New Title 1

by Campbell, J R

  In his biography of Challenger, Man of Two Worlds, Edward Malone writes, “As with all of my dear friend's adventures, I chronicled the Professor’s exploration of the Spirit World; but rather than lay before my readers the facts of what occurred that year, I chose instead to give them a rather embarrassing piece of fiction called The Land of Mist. As a newspaperman I can now do nothing greater than set the record straight, to rectify my error in sound judgment, and to make an attempt to regain my journalistic integrity. With this in mind, and with a sincere desire to restore my readers’ trust, I now lay before you the complete and unadorned truth of what really happened that fateful year of 1926. (--Edward D. Malone, London, May 3, 1956)”

  Following is a dramatization of Malone's “unadorned truth.” I have supplemented my story with additional research culled from the newspaperman's many articles, unpublished notes, and letters; allowing the reader to “relive” Challenger’s darkest hour, his weirdest adventure, and the dreadful consequences which followed.]

  London, 1926: Edward Malone walked past the row of gigantic batteries needed to power Challenger’s latest experiment, and stopped in front of the dais supporting the portal, through which, he would shortly follow the Professor. The device looked like a huge silver ring, eight feet in diameter and studded with a hundred electrodes connecting it to a wall of instruments, which in turn were dotted with dozens of knobs, switches and dials.

  “Incredible, wouldn’t you say, Malone?” asked Challenger, who had just completed his final inspection of the portal and was stepping down from the dais to greet his old friend. “A mechanism capable of disassembling matter into an invisible cloud of atoms and then returning it to its original molecular condition. Theodore Nemor was a genius!”

  Malone shook his head. “I still can’t believe,” he said gravely, “that you actually used this technology to send the poor man into utter oblivion.”

  “ Not correct, my dear fellow. When I used the machine on its inventor, there was no directional device incorporated into the mechanism. I assure you, I sent that evil Latvian scientist absolutely nowhere. In fact, he’s still swarming about,” Challenger said, glancing around the laboratory melodramatically, “while existing as a collection of disassociated molecules.”

  “‘Nowhere’ is exactly how I define the word oblivion.” “The man was a menace to society,” said Challenger. “But you cannot set yourself up as judge and jury.”

  “ You heard what he was planning to do, Malone. But we couldn’t very well bring him to justice until he actually committed the crime. Were we to simply wait for him to disintegrate entire cites, annihilating millions of innocent people. No, Malone. I prevented a madman from destroying the world---by temporarily dissolving his body---and then I converted his weapon into a teleportation device.”

  Challenger went to the portal’s main control switch. “Besides,” he said, “perhaps someday I’ll reassemble that myopic miscreant---just to have someone with whom I can enjoy a truly stimulating scientific conversation. Despite his malevolence, Nemor had a magnificent brain.”

  “Well, Professor, I shan’t be telling the story of The Disintegration Machine until you do bring him back. In my eyes, you’ll always be a hero to science. But in light of some of your actions I’m not sure if all my readers would agree.”

  “ As you wish, Malone,” said Challenger, wrapping a huge hand around the main control switch.“Journalism is your arena, not mine. Are you ready, sir?”

  “What about our food and water?” “According to Monty, we’ll have no need for such things where we’re going.” Challenger threw the lever, and the portal began to glow and hum. “I’ve set the timer for the return trip,” he said. “What a shame Monty couldn’t make this one.”

  The two men mounted the dais and stood before the portal. Malone took a deep breath. “Professor, are you absolutely sure about this? I may not be the bravest of men, but I’m certainly no coward. I’ve never shrank from an opportunity for adventure. And yet, I must confess, I’m extremely apprehensive about what we’ll find.”

  “ There’s no danger where we’re going, Malone. Besides,” Challenger laughed, “Think of the story you’ll get for that old rag of yours!” He held up an index finger, and cried heartily, “For science, Malone! To help dispel the darkness of ignorance!”

  They stepped through the polished steel ring and vanished in a blinding flash of light, leaving behind them a bank of instruments that exploded in a shower of sparks and thick black smoke. Above the machinery, four incandescent lamps manufactured by Company simultaneously burst, plunging the laboratory into blackness; and throughout the darkened warehouse the temperature instantly dropped ten degrees.

  *** Professor Challenger sat waiting in a small room on Regent Street. The door had been locked, and there was little to do but gaze out the room’s single window which overlooked Piccadilly Circus. The junction was surprisingly devoid of people for an August afternoon, but there was, however, an unseasonable chill in the air, and a heavy fog had crept down Shaftesbury Avenue and now all but covered the great fountain below. Through the murk, Challenger could still see winged Anteros, with his bow drawn, rising from the mist like an angel in the clouds, preparing to face some unseen foe. Above the bronze figure the cloudless London sky was the dull colour of graphite.

  A little old bearded man in a grey suit and top hat quickly entered the room. “You see what is happening to our world outside. Good.” He wore spectacles and spoke with an accent, perhaps Bavarian. “I am Doctor Josef Steiner,” he said, removing his hat. “Thank you for coming on such short notice, Professor.”

  “ I had little choice in the matter. I was in the middle of a lecture when your people hurried me to a cab and brought me here. What exactly do you wish, sir?”

  dozen of the finest the General Electric

  “ Professor Challenger,” he said excitedly, “surely you have noticed that each day the sky grows darker. Our astronomers report that our sun shines as brightly as ever, and the amount of heat and light reaching the earth is undiminished. And yet, all across Europe our cities lie in gloom at midday. Each day the temperature continues to drop. So, I ask you, ‘Where is the light? Where is the heat?’ I ask you, ‘Where does it go?’”

  “Doctor Steiner, why have you brought me here? Why not consult my father? I’m sure he can find the answers you need.” “ Ah, Miss Challenger, that is my biggest problem. Your father disappeared two weeks ago! Poof! Gone! Not a trace! And that is when, almost from the moment he departed, that these strange phenomena began.”

  “Perhaps he’s left England for the Continent.” “ My dear lady,” said Steiner, gravely, “we believe Challenger has left the planet. Where and how, this we must learn

  --and soon! We believe your father’s experiments have upset the delicate balance of our world. We must find him, have him reverse whatever it is he’s done, before it’s too late.”

  Enid Challenger removed her hat and a cascade of ravenblack locks fell about her shoulders. She ran her fingers through her hair and sighed in exasperation. It was just like her father, she thought, to desert everyone during a time of crisis.

  “Professor Challenger, do you have any idea as to what your father was working on?” “ I am afraid I haven’t communicated with my father for some time now. We don’t exactly see eye to eye on certain important matters.”

  “ We located an abandoned laboratory in a converted warehouse alongside the Thames River,” Steiner said, pacing the room. “It appears your father had constructed some elaborate machinery of a design we’ve never before seen. Our people also found Challenger’s notes.” He handed her a battered tan journal with stained pages and dog-eared corners. “Totally indecipherable!”

  “ I know my father’s handwriting can be quite illegible, but I seriously doubt--” She turned several pages andcouldn’t help smiling. “This is written in the language of the Cucama Indians. My father was studying the language around the time that he discovered the Lost
World.”

  “Dear God! Such secrecy, such pretension! Does anyone else know this language?”

  “My father used to drill me in it.”

  “Then you can translate it! Now we are getting somewhere!” “It will take time, though.” “ Time is not a commodity we have, my lady. With each passing day the temperature drops several more degrees. A few days, perhaps, but no longer.”

  “Then I‘ll start immediately.”

  “We also found this telegram folded in the pages of Challenger’s journal. It was sent fifteen days ago.”

  To: G E Challenger. Sorry cannot be present for Great Experiment. Would not miss it for world but must attend urgent Church matter. See you upon your return.

  Montague Summers

  “Do you know anything about this man Summers?” asked Enid. “I don’t recall my father ever mentioning his name.” “He is a Catholic priest with a reputation for investigating the occult.”

  “I’ll want to speak to him. Can you locate him for me?” “We already have, dear lady,” said Steiner. “We already have.”

  *** The Reverend Montague Summers was an imposing figure, a huge, rather intimidating man with a cupid face and owlish eyes. He had a reputation for being outrageously eccentric, and with his carefully curled locks, shovel hat and sweeping cassock, he appeared to have just stepped out of an Elizabethan drama. But if her father had found sufficient common ground to form such a close friendship with the cleric, Enid realized that a quick and capable mind must surely repose behind the cherub features. Perhaps in some ways, Summers was to religion what her father was to science. And physically, if Challenger did indeed resemble “a Neanderthal in a lounge suit,” as one critic had written, then Summers certainly looked like a gargoyle in a frock coat.

  Enid sat down next to the priest and tossed her father ’s leather journal on the conference table. “Nemor had intended on selling his technology to the highest bidder,” she said, “and the disintegrator almost ended up in the hands of the Russian government. My father felt the device had far greater application than use as the ultimate weapon. If the disintegrator could render a person or object into a swarming mass of particles, then why couldn’t that mass of particles be hurled to another location, and then reassembled there? Linking all the countries of the world and solving transportation problems for at least the next few decades.”

  “And Professor Challenger found a most unique way to test his theory,” said Steiner, seated at the far end of the table. “ Well, gentlemen,”said Enid, “by now you surely must know my father’s rather peculiar proclivities. He’s been around the globe several times, and seen just about everything there is to see on this planet. So thereweren’t too many places he cared to go.” She turned to Summers.

  “ George had become fascinated with the supernatural,” said the priest, folding his hands on the table.“We all know that there are certain sound frequencies which are inaudible to the human ear; and frequencies of light which we are unable to see. George and I share a theory that the spirit realm is simply another dimension coexisting with our own, physical world. It remains invisible to us, and hence---for most of us---goes completely undetected, because it operates at a much different frequency.

  “ It’s quite possible,” Summers continued,“that the molecular structures of angels and demons vibrate at a much greater speed, rendering them invisible in our world. Perhaps spirit beings move like lightning, quick as a wink. Of course, speed is measured against time, and we all know that God exists outside of time.”

  Summers stopped abruptly, scanning the blank faces of those seated around him. “That would certainly explain,” he said hesitantly, “why Saint Peter wrote that ‘with the Lord, one day is as a thousand years.’”

  Enid nodded. “Please go on, Father.” “ George reasoned that if Nemor’s device could create a swarm of fast moving molecules, by speeding up the vibratory state of a man’s physical body at the atomic level, then why couldn’t he match the speed to that of the angels? Whycouldn’t we fire that molecular swarm into the heart of the Spirit World?”

  Lord John Roxton, seated opposite the priest, folded his darkly tanned, muscular arms, and whistled shrilly, prompting Enid to give her father’s old friend a reproachful stare.

  “I was to accompany George and Ned on their first trip,” said Summers. “I regret missing it.”

  “Malone accompanied my father?” asked Enid. “I thought Ned was on foreign assignment for the Gazette.”

  Roxton chuckled. “Extremely foreign, I’d say.” “ Well, I feel a little better knowing he went,”she said. “Ned’s pretty level-headed. He’s often managed to buffer some of the worse effects of my father’s eccentricities.”

  “ Not this time, obviously,” said Steiner. “As I said, people, when Challenger entered this other world, he somehow created an inter-dimensional imbalance. And now, the world’s energy supply is being drained off. This other dimension seems to be literally sucking our planet dry of both heat and light.”

  “ My father's equipment blew out after he and Malone passed through the portal,” said Enid. “No doubt the energy drain started the instant they crossed over. Doctor Steiner’s people have effected repairs to the equipment and constructed a generator that should hold up to the strain of another trip into this ... spirit world. Will you gentlemen accompany me through the portal?”

  “ Now wait a minute,” said Roxton. “Assumin’ I believe this wild yarn, and it’s indeed a cracker, finding Ned and the Professor in the spirit world could be like locatin’ a proverbial needle in a haystack.”

  “I don’ t think so,” said Enid. “If the earth’s energy is flowing into another dimension, then we should be swept along with the current to the heart of the disturbance. And if my father did create the imbalance, then we’ll find him at the heart of that disturbance.”

  “Madam,” said Summers, “I am at your service.” “ Just a moment, Padre,” said Roxton. “We have no idea what we’ll encounter on the other side. This is no mission for a man of the cloth, or, I dare say, a young lady.”

  “ Lord John,” said Enid, “this ‘young lady’ will be leading this expedition, and she will decide who goes. If we’re truly facing the supernatural, then Father Summers will be more qualified to go than any of us. Doctor Steiner will also be invalu---.”

  “ Alas, my dear lady,” interrupted Steiner, “I must leave such adventures in the hands of those stronger and more capable. But I eagerly await your successful return.”

  Roxton leaned forward. “Well, I wouldn’t miss this trip for anything. However, I doubt conventional firearms will be of much use where we’re goin’ and I don’t intend to enter any uncharted territory unarmed. Any more bright ideas?”

  “Trust me, Lord Roxton,”said Summers, “we’ll need no guns in the spirit world.” “ I anticipated your request, Lord John,” said Enid. “And I will feel much more comfortable having a skilled and well-armed hunter at my side. We don’t know yet why my father hasn’t returned. Either he can’t find his way back home, or he’s injured and unable to return. If the latter....” She pushed a schematic across the table to Roxton. “This gun design is basically a portable version of Nemor’s original disintegrator. At my request, Steiner’s engineers are currently constructing four of these. They should be ready in another hour or two.”

  *** As they sat waiting in her father ’s laboratory, Roxton whispered to Enid, “You’re the last person I’d expect to go searchin’ for your father. Glad to see you takin’ an interest in his welfare again.”

  “I never stopped taking an interest,” she said.

  “Strange. As I recollect you haven’t spoken to the Professor in over a year. Not since your mother--”

  “As I told Doctor Steiner, my father and I don’t see eye to eye on certain issues.”

  “That’s hardly an excuse, child! Your father loves you dearly. It’s pained him to see you act this way.” “ Lord John,” she said harshly, “I do not intend to sit h
ere and be lectured by you. You have no idea what it was like growing up in my house. My father was rarely ever at home---he was always off somewhere saving the world. And when he was at home, he insisted on spending whatever time we had together cramming my head full of the most arcane facts---like that nearly dead Indian language.”

  “Which came in mighty handy recently.” “ Nice try, Lord John. But it doesn’t change the fact that I grew up not knowing where my father was half the time, or when he’d be coming home,” Enid huffed. “And it appears that things haven’t changed a bit.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Roxton. “Are you up for this?” “ Of course I am. The fate of the world may depend on locating my father, and I’ve never let my emotions get in the way of what needs to be done.”

  A stocky young man approached them and extended something that resembled an elephant gun tightly wrapped in a copper coil, and with a cone-shaped lens at the end of the barrel. Roxton hefted the piece and smiled. “This’ll do nicely. Where are the other three?”