Classic Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories

by Stephen Brennan

  “Why, it’s open in the middle!” I cried as soon as I had put the glass to my eyes. “There’s a big circular hole in the centre of the roof.”

  “Look inside! Look inside!” repeated Hall, impatiently.

  “I see nothing there except something bright.”

  “Do you call it nothing because it is bright?”

  “Well, no,” I replied, laughing. “What I mean is that I see nothing that I can make anything of except a shining object, and all I can make of that is that it is bright.”

  “You’ve been in the Syx works many times, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you ever see the opening in the roof?”

  “Never.”

  “Did you ever hear of it?”

  “Never.”

  “Then Dr. Syx doesn’t show his visitors everything that is to be seen.”

  “Evidently not since, as we know, he concealed the double tunnel and the room under the furnace.”

  “Dr. Syx has concealed a bigger secret than that,” Hall responded, “and the Grand Teton has helped me to a glimpse of it.”

  For several minutes my friend was absorbed in thought. Then he broke out:

  “I tell you he’s the most wonderful man in the world!”

  “Who, Dr. Syx? Well, I’ve long thought that.”

  “Yes, but I mean in a different way from what you are thinking of. Do you remember my asking you once if you believed in alchemy?”

  “I remember being greatly surprised by your question to that effect.”

  “Well, now,” said Hall, rubbing his hands with a satisfied air, while his eyes glanced keen and bright with the reflection of some passing thought, “Max Syx is greater than any alchemist that ever lived. If those old fellows in the dark ages had accomplished everything they set out to do, they would have been of no more consequence in comparison with our black-browed friend down yonder than—than my head is of consequence in comparison with the moon.”

  “I fear you flatter the man in the moon,” was my laughing reply.

  “No, I don’t,” returned Hall, “and some day you’ll admit it.”

  “Well, what about that something that shines down there? You seem to see more in it than I can.”

  But my companion had fallen into a reverie and didn’t hear my question. He was gazing abstractedly at the faint image of the waning moon, now nearing the distant mountain-top over in Idaho. Presently his mind seemed to return to the old magnet, and he whirled about and glanced down at the Syx mill. The column of smoke was diminishing in volume, an indication that the engine was about to enjoy one of its periodical rests. The irregularity of these stoppages had always been a subject of remark among practical engineers. The hours of labor were exceedingly erratic, but the engine had never been known to work at night, except on one occasion, and then only for a few minutes, when it was suddenly stopped on account of a fire.

  Just as Hall resumed his inspection two huge quarter spheres, which had been resting wide apart on the roof, moved towards one another until their arched sections met over the circular aperture which they covered like the dome of an observatory.

  “I expected it,” Hall remarked. “But come, it is mid-afternoon, and we shall need all of our time to get safely down before the light fades.”

  As I have already explained, it would not have been possible for us to return the way we came. We determined to descend the comparatively easy western slopes of the peak, and pass the night on that side of the mountain. Letting ourselves down with the rope into the hollow way that divides the summit of the Teton into two pinnacles, we had no difficulty in descending by the route followed by all previous climbers. The weather was fine, and, having found good shelter among the rocks, we passed the night in comfort. The next day we succeeded in swinging round upon the eastern flank of the Teton, below the more formidable cliffs, and, just at nightfall, we arrived at the station. As we passed the Syx mine the doctor himself confronted us. There was a very displeasing look on his dark countenance, and his sneer was strongly marked.

  “So you have been on top of the Teton?” he said.

  “Yes,” replied Hall, very blandly, “and if you have a taste for that sort of thing I should advise you to go up. The view is immense, as fine as the best in the Alps.”

  “Pretty ingenious plan, that balloon of yours,” continued the doctor, still looking black.

  “Thank you,” Hall replied, more suavely than ever. “I’ve been planning that a long time. You probably don’t know that mountaineering used to be my chief amusement.”

  The doctor turned away without pursuing the conversation.

  “I could kick myself,” Hall muttered as soon as Dr. Syx was out of earshot. “If my absurd wish to outdo others had not blinded me, I should have known that he would see us going up this side of the peak, particularly with the balloon to give us away. However, what’s done can’t be undone. He may not really suspect the truth, and if he does he can’t help himself, even though he is the richest man in the world.”

  STRANGE FATE OF A KITE

  “Are you ready for another tramp?” was Andrew Hall’s greeting when we met early on the morning following our return from the peak.

  “Certainly I am. What is your program for to-day?”

  “I wish to test the flying qualities of a kite which I have constructed since our return last night.”

  “You don’t allow the calls of sleep to interfere very much with your activity.”

  “I haven’t much time for sleep just now,” replied Hall, without smiling. “The kite test will carry us up the flanks of the Teton, but I am not going to try for the top this time. If you will come along I’ll ask you to help me by carrying and operating a light transit I shall carry another myself. I am desirous to get the elevation that the kite attains and certain other data that will be of use to me. We will make a détour towards the south, for I don’t want old Syx’s suspicions to be prodded any more.”

  “What interest can he have in your kite-flying?”

  “The same interest that a burglar has in the rap of a policeman’s night-stick.”

  “Then your experiment to-day has some connection with the solution of the great mystery?”

  “My dear fellow,” said Hall, laying his hand on my shoulder, “until I see the end of that mystery I shall think of nothing else.”

  In a few hours we were clambering over the broken rocks on the south-eastern flank of the Teton at an elevation of about three thousand feet above the level of Jackson’s Hole. Finally Hall paused and began to put his kite together. It was a small box-shaped affair, very light in construction, with paper sides.

  “In order to diminish the chances of Dr. Syx noticing what we are about,” he said, as he worked away, “I have covered the kite with sky-blue paper. This, together with distance, will probably insure us against his notice.”

  In a few minutes the kite was ready. Having ascertained the direction of the wind with much attention, he stationed me with my transit on a commanding rock, and sought another post for himself at a distance of two hundred yards, which he carefully measured with a gold tape. My instructions were to keep the telescope on the kite as soon as it had attained a considerable height, and to note the angle of elevation and the horizontal angle with the base line joining our points of observation.

  “Be particularly careful,” was Hall’s injunction, “and if anything happens to the kite by all means note the angles at that instant.”

  As soon as we had fixed our stations Hall began to pay out the string, and the kite rose very swiftly. As it sped away into the blue it was soon practically invisible to the naked eye, although the telescope of the transit enabled me to follow it with ease.

  Glancing across now and then at my companion, I noticed that he was having considerable difficulty in, at the same time, managing the kite and manipulating his transit. But as the kite continued to rise and steadied in position his task became easier, until at length he ceased to
remove his eye from the telescope while holding the string with outstretched hand.

  “Don’t lose sight of it now for an instant!” he shouted.

  For at least half an hour he continued to manipulate the string, sending the kite now high towards the zenith with a sudden pull, and then letting it drift off. It seemed at last to become almost a fixed point. Very slowly the angles changed, when, suddenly, there was a flash, and to my amazement I saw the paper of the kite shrivel and disappear in a momentary flame, and then the bare sticks came tumbling out of the sky.

  “Did you get the angles?” yelled Hall, excitedly.

  “Yes; the telescope is yet pointed on the spot where the kite disappeared.”

  “Read them off,” he called, “and then get your angle with the Syx works.”

  “All right,” I replied, doing as he had requested, and noticing at the same time that he was in the act of putting his watch in his pocket. “Is there anything else?” I asked.

  “No, that will do, thank you.”

  Hall came running over, his face beaming, and with the air of a man who has just hooked a particularly cunning old trout.

  “Ah!” he exclaimed, “this has been a great success! I could almost dispense with the calculation, but it is best to be sure.”

  “What are you about, anyhow?” I asked, “and what was it that happened to the kite?”

  “Don’t interrupt me just now, please,” was the only reply I received.

  Thereupon my friend sat down on a rock, pulled out a pad of paper, noted the angles which I had read on the transit, and fell to figuring with feverish haste. In the course of his work he consulted a pocket almanac, then glanced up at the sky, muttered approvingly, and finally leaped to his feet with a half-suppressed “Hurrah!” If I had not known him so well I should have thought that he had gone daft.

  “Will you kindly tell me,” I asked, “how you managed to set the kite afire?”

  Hall laughed heartily. “You though it was a trick, did you?” said he. “Well, it was no trick, but a very beautiful demonstration. You surely haven’t forgotten the scarlet tanager that gave you such a surprise the day before yesterday.”

  “Do you mean,” I exclaimed, startled at the suggestion, “that the fate of the bird had any connection with the accident to your kite?”

  “Accident isn’t precisely the right word,” replied Hall. “The two things are as intimately related as own brothers. If you should care to hunt up the kite sticks, you would find that they, too, are now artemisium plated.”

  “This is getting too deep for me,” was all that I could say.

  “I am not absolutely confident that I have touched bottom myself,” said Hall, “but I’m going to make another dive, and if I don’t bring up treasures greater than Vanderdecken found at the bottom of the sea, then Dr. Syx is even a more wonderful human mystery than I have thought him to be.”

  “What do you propose to do next?”

  “To shake the dust of the Grand Teton from my shoes and go to San Francisco, where I have an extensive laboratory.”

  “So you are going to try a little alchemy yourself, are you?”

  “Perhaps; who knows? At any rate, my good friend, I am forever indebted to you for your assistance, and even more for your discretion, and if I succeed you shall be the first person in the world to hear the news

  BETTER THAN ALCHEMY

  I come now to a part of my narrative which would have been deemed altogether incredible in those closing years of the nineteenth century that witnessed the first steps towards the solution of the deepest mysteries of the ether, although men even then held in their hands, without knowing it, powers which, after they had been mastered and before use had made them familiar, seemed no less than godlike.

  For six months after Hall’s departure for San Francisco I heard nothing from him. Notwithstanding my intense desire to know what he was doing, I did not seek to disturb him in his retirement. In the meantime things ran on as usual in the world, only a ripple being caused by renewed discoveries of small nuggets of artemisium on the Tetons, a fact which recalled to my mind the remark of my friend when he dislodged a flake of the metal from a crevice during our ascent of the peak. At last one day I received this telegram at my office in New York:

  “SAN FRANCISCO, May 16, 1940.

  “Come at once. The mystery is solved.

  “(Signed) HALL.”

  As soon as I could pack a grip I was flying westward one hundred miles an hour. On reaching San Francisco, which had made enormous strides since the opening of the twentieth century, owing to the extension of our Oriental possessions, and which already ranked with New York and Chicago among the financial capitals of the world, I hastened to Hall’s laboratory. He was there expecting me, and, after a hearty greeting, during which his elation over his success was manifest, he said:

  “I am compelled to ask you to make a little journey. I found it impossible to secure the necessary privacy here, and, before opening my experiments, I selected a site for a new laboratory in an unfrequented spot among the mountains this side of Lake Tahoe. You will be the first man, with the exception of my two devoted assistants, to see my apparatus, and you shall share the sensation of the critical experiment.”

  “Then you have not yet completed your solution of the secret?”

  “Yes, I have; for I am as certain of the result as if I had seen it, but I thought you were entitled to be in with me at the death.”

  From the nearest railway station we took horses to the laboratory, which occupied a secluded but most beautiful site at an elevation of about six thousand feet above sea-level. With considerable surprise I noticed a building surmounted with a dome, recalling what we had seen from the Grand Teton on the roof of Dr. Syx’s mill. Hall, observing my look, smiled significantly, but said nothing. The laboratory proper occupied a smaller building adjoining the domed structure. Hall led the way into an apartment having but a single door and illuminated by a skylight.

  “This is my sanctum sanctorum,” he said, “and you are the first outsider to enter it. Seat yourself comfortably while I proceed to unveil a little corner of the artemisium mystery.”

  Near one end of the room, which was about thirty feet in length, was a table, on which lay a glass tube about two inches in diameter and thirty inches long. In the farther end of the tube gleamed a lump of yellow metal, which I took to be gold. Hall and I were seated near another table about twenty-five feet distant from the tube, and on this table was an apparatus furnished with a concave mirror, whose optical axis was directed towards the tube. It occurred to me at once that this apparatus would be suitable for experimenting with electric waves. Wires ran from it to the floor, and in the cellar beneath was audible the beating of an engine. My companion made an adjustment or two, and then remarked:

  “Now, keep your eyes on the lump of gold in the farther end of the tube yonder. The tube is exhausted of air, and I am about to concentrate upon the gold an intense electric influence, which will have the effect of making it a kind of kathode pole. I only use this term for the sake of illustration. You will recall that as long ago as the days of Crookes it was known that a kathode in an exhausted tube would project particles, or atoms, of its substance away in straight lines. Now watch!”

  I fixed my attention upon the gold, and presently saw it enveloped in a most beautiful violet light. This grew more intense, until, at times, it was blinding, while, at the same moment, the interior of the tube seemed to have become charged with a luminous vapor of a delicate pinkish hue.

  “Watch! Watch!” said Hall. “Look at the nearer end of the tube!”

  “Why, it is becoming coated with gold!” I exclaimed.

  He smiled, but made no reply. Still the strange process continued. The pink vapor became so dense that the lump of gold was no longer visible, although the eye of violet light glared piercingly through the colored fog. Every second the deposit of metal, shining like a mirror, increased, until suddenly there came a curious wh
istling sound. Hall, who had been adjusting the mirror, jerked away his hand and gave it a flip, as if hot water had spattered it, and then the light in the tube quickly died away, the vapor escaped, filling the room with a peculiar stimulating odor, and I perceived that the end of the glass tube had been melted through, and the molten gold was slowly dripping from it.

  “I carried it a little too far,” said Hall, ruefully rubbing the back of his hand, “and when the glass gave way under the atomic bombardment a few atoms of gold visited my bones. But there is no harm done. You observed that the instant the air reached the kathode, as I for convenience call the electrified mass of gold, the action ceased.”

  “But your anode, to continue your simile,” I said, “is constantly exposed to the air.”

  “True,” he replied, “but in the first place, of course, this is not really an anode, just as the other is not actually a kathode. As science advances we are compelled, for a time, to use old terms in a new sense until a fresh nomenclature can be invented. But we are now dealing with a form of electric action more subtile in its effects than any at present described in the text-books and the transactions of learned societies. I have not yet even attempted to work out the theory of it. I am only concerned with its facts.”

  “But wonderful as the exhibition you have given is, I do not see,” I said, “how it concerns Dr. Syx and his artemisium.”

  “Listen,” replied Hall, settling back in his chair after disconnecting his apparatus. “You no doubt have been told how one night the Syx engine was heard working for a few minutes, the first and only night work it was ever known to have done, and how, hardly had it started up when a fire broke out in the mill, and the engine was instantly stopped. Now there is a very remarkable story connected with that, and it will show you how I got my first clew to the mystery, although it was rather a mere suspicion than a clew, for at first I could make nothing out of it. The alleged fire occurred about a fortnight after our discovery of the double tunnel. My mind was then full of suspicions concerning Syx, because I thought that a man who would fool people with one hand was not likely to deal fairly with the other.