John Russell Fearn Omnibus

by John Russell Fearn

  His grief-stricken widow fell seriously ill herself, and was unable to promote his work, or answer publishers’ letters. His work quickly fell out of print, and since much of it was under pseudonyms that were not generally known to be his, Fearn was in danger of becoming completely forgotten.

  His reputation was only revived by the publication in 1968 of the present writer’s biography of Fearn, The Multi-Man, which included a detailed bibliography and revealed dozens of pseudonyms for the first time, and in 1970 his widow asked me to take over his representation.

  Over the next 45 years, publishers on both sides of the Atlantic began an extensive ongoing reprinting of his novels in all of the genres in which he had worked—this time under his own name.

  They are now joined by Venture Press, who as well reprinting the first six “Golden Amazon” novels are issuing new collections of his best early science fiction pulp stories, beginning with The Best of John Russell Fearn in two volumes.

  In recent years several posthumous Fearn collections have appeared, but there yet remains a substantial number of Fearn’s early science fiction novelettes that have not so far been reprinted simply because they are now known to be ‘scientifically impossible’ in that they feature Martians and the like, and as such have become fantasy. What was still possible to speculative writers in the past is no longer believable today.

  But should such entertaining stories be allowed to slip into oblivion and be entirely forgotten? Cannot such stories, with due allowances made for the time when they were written, still entertain and amuse modern readers willing to suspend their disbelief and simply enjoy these stories in their historical context?

  Gathered together for the first time in Secret of the Buried City are three vintage Fearn novelettes: the title story, “World Without Death” and “The Master of Golden City.”

  I hope you will agree that they still have the power to astonish and entertain!

  CHAPTER I

  Mystery Metal and a Mystery Girl

  Rodney Marlow had bought the old farmhouse with its several acres of land with the idea of turning it to profit. He had envisioned fruit and vegetables produced by his expert technical knowledge from the Agricultural College. But the presence of large quantities of old iron under the subsoil rather upset his ideas. In fact, he was distinctly annoyed. Everywhere his shovel touched, wherever his pick drove into sun-baked earth, he encountered more metal. On every portion of his land it was the same, and probably it explained the sickly nature of even the weeds and grass which were unable to form any deep root growth.

  “Swell place to sell to a guy!” he growled one morning, pausing in the hot sunshine to mop his face and gaze round with baffled eyes. “Must be an old car dump or something…”

  He meditated for a moment, gazed back at the silent farmhouse, at the lonely country around him—then with sudden savage vigor he whipped up his pick and drove it down with all the force of his young, powerful muscles.

  Immediately he jumped back, gasping at the pain stinging through his palms at the terrific rebound. Woefully he stared at his pick; the pointed end had bent considerably under the impact.

  “No wonder I got the place cheap,” he muttered, then as the pain in his hands began to subside a puzzled look came into his eyes. Something of his anger changed to wonderment. All the land metal-bound? Definitely! He had driven his pick into almost every quarter of it. Perhaps a foot or so of soil, then metal—rusty and incredibly hard.

  Slowly he went down on his knees, stared down into the nearest foot deep cavity he had made. Reaching down his arm he hammered on the metal with his knuckles; it gave back a solid, earthy thud.

  “Looking for worms?” inquired a quiet, amused voice behind him.

  “Huh?” He emerged with a start, straightened his tumbled black hair. A girl in a cool, summery frock was gazing down at him, swinging a large picture hat in her hand. Her blue eyes were still smiling as he hastily stood up.

  “Some—something I can do for you?” he asked, rather puzzled. He had imagined himself entirely alone: his last look round the landscape had revealed its emptiness…

  “I wondered,” the girl said, “if you could direct me to Middleton? I’ve walked nearly five miles from my home, I should imagine. Once I left the main road I seemed to lose my way,” and she jerked her sun-flooded golden head back toward the dusty road leading past the farm.

  “I saw you here as I came past, and so—” She stopped, waited prettily, still swinging her hat.

  Rod wiped his powerful hands rather uneasily down his trousers. This sudden shattering vision of loveliness in the wilderness was rather too much for his peace of mind.

  “Sure I can direct you,” he nodded. “Take the road straight through until you come to fork roads. Turn due left, and keep going.”

  “How far is it?”

  “About three miles from here.”

  The girl sighed. “The car would have to break down this very day! I’ll have no feet left at this rate. You haven’t a car I could borrow?”

  “Sorry, no.” Rod shook his head regretfully. “You see, I live alone here, and I’ve no particular use for a car. I walk if I want to get anywhere. But I don’t like to see you having to do it,” he added gallantly. “I suppose a farm-horse wouldn’t be any use?”

  “Do I look like an equestrian?” the girl asked dryly.

  “Eh? Well—no. But if your mission’s important…”

  “Not particularly. A friend asked me to drop over and see her on business. The day is all right, but the distance! I’d no idea it was so far.” The girl winced, fanned herself with a wisp of lace and glanced down at her dusty shoes.

  “I’m Phyllis Bradman,” she volunteered suddenly, and with a certain purposeful movement she took a step back and leaned against the fence eyeing Rod curiously He returned the compliment, smiled rather shyly.

  “My name’s Rod Barlow,” he said, shaking her slim hand. “I’m sorry you’re put out like this. Guess that if I hadn’t spent all my spare cash in this dump I’d have had a decent car to offer you. Some guy must have taken me for a sucker when he sold me this lot!”

  “What’s the matter with it? Something to do with that hole you were peering into?”

  “Take a look,” Rod growled, and gently grasped the girl’s arm as she stared down into the cavity. She seemed unaware of his grip as her thoughtful eyes looked down; he for his part found the contact remarkably alluring.

  “This metal’s all over the place,” he went on sourly. “Doesn’t seem to be broken at any point, either. I had visions of orchards and vegetables, and instead I get this. Wish I’d stuck in the auto factory now, boring though it was.”

  The girl looked at him quickly. Her face was no longer amused; it was serious.

  “Do you realize that you may have something here which is far more valuable than orchards or vegetables?”

  “Such as?”

  “A meteorite, maybe—though I certainly never heard of one landing in this part of the Middle West. Some scientists would give their souls to have what you’ve got buried right in your back garden.”

  “They can have it,” Rod grunted moodily. “I’m thinking of the money I’ve lost.”

  “You might try and get through the metal,” the girl said hopefully.

  Rod stared at her. “Say, why are you so interested in the stuff?” he demanded. “And where would be the sense in just digging through a lot of iron? Think of the time it would take! The season would be finished by then—”

  “Listen!” The girl spoke so imperiously that he promptly subsided. “I’m no scientist in the professional sense, but I do know a thing or two about the things they go crazy over. If there is an enormous, hitherto unfound, meteorite right here on this land of yours you’ll more than get your money back from the Scientific Association. On the other hand, if it’s only a great sheet of metal, perhaps from the foundations of some old building, you’ll soon find how deep it is after drilling through it. If you co
me to soil after an inch or so it is an old foundation; if not, then it’s a meteor.”

  Rod rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Maybe you’ve got something there. I’m beginning to think it’s lucky you chanced along as you did—”

  “Have you an acetylene torch, or an electric arc welder?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Right!” With sudden activity the girl put on her hat; it framed her sensitive, intelligent face in a lacy halo. “Leave this to me, Mr. Marlow. I’ve got to go into town anyway, and while I’m there I’ll buy an electric welder from Markinson’s. They’re big electrical people.”

  “But—but I can’t afford things like that!” Rod objected. “Hang it all, Miss Bradman, I—”

  “Forget it!” she laughed, moving away. “We’re both in on this. Science is a pet fad of mine, anyway. I’ll be back sometime this afternoon—and don’t be surprised if I’ve bought a car in the interval!”

  She moved to the fence opening and out into the dusty road, leaving Rod staring blankly after her. He had known girls in his time, none of them very impressive—but this one positively took his breath away. Her calm decisions, her beauty, her manifest intelligence—

  “Gosh,” he whispered, and looked at her slim, retreating figure striding actively away through the sunshine.

  He turned to look back at the hole—then once more to the road. But the girl was no longer there!

  Dumbfounded, he raced to the rail of the enclosure and stared along the great dusty expanse leading to Middleton. There was not a single corner where the girl could have hidden herself, and yet—

  “Gosh!” Rod gulped again. He wondered if he had had a touch of sunstroke. But surely a girl like that could not have been a delusion? If so, he was willing to have more of them. He went slowly back to the hole. The girl’s footprints were still visible in the loose soil.

  CHAPTER II

  An Incredible Discovery

  Rod hardly knew how the time passed afterward. Repeatedly, memory of the girl returned to him; it even put him off his dinner. Most of the time he was outside, shoveling away a good clear area from the hole.

  Then, toward mid-afternoon, he looked up with sudden expectancy at the sound of distant roaring. Screwing his eyes against the sunshine he discerned a long trail of dust whirling up the road; something merged out of it—a fast roadster. It stopped at the fence opening with a scream of tires.

  “Hello there!” Phyllis Bradman waved her arm cheerfully, climbed swiftly out of the car and came tripping across to where Rod was standing.

  He eyed her rather dubiously, glanced across at the auto. “Then you did buy one?”

  She nodded. “I can always do with two, and money is no consideration so far as I am concerned. I brought an electric welder along with me, too. You’ll have to carry it, though.”

  “O.K.” Rod strode across to the roadster, surveyed its smooth lines enviously, then hauled the heavy welding instrument from the big rumble seat. The girl came up behind him as he lowered it into the shallow hole he had dug. “I can’t begin to thank you—” he began, but she waved her hand indifferently

  “Skip that. Point is, can you work the thing?”

  “Sure; it’s on the same design as the welders we used in the auto factory. Only wants connecting to the power socket…”

  He picked up the surplus flex and carried it back to the plug and socket just inside the farmhouse door. Then he returned and switched the instrument on, took the pair of blue goggles the girl pulled from her handbag. Silently she slipped a pair over her own eyes.

  “Funny thing,” he murmured, as he tested the savagely bright flame. “I could have sworn something queer happened to you when you left me this morning. When I looked for you down the road you had vanished. Where the deuce did you go?”

  “Only on and on,” she sighed. “The furthest three miles I ever struck. There’s a dip in the road a bit further along, though; and since I stooped to adjust my shoes that’s why I probably was out of sight.”

  “Yeah—maybe.” But Rod’s voice had no ring of conviction. Innocently though the girl regarded him, calmly though she explained away the mystery, Rod knew that his eyes had not deceived him. Deep rooted inside him was a growing wonder.

  Motionless, they both watched the biting core of incandescence from the welder eat steadily into the metal amidst a shower of sparks. Minutes passed, and still it bored steadily downward.

  “If this is the floor of an old building it must have been a bank,” Rod growled at last. “We’ve penetrated a foot of metal already, and still going.”

  “If it is a meteorite, it might be solid,” the girl observed. “Anyway, go right ahead and we’ll see what happens.”

  He nodded, continued his activities—then five minutes later he glanced up triumphantly.

  “It’s through! The metal’s about two feet thick and as tough as the devil. Won’t be long now.”

  With a new enthusiasm he cut a line, formed it gradually into a square, then as the last piece fused away he thudded heavily on the metal with his boot. The section gave way and vanished below. The sound of incredibly far distant echoes floated upward.

  Whipping off his goggles he stared at the girl with amazed eyes. Taking off her own glasses she returned his look, peered at the black square. It framed an absolute, ebony dark.

  Regardless of the soil and dirt the girl went on her knees beside Rod. Together they peered down. At last their eyes met once more.

  “No meteorite could be this thick,” Rod muttered. “You heard the echo from that fallen metal plate? It sounded miles away…”

  He relapsed into thought for several moments, then suddenly snapped his fingers.

  “Got it!” Scrambling to his feet he went over to the farm and returned with an enormous coil of strong rope, together with an electric torch.

  He flashed the beam swiftly in the opening, but it failed to reveal anything beyond black, empty space. In silence he tied it to the rope, lowered it down and watched intently.

  Only when the rope was nearly at its extremity—one hundred and fifty feet—did the torch alight on something solid. What was it?

  “Smells dank,” Phyllis said, sniffing.

  “But what the dickens is it?” Rod demanded, hauling the torch back again.

  “Can’t be a disused mine…”

  He meditated briefly, then shrugged. “Guess there’s only way to find out, and that’s go down!”

  “But—but suppose something happens?” the girl asked anxiously.

  “Have to chance that. We can’t leave this hole here and not know what it’s all about, can we?”

  Rod thrust the torch in his hip pocket, fastened one end of the rope securely to the car axle and dropped the other end into the hole.

  “Wait here until I come up again,” he said to the girl, and she nodded slowly, watching anxiously as he lowered himself into the hole, gradually vanished from her sight. Lying face downwards she squinted into the dark.

  Rod could see her head and shoulders above him as he descended. She grew more remote. He swung in emptiness, the rope sliding gradually through his hands and past his scissored legs. Pausing once, he tugged out his torch and waved it around. Darkness. He sank lower. The hole above became a square star with the girl’s head still outlined against it—

  Suddenly his feet were scraping something solid. It felt like metal. Gingerly he released the rope and edged forward, tugging at his torch as he did so. But the torch jammed in his hip pocket. He tugged at it furiously, then before he realized what had happened his left foot plunged into emptiness and he went flying into space. It was impossible to save himself. He seemed to fall for infinite miles, landed at last with a stinging pain through his head. Weakly he collapsed, stunned with the impact.

  Gradually, from the mists of oblivion, he became aware of sounds—rustling, metallic sounds, like joints moving in oiled sockets. For a time he lay with his eyes closed, almost devoid of all sensation, save profound bewilderm
ent. The memory of his fall and blow on the head was still in his mind.

  The noises seemed to grow stronger. His nostrils drew in the sweetish, sickly odor of powerful antiseptics; he heard the gurgle of water, the clink of glass striking glass…

  Wearily he opened his eyes, lay gazing in blank wonderment at a shadowless flood of light contrived from somewhere in a metal ceiling above him. His first impression, which he just as quickly dispelled, was that he was in some kind of hospital. But the instruments around him were ahead of those in any hospital, despite the advanced surgery of this century. Further, the objects moving about so gently and putting their instruments away were not living beings, but robots. Three of them—perfectly fashioned creatures of metal, even with strong resemblance to human beings in outline and face, but just the same still mechanical.

  Rod sat up with a jerk as the full significance of everything dawned upon him. He winced at the stinging pain in his head. Everything rushed back to memory—the fall, the hole through the metal. Was this, then, the inside of the metal mystery? Through the windows of this particularly replete place he could distinguish other buildings, low built, and floodlit, stretching away for perhaps two miles then ending in blank darkness.

  Phyllis Bradman? What had happened to her? Was she still waiting above? Shakily he got off the low built bed.

  “Say, where the hell am I?” he demanded hoarsely, staring at the nearest robot.

  The thing turned, moved slowly toward him. Then it spoke in a metallic voice—strangely enough in English.

  “You are Rodney Marlow.” It was more a statement than a question.

  “Yeah, sure I am, but who the devil are you? How did I get into this place, anyway?”