Anton York, Immortal

by Eando Binder

  War! That most senseless of human atrocities.

  "Haven't they had enough of it?" he cried. "They fought like beasts for a decade just thirty years ago. I was tempted then to reveal my super-weapon and let them butcher one another to nothingness. I am tempted now."

  The next day Berlin was bombed. And in the following days, Paris, London, and Moscow. The world gasped. What mad nation was challenging all Europe? Tokyo was bombed, and then Washington. What power was challenging the whole world? A new note of terror arose when a gigantic fleet, composed of mixed Italian and German aircraft, was annihilated by fifty small ships of the invaders. The enemy seemed to have some long-range weapon that made victory ridiculously easy.

  York waited for the unknown power to declare itself. Then he would act. After the succession of bombings, which had not been very destructive and had evidently been an exhibition of power, there was a lull of a day, then news that set the world on fire.

  "The enemy had finally announced itself," blared the tele-visor. "This afternoon a powerful radio message was picked up at many official stations. The invaders that have bombed the world's most important cities call themselves The Immortals. They demand a parley of all important nations, at which The Immortals are to be accepted as the sole government on earth. In plain words, The Immortals, whoever they are, demand world dominion. This, or the threat of continuous bombing and destruction by their invincible fleet of fifty ships!"

  Then York knew. He and Vera looked at one another. "Dr. Vinson!" gasped York. "Dr. Vinson and a band of ruthless demons bent on conquering Earth. For a hundred years he planned this. I did not think he would go to such lengths. In some hidden spot he and his crew, all immortals, must have laboured for this day. Undoubtedly they are all scientists and technicians. Men who in a century's time could do miracles in discovery. Vastly improved ships, super-weapons, carefully laid plans. They played for big stakes and made preparations in a big way."

  He turned his anger on himself.

  "Why didn't I see it before this? It's all so clear now. In the past year they carried out experimental raids, to gauge their power and readiness. I should have suspected, and prepared. Now they have struck, and the end will be soon.

  True scientific warfare against the world's tremendous, but clumsy armament. The wasp against the bear. It can sting again and again, too quick and small to be crushed by might" Again news came over the tele-visor, indicating the crisis which faced the world. A hastily and secretly formed armada of the world's best fighting craft—of every large nation—had massed and challenged The Immortals. The challenge had been promptly accepted. The incredible story told by gasping announcers was that by sheer weight of numbers the fleet had succeeded in downing three of the enemy, while they themselves were mowed to one-third their strength. The remnant had fled.

  Vera was alarmed by the sickly grey colour of York's face as he heard this.

  "I'm responsible," he whispered hoarsely. "I let the dangerous secret of immortality fall into Vinson's hands!" His whisper continued, but with a deadlier note in it, "I must act before it is too late."

  It was the climax of his super-lifetime. Armed with nothing more than a few pages of diagrams and figures, York descended on Washington in his silent gravity ship and said he could fight the alien power. He was derided rather than laughed at, in that the situation was too grim for laughing.

  5

  HOWEVER, the gravity ship could not be laughed at. And when a group of scientists was hurriedly assembled, they said the thing looked good on paper. At the same time the startling news came that The Immortals had been completely victorious in Europe and were now sweeping Asia. If Japan would fall, as must be, America would be next, as the last remaining power.

  Faster than they had ever moved before, the wheels of industry, lashed by a frantic government, turned out the apparatus York wanted. He had them secretly move their headquarters to Pittsburgh. The terrible weapon he had kept locked in his brain for over a century took form here.

  In two weeks it was nearly completed, but not before The Immortals, now dominant in the Eastern Hemisphere, swung their tiny, deadly fleet westward. At the first encounter, the pride of America's aerial defence was annihilated by the sweeping rays of the enemy. These rays had all the potency of a two-ton bomb at close range, yet were invisible and noiseless.

  "We must surrender!" This cry echoed in the hall of authority.

  "Hold out!" commanded York. "Hold-out, I tell you."

  They obeyed him, almost hypnotized by his blazing eyes. The Immortals, after defiance of their ultimatum, promptly began razing cities to the ground. Their supply of fuel and ammunition seemed inexhaustible. Coming from the west, San Francisco, Denver and St. Louis crumpled before the onslaught.

  "Enough is enough. We must give in!" was the horrified clamour among the leaders and statesmen.

  "Hold out!" screamed York. "Three more days!"

  They did. In those three days Chicago, Cincinnati and Philadelphia became smoking ruins. And the invincible fleet headed for New York City!

  But in those three days York became prepared. His weapon was mounted on his ship, a long snout of vitrolite pivoted on a universally jointed base. Wires led inside the ship, through hastily made rips in the hull, to the power source of the ship. By a quick change, York had fitted his anti-gravity unit to utilize Earth's tremendous gravitational field for power for the vitrolite gun.

  Then he contacted the fleet of The Immortals by radio, challenged them, called them back from their course toward New York. They might have taken it as a desperate bluff to save that great city except that York made his challenge a personal one---from himself to Dr. Vinson.

  "York?" came back a voice that was recognizable as Dr. Vinson's. "Anton York? Impossible—he—"

  "I did not die, Vinson. I survived the cyanide. I've been wondering if you would appear on the scene. I'd almost forgotten you in the century that has gone by. But bad pennies always show up. You've done a lot of damage, Vinson, but you'll do no more. I'll meet your fleet anywhere you say for a showdown. If you don't meet me half-way, I’ll hound you to the ends of the earth—to the ends of the Universe if I must!"

  Vinson's voice spluttered over the radio. For the first time his companions around him saw fear on their leader's face. What man could this York be; that their hitherto confident master feared him?

  Then Vinson spoke again: "Wait, York. I don't know what you have to give you such confidence against my fleet, but listen to reason. You're an Immortal, as we are. You belong with us, York—as rulers of Earth. I have no grudge against you. Join up with me and that's the end of it. Why should there be trouble between us?"

  York's voice was a white-hot hiss in the microphone.

  "You will rule Earth without me, or not at all. But first you must put me out of the way. Name the place!'

  "Over Niagara Falls!" Vinson's voice, previously uncertain, rang now with arrogance and assurance "What can you do against the fleet that has whipped a world?"

  It must have seemed like a battle of the gods to those fortunate eyes that saw it, especially those who had caught the exchange of words between York and Vinson.

  York's ship, a bright ball of metal and glass, dropped from the clouds several miles from the fleet of The Immortals. A group of tiny black figures could be seen around the base of the vitrolite gun, precariously hung in sprung seats. These were the gunners, iron-nerved army men who knew nothing about the weapon, but who knew that when you aimed the long snout and jerked a lever, a something was released that could destroy. Other than that they had only grim determination and courage.

  Like the buzzing of angry hornets, Vinson's fleet dashed for the lone ship. York's ship, high over Lake Erie, hovered like a poised eagle. The long, slender vitrolite tube swung toward the oncoming ships. Something blue and pulsating sprang from it, projected a streamer of violet across the intervening space of two miles.

  What inconceivable force it was, no one was ever to know. York
could have described it briefly as a combination of atom-tuned sound vibrations and, electron-tuned gamma vibrations, both together able to rip matter to ultra-shreds, without revealing its secret. For it was a type of wave existing in the audio-ether transition stage between the known and the unknown in catalogued science.

  But the effect was not so mysterious. A dozen of the enemy craft sagged strangely, burst into little bubbles of vapour, and changed to clouds of black dust that fell slowly toward the water below. The rest of the fleet, as one, swept up and to one side, away from this frightful weapon. Yet before they had completed the retreat, twelve more of their ships had become puff-balls of black soot.

  York smiled grimly. He had purposely made the focus of the gun's beam very wide. Each time it belched forth its titanic charge, a ransom in power went with it. But Earth, could afford it, with its almost unlimited gravitational stresses that fed the weapon.

  The range of The Immortals' weapons was known to be just as great, but they had not thought to use them on this lone ship three miles away. Now however, the air droned with the concussion of atmospheric rents, made by invisible streamers of their ray-forces. Their rays were amplified cathode radiations, million-watt bundles of electrons at half the speed of light.

  York was not caught napping. His ship had already moved upward, at right angles to their position, presenting a target moving at a speed of ten thousand miles an hour. It was cruel for the men exposed to the air around the vitrolite gun, but necessary. York flung his ship above the clouds. The-Immortals seemed nonplussed. They scattered widely and massed their beams upward, on the blind chance of scoring a hit. When York's ship did appear, far on the other side of his former position, it was heralded by the destruction of eight more of Vinson's fleet. Most of his ships were already destroyed and the fight had hardly begun!

  Under this scene, the waters of Lake Erie boiled and rose in great clouds of steam. Niagara Falls, though York tried to avoid it, took most of one of his gun's charges, and, became in one minute an unrecognizable jumble of churning waters and puffs of black vapour. Grim reminder for all time of this battle of the gods.

  The Immortals fled, ingloriously, scattering wide. The swift, sweeping sword of destruction from York's ship picked them off one by one. There was no limit to its range. It hounded the last one down after a brief chase. And the menace of the Immortals was over!

  The world had to content itself with honouring three of the five men who had handled the vitrolite gun, and burying the other two, dead from their ordeal. York, after landing them, had promptly departed, without a word to anyone. Without waiting for thanks and praises. Like a god he had come and like a god he left.

  And like a god he went out into the void not long afterward, with his wife, leaving behind him the legacy of space travel. The secret of the super-weapon went with him. The secret of immortality was no longer his to give away. Earth had had a god, one who had nearly destroyed it, and then saved it. One who had shown the way to other worlds. One who had exhibited an awesome weapon to warn mankind what its warfare could lead to. One about whom many legends were to be woven, true and false.

  But now the god was gone—forever. Once given a taste of the supreme freedom of the void, he could not return to the pettiness of Earth. Nor did he care to interfere in any way, altruistic or otherwise, in its normal course of affairs.

  On and on he went, he and his immortal companion. Their understanding and wisdom grew to cosmic heights.

  They visited many worlds, many suns. Time meant nothing. They discovered the secret of voluntary suspended animation, requiring no food or air. They became truly gods.

  Somewhere in the dim future ages he must die, this manmade god. Sometime when the scales of time have sufficiently lowered the amount of cosmic radiation which gives the god life.

  LIFE ETERNAL

  1

  MASON CHARD laughed.

  For a year now he had been cruising aimlessly in the interplanetary depths of the Solar System. His beryllium-hulled space ship was motivated by the controlled interplay of the gravitational stresses filling the void. His power plant greedily absorbed solar radiation and rammed it through whirling quartz coils which cut the force-lines of gravitation, producing reactive motion. The same titanic energies which swung the ponderous planets in their eternal orbits were used, in part, to propel the tiny ship. It was superpower, limitless. And eternal, in the sense that gravitation was eternal.

  Eternal!

  Mason Chard liked that word. For, barring violent death, Mason Chard himself was eternal! In his veins flowed blood enriched with a self-renewing enzyme that was the antithesis of death and decay. His body cells were doubly endowed with radiogens, the tiny batteries of life which sucked energy from the cosmic rays, from the universe at large.

  Mason Chard could not die from "disease" or "age" until the Universe had run down to the point where cosmic radiation was halved. That would be millions of years in the future!

  The Immortal laughed again. His ruminations covered, in reverse order, the most eventful thousand years in human history. Just the year before, Earth's vigorous race had established an outpost on far Pluto, thus completing a phase in its empire building. Previous to that there had been interplanetary wars, heroic pioneering, and dauntless feats of exploration. The parade of a thousand years, glorious and packed with drama, marched through Mason Chard's mind. The laughs that punctuated his ponderings were for those times he, Chard, had interfered with the course of history.

  There was the time, for instance, he had led the insurrection of the native Callistans against the domineering Earthmen, purely for the diversion of espousing a lost cause. At another time it had been his whim to destroy three successive rescue ships on their way to a marooned group of explorers in the wilds of Titan, so that he could watch brave men die.

  Chard had had to amuse himself in those endless centuries to escape the dreary cycles of ennui. He had long felt himself above the ties of race and allegiance. Roaming the interplanetary void at will, a mysterious and half-mythical anarchist, he had often dammed the progress of mankind's growing dominion in the Solar System. Along with the ties of blood and tradition, Chard had thrown conscience into the discard. It had not caused him one twinge to see thousands of space ship crews annihilated in the intra-world war he had personally embroiled, five centuries before, between Venus and Earth. He had watched the holocaust through his vision screen, grimly amused.

  Mason Chard had never taken the trouble to analyze himself. If he had, he would have realized himself to be a colossal ego, inflated by the drug of immortality. He would have recoiled from the picture of a cold, heartless, scheming scoundrel, clothed in a super-vanity. Yet perhaps only one little thing made him this, rather than an honoured, inspired, immortal leader—

  His chuckle was just a bit bitter as reminiscences took him back to that time almost a thousand years ago when he had run afoul of Earth law. Realizing his immortality, he had started an abortive drive for world domination. He had not planned thoroughly and had been captured. Fortunate that capital punishment, even for treason, was outlawed in that day, he had been exiled to a lonely asteroid. His sentence had been 199 years. There, for seventy-five years, he was made to attend the warning light beacon that warded off space liners. A supply ship had come once a year.

  The only light spots, in that dreary, bitter incarceration were those times the officials had been amazed at his longevity, not knowing he was immortal. He had been a man. in the prime of life at the start of his sentence. He was still a man in the prime of life seventy-five years later. He might have waited to serve out his 199 year sentence, to confound them utterly, but before that a pirate of space landed to destroy the beacon in some deep-laid plot. Chard gratefully joined the pirate crew, became their leader in a few years, and later betrayed them.

  Thus had his career begun. Then Chard's reflections went back to the stirring events of the middle Twentieth Century

  He had been thirty-five then—r
eally thirty-five--occupied as a research scientist. Dr. Charles Vinson, his former instructor, had called him to a secret conference with a half hundred others, unfolding a breath-taking scheme. He had inoculated them all with the Elixir of Youth, whose formula he had stolen from Anton York, and as immortals they had begun the subjugation of Earth. Anton York himself had defeated the plan, destroying the Immortal fleet.

  Of the Immortals, only Mason Chard was left. He had been left in charge of their secret underground headquarters in Tibet and had thus escaped York's vengeance. For, years he had remained in hiding, waiting until Anton York had left the Solar System, plunging out amid the stars like a god whose duties were done. Chard, keeping his identity secret, had watched Earth, equipped with the legacy of space travel York had left, attempt the conquest of the Solar System.

  And then had come his lone and foolish attempt to win the rule of Earth. Reaching again this point in his review of the past, Chard laughed once more, this time harshly.

  "A thousand years I've fooled around and played with fate," he muttered to himself, staring out at the dome of stars. "But I have learned much. I am prepared now to accomplish the aim that Vinson tried and failed, and I later, and before us, men like Napoleon, Attila the Hun, and Alexander the Great. I am going to conquer the world. Not the world they knew, but the world of today—the entire Solar System!"

  His cold, cruel eyes blazed with sudden fire.

  "I have the power to do it. And more important, I know the method. It must be done through fear! Fear is the common weakness of all humanity, excepting myself. I have learned to laugh at fear. But these mortals, they know fear. It can strike them powerless, tie their hands and wits. I will conjure up a fear that will strike in every heart in the Solar System. I will play up this fear, feed it, until they grovel at my feet. I will become emperor of nine worlds!"

  In the melodramatic ecstasy of the moment, Mason Chard flung a clenched fist toward the watching stars, pledging himself.