fully anticipated there would be—it would be Rigilus who would catch the full blast of it. Not that this concerned her in the least now. By him she had had her son, which was all that mattered, and this son could very easily take the place of Rigilus as the years passed and there was granted to her the eternality of life produced by the life energy of other children in whom she had not the remotest interest.
Rigilus, suspecting none of these things, went steadily on. He maintained a just control of the peoples in the space machine and they in turn behaved quite normally and caused no trouble whatever. Indeed, they had no need to as yet, for they were allowed to educate their children as they wished—and there were six children in all, three boys and three girls—which had brought into their lives an interest and lifted from them the crushing load of monotony produced by the everlasting journeying through space.
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