The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 04

by Anthology

  Then we turned in at a gate and went up toward the large house I knew to be Croft's, and the little old woman unlocked a heavy front door and led me into a hall. It was a most unusual hall, too, its walls draped with rare tapestries and rugs, its floor covered with other rugs such as I had never seen outside private collections.

  Across the hall she scuttered, and flung open a door to permit me to enter a room which was plainly a study. It was lined with cases of books, furnished richly yet plainly with chairs, a heavy desk, and a broad couch, on which I saw in one swift glance the stretched-out boy of Croft himself.

  He lay wholly relaxed, like one sunk in heavy sleep, but with no visible sign of respiration animating his deep full chest.

  I touched his face and found it cold. My fingers sought his pulse and failed to find it at all. But his body was limp as I lifted an arm and dropped it. There was no rigor, yet there was no evidence of decay, such as must follow once rigor has passed away. I had brought instruments with me; I took them from my pocket and listened for some sound from the heart. I thought I found the barest flutter, but I wasn't sure. I tested the tension of the eyeball under the closed lids and found it firm. I straightened and turned to face the old woman.

  "Dead, sir?"

  I shook my head. "He doesn't appear to be dead," I replied. "See here, Mrs. Goss, what did you mean by saying he ought to have been back three days ago? What do you mean by back?"

  She fingered at her lips with one bony hand. "Why—awake, sir."

  "Then why didn't you say so?" I snapped. "Why use the word back?"

  "Because, sir," she faltered, "that's what he says when he wakes up. 'Well, Mary, I'm back.'"

  "He's been like this before, then?"

  "Yes, sir. But never more than four days without telling me he would. Th' first time was months ago—but it's been gettin' oftener and oftener, till now all his sleeps are like this. He told me not to be scared—an' to—to never bother about him—to—to just let him alone; but—I guess I was scared tonight, when it begun to storm an' him layin' there like that."

  I myself had seen people in a cataleptic condition, had even induced the state in subjects myself, and it appeared to me that Jason Croft was in a similar state, no matter how induced.

  "What does your employer do?"

  "He studies, sir—just studies things like that." Mrs. Goss gestured at the cases of books. "He don't have to work, you know. His uncle left him rich."

  I followed her arm as she swept it about the glass-fronted cases. I brought my glances back to the desk in the center of the room. Upon it I spied another volume lying open. It was yellowed with age; in fact it was not a book at all, but a series of parchment pages tied together with bits of silken cord.

  I took the thing up and found the open pages covered with marginal notes in English, although the original was plainly in Sanskrit. The notations, however, threw some light into my mind, and as I read them I forgot everything save what I read and the bearing it held on the man behind me on the couch. I felt sure they had been written by his own hand, and they bore on the subject of astral projection, out-of-the-body phenomena.

  I finished the open pages and turned to others. The notations were still present wherever I looked. At last I turned to the very front and found that the manuscript was by Ahmid, an occult adept of Hindustan, who lived somewhere in the second or third century of the Christian era.

  With a strange sensation I laid down the silk-bound pages.

  "You can do nothing for him?" the woman broke my introspection.

  "I'm not so sure of that," I said. "But—M. Croft's condition is rather—peculiar. Whatever I do will require quiet. I think if I can be left here with him for possibly an hour, I can bring him back."

  She nodded. "You'll bring him back," she said. "Mind you, doctor, th' trouble is with Mr. Jason's head, I've been thinking. 'Twas for that I've been telling myself I would come for you, if he forgot to come back some time."

  "You did quite right," I agreed. "But—the trouble is not with Mr. Croft's mind. In fact, Mrs. Goss, I believe he is a very learned man. How long have you known him, may I ask?"

  "Ever since he was a boy, except when he was travelin'," she returned.

  "He has traveled?" I took her up.

  "Yes, sir, a lot. Me an' my husband kept up th' place while he was gone."

  "I see," I said. "And now if you will let me try what I can do."

  "Yes, sir. I'll set out in the hall."

  Left alone, I took a chair, dragged it to the couch, and studied my man.

  So far as I could judge, he was at least six feet tall, and correspondingly built. His hair was heavy, almost tawny, and, as I knew, his eyes were gray. The whole contour of his head and features showed what appeared to me remarkable intelligence and strength, the nose finely chiseled, the mouth well formed and firm, the chin unmistakably strong.

  My own years of study had taught me no little of hypnosis, suggestion, and the various phases of the subconscious mind. I had developed no little power with various patients, who from time to time had submitted themselves to my control. It behooved me to get to work.

  I began. I concentrated my mind to the exclusion of all else upon my task, sending a mental call to the ego of Jason Croft, wherever it might be, commanding it to return to the body it had temporarily quitted of its own volition, and once more animate it to a conscious life. It was a nerve-racking task. In the end it came to seem that I sat there and struggled against some intangible, invisible force which resisted all my efforts.

  The hour ran away, and another, and still the body over which I worked lay as it had lain at first, nor gave any sign of any effect of my concentrated will. It was three in the morning when I gained my first reward.

  And when it came, it was so sudden that I started back in my chair and sat clutching its carved arms, staring in something almost like horror at the body which had lifted itself to a sitting posture on the couch.

  And I know that when the man said, "So you are the one who called me back?" I gasped before I answered, "Yes."

  Croft fastened his eyes upon me. "You are Dr. Murray, from the Mental Hospital, are you not?"

  "Ye-s," I stammered again.

  He nodded, with the barest smile on his lips. "Only one acquainted with the nature of my condition could have roused me. However, you were engaged in a dangerous undertaking, friend."

  "Dangerous for you, you mean," I rejoined. "Do you know you have lain cataleptic for something like a week?"

  "Yes." He nodded again. "But I was occupied on a most important mission."

  "Occupied!" I exclaimed. "You mean you were engaged in some undertaking whie you lay there?"

  "Yes." Once more he smiled.

  Well, my very knowledge gained by years of study told me he was sane. I continued with a question. "Where?"

  "On the planet Palos, one of the Dog Star pack—a star in the system of the sun Sirius," he replied.

  "And you mean you have just returned from—there?" I faltered over the last word. The thing made my senses reel.

  "Do not think me in any way similar to those unfortunates under your charge. You must know the truth of that, just as you knew that my trancelike sleep was wholly self-induced."

  "I gathered that from the volume on your desk," I explained.

  He glanced toward Ahmid's work. "You read the Sanskrit?"

  "No, I read the marginal notes."

  "I see. Who called you here?"

  I explained.

  Croft frowned. "I cannot blame her. She is a faithful soul," he remarked. "However, now that you can reassure her, I must ask you to excuse me, Doctor, for a while. Come to me in about twelve hours and I will be here to meet you and explain in part at least." He stretched himself out once more on the couch.

  "Wait! What are you going to do?"

  "I am going back to Palos."

  "But—will your body stand the strain?"

  He met my objection with another smile. "I studied that
well before I began these little excursions of mine. Meet me at, say, four o'clock this afternoon." He appeared to relax, sighed softly, and sank again into his trance.

  I sprang up and stood looking down upon him. I began pacing the floor. Finally I gave my attention to the books in the cases which lined the room. They comprised the most wonderful collection of works on the occult ever gathered within four walls. I decided to take Jason Croft at his word and keep the engagement for the coming afternoon.

  I went to the study door and set it open. The little old woman sat huddled on a chair.

  "He came back—I—I heard him speaking," she began in a husky whisper. "He—is he all right?"

  "All right," I replied. "But he is asleep again now and has promised to see me this afternoon at four. In the meantime do not attempt to disturb him in any way, Mrs. Goss."

  She nodded. "I won't, sir. I was worrit—worrit—that was all."

  "You need not worry any more," I assured her. "I fancy Mr. Croft is able to take care of himself."

  And yet when I woke in the morning and went about my duties at the asylum, I confess the events of the night before seemed rather unreal. Hence it was with a resolve not to be swept off my feet that I approached his house at about three o'clock and turned in from the street to his porch.

  He sat there, in a wicker chair, smoking an excellent cigar. He rose as I mounted the steps and put out a hand. "Ah, Dr. Murray, I have been waiting your coming. Let me offer you a chair and a smoke while we talk."

  We shook hands, and then I sat down and lighted the mate of the cigar Croft held between his strong, even teeth. "I really told you the truth, Murray, you know," he said.

  "About—Palos?" I smiled.

  He nodded. "Yes, I was really there, and—I went back after we had our talk."

  "Rather quick work," I remarked. "Have you figured out how long it takes even light to reach Earth from that distant star, Mr. Croft?"

  "Light?" He half-knit his brows, then suddenly laughed without sound. "Oh, I see—you refer to the equation of time?"

  "Well, yes. The distance is considerable, as you must admit."

  He shook his head. "How long does it take you to think of Palos—of Sirius?"

  "Not long," I replied.

  He leaned back in his seat. "Murray, time is but the measure of consciousness. Outside the atmospheric envelopes of the planets—outside the limit of, well—say—human thought—time ceases to exist. And—if between the planets there is no time beyond the depths of their surrounding atmosphere—how long will it take to go from here to there?"

  I stared. "You mean time is mental conception?" I managed at last.

  "Time is a mental measure of a span of eternity," he said slowly. "Past planetary atmospheres, eternity alone exists. In eternity there is no time. Hence, I cannot use what is not, either in going to or returning from that planet I have named. You admit you can think instantly of Palos. I allege that I can think myself, carry my astral consciousness instantly to Palos. Do you see?"

  I saw what he meant, of course, and I indicated as much by a nod. "But," I objected, "you told me you had to return to Palos. Now you tell me you had projected your astral body to that star. What could you do there in the astral state?"

  He smiled. "Very little. I know. I have passed through that stage. As a matter of fact, I have a body there now."

  "You have what—"

  "A body—a living, breathing body," he repeated his declaration. "Oh, man, I know it overthrows all human conceptions of life, but—last night you asked me a question concerning this body of mine—and I told you I knew what I was doing. And I know you must have studied the esoteric philosophies. And therefore you must have read of the ability of a spirit to dispossess a body of its original spiritual tenant and occupy its place—"

  "Obsession," I interrupted. "You are practicing that—up there?"

  "No. I've gone further than that. I took this body when its original occupant was done with it," he said. "Murray—I'm a physician like yourself."

  "You?" I exclaimed, none too politely.

  "Yes. That's why I was able to assure you I knew how long the body I occupy now could endure a cataleptic condition last night. I am a graduate of Rush, and I fancy, fully qualified to speak concerning the body's needs. And—" He paused a moment.

  "Frankly, Murray, I find myself confronted by what I think I may call the strangest position a man was ever called upon to face. Last night I recognized in you one who had probably far from a minor understanding of mental and spiritual forces. Your ability to force my return at a time when I was otherwise engaged showed me your understanding. For that very reason I asked you to return to me here today. I would like to talk to you—a brother physician, to tell you a story—my story, provided you would care to hear it."

  "I'm not going to deny a natural curiosity, Dr. Croft."

  "Then," he said in an almost eager fashion, "I shall tell you—the whole thing, I think…. But first—in order that you may understand, and believe if you can, I shall tell you something of myself."

  That telling took the rest of the afternoon, and most of the following night.

  Jason Croft was born in New Jersey, but brought west at an early age by his parents, who had become converts to a certain faith. In this church, which has grown strong in the Western states, I think there is a closer approach to the Eastern theory of soul and spiritual life.

  Be that as it may, Croft grew to manhood in the town where I was now employed. He elected medicine as a career. He went to Chicago and put in his first three years. The second year his mother died, and a year later his father. In his fourth year he met a man named Gatua Kahaun.

  Gatua Kahaun was a Hindu, a member of an Eastern brotherhood, come to the United States to study the religions of the West. The two became friends. When Croft came west after his graduation, Gatua Kahaun was his companion and stopped at his home, which had been kept up by Mrs. Goss and her husband, then still alive. The two lived there together for some weeks, and the Hindu taught Croft the rudiments at least of the occult philosophy of life.

  Then, with little warning, Croft was assigned on a mission to Australia. The church of which he was a member has a custom of sending their members about the world as missionaries of their faith.

  For over two years he did not see the Hindu, though he kept up his studies of the occult. Then, just as he was nearly finished with his "mission," what should happen but that, walking the streets of Melbourne, he bumped into Gatua Kahaun.

  The two men renewed their acquaintance at once. Gatua Kahaun taught Croft Hindustani and the mysteries of the Sanskrit tongue. When Croft's mission was finished he prevailed upon him to visit India before returning home.

  Croft went. Through Gatua's influence he was admitted to the man's own brotherhood. He forgot his former objects and aims in life in the new world of thought which opened up before his mental eyes. He learned the secrets of the magnetic or enveloping body of the soul, and after a time he became convinced that by constant application to the major purpose the spirit could break the bonds of the material body without going through the change which men call death.

  At times he lay staring at the starry vault of the heavens with a vague longing within him to put the thing to the test. And always there was one star which seemed to call him. That was the Dog Star, Sirius.

  Meantime, his studies went on. He learned that matter is the reflex of spirit; that no blade of grass, no chemical atom exists save as the envelope of an essence which cannot and does not die. He came to see that nature is no more than a realm of force, comprising light, heat, magnetism, chemical affinity, aura, essence, and all the imponderables which go to produce the various forms of motion as expressions of the ocean of force, so that motion comes to be no more than force refracted through the various forms of existence, from the lowest to the highest, as a ray of light is split into the seven primary colors by a prism, each being different in itself, yet each but an integral part of the origi
nal ray.

  He came to comprehend that all stages of existence are but stages and nothing more, and that mind, spirit, is the highest form of life force—the true essence—manifesting through material means, yet independent of them in itself.

  Then once more he was called home. His father's brother, a bachelor, had died, leaving Croft sufficient wealth to provide for his every need. Croft decided to pursue his studies at home; he had gained all that India could give him, even startling Gatua Kahaun by some theories he had deduced.

  He stocked the library where I had found him the night before, and the more he studied, the more he became convinced that ordinary astral projection was but a first step.

  He began to experiment, sending his consciousness here and there, roaming the globe at will. One night on his porch, when Mrs. Goss, now a widow, had gone to bed, he watched the moon rising above the mountains, and decided to try a greater project than before. He fixed his whole mind upon his purpose and sank into a cataleptic sleep.

  There was a sensation of airy lightness. His body sat beneath him in the chair; he could see it. He could see the city and the lake and the mountains and the yellow disk of the moon. He knew he was rising toward the latter swiftly. Then—space was annihilated in an instant, and he seemed to be standing on the topmost edge of a mighty crater in the full, unobstructed glare of a blinding light.

  He sensed that as the sun, which hung like a ball of fire halfway up from the horizon, flung its rays in dazzling brilliance against the satellite's surface.

  To one side was the vast ring of the crater itself, a well of darkness. To the other was the downward sweep of the crater's flank, dun-colored, dead, wrinkled, seamed and seared. And beyond the foot of the crafter was a vast, irregular plain, lower in the center as though eons past it might have been the bed of some vanished sea. About the plain were the crests of barren mountains, crags, pinnacles, misshapen and weird.

  Yes, the moon is dead—now. Croft willed himself down from the lip of the crater to the plain. Indeed it had been a sea. There in the airless blaze, still etched in the lifeless formations, he found an ancient water-line. And skirting the outline of that long-lost sea, he came to the ruin of a city, a thing of paved streets, and dead walls, safe in that moistureless world from decay.