Before The Golden Age - A SF Anthology of the 1930s

by Edited By Isaac Asimov

  * * * *

  It was hopeless. The telepathic messages had not reached the machine men of Zor. They were too far away, just as one person may be out of earshot of another’s voice. He was doomed to a terrible fate of existence! It were better that his rocket had never been found. He wished that the Zoromes had destroyed him instead of bringing him back to life — back to this!

  His thoughts were suddenly broken in upon.

  “We’re coming!”

  “Don’t give up hope!”

  If the professor’s machine body had been equipped with a heart, it would have sung for joy at these welcome thought impressions. A short time later there appeared in the ragged break of the volcano’s mouth, where he had fallen through, the metal head of one of the machine men.

  “We shall have you out of there soon,” he said.

  * * * *

  The professor never knew how they managed it for he lost consciousness under some strange ray of light they projected down upon him in his prison. When he came to consciousness once more, it was to find himself inside the space ship.

  “If you had fallen and had smashed your head, it would have been all over. with you,” were the first thought impulses which greeted him.

  “As it is, however, we can fix you up first rate.”

  “Why didn’t you answer the first time I called to you?” asked the professor. “Didn’t you hear me?”

  “We heard you, and we answered, but you didn’t hear us. You see, your brain is different than ours, and though you can send thought waves as far as we can you cannot receive them from such a great distance.”

  “I’m wrecked,” said the professor, gazing at his twisted limbs, paralyzed tentacles and jammed body.

  “We shall repair you,” came the reply. “It is your good fortune that your head was not crushed.”

  “What are you going to do with me?” queried the professor. “Will you remove my brains to another machine?”

  “No, it isn’t necessary. We shall merely remove your head and place upon another machine body.”

  The Zoromes immediately set to work upon the task, and soon had Professor Jameson’s metal head removed from the machine which he had wrecked in his fall down the crater. All during the painless operation, the professor kept up a series of thought exchanges in conversation with the Zoromes, and it seemed but a short time before his head surmounted a new machine and he was ready for further exploration. In the course of his operation, the space ship had moved to a new position, and now as they emerged 25X-987 kept company with Professor Jameson.

  “I must keep an eye on you,” he said. “You will be getting into more trouble before you get accustomed to the metal bodies.”

  But Professor Jameson was doing a great deal of thinking. Doubtlessly, these strange machine men who had picked up his rocket in the depths of space and had brought him back to life, were expecting him to travel with them and become adopted into the ranks of the Zoromes. Did he want to go with them? He couldn’t decide. He had forgotten that the machine men could read his innermost thoughts.

  “You wish to remain here alone upon the earth?” asked 25X-987. “It is your privilege if you really want it so.”

  “I don’t know,” replied Professor Jameson truthfully.

  * * * *

  He gazed at the dust around his feet. It had probably been the composition of men, and had changed from time to time into various other atomic structures — of other queer forms of life which had succeeded mankind. It was the law of the atom which never died. And now he had within his power perpetual existence. He could be immortal if he wished! It would be an immortality of never-ending adventures in the vast, endless Universe among the galaxy of stars and planets.

  A great loneliness seized him. Would he be happy among these machine men of another far-off world — among these Zoromes? They were kindly and solicitous of his welfare. What better fate could he expect? Still, a longing for his own kind arose in him — the call of humanity. It was irresistible. What could he do? Was it not in vain? Humanity had long since disappeared from the earth — millions of years ago. He wondered what lay beyond the pales of death — the real death, where the body decomposed and wasted away to return to the dust of the earth and assume new atomic structures.

  He had begun to wonder whether or not he had been dead all these forty millions of years — suppose he had been merely in a state of suspended animation. He had remembered a scientist of his day, who had claimed that the body does not die at the point of official death. According to the claims of this man, the cells of the body did not die at the moment at which respiration, heart beats and the blood circulation ceased, but it existed in the semblance of life for several days afterward, especially in the cells of the bones, which died last of all.

  Perhaps when he had been sent out into space in his rocket right after his death, the action of the cosmic void was to halt his slow death of the cells in his body, and hold him in suspended animation during the ensuing millions of years. Suppose he should really die — destroying his own brain? What lay beyond real death? Would it be a better plane of existence than the Zoromes could offer him? Would be rediscover humanity, or had they long since arisen to higher planes of existence or reincarnation? Did time exist beyond the mysterious portals of death? If not, then it was possible for him to join the souls of the human race. Had he really been dead all this time? If so, he knew what to expect in case he really destroyed his own brain. Oblivion!

  Again the intense feeling of loneliness surged over him and held him within its melancholy grasp. Desperately, he decided to find the nearest cliff and jump from it — head-first! Humanity called; no man lived to companion him. His four metal limbs carried him swiftly to the summit of a nearby precipice. Why not gamble on the hereafter? 25X-987, understanding his trend of thought, did not attempt to restrain him. Instead, the machine man Zor waited patiently.

  As Professor Jameson stood there meditating upon the jump which would hurl him now into a new plane of existence — or into oblivion, the thought transference of 25X-987 reached him. It was laden with the wisdom born of many planets and thousands of centuries’ experience.

  “Why jump?” asked the machine man. “The dying world holds your imagination within a morbid clutch. It is all a matter of mental condition. Free your mind of this fascinating influence and come with us to visit other worlds, many of them are both beautiful and new. You will then feel a great difference. Will you come?”

  The professor considered for a moment as he resisted the impulse to dive off the declivity to the enticing rocks far below. An inspiration seized him. Backing away from the edge of the cliff, he joined 25X-987 once more.

  “I shall come,” he stated.

  He would become an immortal after all and join the Zoromes in their never-ending adventures from world to world. They hastened to the space ship to escape the depressing, dreary influence of the dying world, which had nearly driven Professor Jameson to take the fatal leap to oblivion.

  * * * *

  “The Jameson Satellite” is a notable example of the faults of pre-Campbell science fiction. The scientific background is not blended with the story but is presented in indigestible blocks that halt the action. The science, moreover, is inaccurate even by the standards of its own time.

  In 1931, for instance, radium still had glamour as the richest practical source of radioactivity, so it is natural to have it used vaguely as propulsive power for a satellite (launched in 1958, by the way, almost on the nose). There was no indication, however, in 1931 (or since) that radium possesses “repulsion rays.”

  Then, too, Jones, at this early stage in his career (he had been publishing for only a year and a half, and this was his fourth science fiction story) was clearly in imperfect command of the English language. He used the words “soliloquized upon” when he should rather have used “considered,” “inspiration” rather than the more accurate “impulse,” and so on. On the whole, “The Jameson Satellite” is prob
ably the least skillfully written story in this anthology.

  None of the flaws in language and construction were obvious to my eleven-and-a-half-year self, however. What I responded to was the tantalizing glimpse of possible immortality and the vision of the world’s sad death, to say nothing of the contracting spirals of the planetary orbits forty million years hence (not long enough, by the way; forty billion would have been better if that were the way the Solar System were to end, which it isn’t).

  More important still were Jones’s Zoromes, who were robots really. Their organic brains were just a detail. Jones treated them as mechanical men, making them objective without being unfeeling, benevolent without being busybodies. They made no effort to use force to keep Professor Jameson from committing suicide if he really wanted to, but they did use dignified persuasion.

  One of the marks of reader enthusiasm for a story is the demand for more, and an author often wrote a sequel to a popular story. The readers (not just myself) were so taken by “The Jameson Satellite” that Jones wrote about a dozen “Professor Jameson stories” over the next seven years, carrying his Zoromes to a new and startling world in each. Although the Zoromes remained without individual personality, I could easily recite the number-letter combinations of those who appeared most often.

  It is from the Zoromes, beginning with their first appearance in “The Jameson Satellite,” that I got my own feeling for benevolent robots who could serve man with decency, as these had served Professor Jameson. It was the Zoromes, then, who were the spiritual ancestors of my own “positronic robots,” all of them, from Robbie to R. Daneel.

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  * * * *

  Something else that was very prevalent in the science fiction of the 1930s was the adventure story fitted out with just enough scientific trappings to enable it to pass muster. And in the science fiction magazines of the early part of the decade, no one was better at it than Captain S. P. Meek.

  He published some thirty stories in the magazines between 1930 and 1932—his heyday—and of them all, the best was The Drums of Tapajos, a lost-civilization-in-the-Amazon story I have already mentioned twice.

  Equally typical, and short enough to include here, are his “Submicroscopic” and its sequel, “Awlo of Ulm,” which ran in successive issues of Amazing Stories (August and September 1931), and which won my heart with their boy-and-girl romance. It was at a level that just suited my time in life.

  * * * *

  SUBMICROSCOPIC

  by Cap. S. P. Meek

  After many weary months of toil my task has been completed. As the sun sank to rest today, I soldered up the last connection on my Electronic Vibration Adjuster and in the fading twilight I tested it. It functions perfectly and as soon as the sun rises tomorrow I will leave this plane, I hope forever. I had originally intended to disappear without trace, as I did once before, but as I sit here waiting for the dawn, such a course seems hardly fair. This plane has treated me pretty well on the whole and I really ought to leave behind me some record of my discoveries and of my adventures, possibly the strangest adventures through which a man of this plane has ever passed. Besides, it will help to pass the time which must elapse before I can start on my journey.

  My name is Courtney Edwards. I was born thirty-four years ago in the city of Honolulu, the only child of the richest sugar planter in the Islands. When I arrived at high school age I was sent to the mainland to be educated and here I have stayed. The death of my parents left me wealthy and rather disinclined to return to the home of my youth.

  I did my bit in the Air Corps during the war and when it was over I shed my olive drab and went back to the University of Minneconsin to finish my education. My interest in science started when I attended a lecture on the composition of matter. It was a popular lecture intended for non-science students, and so it wasn’t over my head. Dr. Harvey, one of our most popular professors, was the speaker and to this day I can visualize him standing there and can even recall some of his words.

  “To give you some idea of the size of an atom,” he said, “I will take for an example a cubic millimeter of hydrogen gas at a temperature of 0 degrees Centigrade and at sea-level pressure. It contains roughly ninety quadrillions of atoms, an almost inconceivable number. Consider this enormous number of particles packed into a cube with an edge less than one-twentieth of an inch long; yet so small are the individual atoms compared with the space between them that the solar system is crowded in comparison.

  “In order to get at the ultimate composition of matter, however, we are forced to consider even smaller units. An atom is not a solid particle of matter, but instead consists of smaller particles called protons and electrons. The protons are particles of positive electricity which exist at the center or the nucleus of the atoms and the electrons are particles of negative electricity some of which revolve about the central portion and in most elements some are in the nucleus. Each of these particles is as small compared to the space between them as is the case with the atoms in the molecule.”

  I left the lecture hall with my head in a whirl. My imagination had been captured by the idea of counting and measuring such infinitesimal particles and I went to Dr. Harvey’s office the next day and sought an interview.

  “I wish to ask some questions relative to your talk last night, Doctor,” I said when I faced him.

  His kindly grey eyes twinkled and he invited me to be seated.

  “As I understood you, Doctor,” I began, “the space between the atoms and between the electrons and protons in each atom is so vast compared to their bulk that if you were to jam the protons and electrons of a cubic mile of gas together until they touched, you couldn’t see the result with a microscope.”

  “Your idea is crudely expressed, but in the main accurate,” he answered.

  “Then what in the name of common sense holds them apart?” I demanded.

  “Each of the atoms,” he replied, “is in a state of violent motion, rushing through space with a high velocity and continually colliding with other atoms and rebounding until it strikes another atom and rebounds again. The electrons are also in a state of violent motion, revolving around the protons and this combination of centrifugal force and electrical attraction holds the atom in a state of dynamic equilibrium.”

  “One more question, Doctor, and I’ll quit. Are these things you have told me cold sober fact susceptible of proof, or are they merely the results of an overactive imagination?”

  He smiled and then leaned over his desk and answered gravely.

  “Some of them are solid facts which I can prove to you in the laboratory,” he said. “For instance, you, yourself, with proper training could count the number of atoms in a given volume. Other things I have said are merely theories or shrewd guesses which best explain the facts which we know. There is in physical chemistry a tremendous field of work open for men who have the ability and the patience to investigate. No one knows what the future may bring forth.”

  The Doctor’s evident enthusiasm communicated itself to me.

  “I’ll be one of the ones to do this work if you’ll have me as a student!” I exclaimed.

  “I’ll be very glad to have you, Edwards,” he replied. “I believe you have the ability and the will. Time alone will tell whether you have the patience.”

  I resigned from my course the next day and enrolled as a special student under Dr. Harvey. After a period of intensive study of methods, I was ready to plunge into the unknown. The work of Bohr and Langmuir especially attracted me, and I bent my energies to investigating the supposed motion of the electrons about the nuclear protons. This line of investigation led me to the suspicion that the motion was not circular and steady, but was periodic and simple harmonic except as the harmonic periods were interfered with by the frequent collisions.

  I devised an experiment which proved this to my satisfaction and took my results to Dr. Harvey for checking. He took my data home with him that night intending to read it in bed as was his usual c
ustom, but from that bed he never rose. Death robbed me of my preceptor and Dr. Julius became the head of the Chemistry Department. I took my results to him only to meet with scorn and laughter. Dr. Julius was an able analyst, but he lacked vision and could never see the woods for the trees. The result of my interview with him was that I promptly left Minneconsin, and resolved to carry on my work at another school.

  The problem on which I wished to work was the reduction of the period of vibration of the atoms and of their constituent parts. If my theory of their motion were correct, it should be possible to damp their vibrations and thus collapse matter together and make it occupy a smaller volume in space. I soon found that men like Dr. Harvey were scarce. Not a man at the head of a university department could I find who had the vision to see the possibilities of my work and in a rage I determined to conduct my experiments alone and hidden from the world until I had proved the truth of my theories.