World Without Chance

by John Russell Fearn

  “So it was you who killed Nick!” I breathed murderously.

  “What else did you think, you fool? It was sheer mischance that Ada happened to see the boat containing his body. I rather hoped it would be carried unnoticed down the river and end up over the Sawback Rapids. Much better than leaving the body here for these Martians to examine.”

  “And now?” I whispered, at the same time carefully feeling the weight of the stone slab on which I sat.

  “Now you will watch these dumb heads give up their secrets. They know a little English—enough for that, anyhow. Here in this hall they have all the machines I’ve dreamed of. The actual knowledge is long since gone from their minds, but they still remember how to use the major switches, which set the machinery in action. Here we have the source of jilian steel tempering, matter projection over a distance, and a hundred and one other things. The matter projection is particularly interesting, but to demonstrate it, it is necessary, of course, to have a living subject. I could find only one—Ada!”

  I sat still. If I simulated growing paralysis I might get somewhere. “You had no need to take her!” I grated back. “Anything would have done! Even a rocket-bird.”

  He shook his untidy head. “A rocket-bird is not ordinary flesh and blood. The effect wouldn’t have been the same.”

  “You mean you would deliberately kill Ada, change her into atoms, in order to learn one of several blasted secrets that we’re bound to discover on Earth in due time?”

  “Ah, but when?” he asked doubtfully.

  “If I get the secrets first, it will give me an enormous advantage. I told you once that I was short of money. I’m taking care of that from now on!”

  He turned aside quickly and uttered a command. A distant door of the great hall opened and two more Martians appeared, carrying the unconscious form of Ada between them. In perfect silence, save for the scrape of their insect feet along the floor, they bore her to a device that closely resembled a giant vacuum tube. I saw a great semicircle of glass glint momentarily as it rose upward, then it clamped into place again with the girl inside it. In growing anxiety I noticed the anode and cathode poles at either end of the tube.

  Still I sat tight and glanced anxiously toward the guards. They were by the wall now, watching me intently. Reid had turned away from me, his whole attention given to the scientific experiment he intended to note down. The other two Martians were moving toward the switchboard preparatory to closing the switches that, I presumed, would bring hidden energies to work and actuate the machinery.

  I had two things only in my favor—the gravity, and the fact that I was supposed to be in the first stages of paralysis. From the rigid way I’d been sitting I think I fooled them into believing it. But with that gravity I had in consequence three times as much strength as on Earth. The only thing to do was to utilize it immediately. And I did, with a plan in mind beforehand.

  Suddenly I sprang upward to my feet, clutching to the stone on which I’d been sitting. It was heavy in my hands. On Earth I couldn’t have raised it. In one mighty sweep I lifted it over my head and hurled it forward with shattering force. The effect was just as I’d hoped. The two Martian guards, taken utterly by surprise, had not the time to dodge. The hurtling slab carved into their brittle, insectile bodies, snapped them in two and plastered them messily against the frowning wall behind.

  With a cry of alarm Reid swung round and ripped out his flame gun, leveling it to fire—but I’d been expecting that. I dove into a flying tackle, bracing my plunge with my heels hard against the floor. The terrific thrust sent me hurtling into him and we both went flying six or seven yards, his gun sailing out of his hand.

  Keeping my head, I clung to my original plans, leapt to my feet, and vaulted clean over Reid’s sprawling body. In an instant I’d seized his gun, swung it round and pressed the button. The tremendous blast roared across the hall and immediately incinerated the two remaining Martians at the switchboard.

  Reid seized his chance to hurl himself upon me, snatched at the gun—snatched too hard and it went sailing away across the shadows. His fist came up and jolted me from head to foot. I floated backward with a spinning brain, contacted the wall, and automatically thrust my feet against it.

  I had a vision of him racing toward Ada, probably with some plan in his mind to try and complete the experiment—but he didn’t make it. The force of my thrust hurled me upon him again, and this time I was ready for him. I clutched him with my left hand, jerked him upright, then with the full power of my right arm drove my fist into his face.

  He shot backward as though fired from a gun, his face shining sticky red with the force of that three-times Earth punch. He steadied himself suddenly and whipped out that dagger-like knife of his from his pocket. Menacingly he came toward me as I measured him narrowly from the shadows.

  He was an unlovely picture. The blow I’d dealt him had smashed his nose, I think. I crouched, waiting for him to spring—and at last he did. But in that split second I stepped aside and brought up a terrific uppercut that made his jawbone soggy under my knuckles. The knife dropped from his hand. He came reeling drunkenly down from the lofty ceiling and, braced against one of the vast instruments, I slammed him again. The blow hurled him floorward.

  Still unsatisfied I hauled him to his feet and drew back my arm for a final blow—but it wasn’t necessary. That last blow on the jaw, driven with pile-driving effect, had snapped his neck. He sank down in a limp heap to the floor.

  For just a moment I stood looking down at him, breathing hard. Then I turned swiftly and smashed open the tube in which the senseless Ada was imprisoned. In a moment I had her over my shoulder, weighing no heavier than a child.

  Stooping, I picked up the ray gun and turned away to run swiftly outside into the jungle, fearful that other Martians hidden somewhere in the city’s depths might start a pursuit.

  But none did. I can only assume that those four were the last of their race. I reached the river half an hour later and pushed off hastily into midstream.…

  Of course, old Brook was disgusted about his ilution trees, until I made a surprising discovery. As we packed up for departure to Earth, I came across that ilution sap in Reid’s tent. To my surprise it had set to complete hardness, nor could I make any impression on it! I tipped it out of its pot and it stood in a solid block, perfectly transparent, but—

  Suddenly I remembered those two halves of Martian coin that I’d accidentally dropped into it. By rights they should be visible—but they weren’t! They had chemically amalgamated with the ilution. Immediately I called Brook and Ada and told them what had happened.

  “But—but what does it mean?” Brook asked in astonishment.

  “It can only mean one thing,” I answered slowly. “Reid said he had a hardening chemical extracted from Martian ore. It can only mean that these coins are made from that self-same ore and chemically assimilate with ilution. The thing’s simple in that case. On Mars there are countless tons of the same metal from which these coins are made. It can be bought cheap—though but for this accident we might have searched for years to discover Reid’s secret. Obviously, he didn’t know the coins were the same ore, otherwise he’d not have been so casual about my dropping them in the ilution.”

  “You’re right—dead right!” Brook breathed wonderingly.

  THE MISTY WILDERNESS

  BY JOHN RUSSELL FEARN

  From Modern Wonder #78, 1938, and Startling Stories, September 1939

  In 1937 the giant Odhams Press in the UK launched Modern Wonder, a very attractive juvenile boys’ weekly, tabloid size, but printed in glossy photogravure. It contained mainly science fact articles, and features on modern transport, engineering, etc.—but also had a small but significant amount of science fiction. Alerted by Gillings, Fearn was quickly on the case, and he soon crashed the magazine with a very clever series of articles, tailor-made for the magazine: “The Chronicles of a Space Voyager.” This was a series of speculative/factual articles on each
planet of the solar system, strictly based on modern astronomical knowledge, but leavened with a science-fictional framing device of the planets described from the viewpoint of the crew of an exploratory spaceship.

  Having got his foot in the editorial door, Fearn sent the editor the synopses of a number of science fiction short stories, some of them based on earlier unsold stories. Fearn was then commissioned to produce three short stories as quickly as possible.

  For the first story, “Death at the Observatory”, he created a modern-day scientific detective, Marlo, called in to investigate an “impossible” murder at an observatory. Appearing first in Modern Wonder No. 76 (1938), it was reprinted in the U.S. in Captain Future in September 1940, and reprinted as a classic ten years later in the first issue of the same publisher’s reprint magazine, Fantastic Story Magazine. It has since been anthologised.

  His third story was “The Misty Wilderness”, which had been quickly rewritten from one of Fearn’s Weinbaum-flavour Thornton Ayre stories that had been rejected by Astounding at the beginning of the year. In the original, Fearn’s villain, Eboni, had been a woman (based on Weinbaum’s “The Red Peri”). Fearn changed the character to a man (in accordance with the requirements of a boys’ magazine). The story, an interplanetary detective yarn, duly sold, and appeared in Modern Wonder No. 78 (1938). Like the others, it was not an ostensibly juvenile story, as was proven by its being reprinted by Startling Stories in September 1939.

  This story’s quality was further attested by its being translated and published—along with his second Modern Wonder story (from No. 77), “The Weather Machine”—in a French newspaper, Ric et Rac, on the 6th and 20th of December, 1939. With the Second World War having already broken out, this was a truly astonishing coup for an English author, as well as being the first translated science fiction short stories to ever appear in a French newspaper!

  “The Misty Wilderness” was later translated into Italian in 1982, and along with “The Weather Machine” it was again translated and published in the French magazine Le Rocambole in 2002.

  THE MISTY WILDERNESS

  Selton of the Spaceways dares Uranus’ trackless trails to hunt down Eboni. The Planetary Buccaneer.

  Dudley Selton closed the switches that gave the power to the forward under-jets. His space machine instantly slowed in its onrush through the dense upper-level mists of Uranus and quickly nosed upward. He corrected that reaction, brought the ship back to a diving angle.

  As he dropped he studied the infra-red screens, intently watching that small ship not more than two miles ahead which was likewise dropping to the spongy, unstable magma that constituted the ground of the Uranian unexplored belt.

  “Thought you’d get away from me, eh?” Selton murmured, as the ship settled. “No black-haired pirate can get away from the Space Way Service—and from me last of all! I may be new to the game, but I always get my man.”

  Ahead of him, invisible to the eye but still impressed on the screens, the little ship gently landed. Selton eased his own machine along to within a hundred yards of it, cut the jets. Then, strapping a flame-gun belt round his waist, he opened the airlock and took a deep breath of the green world’s warm, enervating atmosphere.

  Warm because Uranus still possessed vast internal heat reserves, constantly seeping out on the dayside in the form of terrific geysers and mud eruptions. The air, mainly inert argon, but with a thirty percent oxygen content, was breathable enough to an Earthling.

  Selton stepped outside his vessel on to the spongy black soil and glanced at the upper-level clouds—whirling, dense to London fog consistency, kept incessantly on the move by the eternal higher winds sweeping in from the nightward hemisphere. Down here at ground level the air was hazy, overhung by that low, shifting ceiling.

  He moved along slowly, then paused as the other ship’s airlock swung open, casting forth a long diffused fan of light.

  The powerful figure of the man he had followed came slowly into view, attired in the customary leather jacket and breeches, gun holsters at his sides. The instant he saw Selton his hand flew to them—but Selton was quicker.

  He strode up, gun leveled. “Take it easy! One false move and I’ll wing you.”

  The man raised his arms as Selton relieved him of his guns. Selton looked into cold blue eyes set in a brown masterful face. The chin was square, the lips half curved in a contemptuous smile. But the hair—that was enough! Absolutely as black as space.

  “What have I done?” the prisoner inquired coolly.

  Selton stared at him. “Done! You steal all the cargoes of the freighter ships on the Jupiter-Mercury run, then ask what you’ve done? You’re an outlaw, running around in a private ship so you won’t be detected. I’ve followed you all the way from the Jovian moon area.”

  He paused and studied the man’s coal black hair. “Whoever called you Eboni was right,” he murmured.

  “Do you mind if I put my hands down?” Eboni asked politely. “Now that you have disarmed me?”

  “Sure—sure; you can lower your hands.”

  Eboni did so, but so rapidly that he took Selton right off his guard. In one tricky movement that remotely resembled ju-jitsu Selton found his gun flying out of his hand.

  A stabbing pain shot the length of his arm and he found himself sitting flat on the wet ground staring up into that resolute face and his own leveled gun.

  “All right—get up!” Eboni snapped. “Quick.”

  Selton rose slowly, muttering under his breath. Still covering him, the outlaw plucked out the Space Service man’s remaining gun and threw it into the mist. He retrieved his own weapon before discarding the second

  “Now, listen,” he breathed. “I know you followed me all the way from Callisto, so you could stop right with me. Your idea is to waltz me back to Earth, but you’ve got more ideas coming. I’m heading for the north of the unexplored belt, and if you know anything about this planet, you’ll know that that’ll take us to Equator Peaks.”

  Selton started. “But you can’t do that, Eboni! That means going across unknown territory. Besides, the seasonal change—”

  “Shut up!” Eboni eyed him grimly. “What’s your name?”

  “Dud Selton—Space Way Service V Detachment.”

  “Cub sleuth, eh?”

  “What of it?”

  “Oh, nothing. Anyway, your mother had the right idea when she gave you that first name. Now let’s go!”

  The outlaw leaned inside the airlock of his vessel and switched off the lights. Selton regarded him doubtfully, then tried again.

  “Look here, Eboni, be sensible! How do you expect to get back here? You ought to know that the Uranian pole has no magnetic properties, and therefore a compass is useless—”

  Eboni thrust out his powerful arm and revealed a small object like a watch upon his wrist. “This is a magnetic indicator, Dud—” He grinned again at the abbreviation.

  “The needle swings to a magnetic plate in my machine. I can’t fail to find my way back. Since you won’t be coming back with me, what are you worrying about? Now get going.”

  Their feet made no sound in the sodden wilderness as they began to move. The broad soles of their boots sank half an inch into the ground at every step. Had the gravity been compatible with the 31,000-mile diameter of Uranus, it would have been an utter quagmire; but with a density of only 27, effort was almost similar to that demanded on Earth, and therefore saved them sinking any deeper.

  After a while Selton asked: “What’s the idea of heading for Equator Peaks? Hideout or something?”

  Eboni did not answer immediately. His powerful face was still curiously amused in the faint light sifting through the upper-level clouds—a light cast by a sun with only one-three hundred and sixtieth of the power on earth.

  “Can you think of a better place?” he asked presently. “A world wrapped in fogs, a vast expanse of crazy, slipping landscape, a veritable deathtrap to the uninitiated. Where better to have a hideout than in the foothills of E
quator Peaks?”

  Selton’s face hardened a little. “Well, thanks for telling me that much, anyhow. I can use it in my evidence against you.”

  The outlaw said nothing, and they went on silently. When they were some distance from the ships, alone in the dim, misting twilight, he lowered his guns and slipped them into their holsters.

  “We’re far enough from the ship by now for you to lose your way if you try to escape,” he explained calmly. “While, if you attack me and gain possession of this compass, it won’t do you any good because it will only work on my wrist. It’s tuned to my particular electrical wavelength and anybody else’s would only jam the thing. Anyway, I’m quick on the draw—as you may have heard.”

  “Don’t worry—I shan’t attack you.” Selton smiled coldly. “I want to find the location of this hideout of yours before I try running you in. The only point I don’t understand is how you find your way to the Equator Peaks in a landscape like this.”

  Eboni glanced upward. “Try using your brains,” he sneered. “The upper-level clouds move in a direct line from the Equator Peaks because of the colder winds sweeping in from the nightward side. By following their line of movement it’s a cinch. They’re not very far from here; I know that.”

  Selton pondered over that. Uranus with its queer axial tilt, had forty-two years of night and forty-two years of day. The heat of the sun affected the atmosphere but little, but it was sufficient to raise the temperature on the sunward side some fifteen degrees.

  This warmth, in contrast to the colder winds from the nightward hemisphere, produced the upper-level clouds and eternal moisture drifts.

  In Hemisphere Chasm, indeed, central passageway through the Equator Peaks to the night side, there were perpetual electrical storms, moving left to right for forty-two years, then right to left for another forty-two.

  “You certainly picked a great planet for a base,” Selton grunted as they squelched along. “How do you know that your hideout will even be there? The Uranian surface is always changing and sliding and—”