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

by Edited By Isaac Asimov

  I doubt whether any of the council had ever believed the story I told of my origin, although they had never said so. It is never safe to dispute the word of those in high authority. When I soberly offered to increase my size and get them guns and ammunition, they shook their heads and began to wonder. I took them up on the wall and showed them what a rifle would do to the Mena and any opposition to my going vanished. Highly elated, I refilled my batteries with the electrolyte I had drawn years before and got ready for the trip. I soon found that I had reckoned without Awlo. My Princess flatly refused to be separated from me.

  For a while I was baffled but Awlo herself suggested a solution of the problem she had raised.

  “Why can’t I go with you, Courtney?” she asked. “If we come back safely, the trip will be an interesting one and if we do not return, at least we will be together.”

  The idea had merit and I presented it to Kalu. He didn’t like Awlo to leave him, but he gave consent at last on my solemn promise to come back with her. I knew that some of the work up here would be rather heavy and I asked for a volunteer to accompany me. To my surprise, Lamu asked to go. I was glad of his company but I didn’t want both the head of the army and the second in command to leave at once. He insisted and pointed out that the danger of the trip should be shared by the two highest ranking men in the army and I gave way and consented.

  The adjuster was carried to the palace roof and I made a few adjustments to increase the speed of its action so that it wouldn’t crush the whole city beneath its weight before the base expanded enough to get a wider support At last everything was ready and the three of us crowded in and with final farewells to all I closed the switch.

  I had set the machine to work faster than I realized and before I could open the switch we were twelve feet tall. I threw it back into slow speed and reduced our size until the indicator showed that I was my normal six feet and we stepped out into a new world to Awlo and Lamu and almost a new one to me.

  We went into my shack and looked it over. Nothing had been disturbed and no one had been there, so there was no reason why Awlo couldn’t stay there safely while Lamu and I trekked into Beatty and I got in touch with my bankers and arranged to buy the munitions that I wanted. We talked it over and Awlo wanted to come. There was no real reason why she couldn’t come and indeed make a trip to New York with me if she wished, so I agreed to her coming. Lamu suggested that it might be a good idea for me to teach him how to operate the adjuster so that, in case we found it advisable to send the stuff down in several loads, he could take it down and return and thus avoid separating Awlo and me. The thought was a good one so I set the machine on slow speed and soon taught him the simple manipulation. He caught on readily and manipulated it several times to quite a small size and then professed himself satisfied with his ability. I wish that I could have seen what was in the black villain’s heart!

  The next morning I was in the cabin making up packs for us to carry on our hike to Beatty when I was alarmed by Awlo outside. I dropped everything and rushed out at top speed. For a moment I didn’t see either her or Lamu and then I heard a low faint wail in her voice. I looked in the direction from which it came and saw the adjuster. It was less than one-tenth the size it should have been and I realized that it was shrinking. I sprinted toward it hoping to reach the switch and reverse the action, but I was too late. On my hands and knees I dropped and stared into it. Lamu had my Princess captive and his hand was on the switch. He stopped the action for a minute but the thing was already so small that I could not get my finger between the side bars had I tried and I was afraid of wrecking it. Stooping closer, I heard their tiny voices.

  “Courtney Siba Tam,” cried Lamu with triumph in his voice, “he laughs best who laughs last as I have heard you say. You robbed me of my kingdom once but when we return and tell them how you planned to desert Ulm in her hour of need and to steal away her Princess, I shall win back all I have lost For years I have planned to thwart you in your ambition and for that reason I throttled my impulses and seemed your friend. Say farewell to Awlo for this is your last glimpse of her.”

  “Awlo,” I cried in a whisper, “can’t you free yourself?”

  “No, Courtney,” came back her tiny voice, “he is too strong for me and I dare not struggle. Come after me, Courtney! Rescue me from this dog who is worse than the Mena from whom you saved me once. I will watch for you, Courtney!” Thus I heard her voice for the last time and responded.

  “I’ll be after you as soon as I can, my darling,” I cried. “As for you, Lamu Siba, the game is not played out yet. When I return, your heart’s blood will pay for this!”

  “Ah, yes, Courtney Siba Tam,” came his mocking voice, “when you return.”

  He turned again to the switch and the adjuster carrying with it all that is dear in life to me disappeared.

  I don’t remember much about the next few days. Somehow, I made my way to Beatty and established my identity. I made the wires hum to San Francisco, ordering the materials I needed to construct a duplicate of my adjuster. Nor did I forget my people. I ordered the guns and ammunition which I wanted shipped in with the rest of my stuff. It seemed to take forever to get to my valley, but at last it came and I have worked almost day and night since. This afternoon I finished my apparatus and moved it over to the spot where the other had stood and in the morning I will leave this plane and try to take my guns and ammunition to Ulm.

  I hope to land in Ulm but I am not at all sure that I will do so. I marked the place where my former machine stood but I may have easily missed placing my new model over the old one. If I have missed setting the center point where it should be by even a fraction of an inch I may come down in Ulm miles from the city. I may even come down into a strange world far from my empire and with no knowledge of which way to go. I have done my best and time alone will tell how well I have done. One thing I know. No matter what Lamu may have done or said, Awlo is still waiting for me and she is still true to me. I have my rifle and plenty of ammunition and even though the whole Mena race block my path, some way I will fight my way through them and once more hold my Princess in my arms.

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  * * * *

  AWLO OF ULM

  by Cap. S. P. Meek

  When I allowed my manuscript, “Submicroscopic,” to be published, I had no intention of telling to the world the balance of my adventures. Frankly, I did not expect to be believed. The events of which I told were so fantastic, so contrary to the ordinary experiences and preconceived notions of men of this plane of existence, that I expected the story to be passed off as an idle tale, told only to amuse. The editor of Amazing Stories was kind enough to forward to me a number of comments received. When I read them over I found, to my astonishment, that there were a small number of discerning thinkers who realized that my story was one of actual facts. Most of them expressed regret that the end of the story was, so they thought, a sealed book to them. It is to this select group, who I feel are my friends, that this story is addressed. The interest they have shown in my welfare and in that of my beloved princess is so heartfelt that I feel that I can do no less than publish for their benefit the extraordinary events which followed that seemingly endless night in my hidden Nevada valley before I started in pursuit of Awlo and her abductor.

  Impatiently I watched the sun rise over the Timpahutes. The sunrise is a little later in Ulm than in this plane because of the height of the mountain (grains of sand!) which surround the empire. I judged it best to wait for broad daylight before I plunged into what might easily be the unknown. I had set my electronic vibration adjuster as nearly as possible over the spot where Lamu and my princess had disappeared but I know that a distance which could not be detected under the microscope in this plane might be miles in Ulm and I had little hope of landing in the beleaguered city.

  At last I felt that the time had come. I entered my newly completed adjuster, closed the switch and was on my way. Rapidly the scenery grew to Brobdingnagian proportion
s and then disappeared as it grew too large for my eyes to see or my mind to comprehend. I watched the indicator dial as the needle crept toward infinity. Presently its motion ceased and the high whine of my generators became audible. The note ran down the scale of audibility and subsided into silence. I looked out from my adjuster and my heart sank. The landscape resembled not in the least the scenery around Ulm. There was no doubt that I had missed my goal by many miles.

  My first inclination was to increase my size and move the adjuster but a sober second thought made me realize the futility of such an action. I had set the machine as nearly as I could over the spot where Ulm lay and any change I made would be just as likely to be away from the city as toward it. The only thing to do was to set out on my travels in the hope that I would meet some one, even were it one of the hostile Mena, who could give me some idea of the direction in which to travel. I slung a couple of extra bandoliers of ammunition over my shoulders, picked up my rifle and stepped out of the adjuster. A second thought made me pause. I retraced my steps and opened an arm locker. From it I took two small-caliber .32, automatic pistols, which I placed in shoulder holsters under my shirt. The little guns held six rounds each and while they were small, they carried hollow point bullets which would have a deadly effect at short range. With my armament thus reenforced, I was ready to start my travels.

  The country in which I found myself was wild beyond description. In place of the dense semi-tropical vegetation which I had been accustomed to associate with my submicroscopic empire, there was nothing but rock, bare rugged rock. Huge masses of stone, hundreds and even thousands of feet high, lay piled one on another as though a race of giants had tossed them about in sport, recking little of where they fell. There was none of the solidity and symmetry which marks the mountains of the larger plane. Many of the stones seemed to be precariously balanced and even where they were wedged together, the effect was one of insecurity. I shuddered and caught myself afraid to stir lest even my tiny weight would start one of the masses of rock into motion and engulf me and all my possessions in cataclysmic ruin. I walked in a gingerly fashion over to one of the unstable appearing masses of rock and rested my hand against it. It was solid to the touch and I pressed, gently at first, and then with all my strength, trying in vain to budge the mass which must have weighed thousands of tons, if my own negligible weight be taken as being its normal one hundred and eighty pounds. Satisfied that it was beyond my strength to move it, I felt safer, and began to consider in which direction I should start my travels.

  I racked my brain for a clue. Somewhere in memory’s vaults there was an elusive something that this jumbled phantasmagoria of rock reminded me of. Suddenly I remembered it.

  In the days when I had been hailed as the Crown Prince of Ulm, the husband of its ruler’s only child, I had been much interested in the ancient legends which told the history of the empire. Ulm had no written language and no records to which I could refer other than the traditions and legends which had been handed down from father to son. These legends were preserved in metrical form. The learning and reciting of them on occasion was the principal duty of the class of persons known as tamaaini, [Compare the Hawaiian word, “kamaaini,” an old inhabitant.] generally elderly men who were not of the noble class, but who, because of their profession, had an entree to the court and many of the privileges of nobility. Some of them had marvelous memories and could repeat without faltering thousands after thousands of lines of the old legends. It was from them that I learned that the Mena had originally come down from the north through the barren passes in the mighty mountains which border Ulm on all sides. I had never been able to gather much information as to derivation of the people of Ulm themselves. It seemed that so far as the tamaaini knew, they had always lived in their present location. There were, however, here and there in the legends dim and little understood references to other places and it was one of these passages that I strove to recall. Suddenly, like a flash, the long forgotten tale came to my mind.

  It told of the flight of the natural son of a ruler of Ulm who had tried to wrest the throne from his legitimate half-brother, after his father’s death, and it described his own defeat and death. The victor pursued him with a handful of guards and caught him in a place where “giants played as children, tossing mountains hand to hand.” There they encountered a race of kahumas or wizards who flew through the air like birds and who shot fire from their many hands. They could “kill from afar with fire” and they allowed no one who entered their land to return. Evidently, at least one of the party returned to Ulm with the record of the attempted usurper’s death, which the legend goes on to detail at great length. The passage had always interested me, for it seemed to hint at a higher civilization than was possessed by the brave and chivalrous warriors of Ulm.

  * * * *

  I looked about me and I did not blame the fancy of the ancient bard who had laid the condition of the landscape to the gambols of giants or to the evil machinations of wizards. Certainly his description was an apt one. The forbidden land lay, according to the legend, “toward the setting sun.” If the tale were true and if I were looking on the scene of that ancient tragedy, Ulm should lie to the east and not more than a few days’ journey away. It was a pretty slender clue but it was the only one I had. Without it I had no idea of which direction to take, so I decided to trust to the accuracy and authenticity of a legend of unknown antiquity and make my way eastward.

  My first step was to fix the landscape in my mind and to take bearings with my marching compass on the most prominent points of the scenery. If I found my way back to Ulm my entire labor and travail would be lost unless I were able to return to the adjuster and its precious load of weapons. Three huge peaks dominated the scene to the north and they stood so that the farther one lay exactly in the middle of the interval between the two nearer ones. The bearing of the farther peak was a quarter point west of magnetic north. Exactly south east was another peak with a peculiar cleft near its summit. A short study enabled me to fix the location of the adjuster so firmly in my mind that I was certain that I could find the place again. With a final look around, I shouldered my rifle, set my face to the east and set out.

  Despite the ruggedness of the country I was able, by the aid of my marching compass, to keep going in the general direction of east pretty well although I had to make several lengthy detours around masses of rock. For several hours I pushed on and found the country gradually getting a little less rugged. There were no signs of animal life but once in a while I came across a tuft of vegetation resembling the bunch grass so common in some parts of the West.

  As the sun got higher it grew intolerably hot and I began to regret that I had loaded myself so heavily with food and especially ammunition and had brought only two quarts of water. It was too late to retrace my steps, so I husbanded my water as carefully as possible and kept going. Before noon the heat got so bad that I began to look for a place where I could find a little shelter.

  Ahead of me I spied what looked like a cave in the rock and I pressed forward to investigate it. It was not a true cave but it was a fair imitation of one made by two huge masses of rock leaning against one another. I had no idea how far into the rock the cavity extended but it was cool in the shade and I discarded my pack with a sigh of relief. I also unslung the heavy bandoliers of ammunition which I carried and leaned my rifle against the wall of the cavern. According to my pedometer, I had covered about ten miles. I secured a pencil and notebook from my pack and stepped to the mouth of the cavern to sight the directions of the peaks by which I had marked my landing.

  I located them without any trouble and was engaged in trying to locate myself by a process of triangulation on a crude map which I had made of my morning’s journey when an unfamiliar sound brought me up with a start. I listened intently and the sound faded for a moment only to increase in volume. I puzzled my brains as to what was causing it. It was a dull humming sound and the only thing it reminded me of was the whirling of an a
irplane propeller, a patent impossibility in Ulm.

  The sound came nearer and I started back to the cave and took up my rifle when the cause of the noise came in sight. My flyer’s ears had not misled me. Flying along at a moderate speed about a thousand feet above my level was an airplane. It was not of the conventional pattern with which I was familiar although it bore certain resemblance to the planes I had flown. The main difference was in the size and shape of the wings. Instead of the usual rectangular wing spread on each side of the fuselage, this machine had a single heart-shaped wing mounted above the fuselage with the point of the heart to the rear. Above the wing was a crisscross network of wires which reminded me of an aerial.

  The passenger car was long and cigar-shaped although it did not extend backward much beyond the point of the heart. The sides were pierced with windows which were glazed with glass or some other transparent material through which I fancied I could see figures moving, although the distance was too great for me to be sure.