John Russell Fearn Omnibus

by John Russell Fearn

  “It looks to me,” Rad said, studying the planet intently, “as though it is inhabited. Those squares of darker colour could easily be cities and the patchwork effect covering most of the disk could be land under cultivation.”

  Invia merely nodded, watching the view ahead, and she remained watching it as Rad gave his attention to the control board and gradually brought the vessel nearer and nearer to the mystery world. At length there came the sound of atmosphere screaming as the machine touched the outermost fringe of the envelope. Rad levelled out so that he was flying parallel with the planet’s surface, then he looked at the instruments.

  “Breathable atmosphere,” he announced. “Oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen argon, krypton—all the ingredients we have at home, and in pretty dense quantities, too. That suggests a world of comparative youth.”

  “Those are cities!” Invia exclaimed abruptly, as at length one of the dark squares came clearly into view and assumed sharp focus as Rad drove lower and lower. He knew perfectly well that he was taking a considerable risk—that the inhabitants of this four-dimensional plane might be completely hostile—but he was prepared to risk it. Having journeyed this far it was only sensible to see things through.

  Avoiding the city itself he brought the machine to rest at length about a couple of miles away from it, landing in a field of ‘grass’ so smooth it resembled moss. Switching off the power plant he gave Invia a questioning glance.

  “Think we should introduce ourselves to whoever runs this world?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “I’m willing. We can’t learn anything just gazing through the window. I’ll get our equipment.”

  Ten minutes later, armed and with provisions, they opened the airlock and received their first taste of the atmosphere. It was full and invigorating; vastly healthier than the spent, attenuated air of their own world.

  “If only we can come to some arrangements with these people,” Rad muttered. “What an ideal world it would make for us.”

  “Perhaps.” Invia’s voice was quiet.

  “Perhaps! There’s no doubt about it, dearest. Just look around you! A gentle sky, a soft wind, a young world…!”

  “I know—but two things are against us, or rather against those who might come here. One is the fact that they might not be able to view things as we do because their brains will not be so accelerated as ours; and the other is that a world can never be shared. It never has worked out, and it never will. I contend that we need an empty planet, or else leave the whole business alone.”

  Rad did not pursue the subject, chiefly because he did not agree with the girl in one particular. Impatiently he began moving forward, Invia at his side, both of them surveying the four dimensional city ahead of them as they advanced.

  Architecturally, it appeared similar to other cities, insofar that there were giant edifices, streets, terraces, pedestrian ways, and bridges linking one group of buildings with another. But the odd thing was—there was no sign of life. Nothing was moving anywhere. There were no people, traffic, airplanes, spaceships, nothing at all to suggest a busy civilisation. Nor did any life appear by the time the two had reached one of the main roadways which lead to the heart of the huge metropolis.

  “Any suggestions?” Rad asked, coming to a halt.

  “Might try our portable radio. Our signals might be picked up somewhere and if we receive any sort of an answer, even if we can’t understand it, we’ll at least know there is life even if we cannot see it.”

  Rad nodded, disengaged the miniature atomic-powered radio equipment from his shoulder and switched it on. He used ordinary space-Morse in the hope that it might be better understood than the spoken word—but though he signalled for nearly ten minutes no answer came back.

  “I begin to think,” Rad said slowly, switching off, “that we have happened on the greatest possible slice of luck, Invia. We have not only come to a deserted planet, but we have here a titanic metropolis, absolutely empty, all ready for the taking over. What drove the inhabitants away we may never discover. That hardly matters, anyway.”

  Invia did not answer. She was staring blankly before her, and Rad frowned in surprise. He turned to follow the direction of her gaze and gave a start. There was no longer any city! Nothing remained but an endless expanse of moss-like grass, stretching away to the oddly foreshortened horizon.

  “What’s—what’s happened?” Invia faltered. “Surely it isn’t possible that that huge city was a mirage?”

  Rad did not reply, chiefly because he could not even begin to think of the answer. Then as he stood pondering, he happened to glance upwards, and received another shock. Rapidly approaching, about fifty feet from the ground, were curiously glowing triangles. At least they were triangles to begin with. As they came nearer their outlines changed miraculously. They became circles, paraboloids, oblongs, straight lines, cubes—everything geometrically conceivable. “Living geometrical symbols, or I’m crazy,” Rad gasped. “Is it possible that life here assumes an arithmetical form?”

  “Why not? At root all life is mathematical, my friend.”

  For the moment Rad thought it was the girl who had spoken, then he realised his mistake. She was certainly not paying any attention to him. Her eyes were fixed in fascination on the geometrical shapes which now whovered like fantastic fireflies a dozen feet overhead.

  “Did you hear somebody say something?” Rad demanded, gripping Invia’s arm.

  “Yes. It must have been one of these things, whatever they are.”

  “I will detach myself from my comrades, travellers, that you may more clearly identify me.”

  One of the perfect circles spun swiftly away from the other shapes and came to a surprisingly abrupt halt a dozen feet away. Both Rad and the girl sensed now that the curious glittering quality it possessed was not so much light as energy of some kind, becoming brighter every time a communication came forth.

  “That we should ever see anything like this!” Rad exclaimed. “A mathematical being emanating thought-waves—a sentient creature as apart from anything living as we could possibly imagine.”

  “Because, my friend, you are not in your normal space and time,” the incredible entity proclaimed. “I represent only one of millions of beings who inhabit this planet, and the neighbour world. In the fourth dimension life does not take on the clumsy material form of the three dimensions any more than you of three dimensions resemble the worm of two dimensions. The worm cannot understand your type of life, and you cannot understand ours. You would be well advised to depart not only from this planet but from this space altogether. You are misfits, and one error might destroy you.”

  “Error?” Rad repeated vaguely. He was just comprehending that this being was using thought-waves only as a means of communication, the one means which hurdled all the barriers of language and race.

  “By error I mean that we of this world spend our lives in a mathematical evolution. Figures are involved in our every thought, and two beings who do not belong in our mathematics might be cancelled out. Even though you are crude physical creatures you nonetheless have mathematics as the basis of your entities. We mean you no ill, but a cancellation could occur despite our precautions.”

  “This,” Invia said, with a grim glance, “is hardly the perfect world to which to migrate, Rad!”

  Rad ignored the observation. Instead he asked the being a question. “What about that city we saw? Was it there or not?”

  “In actuality, no. We have no need of a material city, our existence being purely mental. It was put there specially as a manifestation of thought in order to attract you. When we realised that you were approaching our world, your presence causing eddies in the four-dimensional pool of mathematics in which we exist, we decided we might as well give you a free passage and learn something of your intentions as well … You seek a world for your race because your own planet is doomed. Be advised, my friends, and stay in the space for which Nature intended you. Here you can experience nothing but disaster.”
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br />   For a long moment Rad stood absorbing the message and waiting for it to continue. When it did not and the amazing beings suddenly started to hurtle at lightning speed towards the horizon he relaxed and sighed.

  “Apparently we’ve overstepped ourselves,” he said seriously. “This experience has been interesting, but unprofitable. We’d better be well advised and get out.”

  Invia did not rub it in by telling him this was exactly what she had been saying from the commencement. Instead she kept beside him and together they returned to the waiting space-machine. Once in the control room Rad looked sorrowfully on the four-dimensional planet before closing the airlock.

  “At least,” he said, “we have learned something of the diversity of Nature. Our intelligence, compared to that of these living equations is about zero … Yes, we’d better get back to the space we can understand.”

  He closed the airlock decisively and settled at the switchboard. Within a matter of minutes the spaceship was hurtling away in the weird, four-dimensioned void; then he closed the switches which cancelled out the four-dimensional extension of the vessel. There came again that hideous inside-out feeling, the sensation of revolving whilst standing still—then space was exactly as usual. The stars were diamond-bright, the planets normal, the sun a blinding, prominence-girdled sphere.

  “Just as we should have done at first,” Invia said. “Our only hope is that one of the other planets may prove mere suitable than we think.”

  “Yes—I suppose you’re right.” Rad made the admission humbly and set the course towards the nearest world, the third from the sun. They had emerged from four-dimensioned space fairly close to the third world so that they reached it in a matter of seven hours, during which time they had the opportunity for sleep and refreshment.

  “Not much hope here, I’m afraid,” Rad said, studying the wildly turbulently clouds blown by the planet’s hurricane-force winds. “This is a young, volcanic planet. Anyway, we’ll take a look.”

  Swiftly he drove the machine down into the cloudbanks and then below them into a murky grey landscape. In every direction there was rock and alluvial slime. Here and there across monstrous volcanic plateaux there raced beasts of colossal proportions, and from the look of them they were semi-aquatic.

  “Hopeless,” Rad sighed, surveying. “Man hasn’t even made an appearance on this world yet, and for all we know he perhaps never will. It’s still in the stage which our own world once experienced, when monsters roamed and no human had been born.”

  “But suppose that by the time we are ready to migrate this world has reached the right conditions?” Invia asked. “We could perhaps make an attempt, and destroy the monsters.”

  “Destroying the monsters would be easy enough, I grant you, but that wouldn’t be our chief worry. Take a look at this climate. Soaking wet almost constantly, hurricane winds, vast volcanic disturbances. No, Invia; not for millennia will this world be fit to inhabit. We must look further.”

  To satisfy themselves he made a complete circuit of the storm-lashed planet, but it yielded nothing of value. Made up entirely of volcanic rock and tempestuous oceans it was plainly a hopeless proposition.

  “It has a moon of sorts,” Invia pointed out, “and from the look of it there are clouds on it, which proves a breathable atmosphere. Suppose we have a look at it?”

  “Waste of time,” Rad retorted, hurtling the machine up into the open again. “A moon as small as that will soon lose its atmosphere and we’d be right back where we were, with a dying world on our hands.”

  “True but no world can be eternal, Rad. We have to face that fact. If we went to this moon it might last until this mother planet becomes cool enough to suit us and…”

  “We want a world reasonably perfect, now,” Rad interrupted. “One similar to our own but in the prime of life. We’ll keep on going. Maybe we’ll find it yet.”

  So he set the course for yet another small planet swinging between the orbit of the home-world of Mars and the giant of Jupiter, though to Rad these were not the names by which he knew the various worlds.

  “That little world between our home world and the four great giants has always puzzled me,” he commented, when at last he had the course set. “Not only me, either, but all our astronomical faculty. It is densely cloud-cloaked so that we can’t penetrate to its surface, and when some of our spacemen tried to investigate it they never came back. It could be coincidence that they were killed in space and not by malignant life on that world, but just the same…”

  He became silent again, thinking, then at last he set in the automatic control and got up from the switchboard. There was a very long journey ahead—some 80-million miles from the third world, past the fourth world, and out to the mysterious fifth one. Time in which to relax, think and make notes of what had already been done. Perhaps, even, the savants might confer high honours when they learned that the fourth dimension had actually been penetrated.

  On the whole the journey was monotonous, but Rad did what he could to enliven it by studying the mystery world telescopically as the vessel flew ever nearer towards it. Not once did the veil of clouds part to reveal what might be lying beneath. Indeed, the canopy somehow did not look like cloud at all. It had more the appearance of some kind of sheathing cast entirely around the planet, and this was a conviction which grew on Rad as the journey began at last to draw to its close.

  “Something extremely queer about that world,” he told the girl. “I’m no longer thinking of it as a possible sanctuary for us. I’m more interested in trying to discover what it contains. Far from it being a deserted young planet, I’m inclined to think it is inhabited by a very high form of life which is hiding itself from telescopic observation, maybe to mask some kind of experiment.”

  “In that case don’t let’s fly straight into danger. Send them a radio message and see what happens.”

  “You can do that. I have these controls to watch.”

  Invia turned to the apparatus and switched it on. Rad heard her space Morse but did not pay much attention to it. He was working out the mathematics of the flight and also reading the spectrum he had made of the planet’s atmosphere.

  “In any case,” he said presently, as the girl still ‘buzzed’ the unknown world steadily, “this planet would not do for our purposes. It’s got an atmosphere made up entirely of oxygen and hydrogen with a trace of water vapour. Approximately two of hydrogen to one of oxygen. We couldn’t possibly exist in an atmosphere like that. We need nitrogen and seven other types of gases—”

  “Look!” Invia cried abruptly, ceasing her radio activities and peering intently through the observation window.

  Rad saw immediately what she meant. Hurtling outwards from the planet through the protective screen came some half dozen space machines moving with tremendous speed.

  “Can’t say I like the look of this,” Rad said anxiously. “Either they’ve spotted us through that screen of theirs, or else your radio signals tipped them off. In any case they seem reasonably determined to stop us investigating their world.”

  “And we daren’t argue with six of them.” Invia gasped. “Better get moving out of their way quick—”

  “How in cosmos can I? I’m hurtling straight towards their world at thousands of miles a second. I can’t suddenly stop and go into reverse. The only thing, if they show fight, is to hit back. Stand by that disintegrator.”

  Invia moved to the instrument quickly and settled down in the saddle, her eyes fixed to the sights. The instrument was a deadly one, capable of generating a shaft of naked, withering flame for a distance of nearly fifty miles, but whether it would prove of any avail against the mysterious race was dubious.

  Rad remained at the switchboard, trying every trick he could think of turn the vessel aside in its course, but it just could not be done as yet. He was slowing down, certainly, but that did not mean anything. The space machines were coming nearer with every moment … That they meant grim business was presently made evident for
vermilion beams flashed abruptly from them and began to arc dangerously in the void.

  “Wonder what they use for motive power?” Rad asked. “No exhaust tubes to their machines, or if there are they must be using something that gives no flame—Only chance I’ve got is to use evasion tactics,” he broke off. “If you get any of them in the line of sight let them have it.”

  Invia nodded briefly, her hand on the release button of the deadly gun. Presently, as Rad swung wildly in the void and swept ever nearer the mystery world, one of the machines came dead in line with the divider across the sights. Invia depressed the switch and unholy fire flashed across space and struck the vessel amidships. The explosion which ensued was uncanny in its violence. The ship simply liquefied in a blinding core of flame and left no trace of where it had been. The fact was surprising, for powerful though the disintegrator gun was it was not that powerful.

  Despite the fate which had befallen their colleagues, the other machines swept in to the attack once more. By what could only have been a few feet, Rad avoided one of the vermilion beams and then settled into a power-dive – the only way to escape the attackers.

  Just how wrong his idea was he realised as six more vessels came hurtling out of the vapours of the planet, and they were at such an angle, dead ahead, that Invia could not possibly sight them in the gun-lenses. The only thing for it was to use the second gun, set in the vessel’s prow, and trust to luck it would strike home. Rad had no time to sight; his whole attention was absorbed in controlling the machine’s headlong drop.

  He waited for a second or two, making swift contacts which would put the gun into commission, then when the up-rushing machines were reasonably near he pressed the button…

  What happened after that neither he nor Invia had the least idea. It seemed that the universe suddenly came to an end. They were flung out their seats by a stupendous explosion, its force sufficient to slow up the space machine in its downward rush and fling it on an entirely new course. Dazed, they both lay sprawling on the floor, trying to fathom what vast cosmic disturbance had suddenly overtaken them.