Collected short fiction, p.130
Collected Short Fiction, page 130
The voice of it was louder now. A dull and thunderous roar, sullen with resistless menace. The ground trembled with it. It was the deep-voiced bellow of the monster that was swallowing the planetoid. Of the monster that, held on the leash of conscienceless criminals, menaced every planet in the System.
Helpless to escape the demon’s flaming advance, White shrank before the mighty power of its voice.
CHAPTER IV
The Triumph of White
l Hush of expectancy made almost a physical strain in the atmosphere of the Comet Chamber. In the clear light that gleamed from its lofty ivory-hued walls four men were just gathering about the massive semi-circular table in the middle of its floor.
“The war-rocket Dauntless is just landing, gentlemen,” boomed the Admiral. “I suggested to the President that we meet immediately. We must dispose of this nincompoop White, and take some effective action.”
The dark, bald little President took his seat and sat frowning anxiously at nothing, absently tracing designs on the table with his pudgy forefinger.
“White has returned?” asked the gigantic blond Director.
“He should be aboard the Dauntless,” said the Secretary. “Nine hours ago we had a radio call, asking us to send a war-rocket to Micronia, to pick him up. We sent the Dauntless.”
“It went against my wishes,” muttered the Admiral. “We defied the orders of the thief, in sending it. If we had not promised to support the man, I shouldn’t have permitted it. No telling what will happen—”
“Nothing,” remarked the Secretary, “has yet happened.
“Then you have hope?” demanded the Director, lifting himself from the apathetic posture into which he had sunk.
None!” boomed the Admiral. “The man is an obvious simpleton! What could he have to report but failure?”
“We must not be deceived by what he calls his protective coloration,” smiled the tall gray Secretary, locking his long fingers across his stomach.
White came walking across the great room, five minutes later, his weary face lighted with an unassuming smile. Still he wore nondescript gray. His manner was reserved, unobtrusive, and the four anxious men could read neither despair nor elation in it.
“What have you to say?” the Admiral roared at him before he was half way to the table.
With a deliberation that appeared to annoy that worthy, White came on to the table without speaking, and leaned upon it in an attitude of negligent indifference.
Speak up!” snapped the Admiral.
I am glad to say,” White began, and paused for a slow smile, “that I have recovered the lost document. The System has nothing more to fear from the Electron Flame, unless you are so indiscreet as to let it fall again into the wrong hands.”
“The wave-formulas! Where are they?” demanded the Admiral.
White carelessly tapped a dusty pocket.
“Let’s have the paper!”
The Admiral reached out an eager clutching hand. Deliberately White took a sheet of yellow paper from his pocket, unfolded it and examined it at some length, and then handed it—to the Secretary.
The four men bent excitedly over it, forgetful of White.
“This is it!” cried the Director, with a burst of laughter that was almost hysterical.
“I advise you,” White said when the chorus of explanations had died, “to lock it up very securely and try to forget that it exists.”
The Secretary folded it again, and placed it carefully in an inner pocket, with a glance of something like humor at White.
“We should like to hear,” he said, “where you found it.”
“Who was the thief?” demanded the Admiral. “Does he have any copy—”
“Before I left you, on the occasion of the other interview,” White began, “I was fairly sure of the thief’s identify and of where the paper must be.”
“How?” cried the Secretary. “We had absolutely no clue!”
“You gave me several.” White chuckled softly. “It was a matter of logical inference.
“In the first place, since only the four of you, the unfortunate Andrade and his assistant were present at the first demonstration of the Electron Flame, I at once considered the possibility that one of you might be the criminal.”
The Admiral gasped, speechless.
“I quickly abandoned that idea, however, for two reasons. Being already the most powerful men in the System, you lacked motive. Moreover, since the document was to be given you on the next day, murdering the inventor for it would have been a waste of effort.
“That forced me to the conclusion that the invention must have been known to someone other than the six of you. You took precautions, of course, against being observed by anyone upon the surface of the planet. But, since the demonstration took place out of doors, and must have been fairly spectacular, it might have been observed quite easily, by telescope, from Space.
“Then, since the thief was making his demands through agents on Mars, and since he was threatening to destroy Acestron, it was obvious that he must have remained relatively near. And, at the same time, it was unlikely that he would remain actually on the surface of the planet, because that would limit the range of his annihilation-waves, and because he would wish to avoid the confusion and possible danger that would follow even a relatively harmless demonstration of the Electron Flame.
“But a space ship, hanging off in the void, would certainly have been observed, probably have been destroyed by rocket torpedoes without warning. That would not do.
l “It struck me, then, that one of the satellites of Mars was the answer to my problem. The demonstration in the desert might have been observed from it. And it would furnish the ideal base of operations, enabling the thief to guard approach from all directions, and to menace an entire hemisphere of Mars with his rays of annihilation.
“You remember my questions, as I eliminated three of the four moons of Mars as improbable. Micronia remained, the only one privately owned. Its owner, I knew, might possess an observatory with which he had witnessed the demonstration, a yacht in which to have visited the desert laboratory on the night of the murder, and a radio set that had since served for communication with his agents on the planet.
“Finally, you mentioned Marth as having been connected with Radium of Callisto, Ltd. And that the criminal had forced you to pardon Verlin Starr. I knew, as a result of another investigation, that that corporation had been promoted and looted by a criminal gang, of which she was a member. I was, in fact, indirectly responsible for her arrest and conviction, although on another charge.
“All of which, as you see, pointed to Marth as our man.
“I went to Micronia in a space-shell. The air of alert watchfulness about the place, and the large number of armed men about the grounds pretending to be at work, as well as the radio station, the observatory, and the yacht, convinced me of the correctness of my inference.”
“I suppose you were disguised, Mr. White?” inquired the Secretary.
“I stated that I was cameraman for a television service,” said White. “That would have served to explain my visit had Marth been by any chance innocent. But I was careful not to make it too convincing. Had Marth been certain I was an actual reporter he would not have seen me at all. I let him suspect my identity, but left him doubtful enough so that I gained time while he investigated.”
The Admiral snorted, but in rather a subdued and doubtful manner.
“My cautious reception strengthened my conviction that I had found the thief,” White continued. “And Marth was quite evidently the leader. I was certain he would have the paper about his own person. It was not the sort of thing to be entrusted to a subordinate. And he would have to keep it with him, for his position depended upon the ability to use the Electron Flame at any time.
“Marth had brought me into his presence, so that he himself could inquire into my actual mission, and how much I knew. He was particularly interested in learning how I had found him.
“I discovered him and three of his associates at a game of cards. To hold me while they investigated they offered me refreshment, and made me join the game. I spilled the drink, suspecting that it might have some drug in it.
“Then Marth, certain that I suspected him, presented Verlin Starr, by her own name. I knew then that he did not intend for me to leave Micronia alive.
“I knew that the paper was within a few feet of me, but its actual discovery was a nice problem in psychology. Marth betrayed himself in his discussion of the game, in his distinction between cleverness and intelligence. He made it plain that he was the bold and rather vain type that scorns the conventionally clever, and seeks to go a step beyond. The type who would try to estimate the mentality of his opponent, and prepare a trick just too subtle—or too obvious—for his opponent to penetrate.
“I was prepared to search Marth’s body.”
Smiling reminiscently, White tugged on his steel chain, and pulled out the big gold watch he carried.
“This watch, you notice, is unusually bulky. The reason is that it contains a chamber filled with one of the new odorless anesthetizing gases—one to which I have been made immune by injection. I had only to press the stem of the watch, and every person in the room would have been unconscious in a few seconds—except myself.
“That would have been a crude thing to do, however. The problem of escape, once I left the room, would have been difficult. Fortunately, it was not necessary.
“My attention had immediately fallen upon an old envelope upon which Marth was marking the scores of the game. It had struck me as a little odd that he should use it instead of a prepared scoring pad. Now my reasoning convinced me that he had concealed the document in that envelope, in the belief that it would escape notice through its very conspicuousness.
“He must, of course, have been continually afraid of being searched for the paper, by unsuspected agents of yours, or by traitors among his own men.
“I made an excuse to pick up the envelope, which Marth could not prevent my doing without betraying himself. Opening the envelope slightly with a pressure of my fingers, I saw a yellow paper within.
“The similar paper you had given me I had ready for a quick substitution. I dropped the envelope on the floor, and while picking it up, under cover of the table, I made the change. Marth snatched it from me, angry and alarmed. But finding that it still contained a yellow paper, he did not examine it further.
“Taking certain liberties with the truth, to conceal the fact that I had secured the document, I assured Marth that I had made his hiding place known to others, that it was to be destroyed by bombardment in case of my failure to return with the paper. As I had expected, he left, taking his associates with him in his yacht, the Bright Bird.
“He must have had the wave-frequencies committed to memory after all, must have been preserving the paper merely in case his memory failed. For he started the Electron Flame on the planetoid as the yacht rose, destroying my space-shell. He supposed, of course, that I should perish also.
l “As soon as the Bright Bird was-safely gone I unfolded and examined the paper. It contained, as you know, the precise formula of the wave-combination necessary to check the Electron Flame. As soon as I read it I ran up to Martha’s radio station, a little distance above the house.
“Hastily I retained the abandoned apparatus, to generate the interfering waves. The expanding crater of disintegration had already reached the base of the cliff oh which the station stands when I got it in operation.
“The Electron Flame was instantly extinguished. “Immediately I got in contact with the base here, and asked you to send a war-rocket for me.”
“Then Marth got away?” demanded the alarmed Admiral. “And carried with him the secret of the Flame?”
“He did,” said White. “But he came back. Perhaps he discovered the substitution of the papers. Or perhaps he merely saw the Dauntless coming to take me off. He must have observed that the Electron Flame was extinguished; perhaps that betrayed me.
“The Bright Bird arrived just as the Dauntless was taking me on board. I suppose Marth tried to destroy us with the Electron Flame. But I had left the radio station broadcasting the interfering waves, and if he did so we were not aware of it.
“A single salvo from our rocket-torpedo tubes destroyed the Bright Bird.”
Making curious snorting sounds, the Admiral came vigorously around the table and shook White’s hand.
“You may name your own reward, Mr. White!” cried the Secretary.
“You will receive my bill at the end of the year,” said White.
A vague smile on his gray, tired face, he turned and went silently and unobtrusively out of the Comet Chamber.
THE END.
[*] Note: Satellites of Mars III and IV were discovered in 1976 and 1981, respectively.
The Wand of Doom
A weird-scientific tale of synthetic creation, of ghastly monstrosities and spiders as big as horses
1. The Atavistic Terror
I BELIEVE that Paul Telfair’s unnatural fear of spiders was a dark heritage from the creeping, monstrous forebears of humanity, an atavistic survival from the things that wallowed and devoured one another in the ooze and slime of the primordial mud-flats where life began.
Psychologist have agreed with me that his haunting horror can be explained only as a race-memory of some stark jungle tragedy of the dawn-ages, seared so indelibly into the germ-plasm that it was transmitted to him across the eons—a maddening terror, slumbering in the cells of life through uncounted generations, to wake in the brain of my friend, to consume him, mind and body, with the mordant corrosive of elemental terror.
But if that hideous obsession was indeed a legacy handed down from some crawling monstrosity of the reeking jungle slime, it was certainly a regrettable incident of his own early childhood that wakened it.
The sleeping fear might have slumbered on for untold generations longer, in the unexplored recesses of the germ-plasm, had it not been for the unfortunate happening that roused it, to form my friend’s life to its frightful mold, to make his existence unending nightmare, and to cut off his days at the very pinnacle of ever-mounting horror.
Doctor Paul Telfair and his younger brother, Verne, were friends of mine for many years. I met them first during my student days at Tulane, where their father, the well-known naturalist, was professor of biology. Ancient French Creole blood, I knew, flowed in their veins. But the young men were both fine, modern Americans.
Paul, the elder by a dozen years, was, like his father, reserved and scholarly. His was a rare combination of scientific and artistic genius, marred only by that haunting atavistic inheritance. His ability in electrical research was early recognized with the coveted doctorate. He was an accomplished violinist. A few of his paintings have gained some distinction—fantasies somewhat suggestive of the latter Henri Rousseau, startling with their weird effects of light and color.
As might have been expected, Paul was mild-tempered, retiring, by nature introspective and imaginative. Though his manners were immaculately polished, he was almost diffident except among his very few intimate friends.
Paul never married. Verne told me, once, of his tragic first love. In his late teens he was engaged to a frail, lovely girl, a Miss Elaine LeMar. She became an invalid before the wedding, died within the year.
But I must tell of that other tragedy, in his early youth, that marked the beginning of the fear that dominated his life, of the soul-searing terror that swept him, at last, to unthinkable, inevitable doom. The awakening of the obsessive, atavistic phobia came about as a result of his father’s study of the arachnids.
THE biologist, it appears, specialized in that branch of his science, and had spiders, tarantulas, and scorpions shipped to him at New Orleans from all parts of the world. From earliest infancy, Paul had a strange horror of those hideous creatures. But the phobia would probably have been outgrown—at least to the extent of allowing him to lead a normal life—had not the thing happened that awakened in full the slumbering atavistic fear, burned it indelibly upon his brain.
One night, crossing a dark room, the boy stumbled against a box containing a shipment of living tarantulas, which had just arrived from one of his father’s associates in the Southwest. The box overturned and the cover fell from it, releasing the creatures that stirred in the sensitive boy the fatal fear that was his dark heritage from the fathers of men in the dawn-era jungle-ooze.
He stood there in the darkness, rigid in icy paralysis of fear. He could not run. His throat was dry and constricted, so that he could not even cry out for aid. He was riveted helpless, while the formless, devouring terror from the past wakened in him.
He told me, once, about the occasion. Horror rendered his senses preternaturally acute, he said, so that he could hear distinctly the tiny, scratching, shuffling sounds of the tarantulas’ feet, as they ran about him. In the darkness they were invisible, but he could hear them, and he thought they were attacking him.
The talons of elemental fear, reaching up through dark mists of time, held him unnerved and powerless in their searing embrace. He had collapsed, trembling and shrieking, when his father reached him.
Paul Telfair was able, as he grew older, to banish the atavistic terror from his waking hours. But through the rest of his life, especially when ill or fatigued, he was subject to hideous dreams of gigantic spiders. Verne always slept near him, to waken him from the nightmares, in which he battled haunting fears come down from primal life.
Verne Telfair was nearly my own age. Stocky, powerful, lively, he was far different from the tall, scholarly Paul. Naturally hot-headed and impetuous, fond of social activity, he yet remained sincerely devoted to his brother.
When I left New Orleans in 1923, to take a position in Buenos Aires, the brothers were living together in the old Telfair mansion, Paul absorbed in his experiments and his music, Verne dividing his time between social duties and the care of his more delicate brother.
