by Eando Binder
A few minutes later their ship hovered over the atoll marked for demolition, so that a geological process started years before might be reversed. York set his gamma-sonic weapon for instantaneous decomposition of the entire island to a depth of five miles. His generators were loaded to the full.
His lips pursed in anticipation as he depressed the button. Once again his unobtrusive violet ray shot forth from its gravity-fed power coils. Hissingly it struck the island, and the marble home of the absent Three Eternals, boring down at the speed of light.
Layers of matter 'peeled away and vanished in puffs of soot. Before the ocean waters roared in to fill the breech, the five-mile pit had been formed.
York flung his ship up at full speed as a spume of water spurted from the impact of walls of water crashing together with the face of solid steel. Down below, in the invisible depths of Earth that they had so recently quitted, a titanic ground vibration had spawned. Like a match it would touch off the gunpowder of subsea plasma. There would be a clashing of Gargantuan forces, one started years before by the Eternals. For a while the Behemoth of an earthquake would reign widely on Earth's surface. But then it would be over, and Earth would be quiet. .
Three hours later, York found confirmation of his success.
The bubbles arising from the Pacific floor had lessened by half. Mu was halting its slow upward climb. And in the Atlantic, a continent buried for twenty thousand years in its watery grave also ceased to seek an unnatural resurrection. "It is done!" breathed York, with quiet pride.
Vera's face strained for the past days, grew yet more haggard.
"It is done!" she repeated, but with a deeper meaning. Suddenly she was in his arms, sobbing. "Is there no escape, Tony?"
"I'm afraid not," returned York, 'gently. "The Three Eternals will seek their vengeance. They are powerful beyond measure, as we know. It would do little good to try to hide, in space. Their long-range instruments would search us out, even light years away. Kaligor made his sacrifice. We must make ours, as we agreed." He raised his head. "But Earth is saved. Earth gave us life. Kaligor too. We must think of it that way, my darling of the ages!"
Vera dashed the tears from her eyes, bravely.
"We have lived a full life, Tony dearest. Love, understanding and wisdom beyond the lot of ordinary humans have been ours. We have touched the stars for a brief moment, revelled for a bit of eternity. Dreamed a beautiful dream of immortality, like Kaligor. But we could not escape the laws of Fate, as we did the laws of life. It is over and I am content!"
They kissed, and dung to one another tightly, in their last embrace. Like- gods they had lived, but unlike gods, they must die. The finger of a greater destiny had so decreed.
Not long after, the powerful telepathic voice of the Three Eternals beat in upon their minds. Their ship appeared, dropping from the sky vulturously. Bluntly, seeing, the key-island destroyed, they promised swift death. York spun his ship away, as though trying to escape the inevitable. The large ovoid ship of the Three followed inexorably.
Pursued and pursuing, they shot far into space, out among the emptiness they both knew so well. When they had gone so far that York knew Earth could not be harmed by what was to come, he stopped. Grimly, he set his giant gravity coils, loaded to capacity with world-moving power. Then he smiled as he took Vera in his arms to await the end calmly.
Unknowing of his voluntary sacrifice, the Three Eternals rammed toward his ship enough power to grind it to subatomic shreds. It was like the lighting of a bomb. York's ship released its groaning load of energy in one colossal charge. The ether itself writhed.
Both ships vanished! Back on Earth, every electrical instrument burned out entirely from the mighty reaction waves that had resulted.
They were gone, the gods that Earth knew. Greek mythology and the mythology of Anton York would carry on the legends of their exploits, in distorted form. But the gods themselves were one with infinity. But there would be no mythology of Kaligor, the Eternal Dreamer. Indestructible, falling perhaps eventually into the hot core of some sun, his dream would go on . . on . .
THE SECRET OF ANTON YORK
PROLOGUE
At the top of Mount Everest' stand two gigantic statues of enduring diamond, a hundred feet tall. Gleaming in the stratosphere, they rear higher than any other man-made object on Earth's surface, as the two after whom they had been modelled rear higher than any others in human history.
Those were the statues modelled after the immortal Anton York and his mate.
In the year of their commemoration, 4050 A.D., the President of the Solar System Council spoke to- a gathered crowd of ten million, and to a television audience of ten billion on nine planets. His voice was emotion-filled and awed, as though he spoke of gods.
"Anton York and his wife are dead. But Anton York's name will live, alongside those of Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon and other empire builders. And Confucius, Christ, Mohammed and other spiritual leaders. And Adam, Jove, Robin Hood and other mythological names. For Anton York was like all these in one respect or more.
"He was born- in the twentieth century. Preserved by his father's life-elixir, he lived on, immortally. These great exploits will ring down the hall of history: His defeat of the fifty Immortals who wished to subjugate Earth, in the twenty-first century. His legacy of space-travel to mankind, soon after. His defeat of Mason Chard, the last of the ruthless Immortals, in the thirty-first century. His astro-engineering in the Solar System, giving Jupiter rings, moons to Mercury and Venus, and ridding all the planets of harsh obstacles to colonization.
"But the greatest of all was his return from the deeps of space, in our present time, to wage some titanic battle against the mysterious Three. Eternals, who wished to destroy contemporary civilization. We do not, even know the true story of it, save in snatches. We know only that the Three Eternals, survivors from some forgotten time—perhaps Atlantis—pursued Anton York's space ship out beyond Pluto, a year ago.
"An astronomer's plates, on that dark outpost, caught something of the event. The space ship of the Three Eternals hurled some destructive force at York's ship. The latter seemed loaded with mighty energies. Both ships vanished in an explosion that must have rocked the Universe from one end to another. Pluto was shoved a million miles out of its orbit by etheric concussion!"
He paused to let the worlds imagine the incredible fury of that scene.
"We can only surmise at what mighty, unknown forces were released. And we can only wonder why York, to destroy the Three Eternals, sacrificed himself. Evidently he could defeat the Eternal& only in that way, in a battle of gods.
"Of one thing we are sure. The incredible career of Anton York is over. We are gathered here to commemorate his memory, in the most lasting material we know, on this highest peak of Earth's entire surface."
The speaker looked over the solemn, hushed multitude packed at the base of the towering mountain. He delivered his funereal text.
"Anton York, benefactor of humanity, is dead!"
1
THOSE words, if they could have rolled by some magic throughout the greater cosmos, would eventually have impinged on the ears of the person in question, and made him smile.
For Anton York was alive.
Yet he had not been sure of that himself, at first. With a shock his brain had awakened. His staring eyes focused on the cabin wall of his ship. It looked as it had always been. But queerly, he saw two walls. It was a doubling effect, as if two superimposed images lay on one another. And he could not move. He was in the grip of some paralysis that locked every muscle in his body, including his lungs and heart. He was not breathing and his blood, chilled and viscous, lay stagnant in his veins.
Yet he was alive, for his thoughts were free. Or was this death?
His thoughts probed out in mental telepathy, which he had used so often with his wife. He could not turn to look. "Vera!" his mind called. "Vera, are you near?"
Her mental voice came back, confused, dim.
&nbs
p; "Yes, Tony. I hear you. You must be near. I feel as though we are mental wraiths. Is this the life-after-death? How wonderful, Tony, not to be separated after all—" Her psychic tone became startled. "But look! This is the cabin of our ship, even if it appears double somehow. It was destroyed in that frightful explosion caused by the Three Eternals. How can a material ship pass into the life-after-death?"
It was a grimly ridiculous thought.
"No, Vera." York's thoughts were reflective. "The ship wasn't destroyed. Nor were we. It's sheer speculation, but perhaps the explosion acted so suddenly and so powerfully that it blew the ship away intact. Like tornado winds that blow straws right through oak boards without knocking off one grain. Vera, we're alive!"
"But this paralysis--"
"Suspension of life, through the shock of super-fast motion. Germs, in centrifuges whirled at high speed, pass into a dormant state, as Earth scientists know. All our cells have gone as a unit into suspended animation."
"You mean that we'll stay helpless like this? For ages, thinking, thinking . . ." Vera's psychic voice was alarmed, half hysterical..
"No," York answered quickly. "Don't forget we have twice the normal number of life-giving radiogens in our cells. Cosmic rays are constantly pouring into them. The energy stored will sooner or later break the deadlock. We just have to wait."
Cosmic radiation fed itself into their immortality radiogens. Electrical energy, the warmth of life in the last analysis, gradually built up as in a storage battery. The stunned cells, knocked out by the force of the super-explosion, slowly returned to normal.
It took a year.
During that time, happy at escaping the death that had seemed inexorable, they conversed mentally. They spoke of things past, wondering of things present, and looked forward to things future, once they were free. Well inured to the dragging of time in their 2,000 years of life, the short year passed quickly to them, where it might have driven an ordinary mortal mad.
Anton York felt the twitch of some buried muscle one day. Others came alive quickly, as if it were a signal. The involuntary muscles instantly took up their given tasks. The heart beat and the diaphragm pumped up and down, sucking air into the lungs.
York leaped up suddenly, only to collapse again with a groan. The atrophied muscles refused to take up their burden that quickly.
A few minutes later he arose again, stronger, and turned to help Vera up. He supported her while her body went through the same phases. Finally they embraced each other, knowing the supreme joy of life, when death had seemed inevitable
"Tony, dearest, are we truly immortal?" Vera spoke, using her vocal chords instead of the tiring telepathy. They noticed immediately that the sound echoed, in the same queer doubling effect of their vision. She went on. "Disease and old age can't touch us. Now even that terrible explosion, violent death, failed! We're like the legendary gods."
"Don't think that way!" York returned almost sharply. "We must never lose our perspective. We're immortals through science. And some principle of science accounts for our escape. I had our energy coils loaded to capacity with power enough to shatter a sun. When the Three Eternals shoved a dis-beam at us and released it, the explosion acted on every atom simultaneously, blowing ship and all away as a unit. Probably at the speed of light and out into remote space."
“The Three Eternals!" Vera burst in suddenly. "If they survived the explosion too, they may be near now, ready to blast us again—"
York, reminded of their deadly enemies, was already leaping toward the visiscreen, for an all-around view of surrounding space. Like their eyes, the view-plate seemed afflicted with the singular doubling effect. The firmament of stars around them contained all pairs. But no alien ship blocked out any part of the sky.
"The Eternals aren't here," York announced, his nerves easing. "They must 'have been destroyed then—no, wait! I see their ship now. Just a speck far away, where they were blown in a different direction."
Vera bent close to the view-plate suddenly.
"And look. Another ship is approaching theirs! A queer ship.
"Hsst!" York warned. A totally alien ship might be friend or enemy. "Tune in mentally, if you make contact with the Three Eternals."
Opening their minds full range, they waited to- hear any telepathic radiations from the distant scene. At last they heard a voice, in the universal language of telepathy. Yet they recognized it for an alien, non-human voice, by its mental overtones.
"What ship is this?" challenged the voice, as though it were a patrol ship on the high seas.. "Answer immediately!"
York and Vera waited breathlessly. At last one of the Three Eternals answered groggily, as though he, too, had just emerged from the same suspended state following the explosion.
"The ship of the Three Eternals. We just survived a tremendous explosion, miraculously. Who are you? Where are you from?" The psychic voice was staccato, peremptory.
"From Earth." And then, typically, the Eternal spoke angrily. "But who are you to make demands? I resent your insolence."
"Earth!" It seemed to be a startled exclamation from the alien. "The J-X seventy-seven creatures! You've come to rescue—" The words broke off. Then came a horribly merciless tone. "I am sorry."
In the view-plate, York and Vera saw a green energy-ray stab from the alien ship to the Three Eternals. In a supernal flash of sparks, the ship of the Three Eternals vanished!
The back dot of the alien ship hovered for a moment, as though to make sure of their work. Then it scudded away, disappearing into the void beyond.
Vera shuddered. "I'm glad the Three Eternals are gone, though I've never wanted the death of a human before. They were such evil beings."
"Evil beings?" York's voice was tense. "What about those ruthless aliens? They did us a favour, destroying the Three Eternals, but we'd get the same if they found us. Who are they? From what system? Why are they patrolling space?"
Vera had no answer.
"I wonder where we are," York mused. "We have a lot of things to do and find out. First, this queer doubling of our sight and voices."
A strange expression came over his face. He strode to his laboratory workroom and for the next few hours laboured with his intricate instruments. Vera brought in hot food, in answer to their reawakened appetites. She found her husband tapping his finger on the barrel of an electronic spectroscope. He was frowning, and behind the frown was startled disbelief.
"Tony," Vera asked, "have you found out where we are? Let's return to Earth. I don't like the thought of meeting those aliens."
"Return to Earth?" York had started. He gripped her shoulders. "I just made a rough measurement of the velocity of light here. It's only a hundred-and-eighty-one miles a second —five thousand miles a second slower than it should be! And the velocity of sound is quite a bit below eleven hundred feet per second!"
"That accounts for the doubling phenomenon," Vera returned quickly, for she was no less of a scientist than her husband. "Our eyes and ears are attuned to different rates. But, Tony, you look so worried. At the same instant it struck her. "Why should light and sound travel slower?" she gasped.
For an answer, York swept his hand toward the nearest port. Out there lay the eternal stars, but what had happened to them? Even they were changed. In their many lifetimes of Wandering, Anton York and Vera had come to know the star map almost as minutely as one knows the streets of a city.
"Those are not our stars," York said in a low voice. "Vera, this is not the Universe we used to know!"
After eating in stunned silence, York spoke again, more calmly.
"I see It quite clearly now. The explosion blew us up as unit—completely out of normal space-time--into a new universe! I've suspected for some time that different universes lie side by side, or wrapped up in one another. They occupy the same space and time, but not the same space-time. Notice that distinction. It's like taking two chemical reagents and mixing them in various proportions, to get many different compounds.
&nbs
p; "This space-time, with its `shorter' time and 'longer' space —judging from the low light speed—is separate and distinct from our Universe. Yet the two universes are contained in one another like alcohol in water. Earth, in one sense, is no more than a few miles away in space and a few hours in time. In another sense, it's remoter than the most distant nebula and several eternities removed on an all-embracing time scale."
Vera's brows came together over a white anxious face.
"Tony, it confuses me. I'm afraid. I feel as if we're dropping into an endless pit here. I never felt that way in our space. Tony, let's go back to our Universe right away."
He shook his head, telling her with his eyes to prepare for greater shock.
"We can't. At least for the present Our engine, Our energy-coils, our generators—all our motivating machines are dead. I tried them. You see, there's slower energy here too.
We're marooned in this other universe, and drifting like a wandering comet. We're helpless, too. If those patrolling aliens happen to spy us. . . ."
York left the rest ominously unsaid.
2
BUT this did not happen. In the following year, York spent mind-numbing hours in his laboratory. Vera took down an endless series of notes. Together they sought to readjust their science to the new conditions.
In one thing, nature's laws of compensation were automatic. Their eyes and ears learned gradually to work under new conditions. The irksome doubling effects disappeared. But all else was still a mystery.
York became irritable.
"I'm getting nowhere," he raged. "I feel as, helpless as a baby. la our Universe I had a wealth of super-science, by Earthly standards, at my fingertips. Now I can't even make a single reaction motor. Rockets here don't obey Newton’s Third Law! It's getting me down. I'm like a Stone Age man looking around and wondering what it's all and, Vera, I don't like it."
He went on, betraying a nervousness he had kept under control rigidly.
"The Three Eternals had no chance to fight back when they were destroyed. Neither would we, if -that patrol ship found us. But that isn't all."