John Russell Fearn Omnibus

by John Russell Fearn

  ****

  A year passed. Perry’s terrific mental endeavors kept him in good health. He was as lean and energetic as ever, clear minded, steeped in the profound technique of his task. Tanner, visiting him constantly, keeping all he knew entirely to himself to prevent a flood of newshounds, had seen that original mess of compounds undergo amazing changes.

  Little by little, Perry had built up masses of bone, muscle and nerve tissue, forming them under the influence of needle fine electric radiations. Cell by cell he had arranged the whole incredible structure, producing the outline first, then gradually shifting and positioning the syntheticized parts into their right formations. He had linked up the nerves, socketed the joints, created the flesh. The first mass of elements had formed at last into the recognizable shape of a woman.

  He labored for another six months, working with ever increasing skill as his knowledge expanded. He made wax moulds and created synthetic flesh impressions from them. He spent days on the fingers, on the hair roots, precisioning every detail—until at last he had produced a perfect female body, now removed to a glass case; a body that had everything, except eyes.

  Tanner surveyed the alabaster whiteness of the pseudo-girl in the tube, then turned to look at Perry. The young chemist’s face was set and resolute, a little more lined than at first, more than a trifle anxious.

  “Certainly she’s Kay Wancliffe over again,” Tanner muttered. “Those empty eye sockets aren’t so good. But everything else—The hair even! You’ve made that grow, anyhow.”

  “Simple,” Perry growled. “Hair is only vegetable growth, anyway, and the class of pigment makes the color. I simply stimulated vegetable compounds with mitogenetic radiations. Any fool could do that. A gooseberry does it naturally, anyway.”

  He eyed the flawless body in silence for a while. “The eyes are hardest,” he muttered. “Iris and pupil, retina and cornea, nerve connections. Going to be difficult—but I’ll master it finally.”

  ****

  He did—three months later. Tanner found himself summoned urgently from the Bureau of Statistics on the evening of December 7, 2020, to see the finished work.

  As usual, he found Perry in the laboratory, gazing thoughtfully at the silent figure in the case. The eyelids were closed, but they had beneath them the soft roundness of eyeballs. Perry raised one of the lids gently, revealed a flawless but vacant blue eye.

  “See?” he smiled. “I made it! I used a photo iris diaphragm for my example and used contractor muscles sensitive to light. I constructed two eyes identical to those of a natural human being.” He rubbed his slender hands slowly together. “I sent for you, Bill, because I want you to be the sole witness when I infuse life into this lovely creature. I’m all set to go.”

  “You really believe you can create life?” Tanner asked quickly.

  Perry slowly nodded, waved his hand to the massive electrical machines banked around him.

  “This apparatus, I hope, will duplicate the effects that must have been present at the beginning of the world when the earth was born. It was chemical fusion; science admits that much. Life could only have happened through one agency—solar radiation. Life is basically carbon, mixed with the right proportions of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and so forth, such as we have here in this completed figure.

  “At the dawn of time all those elements existed, but what changed them from merely atoms to atoms plus life? Only one thing, as scientists like Jeans, Eddington, and others have freely admitted—a radiation which was present at the dawn of the world but which was finally lost as the sun cooled and grew older.

  “I have worked on those lines, studying solar phenomena and getting all possible clues and observations from the major observatories of the world. I have calculated backward to the sun’s temperature at the earth’s time of birth. Without doubt, there were several ultra-short radiations in existence at that time, produced by the great heat…”

  Perry pointed to the machines again, grouped at either end of the case in which the body lay.

  “When I release those machines,” he said slowly, “a tremendous electric current will completely shatter a piece of iron in a specially constructed chamber. Iron is one of the basic elements of the universe. I shall release its atomic energy, but before that energy can escape it will go through converting chambers which will alter its wavelength to the one I require. That radiation wavelength will pass clean through this case and, I believe, will infuse inert atoms with that one basic electric reaction which we call life!”

  Perry stood regarding Tanner eagerly, glanced once more at the motionless, exquisite being he had at last completed, then he seized the master switch of his bank of electric machinery and slammed it home.

  Sparks flared, dynamos whined. Amazing globes began to shift up and down on smooth pistons. Tubes flared through all the colors of the spectrum.

  Tanner stood waiting tensely. Perry, a demon of activity, played like a pianist over a row of controlling keys, finished up with jamming home another switch and turning simultaneously to stare at the case. At either end of it massive electrodes glowed with the surge of power.

  Seconds … Minutes … Perspiration rolled down Perry’s face with the intensity of his emotion.

  The figure in the case remained motionless.

  “It’s got to work!” Perry breathed. “It’s got to!”

  One minute—Three. Five … No motion. Only the glowing electrodes and whining dynamos. Very slowly, Perry reached out and cut off the power. Silence fell, an awful silence in which Perry’s hard breathing sounded unnaturally loud.

  “I—I failed,” he whispered dully. “I failed! I was wrong! My God, after all my work—” He looked round in bewilderment, his face ashy white in the glare of lights.

  “Suppose—” Tanner began, but Perry cut him short with a shout of fury.

  “Perhaps nothing!” he yelled. “Don’t start making suggestions because I don’t want ’em! Get out!”

  “Now listen, Perry, take it easy—”

  “Don’t tell me what to do, Bill. Get out, before I do something I might regret!”

  “O.K.,” Tanner nodded quietly. He could see his friend was at the breaking point with despair. Silently, he left the laboratory.

  Perry stared at the closed door, breathed hard, then hardly conscious of what he was doing. he turned moodily and started to pace up and down with his hands locked behind him. Once or twice he gazed at the motionless form in the case, hesitated over tearing it out and destroying it with acids. Finally he thought better of it, went to the window and stared out on the calm beauty of the winter night. The stars, the rising moon in flecks of soft cloud.

  “Where did I go wrong?” he muttered fiercely. “Where?”

  He turned abruptly and snapped a switch. The lights went out. He sat down heavily in his well-padded chair by the window and gave himself up to thought. With external impressions shut off and only the ghostly shadows for company he felt better able to concentrate.

  But after a time he could feel reaction setting in. The crushing disappointment of it all. A drowsiness was upon him. His thoughts would not focus properly.

  Chapter III

  “I Am Not Alive…”

  Perry jumped suddenly, and guiltily realized he must have fallen asleep. The laboratory was still un-lighted, but the beams of the newly risen full moon were shining strongly through the window, glinting back from machines and glasswork, bathing the case of the synthetic woman in a silvery glow.

  Perry yawned and stretched himself. His head felt clearer for the nap. Slowly he got to his feet, then paused in his forward movement and frowned. An alien sound was in the laboratory—a gentle scraping, tapping noise. Or so it sounded to be at first; gradually he realized it was a voice trying very hard to speak and croaking in the doing.

  In spite of himself Perry felt his knees tremble. Though it was insane, incredible, there remained one stupefying fact—the sound was coming from the open end of the tube where lay the hea
d of the synthetic woman! She was whispering, apparently to herself.

  “If you hear me, come! If you hear me, come! Listen! Whoever you are!”

  Perry came back to himself with a bang, switched on the lights. The woman failed to move in the slightest as the glare smote down on her. She remained motionless, her eyes closed. Perry stared down at her in blank bewilderment. Her lips were moving, her tongue was passing up and down between her teeth. He clamped a hand over her heart. It was beating with the steady rhythm of life! And yet despite her steady breathing, not a trace of color came into her face. There seemed to be no circulation worth mentioning. Alive, yet dead? Trying to talk?

  Perry tried hard to think straight, use the routine science demanded. He whirled round and snatched up a thermometer, jabbed it under her tongue; instantly it was pushed out again, smashed on the concrete floor. He took another one, thrust it in her armpit. It registered room temperature, nothing more. She was not alive!

  “What the hell…” Perry groaned, clutching his hair, then he pulled the thermometer away and stooped closer to try and catch the incoherent babblings from that mouth. He fancied they were English words. Impossible, of course, but—

  “Doesn’t make sense!” he muttered, driving his fist into his palm. “The electric current could not possibly have a latent effect. Either she would have come alive at that moment, or never. When the current stopped she ought to have remained inert clay.”

  “Whoever you are, listen!”

  There was no denying those words. They were pure English, and the living-dead girl had uttered them. Perry leaned forward in open mouthed amazement. His creation seemed suddenly to have got her tongue disentangled.

  “You cannot be expected to understand the full implication of all this. I pray you know the English language and understand what I am saying. I can only assume you have made an image of Kay Wancliffe. I’m trying to tell you that although … No, I’ll try another way. I am Kay Wancliffe, and I am in a grim predicament; so are my father and mother who are with me. If indeed you have made an image of me, please understand that this image is not alive, is only a carrier for my thoughts.”

  “Huh?” Perry stared fixedly as the low tones stopped for a moment. He lifted an eyelid; the eye beneath was glassy and lifeless.

  “For various reasons I am not able to give the full facts now,” she resumed suddenly. “You have it in your hands to save three people from a desperate plight, and the world from certain doom. At least, so far as the death of humanity is concerned.

  “Womankind was deliberately destroyed. Why, and how, I hope you will later learn. At the moment I can only ask that you do whatever this carrier of my thoughts tells you to. Obey implicitly!”

  Perry nodded dumbly. This listening to a voice from a girl who had never lived—the voice of a girl who had been buried for four years—was more than he could possibly figure out.

  “You admit,” she resumed, “that the mind controls the body, and that the brain is the most sensitive organism for the conduction of thought? I will assume you do admit that. Through various means I can’t now explain, mind force is enormously amplified and operates through this body for only one reason, because its brain is identical to my own. It so happens that you must have made a perfect model of me, that’s why it responds so well. I presume it is a model. I cannot conceive of anything else. If I am right, I believe vocal organs will respond to my thoughts and enable me to speak to you.

  “After all, is it so amazing that you have made a perfect model? Did not Jeans say long ago that six monkeys, given sufficient time, would be able to type a Shakespeare sonnet? The law of chance, which in this case has operated first time. Not coincidence; science does not admit coincidence. You must have made an exact model, even down to the right number of brain cells. I never expected anything so wonderful. I shall speak to you again soon. For now, I must say goodbye.”

  Perry hesitated over saying something, then stared blankly as the girl’s lips ceased to move. Mechanically he felt her heart; it had stopped. Her breathing had ceased. The unknown motivating life force behind her had been removed.

  “I can’t believe it,” he whispered. “It’s uncanny! Kay Wancliffe is dead and buried. This girl does not really live…”

  He sunk his chin on his chest, moved slowly across the laboratory. In the course of his amblings he came into the glow of moonlight still streaming through the window. He looked up suddenly, gazed out on the serene, silvery orb.

  “I wonder…” he breathed. “Is it possible? When the moonlight fell on that model it became alive! The moonlight alone could not do it, but it at least proves the moon and earth were in a direct line … But can Kay Wancliffe be on the moon?”

  He shook his head in bewilderment.

  “What am I saying? How can she be? She’s dead and buried. She could not throw her mind over 240,000 miles. Buried,” he repeated slowly. “Sure the bodies were buried, all three of them, but what did those bodies contain? Suppose…”

  He swung round and snatched up the telephone. In a moment he had awakened Bill Tanner from heavy slumber at his home.

  “Well? What?” Tanner growled sleepily.

  “Shut up, and listen,” Perry said briefly, then he shot off the whole story with a bewildering disregard for details. Poor Tanner was obviously too baffled to speak straight. He could only gulp and ask what he could do about it.

  “Plenty,” Perry answered crisply. “You’ve got one of those new Z-ray machines at your Bureau, haven’t you? One of those things that emit a ray capable of penetrating earth but which kicks back when it comes to flesh and blood structure?”

  “Sure. We use it for examining buried people instead of the old messy business of exhumation. Why?”

  “At the earliest possible moment I want you to examine the graves of Kay Wancliffe and her parents, get me a report on their bodies. They’ve been buried a long time, but in those new type lead coffins there’ll still be some traces of structure left. I believe.” Perry finished absently, “that they were buried without their brains! Kay, in particular, had no brains.”

  “Huh, she wasn’t the only one!” Tanner grunted; then he sighed. “Well, I think you’re screwy, but I’ll do it.”

  “Only by being buried without her brain could Kay Wancliffe be alive right now,” Perry snapped. “Quit making cracks and get busy the moment you get the chance … Oh, sorry to have disturbed you. Good night!”

  He put the telephone down thoughtfully.

  “If I’m right, how the devil did Kay get to the moon without her body?” he muttered. “How does she…? Oh, hell, what’s the use? I’ll go nuts if I think round a prop much longer.”

  He gave the motionless body a final glance, switched off the lights and left the laboratory. In an hour he was asleep.

  ****

  Tanner wasted no time following out Perry’s request. Though work prevented him from coming personally the following morning, he sent the proofed plates by special messenger.

  The moment Perry studied them, blurred in details though they were from the inevitable decomposition of the bodies concerned, he knew his shot in the dark had been right. There were no brains in those three bodies! For some reason they had been removed, and the only man who could ever have explained it, Doctor Danver Hall, was also dead.

  “Do you hear me? Are you there?” Perry swung round as the soft voice reached his ears. In a moment he had put the plates down and hurried to the side of the girl in the case. She was ephemerally alive once again.

  “I shall have to speak quickly, I have only time for absolute details, nothing more. Get a notebook, please … Now, I am going to reveal to you the secret of space travel. I place you on your honor as a scientist not to reveal the secret to anybody else until given permission. It is still the secret of its original discoverer, Elrond Wancliffe, my father. You are ready?”

  Perry nodded automatically, began to scribble in shorthand and scientific jargon as the girl spoke steadily, her eyes clo
sed and body motionless.

  Perry’s wonder increased as he wrote. The space traveling system revealed to him was utterly unlike anything he had expected. No suggestion of rocket control entered into it. Instead there was described to him a system of screens, exactly covering one half of a theoretical ship. The screens were ordinary berylium steel, but the ship itself was composed of a highly radioactive metal, Element 105, which in itself was totally impervious to gravitational attraction, even as glass is transparent to light.

  At a given temperature in manufacture the stuff went through a mutation, flew away from normal sources of attraction instead of toward them, and could only be prevented from so doing by the insertion of a berylium shield immediately beneath it. Wanthorium, the girl called the stuff—made from elements which any advanced chemist could easily compile. The essential secret lay in the temperature ranges.

  “You will construct a ship to suit yourself for size,” the girl concluded. “See that it has weapons of defense, and also that it is equipped with all possible surgical instruments, such as you must have used to make your model. When you are finally ready you will leave for the moon.

  “When you reach the moon give a radio signal; I will pick it up. Also bring with you the model, through which I will direct your actions. How we got to the moon, you’ll discover later; it is too involved to explain now. I can only speak to you when the moon is at its fullest. Whether it be on your side of the earth or not is of no consequence. The radiations I am using for thought transmission pass through the solid mass of the earth.

  “I shall not be able to speak again until the next full moon—and not then unless matters here are very favorable. I am surrounded by dangers. One thing I beg of you—hurry! Hurry!”

  The girl’s lips closed. Again she was lifeless clay.

  Chapter IV

  “We Have Reached the Moon…”

  The girl did not speak again. She lay passive through the weeks as Perry manufactured a sample piece of wanthorium and found it did all that was claimed of it. At the stated temperature in its cooling it vanished from its sandbed, smashed a hole through the roof of the laboratory and disappeared into space, destined to travel the eternal deeps forever.