John Russell Fearn Omnibus

by John Russell Fearn

  At the end of a week of injections he got busy with the projector, bathed himself at intervals for seven days in its emanations. At each application of its strange frequency he could feel his muscles and physical framework undergoing subtle, unexplained differences. The iron strength of his young muscles and sinews was softened incredibly. It disgusted him to find his natural strength cut to a ghost of its former power at the end of seven days. He felt oddly ineffectual and almost revoltingly girlish. On the night his experiments ended, the communication from Mars resumed after sundown. Eric presumed that his thoughts had more effect on those unknown telepathic machines than he had anticipated. Possibly, even, his earlier decision to throw the whole thing up at the last moment had registered. Not that it mattered now. He was forced by very virtue of his physical change to go through with the thing.

  “You have done well, Eric Sanders,” the calm voice told him. “Your thoughts have revealed your decision to do what is your duty: you will not regret it. The final change in your physical makeup now takes place. Your brain must be made capable of thought-reception and transmission. It is entirely a matter of exercises of concentration—the will to receive and transmit thoughts. The actual brain change to make this feat possible has already taken place. The chemical you used to alter the quality of your bloodstream produced that effect.

  “A brain’s efficiency relies on the quality of blood feeding it: the substance you have injected into your bloodstream will have a higher ratio of efficiency for your brain, will make you able, by following out a series of exercises which I shall detail to you, of transmitting thoughts and receiving them. Understand, though, that no Earthling will be able to receive your thoughts—no Earthly brain is capable of it. But you will be able to read theirs within a range of five hundred yards…

  “Once you reach this planet you will have a perfect telepathic partner in myself. I shall now detail the step-up mental exercises. In another week you will be proficient. Then I will tell you how you will reach Mars… Prepare for details…”

  Eric switched on the spool recorder and at the same time listened intently. The stated exercises consisted of greater and greater spells of concentration on given objects, together with a system of memory retention and conception. It was not a difficult process, but he had his doubts as to being able to accomplish it…

  “Looks like I’m going to be something of a superman before I’m through,” he observed to Jonathan, as the communication ended. “I wish my body was as good. This lily-white effect makes me sore.”

  “One sacrifices plenty in the course o’ duty,” Jonathan said sagely, studying the recording tape. “I guess you ought to feel glad at the thing you’re doing… Your father would have been mighty proud of you.”

  Eric didn’t answer. At that moment he was thinking about Sonia, wondering why she had not kept her word to come and visit him…

  V – The Coming of Yana

  *

  Sonia did keep her promise. On the sixth day of Eric’s concentration exercises she arrived, just before sundown, as slender and lovely as ever, full of excuses for her absence. Business had kept her an unusually long time; now it was over, she wanted to help with the experiments… Then in mid-sentence she stopped and studied Eric closely, surprise, even concern, in her violet eyes.

  “Eric, you’re not ill?” she asked, startled, seizing his arm.

  He looked at her steadily, shook his head. He was wishing bitterly that she hadn’t come. Now she was near him again, so intelligent, so affectionate, he began to realize how far he’d travelled on a scientific road away from her.

  “Not ill—just preparing for something,” he answered quietly. “I’ll tell you about it while we have tea. Sit down, won’t you?”

  She settled herself on the chair Jonathan held for her, began to drink her tea and watched Eric over the cup.

  “Sonia,” he said at last, speaking with obvious difficulty, “I guess I’ve been a first class heel… I can’t marry you, nor had I ever the right to expect it.”

  He waited for the girl to be angered by the slight she had received, but it didn’t come. Instead she smiled faintly and lowered her gaze. “After all, I knew there was something,” she murmured. “You can tell me, Eric… Go on.”

  In halting sentences he told the full story little by little. A variety of expressions passed over her lovely face as she listened. When at last he finished there was a long silence. The cups of tea were cold, the meal uneaten. Jonathan sat to one side smoking solemnly, his eyes alternating between the girl and tensely earnest young man.

  “And yet,” the girl said at last, “knowing what this Martian business must mean you are willing to take it on, go through to the bitter end, and sacrifice me? Everything on Earth?”

  “That’s what makes me a first class heel,” he growled, studying the tablecloth.

  “No, it doesn’t,” she said quietly. “It makes you the possessor of a most enviable quality of nobility. A man has got to be noble to give up everything he loves because his duty demands it. Your father obviously had it; it isn’t lacking in the son.”

  “Then—then you’re not furious with me for the advantage I took of you?”

  Eric looked up quickly and seized her hand.

  “No, my dear.” She smiled a little regretfully. “You only took a very human advantage. You kicked over the traces—made a great show of what you wanted to do, but all the time you didn’t really believe it… I said I’d help you, and I will. I wouldn’t be any sort of a woman if I didn’t.”

  Eric said bitterly, “Your decency makes it all the worse for me—makes me realize so keenly what I’m losing. If you’d only blow up, or something!” He shrugged. “Sorry! Guess I don’t know properly what I am doing… Say, the tea’s cold! We’ll have to start again. Come on, Jonathan, do your stuff.”

  “So you’re on the last lot of physical changes?” the girl asked thoughtfully, as tea proceeded. “What’s the effect?”

  “Rather queer—but it’s right enough. I’m finding ways of getting remarkably adept at concentration. I get some good ideas, too. In another day—by tomorrow night, I’ll be through. Then I’ll be able to read anybody’s thought within five hundred yards. Yours included,” he smiled.

  “I hope you’ll find them interesting,” she laughed. “Tell me, what kind of a woman do you imagine this Martian, Yana, will be?”

  “Hideous, naturally. Life can’t be the same on two worlds.”

  “I’m none too sure.” Sonia mused for a moment, then said, “I think in the case of Mars and Earth parallel evolution might conceivably happen—not identical, mind you, but similar. Yana says her planet had an atmosphere the same as Earth’s once—still has, in artificial form, under the deserts. That would produce oxygen breathing creatures like us. Since air pressure is the same there as here, or almost, it does away with the big chested, large lunged conception. Then again, a small planet will demand comparatively small people. A large person would have too much strength—be top-heavy. That cuts out the giant theory… She mightn’t be so grotesque as you imagine.”

  “Good of you to cheer me up,” Eric said moodily.

  “No; I mean it. The pointers are there—and life itself can’t be so very much different. All the basic chemicals of life came originally from the same source—the Sun. Given similar evolutionary background, save in the matter of gravity, of course, I don’t see why there should be such widely differing species. On Venus, yes—or on Jupiter or Saturn, where climatic conditions would produce weird changes, but not between Mars and Earth. Save for the matter of size they’re twin worlds…”

  Eric shrugged. “Well, there’s no harm in hoping for the best…” He pushed the remains of his tea to one side and glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to get busy with my exercises. You can either watch me or prowl around… Either way I’m darn glad to have you here.”

  The girl relaxed, sat in silence and studied him as he seated himself a little apart and closed his eyes. His bro
ws knitted in the effort of marshalling his thoughts.

  Neither the girl nor Jonathan moved, though they glanced at each other occasionally. Jonathan watched the girl without her noticing it, studied the calm, serene beauty of her face, the steady, interested look in her vari-colored eyes.

  A full hour had passed before Eric suddenly opened his eyes. His face was tense with excitement.

  “Say, I’m beginning to manage it!” he cried. “I can feel it little by little, the inflow of thoughts—for the first time, breaking through like…like sunlight through clouds. Gosh, I never thought I was so dense before!”

  Sonia and Jonathan leaned forward eagerly. “What do you see?” the girl asked tensely. “Can you read our thoughts?”

  Eric winced with the effort of trying. “I’m just beginning to; I’m getting yours more quickly than Jonathan’s… According to the Martian I’ll be fully proficient tomorrow night, but even as it is—Yes, I begin to see things! Your thoughts, Sonia! You’re thinking about me.”

  “Of course,” she admitted gently. “Always.”

  “Something else too,” he went on slowly, eyes closed. “I can see deserts… Martian deserts! Blue-black sky! An underworld of machines… Automatic controls… Something else! A space machine! From photographs and records I’d say it’s my father’s space ship… That’s odd; it’s moving through the void…”

  “Through the void!” echoed Jonathan blankly.

  “Yes.” Eric seemed almost in a dreamlike state. He talked with mechanical effort. “Strange… It comes towards Earth, not away from it. It falls—No, it’s skillfully controlled. It drops gently to Earth… There’s something I can’t quite make out. A radio apparatus, I think. Something is moving dimly before it… Now it’s gone!”

  Eric opened his eyes suddenly, found the girl and Jonathan gazing at him steadily.

  “That all?” Jonathan demanded, disappointed.

  “Afraid so,” Eric muttered. “I think—No, wait a minute!” He concentrated for a moment, then shrugged. “No, I guess I’m just getting memory thoughts from Sonia. She’s coming up the pass in that car of hers just as she did the other night, and—” He stopped dead, staring at her fixedly. “Sonia! You never told me you deliberately emptied your gas tank! I read from your mind that that is exactly what you did. You came here on purpose.”

  “Yes.” She nodded slowly. “I shouldn’t have let you know of that, should I? Frankly, I wanted to meet you. I couldn’t think of a better way.”

  “But why?” Eric demanded. “Why did you—? Just a minute! I see something else… A figure, so far away I can’t distinguish it properly, is sitting studying Earth through an amazingly powerful telescope, making notes on the atmosphere, gravity, and all things related to it… Now it’s gone again—but there’s something else. A lurking figure round this very shack! It’s moving away…”

  He stopped, rubbed his forehead. “Oh, I can’t make head or tail of it,” he said wearily. “Besides, these thought receptions are all wrong somewhere. It’s impossible to receive thoughts beyond a range of five hundred yards, so Yana told me—and yet I’m getting things from a mind that can only be forty million miles away! Unless—unless that space ship brought the Martian to Earth!” he finished with a cry, leaping up. “In that case she’s within five hundred yards of me! Somewhere—”

  He broke off, speechless, staring into the girl’s steady eyes.

  “You!” he screamed. “You are the Martian woman, Yana!”

  The girl’s eyes were mystical in that moment, filled with strange fires. Eric felt himself reeling, clutched futilely at the bench, then his weakened strength failed him and he crashed headlong to the floor…

  *

  Eric awoke to find the girl bending over him, smiling gently, her soft, delicate hands caressing his face.

  “Eric, my dear, forgive me,” she murmured. “I had to do it. I should have realized that you were not strong enough in your present Martian condition to stand such a shock—”

  “But how—what—?” he asked in bewilderment.

  “I gave you the hint that Mars and Earth life might not be so far apart,” she said quietly, holding his hand. “Now that you have become Martian in development we are identical. I am Yana, yes… I analyzed the deposits of fuel left in your father’s space machine rocket tubes, duplicated the fuel. I came to Earth to find his child. I hoped against hope it would be a man… I knew too, from a study of the records of your father, that there is nothing to choose, biologically, between an Earthly male and a Martian female. There would be no difficulty about matehood…

  “I studied Earth, decided it was possible for me to stand its rigors without undue harm, provided I evolved the right counteractive for disease. In the twenty years that have passed since my race died I have had plenty of time to evolve one… So, I came. I have felt as you have felt since you began experimenting—frail, lightheaded… Otherwise, perfectly well.”

  She stopped, her red lips parted in that same slow smile.

  “Go on,” Eric muttered.

  “Originally the space ship landed in a Siberian desert. I became, to all intents and purposes, a wealthy Earth woman by the name of Sonia Benson. I’ve studied this world for years, knew all about its customs, its monetary values… It took me a long time to locate you, but when I did finally succeed I moved the ship to a high peak of these very mountains, no more than ten miles from here but three hundred feet higher up. In the ship I have a radio patterned after your father’s design… On the first occasion when I was with you, you will remember that the message was repeated over and over again. It was simply a perpetual tape with the same wording, timed to cease at sun-up. Then again, it was I who suggested what wavelength you should try on your set. Remember?”

  Eric nodded slowly. “And the other times it was you I suppose?”

  “My voice, yes. Now you know why I took so long in coming here to see you. That other time, when Jonathan dropped me in ’Frisco, I returned here immediately by plane, landed at the bottom of the range. I had to keep on sending you communications. As to your exact reactions, all your intentions—I knew those by standing outside this very shack and receiving your thoughts. That was why I was comfortably installed in ’Frisco when you came to see me. You gave me ample warning of your intentions by thinking of them long before you acted… It was all so simple. The low-powered voice to give the impression of distance, my own reading of your every thought—

  “But why?” Eric demanded, sitting up with a jerk. “You knew all the time I loved you. Why did you have to—”

  “You thought I was a woman of Earth, Eric. I behaved as such on purpose, to see which was the stronger power inside you—love of an Earth woman, or love of duty. I had to test you, my dear. Had you decided to marry me as an Earth girl, I would have returned alone to my own world. As it was you showed me you were the right man to be my partner in the formation of a new and mighty empire…”

  Eric swallowed something, rose on his elbow and gripped the girl’s hands. She was still smiling at him.

  “Sonia…” he breathed. “Oh, Sonia, thank God I decided to do my duty. And I mightn’t have done, but for Jonathan.”

  “We depart tomorrow, Eric,” she murmured. “My life on Earth is finished. I closed my Earthly associations before I came here to rejoin you. We can soon reach the space ship from here. You have only to spray all your belongings with the antidote I’ll give you, and then…”

  “Tomorrow,” Eric whispered. “A new world—a new Empire—you…”

  *

  Only old Jonathan watched them leave the shack the following evening. Eric’s experiments were complete. He was a master of thought reception and transmission between himself and the girl. They were in truth the mother and father of a new race on the red planet…

  But old Jonathan saw nothing of their embracing in the space ship: he only saw, towards midnight, a burst of flame sparks from higher up the range—sparks that crept into the starry sky until they were sw
allowed up.

  Moodily he turned back into the experimental room, stood looking at the short-wave apparatus. Then he picked up the stove poker.

  “Since I’ve been made the legal possessor of all this stuff I’ve the right to do as I want with it,” he said aloud—then brought the poker down savagely on the delicate instruments.

  He surveyed the shattered remains, chuckled dryly.

  “Well, that’s two young folks that have grabbed some peace,” he muttered, “and I’ll darned well see that no folks on this blasted planet goes upsetting ’em by trying to wireless… Interfering busybodies!”

  He spat eloquently at the heater, tugged out his pipe and began to light it vehemently…

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  These stories were previously published as follows, and are reprinted by permission of the author’s estate and his agent, Cosmos Literary Agency.

  The Man Who Stopped the Dust first published in Astounding Stories in 1934. Copyright 1934 by John Russell Fearn; copyright © 2001 by Philip Harbottle.

  Experiment in Murder first published (as Portrait of a Murderer) in Weird Tales in 1936. Copyright 1936 by John Russell Fearn; copyright © 2001 by Philip Harbottle.

  Wings Across the Cosmos first published in Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1938. Copyright 1938 by John Russell Fearn; copyright © 2001 by Philip Harbottle.

  The Circle of Life first published (as Secret of the Ring) in Amazing Stories in 1938. Copyright 1938 by John Russell Fearn; copyright © 2014 by Philip Harbottle.