by Eando Binder
The intruder walked boldly up to the council table.
"I wanted to see you gentlemen," he said calmly. "It's urgent. When the guards resisted me, I used certain telepathic powers that I have.'
"Who are you?" demanded the president of the council, glaring.
"Anton York!"
The councillors smiled.
"Strange," mused the president, "how parents with the family name. York have always baptized their sons Anton. It's a great name to carry through life."
"No, I'm the real Anton York. I came out of space a few hours ago."
The councillors looked at him narrowly. They started a little at his smouldering eyes. Insane! The asylums were filled with those who imagined they were the almost mythical Anton York as in an earlier age so many had identified themselves with Napoleon.
"Yes, of course," said the president gently, tapping his forehead for the benefit of his colleagues. "Now you just come with us—"
York could not blame them for not believing. But as they all converged on him, with the intent of hustling him out, he set his lips a little grimly.
"Sit down, all of you!" he commanded.
The men all stopped. Their faces were puzzled. Nothing tangible opposed them, yet they could not go on. Rulers of the Solar System, they turned back and sat down, impelled by a subtle force that could not be resisted.
"My mental commands must be obeyed, though I'm sorry I had to use them with you," York said firmly. "You must listen to me, whether you want to or not. I am the Anton York. I have the lore of the stars, and of two thousand years of time. I have some questions to ask."
Gasping, the councillors now realized it was the truth. The stranger's words were spoken with an archaic accent that alone tied him with a previous age. It was Anton York in person--stunning thought—returning to Earth after a thousand-year sojourn in the space that was his virtual home. The visitation was totally unexpected. They stared in awe at this immortal who had almost godlike powers at his command.
"I see you are finally convinced," resumed York. "Now tell me, does any danger threaten civilization?"
"Danger?" The president shook his head. "We don't know what you mean!"
Relieved, but still mystified, York recounted briefly the episode in space.
The president shook his head sadly.
"So that was the ultimate fate of those two!" he murmured, and went on in explanation. "They were two flyers who told a wild story. They claimed they had been to Mount Olympus and had found the mythological gods of Greece, or at least three of them, called the Three Eternals. Furthermore, they were evil beings and planned destruction of civilisation, by causing some hare-brained geological upheaval.
"They were so insistent that we sent ships to Mount Olympus, but of course nothing was found there. They claimed to have been in a great marble building. Obviously insane, they were sent to an asylum. They escaped three months ago, and we heard no more of them till today, from you. Their mad flight to Alpha Centauri to search for worlds to migrate to, proves their insanity. They insisted the three evil gods would not rest till all mankind were annihilated!"
3
IT was a strange story the councillor in Sol City related, and later, when York recounted it to Vera, he was still thoughtful. "Hallucination, after all!" Vera said with a note of finality.
"But, Tony, you still look a little worried."
"I am" he admitted. "What do you say, Vera, that we take a trip around this Forty-first Century world, just to see that everything is all right?"
Vera nodded enthusiastically.
"Let's! After a thousand years of absence, it will be intriguing to look over this old Earth of ours."
In their space ship, upheld and motivated by the subtle warpings of gravitation, they soared over the world of mortal men.
Civilization had taken great strides forward, particularly in technology and industry. All the great cities of the Thirty-first Century had grown greater still. The somewhat makeshift space ship dromes of that earlier time in interplanetary expansion had been replaced by magnificent structures. With remarkable speed and efficiency, ships could be unloaded, restocked, refuelled and overhauled. Interplanetary trade flourished.
The population of this age had reached a new peak. No less than ten billion human beings scurried over Earth's surface, and at least another billion were spread among the other planets.
The food problem had been solved by weather control, the manufacture of artificial staples from mineral matter, and the conversion of all desert lands into vast gardens. The great Sahara was no longer a desert, as York and his wife had known it. Irrigation through a tremendous canal from the Mediterranean had transformed it into one giant wheat field.
To supply his ever-growing demand for metals, mankind had finally tapped the vast ocean reservoir. Hundreds of electrical plants, on important coasts, powered by the eternal tides, extracted salt products. Ocean water poured in one end, to come out at the other almost chemically pure. Every element known, in varying amounts, then reposed in the caked residues in their plants. It was simply a matter of the application of Forty-first Century chemistry to separate these materials.
The wealth of products thus made available could not be measured in antiquated terms of dollars and cents. Of radium alone, least abundant of the ocean solutes, there was extracted a full ton each year. Gold, now a useful metal for its resistance to corrosion, coated everything metallic that people wore or used daily.
The high economic standard resulting from this material wealth had also allowed cultural expansion. Even the most backward of races and groups had access to literature, art, music and facilities for scientific research. Travel was within the means of most, and the preserved wilds of central South America, North America's West, and parts of Asia and Africa were constantly frequented by tourists.
"And this is the civilization supposedly marked for destruction!" York mused. "Who would even contemplate such a thing? Who would have the power? I'm just about convinced, now, that those two poor devils were hopelessly insane." He brightened. "Now we can take another trip around the world, and really enjoy it!"
It was while they were leisurely crossing the South Atlantic one day that York suddenly halted their slow passage and lowered the ship toward water. In the bright sunlight, the smoothly rolling waves made a fascinating picture. But York stared as though he had never seen such a sight before. Finally he took out a pair of binoculars and trained them below.
"That's water, Tony!" laughed Vera. "Dihydrogen oxide—remember?"
"But you never saw water quite like that, before," returned York seriously. "Look for yourself."
After a moment, Vera looked up from the glasses. "Why, it looks as if countless little seeds are floating—"
"Those aren't seeds, but bubbles!" interposed York. "MilIions upon millions of tiny bubbles coming up from the ocean floor. Let's find out how far their range is."
He was already at the controls, sending the ship parallel to the ocean level. A mile away he stopped, looked, nodded. "Still there!"
A mile further he went, again nodded. Next time he went five miles, then ten, a hundred, a thousand, and still found bubbles. His face grew solemn.
The next day he sent their ship scudding in straight lines north, and south, and east and west, and in six other radial directions over the South Atlantic. He stopped every hundred miles while Vera reported with the binoculars. They mapped the area infused with bubbles as roughly three thousand miles long and two thousand miles wide, set squarely between Central America and Africa. It included all the Sargasso Sea.
"What does it mean?" asked Vera when her patience at her husband's moody silence had run out "Why should this vast area of ocean surface be filled with bubbles? Where do they come from?"
'They can only come from below, from—" York paused, snapped on his radio. "Anton York calling the central radio exchange," he barked
"Y-yes sir," came a half-frightened voice a moment later, awed by t
he distinguished caller. "What is it, sir?"
"Connect me with your main oceanology station in the Atlantic, please."
When the station at Cape Verde had answered and the director was called, York queried him.
"Yes," came the reply, "we've noticed those bubbles all right. They've been coming up for the past ten years! Their origin is beyond our best guesses. We've sent diving bells down a mile, our limit, without any clue. The bubbles must come from below that."
"One more question," York said. "Have the coast lines of the Atlantic changed at all in those ten years?"
Suddenly a sharp note of worry sprang into the director's voice.
"Yes! It's a disturbing fact that the entire coast line of Western Europe is sinking at an unprecedented rate. Already, relatively, the water level has climbed a foot. Many coast lands will soon be threatened by inundation.
"The effect isn't local, however. The coasts of America are lowering also. And in the Pacific, the same thing is happening. There, too, a vast area of bubbles exists. We scientists have taken up the problem seriously. We don't know what this may lead to, if it keeps up, but we are making plans to dyke all sea coasts."
"Thanks." York snapped off the radio abruptly. He stared unseeingly out of a port.
"If this keeps up," he murmured, "dykes won't help a bit. Coasts sinking! Is it a natural event—or otherwise!"
Vera looked at him queerly.
"Of course it's a natural event, Tony," she commented. "The gods of Fate play strange tricks. Perhaps Jove, dissatisfied with the present civilization, is trying to destroy it with Neptune's weapons. That's just the way myths grow, Tony, trying to explain--"
She stopped and gasped as her husband suddenly whirled, snapped his fingers, and dived for the pilot board as though their lives depended on it. "Tony, have you gone crazy?"
"No, but I could kick myself!"
York sent the ship scuttling at the highest rate of speed safe in an atmosphere. His direction was east.
"I bow again to feminine intuition," he resumed. "We're going to Mount Olympus, Vera, to visit the gods! There's just, a chance that those two lost souls were not mad. They did predict a geological upheaval. And then that man's dying words—"
"About the Three Eternals, Mount Olympus? Vera cried.
"Then Tony, maybe there's danger!"
But York did not answer. His face was set with a glowing anticipation as he drove for what he hoped would be the solution to a mystery as great as any he had ever encountered.
The globular ship raced over the southern coasts of Europe, over the Mediterranean, past what had, formerly been Spain, France, Italy and Albania. It turned south a little into the mountainous interior of Greece. Finally the misty summit of Mount Olympus loomed ahead.
"Do you really expect to find something here?" asked Vera as they approached. "After all, it's just a Greek myth, dating from five thousand years ago, about Jove and the other gods."
York smiled peculiarly.
"Vera, we are myths too, a few centuries after each visit to Earth!"
Presently they were floating over the peak of Mount Olympus. They gazed down searchingly. As with other mountain tops, it was a scene of jagged rocks, scraggly growths, and dark hollows here and there tufted with snow.
"I hardly know what to look for, but nothing is there out of the ordinary," said Vera, almost in relief. "Besides, the president of the council said they had searched and found nothing."
"Look!" York pointed. "That large hollow to the left. Notice the shimmer over it?" He trained his periscope screen. "Can't clarify it. It looks almost as though—something is behind that shimmering mist!"
Vera grasped his arm. "Please, Tony, be careful!"
He lowered the ship cautiously until it was no more than a hundred yards over the strange, quiescent mist that did not stir in the wind. Still nothing could be distinguished beyond it save vague shadows and lights. Switching on his electroprotective screen, out of caution, York descended slowly till he had almost touched the layer of concealment.
A few more feet the ship sank then stopped abruptly.
York and Vera looked at each other. No tangible barrier opposed them; only the queer, glittering, impenetrable mist. Experimentally, York put more power into his engine. His ship pressed against the weird obstruction until the hull creaked, but not one more inch was gained.
York eased up, muttering.
Then, with a suddenness that made them start, a powerful telepathic voice beat into their brains.
"Who is it seeks the presence of the Eternal Three?"
Glancing significantly at Vera, York answered, by the telepathy he had developed and used so many times before in space.
"Anton York, the Immortal!"
"Descend!"
Coincident with the word, the shimmering mist beneath their ship's keel vanished. Below was revealed the full extent of the hollow, desolate save for a huge marble building in its center. It was of ancient Grecian style, and the stone was stained with great age.
"Those two men were here!" gasped Vera. "They told the truth. Tony, do you suppose everything else they said—" York shook his head noncommittally.
4
ANTON YORK landed the ship before the edifice, leaving his electro-screen on, when the telepathic voice invited him to step into the building, York politely declined. Instead he snapped on his televisor requesting them to do the same, if they had such an instrument.
A moment later it proved they had and his screen became spangled with whirling lights that finally crystalized into the image of an ornately furnished room in which sat three men.
York and Vera looked at them closely.
Their rich, velvety togas were of a strange, unknown style. Their features, though strictly human, were a strange blend of Oriental and Nordic qualities. In age, they all seemed at the prime of life. But most of all it was noticeable that their eyes glowed with that same strange light that was in York's and Vera's—the sign of immortality!
"We have been expecting you, Anton York," said one of the three, still using the universal language of telepathy. "Ever since your arrival in the Solar System, we knew you would hear of us. How did it happen?"
York told of meeting the derelict ship, and the resurrected man's words.
"He said you had threatened destruction of civilization!" he concluded challengingly,
The spokesman smiled frostily.
"Yes, I believe we did tell them the story. Briefly, some months ago, they were flying over Mount Olympus in an airplane. Its motors failed and they smashed up on our roof of protective mist. As a whim, we nursed their lives. As a further whim, we told him the story you heard. We wanted to see if it would drive them mad. But we lost interest in them quickly, sent them away. We have lived a long, long time. Nothing in the world of mortals interests us anymore."
Something of rage arose in York at the calm, cold way the man spoke of other humans.
"You had no right to toy with two human lives!" he cried hotly.
The Eternal shrugged.
"We have lived a long, long time," he repeated: "Conceptions of right and wrong melt into one another through the centuries."
York was about to reply angrily again when Vera touched his arm.
"Don't argue with them, Tony—no use!" she whispered rapidly, consciously willing her broadcast thoughts blank. "Find out all you can about them instead."
York pressed her hand, spoke to the trio of cold-faced men.
"Just how long have you lived?"
Again the icy, disdainful smiles from all three of them.
"You have lived how long, Anton York—some two thousand years since you were inoculated with the radiogen-renewing serum? We, too, were given such an elixir of youth to keep up eternally at our prime, but that was—twenty thousand years ago!"
The incredible statement left both York and Vera, numb for a moment. These three had lived for almost an astronomical age!
"It can't be true!" stammered Vera.
"It can't."
"It is true, however," assured the Eternals. "For twenty thousand years we three have lived and breathed: You wonder how we could have filled in our time. Most of it has been spent in space,- as you two have spent your time. We have roamed endless distances, seen uncounted other worlds of other suns.
"However, at first it intrigued us to do certain things in the Solar System. We laughed to ourselves, Anton York, when we saw you moving asteroids and giving Jupiter rings. For you were simply carrying on what we had dropped in boredom. We were the ones who made Saturn's rings! And we had blown up the planet revolving between Mars and Jupiter, testing our powers, to make the present day asteroids.
"Venus originally had a moon which we moved to a new orbit. It is called Mercury now. Mercury, in mythology, is the wandering god—or the wandering planet. We named all the planets.
"But these things lost their novelty after a time. We did no more. Wandering through the void and observing other worlds and civilizations occupied much more of our time. That eventually palled also. Immortality has its penalty of ennui, as you will notice, too, when you have lived a little longer and seen the ashes of futility behind the fires of life. The past five thousand years we have stayed on Earth, finding its pageantry at least interesting as anything else in the Universe. We have been in mankind's history, even as you have been. We, not the primitive Egyptians, built the great Cheops Pyramid, though they copied it with theirs. It is our marker to show the slow passing of time in a swifter scale. Each century the light of a fixed star moves a little along the scale at the back of a passageway. 'Fixed' star! Even the stars have moved, in our time!
"We caused the Noachin Flood, inadvertently, when we split once solid Gibraltar, filling the Mediterranean basin. For a time, during the great Grecian Era, we mingled somewhat with mortals, giving rise to their famous mythology, Our science deeds and seeming miracles, in various roles, impressed them as the doings of a race of gods.
"And other things we have done. But these things, too, have ceased to interest us. In the past three thousand years we have done little but sigh and wonder if perhaps suicide would not be preferable to the slow poison of ennui. Even your rise two thousand years ago, Anton York, and your exploits of a thousand years ago, failed to intrigue us more than casually. We have utterly lost that strange but important human ability to care about anything!"