Collected short fiction, p.104
Collected Short Fiction, page 104
They were suspicious. They searched me again, to be certain that I had upon my person no means of making a light. And the lanterns were examined very carefully for any means of lighting without matches.
Finally they brought me the lanterns. With my father grasping my arm, I poured the gasoline from them into the engine’s fuel tank. Under any circumstances it would have been difficult to avoid spilling the liquid. I took pains to spill as much as seemed possible without rousing suspicion—contriving to pour a little pool of it under the exhaust, where a spark might ignite the fumes.
Then they made me start the engine. Coils hummed once more; the electron tubes lit. Blackness seemed to pour from the strange central tube, to be reflected into the great copper ring by the wide, polished mirror.
Again, I looked through the vast ring into the Black Dimension!
Before me lay a sky of gloom, of darkness unutterable and unbroken, stagnant, lurid waters, dimly aglow with the luminosity of foul decay; worn black hills, covered with obscene, writhing, reptilian vegetation that glowed vaguely and lividly green. And on one of those hills was the city.
A sprawled smear of red evil, it was, a splash of crimson darkness, of red corruption. It spread over the hill like a many-tentacled monster of dark red mist. Ugly masses rose from it, wart-like knobs and projections—ghastly travesties of minarets and towers.
It was motionless. And within its reeking, fetid scarlet darkness, lurked things of creeping gloom—nameless hordes of things like that unthinkable monstrosity that I had seen flow into Stella’s body. Green-eyed, living horrors of flowing blackness.
The monsters about me howled through the ring, into that black world—calling!
AND soon, through the copper ring, came flowing a river of shapeless, inconceivable horror! Formless monsters of an alien universe. Foul beings of the darkness—spawn of the Black Dimension!
Fearful green eyes were swimming in clotted, creeping masses of evil darkness. They swarmed over the pile of dead things on the floor. And the dead rose to forbidden, nameless life!
Mutilated corpses, and the torn bodies of wolves sprang up, whining, snarling. And the eyes of each were the malevolent, glaring green eyes of the things that had flowed into them.
I was still beside the rhythmically throbbing little engine. As I shrank back in numbed horror from the fearful spectacle of the dead rising to unhallowed life, my eyes fell despairingly upon the little pool of gasoline I had spilled upon the black floor. It was not yet ignited.
I had some fleeting idea of trying to saturate my hand with gasoline and hold it in front of the exhaust, to make of it a living torch. But it was too late for that, and the ruthless, ice-cold fingers still clutched my arm painfully. Then my father whined wolfishly. A creepy, formless, obscene mass of blackness, with twin green orbs in it, glowing with mad, alien fires, left the river of them that poured through the ring and crept across to me.
“Now you become one like us!” came the whining voice.
The thing was coming to flow into my body, to make me its slave, its machine!
I screamed, struggled in the cruel hands that held me. In an insanity of terror, I cursed and pleaded—promised to give the monsters the world. And the creeping blackness came on. I collapsed, drenched with icy sweat, quivering, nauseated with horror.
THEN, as I had prayed it would do, the little engine coughed. A stream of pale red sparks shot from the exhaust. There was a sudden, dull, explosive sound of igniting vapor. A yellow flash lit the black-pillared temple.
A flickering column of blue and yellow flame rose from the pool of gasoline beside the engine.
The things of blackness were consumed by the light—they vanished!
The temple became a bedlam of shrill, agonized howls, of confused, rushing, panic-stricken bodies. The fierce grasp upon my arm was relaxed. My father fell upon the floor, writhing across the room toward the shelter of a black pillar, hiding his green eyes with an arm flung across them.
I saw that the gray wolves had deserted their post beside the articles of mine they had been guarding, at the foot of the massive black column. I left the flickering pillar of fire and dashed across to them.
In a moment my shaking hands had clutched upon one of the powerful electric flashlights. In desperate haste I found the switch and flicked it on. With the intense, dazzling beam, I swept the vast columned hall. The hellish chorus of animal cries of pain rose to a higher pitch. I saw gray wolves and ghastly white men cowering in the shadows of the massive pillars.
I snatched up the other searchlight and turned it on. Then, hastily gathering up pistol, ammunition, matches, and strips of magnesium ribbon, I retreated to a position beside the flaring gasoline.
This time I moved very cautiously, flashing the light before me to avoid stumbling into another bomb of darkness, like that which had been my undoing before. But I think my precaution was useless; I am sure, from what I afterward saw, that only one had been prepared.
AS I got back to the engine, I noticed that it was still running, that the way to the Black Dimension, through the copper ring, was still open. I cut off the fuel, at the carburetor. The little engine coughed, panted, slowed down. The wall of darkness faded from the copper ring, breaking our connection with that hideous world of another interpenetrating universe.
Then I hastily laid the flashlights on the floor, laying them so they cast their broad, bright beams in opposite directions. I fumbled for matches, struck one to the end of a strip of magnesium ribbon, to which I had applied sulphur to make it easier to light.
It burst into sudden blinding, dazzling, white radiance, bright as a miniature sun. I flung it across the great black hall. It outlined a white parabola. Its intense light cut the shadows from behind the ebon pillars.
The cowering, hiding things howled in new agony. They lay on the black floor, trembling, writhing, fearfully contorted. Low, agonized whinings came from them.
Again and again I ignited the thin ribbons of metal and flung them flaming toward the corners of the room, to banish all shadow with their brilliant white fire.
The howling grew weaker, the whines died away. The wolves and the corpse-white men moved no more. Their fierce, twisting struggles of agony were stilled.
When the last strip of magnesium was gone, I drew the automatic, put a bullet through the little engine’s gasoline tank, and lit a match to the thin stream of clear liquid that trickled out. As a new flaring pillar of light rushed upward, I hurried toward the passage that led to the surface, watching for another of those black spheres that erupted darkness.
I found the gasoline lanterns I had left in the tunnel still burning; the monsters had evidently found no way of putting them out.
ON to the surface I ran. I gathered up the six lanterns I had left there—still burning brilliantly in the gathering dusk—and plunged with them back down the passage, into the huge, pillared temple.
The monsters were still inert, unconscious.
I arranged the powerful lanterns about the floor, so placed that every part of the strange temple was brilliantly illuminated. In the penetrating radiance, the monsters lay motionless.
Returning to the surface, I brought one of my full cans of gasoline, and two more of the lighted lanterns. I filled, pumped up, and lit the two lanterns from which I had drawn the gasoline.
Then I went about the black-walled temple, always keeping two lanterns close beside me, and dragged the lax, ice-cold bodies from their crouching postures, turning them so the faces would be toward the light. I found Stella, her lovely body still unharmed, except for its deathly pallor and its strange cold. And then I came upon my father. There was also the mangled thing that had been Judson, and the headless body that had been Blake Jetton, Stella’s father. I gazed at many more lacerated human bodies and at the chill carcasses of wolves, of coyotes, of the gray horse, of a few other animals.
In half an hour, perhaps, the change was complete.
The unearthly chill of that alien life was gone from the bodies. Most of them quickly stiffened—with belated rigor mortis. Even my father was quite evidently dead. His body remained stiff and cold—though the strange chill had departed.
But Stella’s exquisite form grew warm again; the soft flush of life came to it. She breathed and her heart beat slowly.
I carried her up to the old cellar, and laid her on its floor, with two lanterns blazing near her, to prevent any return of that forbidden life, while I finished the ghastly work left for me below.
I NEED not go into details. . . .
But when I had used half my supply of dynamite, no recognizable fragments were left, either of the accursed machine, or of the dead bodies that had been animated with such monstrous life. I planted the other dozen sticks of dynamite beside the great black pillars, and in the walls of the tunnel. . . .
The subterranean hall that I have called a temple will never be entered again.
When that work was done, I carried Stella up to her room, and put her very gently to bed. Through the night I watched her anxiously, keeping a bright light in the room. But there was no sign of what I feared. She slept deeply, but normally, apparently free from any taint of the monstrous life that had possessed her.
Dawn came after a weary night, and there was a rosy gleam upon the snow.
The sleeping girl stirred. Fathomless blue eyes opened, stared into mine. Startled eyes, eager, questioning. Not clouded with dream as when she had awakened before.
“Clovis!” Stella cried, in her natural, softly golden voice. “Clovis, what are you doing here? Where’s Father? Dr. McLaurin?”
“You are all right?” I demanded eagerly. “You are well?”
“Well?” she asked, raising her exquisite head in surprise. “Of course I’m well. What could be the matter with me? Dr. McLaurin is going to try his great experiment to-day. Did you come to help?”
Then I knew—and a great gladness came with the knowledge—that all memory of the horror had been swept from her mind. She recalled nothing that had happened since the eve of the experiment that had brought such a train of terrors.
She looked suddenly past me—at the picture of myself upon the wall. These was a curious expression on her face; she flushed a little, looking very beautiful with heightened color.
“I didn’t give you that picture,” I accused her. I wished to avoid answering any questions, for the time being, about her father or mine, or any experiments.
“I got it from your father,” she confessed.
I HAVE written this narrative in the home of Dr. Friedrichs, the noted New York psychiatrist, who is a close friend of mine. I came to him as soon as Stella and I reached New York, and he has since had me stay at his home, under his constant observation.
He assures me that, within a few weeks, I shall be completely recovered. But sometimes I doubt that I will ever be entirely sane. The horrors of that invasion from another universe are graven too deeply upon my mind. I cannot bear to be alone in darkness, or even in moonlight. And I tremble when I hear the howling of a dog, and hastily seek bright lights and the company of human beings.
I have told Dr. Friedrichs my story, and he believes. It is because of his urging that I have written it down. It is an historical truism, my friend says, that all legend, myth, and folklore has a basis in fact.
And no legends are wider spread than those of lycanthropy. It is remarkable that not only wolves are subjects of these legends, but the most ferocious wild animals of each country. In Scandinavia, for instance, the legends concern bears; on the continent of Europe, wolves; in South America, jaguars; in Asia and Africa, leopards and tigers. It is also remarkable that belief in possession by evil spirits, and belief in vampires, is associated with the widespread belief in werewolves.
Dr. Friedrichs thinks that through some cosmic accident, these monsters of the Black Dimension have been let into our world before; and that those curiously widespread legends and beliefs are folk-memories of horrors visited upon earth when those unthinkable monstrosities stole the bodies of men and of savage beasts, and hunted through the darkness.
Much might be said in support of the theory, but I shall let my experience speak for itself.
Stella comes often to see me, and she is more exquisitely lovely than I had ever realized. My friend assures me that her mind is quite normal. Her lapse of memory is quite natural, he says, since her mind was sleeping while the alien entity ruled her body. And he says there is no possibility that she will be possessed again.
We are planning to be married within a few weeks, as soon as Dr. Friedrichs says that my horror-seared mind is sufficiently healed.
The Moon Era
JACK Williamson has properly been called a first-rate writer of colorful tales. His “Alien Intelligence” published in the early days of SCIENCE WONDER STORIES placed him, in the estimation of our readers, in the class of A. Merrit and other masters. The present story carries on Mr. Williamsons gripping portrayal of the possibilities of science on other worlds.
It is quite within reason that our moon, now dead and barren, was once the scene of flourishing life. Although no water now exists there, nor air shields from the moon the intense solar rays, in another age the moon may have been bountifully endowed by nature. If that is true, then the picture of the Eternal Ones drawn by our author is certainly a colorful portrayal of what the lunar civilization may have been like. And the picture of the Mother, and her exciting and bizarre adventures with our hero, are, in our opinion, among some of the best drawn by any author of science fiction.
WE WERE seated at dinner in the long dining room of my uncle’s Long Island mansion. There was glistening silver plate, and the meal had been served with a formality to which I was unaccustomed. I was ill at ease, though my uncle and I sat alone at the table. The business of eating, without committing an egregious blunder before the several servants, took all my attention.
It was the first time I had ever seen my uncle, Enfield Conway. A tall man, stiffly erect, dressed severely in black. His face, though lean, was not emaciated as is usual at his age of seventy years. His hair, though almost perfectly white, was abundant, parted on the side. His eyes were blue, and strong; he wore no glasses.
A uniformed chauffeur had met me at the station, in the afternoon. The butler had sent an entirely unnecessary valet to my luxurious room. I had not met my uncle until he came down to the dining room.
“I suppose, Stephen, you are wondering why I sent for you,” he said in his precise manner, when the servants had carried away the last course, leaving cigars, and a bottle of mineral water for him.
I nodded. I had been instructor of history in a small high school in Texas, where his telegram had reached me. There had been no explanation; merely a summons to Long Island.
“You are aware that some of my patents have been quite profitable.”
Again I nodded. “The evidence surrounds me.”
“Stephen, my fortune amounts to upwards of three and a half million.
How should you like to be my heir?”
“Why, sir—I should not refuse. I’d like very much to be.”
“You can, if you wish, earn that fortune. And fifty thousand a year while I live.”
I pushed back the chair and rose to my feet in excitement. Such riches were beyond my dreams! I felt myself trembling.
“Anything—” I stammered. “I’ll do anything you say, to earn that! It means—”
“Wait,” he said, looking at me calmly. “You don’t know yet what I require. Don’t commit yourself too soon.”
“What is it?” I asked, in a quivering voice.
“Stephen, I have been working in my private laboratory here for eleven years. I have been building a machine. The best of my brains have gone into that machine. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. The efforts of able engineers and skilled mechanics.
“Now the machine is finished. It is to be tested. The engineers who worked with me ret used to try the machine. They insist that it is very dangerous.
“And I am too old to make the trial. It will take a young man, with strength, endurance, and courage.
“You are young, Stephen. You look vigorous enough. I suppose your health is good? A sound heart? That’s the main thing.”
“I think so,” I told him. “I’ve been coaching the Midland football team. And it isn’t many years since I was playing college football, myself.”
“And you have no dependents?”
“None.—But what is this machine?”
“I will show you. Come.”
He rose, agilely enough for one of his seventy years, and led the way from the room.
Through several magnificent rooms of the big house. Out into the wide, landscaped grounds, beautiful and still in the moon-light.
I followed silently. My brain was confusion. A whirl of mad thought. All this wealth whose evidence surrounded me might be my own! I cared nothing for luxury, for money itself. But the fortune would mean freedom from the thankless toil of pedagogy. Books. Travel. Why I could see with my own eyes the scenes of history’s dramatic moments! Finance research expeditions of my own! Delve with my own hands for the secrets of Egypt’s sands, uncover the age-old enigmas of ruined mounds that once were proud cities of the East!
We approached a rough building,—resembling an airplane hangar,—of galvanized iron, which glistened like silver in the rays of the full moon.
Without speaking, Uncle Enfield produced a key from his pocket, unlocked the heavy padlock on the door. He entered the building, switching on electric lights inside it.
“Come in,” he said. “Here it is. I’ll explain it as well as I can.”
I WALKED through the narrow doorway and uttered an involuntary exclamation of surprise at sight of the huge machine that rested upon the clean concrete floor.
Two huge disks of copper, with a cylinder of bright, chromium-plated metal between them. Its shape vaguely suggested that of an ordinary spool of adhesive plaster, from which a little has been used—the polished cylinder, which was of smaller diameter than the disks, took the place of the roll of plaster.
