Collected short fiction, p.254
Collected Short Fiction, page 254
The Great Illusion
In this story, the First of the five authors, was asked to write the Last part of the story; the second author, to write the fourth installment; and so on. John Russell Fearn started (or rather ended) the story, leaving to be explained a number of mysteries. Raymond Z. Gallun, who was next, remarked, after completing his job, “The backside foremost yarn was pretty badly screwed up before, an I imagine it’s worse now.” Next, Edmond Hamilton, said, “I will give a prize of $1000 to anyone who can tell me what the other two parts of this story are about. And I will give a prize of $10,000 to anyone who can tell me what my part is about. The thing looks like the screwiest story in the history of science fiction.” Jack Williamson, who followed, briefly commented, “In my opinion, this would be a very interesting story if one knew precisely what it is all about.” Finally, Eando Binder completing (or starting) the story, remarked. “I’ve done my best to carry the yarn on, or back, as screwily as possible, following the example of the others, and I’m sure I’ve done no less than the others in making it completely inexplicable. Maybe with a little more thought I could have made it Utterly impossible for the reader to understand, but I think as it stands now it’s safe from ever being unraveled.” Despite the above comments, we believe the five authors have done a remarkable job. To fully appreciate their difficulties, we suggest you first read the story as it was written—backwards. Then re-read it in the normal manner, and marvel at its coherence and smoothness!
[1]The greatest experiment in human history was about to begin!
Four men stood in the metal-lined cabin of the space-ship, their combined attention centered on Berringer’s apparatus riveted to one wall. Korth, tall and solemn, stared with a sneer on his hawk-like face. Bradley and Forijay, far younger that, the other two, gazed with hypnotic fascination, their faces pale with a deep-rooted fear.
Berringer reached a hand toward the mechanism’s only lever. Bradley jerked forward, clutched his arm in panic. Berringer turned in impatient surprise.
“Wait—just one minute!” pleaded Bradley. “Before w-e go ahead with this, explain it all again. After all, there may be no return, and—”
“No return!” repeated Berringer. with emphasis. “Get that, Korth—no return!”
“Bah!” snapped the physicist. “The whole thing is a farce. There will be no return because there will be no start. Go through that mumbo-jumbo about illusion again, Berringer, for their benefit. They are scared, but they have no reason to be. Bah. again, Berringer!”
The savant deliberately turned his thin, wasted form away from the skeptical acid-tongued Korth and addressed himself to his two young assistants of the past two years.
“Boys, listen carefully, for this is the last time I will explain it—we go. You remember the electrical experiment we performed two years ago which proved that electricity is life, pure and completely. You remember how by establishing communication of sorts with this basic life-essence, we learned many things—incredible things! For the Blue Beings who can live in any environment, even that of airless space, revealed that all human thought is illusion! Every theory and conception ever performed by the human mind is self-delusion!”
Berringer went on, despite another disgusted “Bah!” from Korth. “For instance, our mathematics, by which we formulate laws about the universe, are limited between zero and infinity, which are but ciphers in the greater and truer mathematics. Then our five senses are so inconceivably inaccurate, and cover a pitifully small range of perception. With these limitations, it is no wonder that we cannot realize that there are no stars, no vacuum, nor anything we think we know of! Yet the Blue Beings of electricity have shown us that.”
“The machine!” muttered Bradley hoarsely. “That shaft which pierces to alien dimensions—”
“Fool!” spat out Korth. “A Big Fool to believe in that!”
Berringer ignored this bitter thrust, spoke. “My two years of daily contact with the Blue Beings finally gave me a glimmering of the Great Truth. Cave me a slight idea of the Great All that is behind this gigantic illusion of life, space, energy and all the other droolings we humans call ‘science.’ I was able, then, to build this apparatus. Simply stated, it pours its 200,000 volts into what we call a vacuum and rip it aside like a veil, to reveal beyond the ultra-dimensional shaft that leads to—to the Real Universe. It’s like going through a mirror and finding reality there!”
“So Alice said to the Mad-Hatter, please, sir, can I have a puff on your opium pipe?” mocked Korth.
“As for you,” said Berringer coolly, facing the leering physicist, “remember five minutes from now that I said year great Einstein is like a drunk who sees double and imagines pink elephants in between.”
“One more thing,” whispered Bradley. This shaft to the—the Beyond—it is navigable by a space-ship, you’re sure?”
At the savant’s firm “yes.” the two young men looked at each other in evident relief. Berringer’s weak old eyes flamed suddenly. “Navigable, yes.” he went on, “but only one way! For when you reach the end, you are again at the beginning, yet it is not circular!”
“And when we reach the end, we are once again at the beginning, and therefore back in the laboratory?” asked Forijay eagerly.
“Which comes first the chicken or the egg?” sang Korth scornfully. “And where does the rooster come in?”
Berringer patted the handle of the machine reflectively before answering Forijay. Then he said, emotionlessly, “I told you from the start there was no return! ‘End’ and ‘beginning’ are human conceptions, like zero and infinity. There is no end or beginning in this shaft!”
Bradley sucked in his breath sharply, while Forijay grew paler than he was. Korth. mocked! the whale thing with a nasal chant about the Man with Two Minds, Neither of Which Existed.
“But enough of this chatter,” barked Berringer. His thin, sharp face grew livid with a driving purposefullness. “You, Bradley and Forijay, asked to come along—pledged yourselves, in fact I told you it was slow suicide, but I see you disbelieved that You cast aside a chance to remain and become famous, even though that is illusion with all the rest of human endeavor. You elected to plumb with me cosmos’ depths —the real cosmos—and even that is an illusion! Korth is here to observe the Outer phenomena as a learned savant, and he, too, will perceive that all is illusion!”
“Not to mention the illusion that you have.” Korth winked at the two younger men. “I mean the illusion that you did not turn utterly insane two years ago.”
Berringer grasped the handle of his machine. “Are we ready?” he barked, and at the same time wrenched over the lever savagely.
With a suddenness that brought a gasp to their lips, the laboratory vanished from beyond their port windows, and was succeeded! by an ultimate blackness. Their ship seemed to be in a pool of ink. There was not the faintest ray of light outside the hull, and the darkness seemed to be crawling In, trying to extinguish their overhead light.
Suit a moment later a faint blueness appeared in the vast distance. It brightened and resolved itself as a gigantic entity of blue, with titanic green-glowing wings widespread. It seemed to be approaching.
Bradley and Forijay huddled together. talking swiftly.
Korth, face astounded, raced to the side port and tried to pierce the sable curtain beyond. But all he could see was the huge green-winged monstrosity, steadily nearing. “Damn you, Berringer!” he shrieked whirling. “What have you done?”
Perfectly calm, the aged savant spoke triumphantly, “Just what I said I would. I wrenched the vacuum apart, and we are now falling—or rising, no matter—In the shaft that leads beyond earthly illusion to— more illusion! We have engines, but they are useless—I see the irony of It now. For there are no such things as motion or distance! Human conceptions — illusions! Do you know what we shall find? Professor Korth, do you?”
Berringer went on as the tall physicist shrank hack, eyes wide. “We shall find that the sun is the center of everything, and that It is the only star! We shall see other stars spaced evenly around, but bunched at one end of this ultra-dimensional shaft, and they will be illusions. The planets will be missing!
“But those are silly, meaningless things—unveiled hallucinations. The important things we shall see and discover will be the Blue Beings in their natural environment of what we call vacuum. Then the facet-rocks of the Outer World, whose reflections we call stars. The Universal Mind which the Blue Beings fear. And finally, the Great All—the reality that will turn Illusion before our very eyes!”
Korth and Berringer stared at one another, both aware of a tremendous significance behind these paradoxical words.
They did not notice that Bradley and Forijay were quietly sneaking toward the airlock. In their eyes was a glassy stare—a hypnotic determination to escape from this mad ship that was plunging to an alien universe. In their fear-palsied brains rang but one thought—“Get out!”
Bradley twisted the control lever for the airlock, jerked open the first door, and duplicated this maneuver at the outer hatch. Strangely, there was no blast of escaping air as be catapulted himself madly away from the ship. Forijay followed an instant later.
They had escaped! Let death come, the way they understood death; better that then the lunatic journey to a world of insanity and illusion!
[2]It was very dark. There were no stars visible. Forijay shivered to the cold wind that blew out of the black silence. His hands clutched at the naked, ice-cold rocks. Even as he lay with face pressed against the ledge, his head still ached and spun with an appalling unendurable vertigo.
There are no stars!
The words hung in his mind, a haunting, hideous enigma. He tried to remember; then the thought came that the memory must toe so terrible that it would shatter his insanity.
With vast relief, he sensed another inert body near him. His eyes, becoming adjusted to the strange darkness, could now see the outlines of the desolate rocky terrain, as if by a faint luminescence. He turned toward the groan.
“Bradley!” he muttered. “What happened? Where are we?” He whispered again the sinister and meaningless answer to his questions. “There are no stars!”
Bradley sat up in the darkness, still groaning.
“It would be hard to say where we are—and when,” he gasped. “But we are where Berringer will never find us. I have broken our pledge, Fo— to save our lives!” He shuddered. “When I saw that winged monstrosity of the void, it was impossible to go on! I never suspected myself a coward, Fo. But that horror—”
Forijay was rubbing his bruised forehead, dizzily.
“Still, he muttered, “I can’t remember—it’s all like a nightmare. Tell me, Brad.”
“Of course you remember,” said Bradley. “But no wonder you think it a nightmare—it is one! But old Berringer’s experiment— remember? He was going to prove that all knowledge is illusion. And Korth, his old rival, standing there with a skeptical smile on his hard mouth, waiting for his chance to make a fool of Berringer—”
“Wait!” Forijay’s voice broke in, faint with dread. I remember . . . The terrible dark, when Berringer started his apparatus . . . The silence . . . The shaft beneath the vanishing planets . . . The fall down the shaft, out of space, Berringer said—”
Horror choked him for a time. His dry lips moved soundlessly, whispering again:
“The stars below . . . The facets of rock like a valley of Jewels . . . The central sun beneath a world that no longer existed! . . . The Blue Beings, waiting for us to come to our doom . . .”
He jerked up his head, tried to recover himself.
“But that can’t he!” His jaw tensed. “Illusion of illusion. There are no stars!” He rubbed his forehead, blankly and looked into the darkness toward Bradley. “But I still don’t understand why we are here.”
“You have forgotten the nearer horror,” said Bradley. “The monstrous entity that guards the secret of the void. It pursued us through space on wings of glowing green. Its flight was as fast as light; it may have been a thing of light.” His voice was dry with horror. “Its eye was a triple well of purple evil.”
He shook his head, as if to shake off fear. Forijay grasped at his arm.
“Berringer will find us,” he said apprehensively. “We gave our word to go with him to the end—even to certain doom at the end. He won’t let us break it.”
“No, we’re safe enough from Berringer,” said Bradley confidently. “It Is a thing I got from the Blue Beings. Time and space and matter are illusions. There is a mastery of illusion. We are ten thousand miles from Berringer, and ten million years—”
His voice was cut off by a gasp of panic. Far away in the starless darkness, he had heard the clatter of a stone. Presently, out of the black unknown, he saw a dark bulk approaching. Its looming outlines became human, although it remained a monstrous thing.
“A man, Brad!” gasped Forijay. “Though his head’s too hig—”
“Once a man,” the low, terrible voice came out of the dark. “But now my purpose makes me greater than a god.”
“Berringer!” cried Forijay in terror.
The grotesque huge head became a helmet, as the man approached them.”
“It is I. I have come to remind you of your pledge. You had the choice—you could have remained behind to reap fame and wealth from my disclosures. But you have chosen —to know and die.
“There can be no turning back. We are surely doomed. But if we go forward, we may know before we die what all men have toiled to learn, since the first savage wondered at the alternation of day and night.”
“But how—” gasped Bradley. “How did you follow?”
Berringer’s emaciated hand touched his strange helmet.
“This mechanism gives me contact with the Universal Mind, of which you are a part, and I am. I knew every thought of your desertion—But we must go on. Our quest will lead, far beyond the range of the Universal Mind. Korth has followed us with the ship.”
The little space-ship grated on the rocks beside them. They filed aboard. Tall Korth was staring from the controls with frantic terror on his face.
“Berringer!” he gasped. “It has followed us, even here!”
His trembling hand pointed at a vision screen. There Forijay saw again the monstrous entity of the void, its glowing green wings rigidly extended against the dark of space.
“Drive back into space,” ordered Berringer. “The monster is the smallest of the perils before us.”
The ship flashed upward through spinning, vertiginous darkness. Abruptly the stars returned. Korth, at the controls, greeted them with a mocking laugh.
“Illusion. There are no stars.” He looked fearfully back at the screen.
“It is gaining.”
“Full acceleration,” commanded Berringer grimly. “Away from the Earth.”
The velocimeter needle crept swiftly upward. But suddenly alarm gongs jangled. White-faced, Korth snatched for the brake dial.
“Obstruction ahead. Invisible! But we are about the collide—”
“Go on,” said Berringer.
Still the needle crept upward. The pursuing monster grew larger in the screen. Korth’s staring eyes searched for the invisible border revealed by the detectors.
Young Forijay looked mutely at his chief.
“Ahead,” said Berringer, “is the etheric shell that surrounds the earth. “The mirror that reflects the illusion of the stars. Itself an illusion—”
Crash!
Forijay reeled from a stunning shock. All his body ached from a searing instant of in tolerable pain. He blinked, bewildered, at the vision screen.
“The barrier is gone,” reported Korth, incredulously. “And the pursuing monster also—”
“The atoms of our body have rebounded from impact with the etheric shell,” said Berringer. “If you will observe yourself, you will discover that what was once your left hand is now your right. You will now require a mirror to read your charts—”
“But—” Korth stammered bewilderedly, “the monster—”
“We were reflected back against it,” said the old man, the withered mask-like face beneath his helmet grim with invincible purpose. “Our combined speeds were far in the excess of the velocity of light. Impossible, you may say. Illusion of illusions.
“But the entity has experienced the illusion of death.”
[3]They were shaken, these four men in the cramped interior of the speeding little space-ship. Badly shaken by what they had just seen in space, by the weird incredible phenomenon that had overturned the life-time beliefs of at least three of them.
Berringer, thin, shrivelled little man, whose aged body was husk of a colossal brain, was the least overwhelmed of them all. Korth, the tall, solemn scientist who bad hack on earth been Berringer’s greatest rival and critic, bore on his rugged face a disturbed bewilderment.
The two younger men, Bradley and Forijay, were looking helplessly toward Berringer. In their eyes was still horror of what they had just seen, and mute appeal for knowledge. for explanation.
“Now do you believe Korth?” Berringer was asking softly. “Now are you so sure that this quest is so utterly wild and useless one?”
Korth tried to keep his voice steady. “I still see no reason for overturning all the accepted laws of human science,” he stated. “What we just experienced was incredible, unprecedented. It is true. But it does not mean that everything you have told us is true, that you can actually solve the supreme secret of the universe, storm the last citadel of the unknown.”
“I can, and I will!” Berringer’s voice rang with a super-human resolve. “For too great a time the scientists of earth have repeated parrotlike, ‘The final secrets are unknowable.’ I tell you that we are flying straight toward the core of the mystery of the cosmos. We are going to know all before we die!”
“Impossible,” muttered Korth, his gaunt face pale. “I would give my life to achieve it, to penetrate the last supreme mysteries of time and space and matter. I have in fact hazarded my life in coming with you, simply to prove that theory of your’s wrong. For it is—It must be.”
In this story, the First of the five authors, was asked to write the Last part of the story; the second author, to write the fourth installment; and so on. John Russell Fearn started (or rather ended) the story, leaving to be explained a number of mysteries. Raymond Z. Gallun, who was next, remarked, after completing his job, “The backside foremost yarn was pretty badly screwed up before, an I imagine it’s worse now.” Next, Edmond Hamilton, said, “I will give a prize of $1000 to anyone who can tell me what the other two parts of this story are about. And I will give a prize of $10,000 to anyone who can tell me what my part is about. The thing looks like the screwiest story in the history of science fiction.” Jack Williamson, who followed, briefly commented, “In my opinion, this would be a very interesting story if one knew precisely what it is all about.” Finally, Eando Binder completing (or starting) the story, remarked. “I’ve done my best to carry the yarn on, or back, as screwily as possible, following the example of the others, and I’m sure I’ve done no less than the others in making it completely inexplicable. Maybe with a little more thought I could have made it Utterly impossible for the reader to understand, but I think as it stands now it’s safe from ever being unraveled.” Despite the above comments, we believe the five authors have done a remarkable job. To fully appreciate their difficulties, we suggest you first read the story as it was written—backwards. Then re-read it in the normal manner, and marvel at its coherence and smoothness!
[1]The greatest experiment in human history was about to begin!
Four men stood in the metal-lined cabin of the space-ship, their combined attention centered on Berringer’s apparatus riveted to one wall. Korth, tall and solemn, stared with a sneer on his hawk-like face. Bradley and Forijay, far younger that, the other two, gazed with hypnotic fascination, their faces pale with a deep-rooted fear.
Berringer reached a hand toward the mechanism’s only lever. Bradley jerked forward, clutched his arm in panic. Berringer turned in impatient surprise.
“Wait—just one minute!” pleaded Bradley. “Before w-e go ahead with this, explain it all again. After all, there may be no return, and—”
“No return!” repeated Berringer. with emphasis. “Get that, Korth—no return!”
“Bah!” snapped the physicist. “The whole thing is a farce. There will be no return because there will be no start. Go through that mumbo-jumbo about illusion again, Berringer, for their benefit. They are scared, but they have no reason to be. Bah. again, Berringer!”
The savant deliberately turned his thin, wasted form away from the skeptical acid-tongued Korth and addressed himself to his two young assistants of the past two years.
“Boys, listen carefully, for this is the last time I will explain it—we go. You remember the electrical experiment we performed two years ago which proved that electricity is life, pure and completely. You remember how by establishing communication of sorts with this basic life-essence, we learned many things—incredible things! For the Blue Beings who can live in any environment, even that of airless space, revealed that all human thought is illusion! Every theory and conception ever performed by the human mind is self-delusion!”
Berringer went on, despite another disgusted “Bah!” from Korth. “For instance, our mathematics, by which we formulate laws about the universe, are limited between zero and infinity, which are but ciphers in the greater and truer mathematics. Then our five senses are so inconceivably inaccurate, and cover a pitifully small range of perception. With these limitations, it is no wonder that we cannot realize that there are no stars, no vacuum, nor anything we think we know of! Yet the Blue Beings of electricity have shown us that.”
“The machine!” muttered Bradley hoarsely. “That shaft which pierces to alien dimensions—”
“Fool!” spat out Korth. “A Big Fool to believe in that!”
Berringer ignored this bitter thrust, spoke. “My two years of daily contact with the Blue Beings finally gave me a glimmering of the Great Truth. Cave me a slight idea of the Great All that is behind this gigantic illusion of life, space, energy and all the other droolings we humans call ‘science.’ I was able, then, to build this apparatus. Simply stated, it pours its 200,000 volts into what we call a vacuum and rip it aside like a veil, to reveal beyond the ultra-dimensional shaft that leads to—to the Real Universe. It’s like going through a mirror and finding reality there!”
“So Alice said to the Mad-Hatter, please, sir, can I have a puff on your opium pipe?” mocked Korth.
“As for you,” said Berringer coolly, facing the leering physicist, “remember five minutes from now that I said year great Einstein is like a drunk who sees double and imagines pink elephants in between.”
“One more thing,” whispered Bradley. This shaft to the—the Beyond—it is navigable by a space-ship, you’re sure?”
At the savant’s firm “yes.” the two young men looked at each other in evident relief. Berringer’s weak old eyes flamed suddenly. “Navigable, yes.” he went on, “but only one way! For when you reach the end, you are again at the beginning, yet it is not circular!”
“And when we reach the end, we are once again at the beginning, and therefore back in the laboratory?” asked Forijay eagerly.
“Which comes first the chicken or the egg?” sang Korth scornfully. “And where does the rooster come in?”
Berringer patted the handle of the machine reflectively before answering Forijay. Then he said, emotionlessly, “I told you from the start there was no return! ‘End’ and ‘beginning’ are human conceptions, like zero and infinity. There is no end or beginning in this shaft!”
Bradley sucked in his breath sharply, while Forijay grew paler than he was. Korth. mocked! the whale thing with a nasal chant about the Man with Two Minds, Neither of Which Existed.
“But enough of this chatter,” barked Berringer. His thin, sharp face grew livid with a driving purposefullness. “You, Bradley and Forijay, asked to come along—pledged yourselves, in fact I told you it was slow suicide, but I see you disbelieved that You cast aside a chance to remain and become famous, even though that is illusion with all the rest of human endeavor. You elected to plumb with me cosmos’ depths —the real cosmos—and even that is an illusion! Korth is here to observe the Outer phenomena as a learned savant, and he, too, will perceive that all is illusion!”
“Not to mention the illusion that you have.” Korth winked at the two younger men. “I mean the illusion that you did not turn utterly insane two years ago.”
Berringer grasped the handle of his machine. “Are we ready?” he barked, and at the same time wrenched over the lever savagely.
With a suddenness that brought a gasp to their lips, the laboratory vanished from beyond their port windows, and was succeeded! by an ultimate blackness. Their ship seemed to be in a pool of ink. There was not the faintest ray of light outside the hull, and the darkness seemed to be crawling In, trying to extinguish their overhead light.
Suit a moment later a faint blueness appeared in the vast distance. It brightened and resolved itself as a gigantic entity of blue, with titanic green-glowing wings widespread. It seemed to be approaching.
Bradley and Forijay huddled together. talking swiftly.
Korth, face astounded, raced to the side port and tried to pierce the sable curtain beyond. But all he could see was the huge green-winged monstrosity, steadily nearing. “Damn you, Berringer!” he shrieked whirling. “What have you done?”
Perfectly calm, the aged savant spoke triumphantly, “Just what I said I would. I wrenched the vacuum apart, and we are now falling—or rising, no matter—In the shaft that leads beyond earthly illusion to— more illusion! We have engines, but they are useless—I see the irony of It now. For there are no such things as motion or distance! Human conceptions — illusions! Do you know what we shall find? Professor Korth, do you?”
Berringer went on as the tall physicist shrank hack, eyes wide. “We shall find that the sun is the center of everything, and that It is the only star! We shall see other stars spaced evenly around, but bunched at one end of this ultra-dimensional shaft, and they will be illusions. The planets will be missing!
“But those are silly, meaningless things—unveiled hallucinations. The important things we shall see and discover will be the Blue Beings in their natural environment of what we call vacuum. Then the facet-rocks of the Outer World, whose reflections we call stars. The Universal Mind which the Blue Beings fear. And finally, the Great All—the reality that will turn Illusion before our very eyes!”
Korth and Berringer stared at one another, both aware of a tremendous significance behind these paradoxical words.
They did not notice that Bradley and Forijay were quietly sneaking toward the airlock. In their eyes was a glassy stare—a hypnotic determination to escape from this mad ship that was plunging to an alien universe. In their fear-palsied brains rang but one thought—“Get out!”
Bradley twisted the control lever for the airlock, jerked open the first door, and duplicated this maneuver at the outer hatch. Strangely, there was no blast of escaping air as be catapulted himself madly away from the ship. Forijay followed an instant later.
They had escaped! Let death come, the way they understood death; better that then the lunatic journey to a world of insanity and illusion!
[2]It was very dark. There were no stars visible. Forijay shivered to the cold wind that blew out of the black silence. His hands clutched at the naked, ice-cold rocks. Even as he lay with face pressed against the ledge, his head still ached and spun with an appalling unendurable vertigo.
There are no stars!
The words hung in his mind, a haunting, hideous enigma. He tried to remember; then the thought came that the memory must toe so terrible that it would shatter his insanity.
With vast relief, he sensed another inert body near him. His eyes, becoming adjusted to the strange darkness, could now see the outlines of the desolate rocky terrain, as if by a faint luminescence. He turned toward the groan.
“Bradley!” he muttered. “What happened? Where are we?” He whispered again the sinister and meaningless answer to his questions. “There are no stars!”
Bradley sat up in the darkness, still groaning.
“It would be hard to say where we are—and when,” he gasped. “But we are where Berringer will never find us. I have broken our pledge, Fo— to save our lives!” He shuddered. “When I saw that winged monstrosity of the void, it was impossible to go on! I never suspected myself a coward, Fo. But that horror—”
Forijay was rubbing his bruised forehead, dizzily.
“Still, he muttered, “I can’t remember—it’s all like a nightmare. Tell me, Brad.”
“Of course you remember,” said Bradley. “But no wonder you think it a nightmare—it is one! But old Berringer’s experiment— remember? He was going to prove that all knowledge is illusion. And Korth, his old rival, standing there with a skeptical smile on his hard mouth, waiting for his chance to make a fool of Berringer—”
“Wait!” Forijay’s voice broke in, faint with dread. I remember . . . The terrible dark, when Berringer started his apparatus . . . The silence . . . The shaft beneath the vanishing planets . . . The fall down the shaft, out of space, Berringer said—”
Horror choked him for a time. His dry lips moved soundlessly, whispering again:
“The stars below . . . The facets of rock like a valley of Jewels . . . The central sun beneath a world that no longer existed! . . . The Blue Beings, waiting for us to come to our doom . . .”
He jerked up his head, tried to recover himself.
“But that can’t he!” His jaw tensed. “Illusion of illusion. There are no stars!” He rubbed his forehead, blankly and looked into the darkness toward Bradley. “But I still don’t understand why we are here.”
“You have forgotten the nearer horror,” said Bradley. “The monstrous entity that guards the secret of the void. It pursued us through space on wings of glowing green. Its flight was as fast as light; it may have been a thing of light.” His voice was dry with horror. “Its eye was a triple well of purple evil.”
He shook his head, as if to shake off fear. Forijay grasped at his arm.
“Berringer will find us,” he said apprehensively. “We gave our word to go with him to the end—even to certain doom at the end. He won’t let us break it.”
“No, we’re safe enough from Berringer,” said Bradley confidently. “It Is a thing I got from the Blue Beings. Time and space and matter are illusions. There is a mastery of illusion. We are ten thousand miles from Berringer, and ten million years—”
His voice was cut off by a gasp of panic. Far away in the starless darkness, he had heard the clatter of a stone. Presently, out of the black unknown, he saw a dark bulk approaching. Its looming outlines became human, although it remained a monstrous thing.
“A man, Brad!” gasped Forijay. “Though his head’s too hig—”
“Once a man,” the low, terrible voice came out of the dark. “But now my purpose makes me greater than a god.”
“Berringer!” cried Forijay in terror.
The grotesque huge head became a helmet, as the man approached them.”
“It is I. I have come to remind you of your pledge. You had the choice—you could have remained behind to reap fame and wealth from my disclosures. But you have chosen —to know and die.
“There can be no turning back. We are surely doomed. But if we go forward, we may know before we die what all men have toiled to learn, since the first savage wondered at the alternation of day and night.”
“But how—” gasped Bradley. “How did you follow?”
Berringer’s emaciated hand touched his strange helmet.
“This mechanism gives me contact with the Universal Mind, of which you are a part, and I am. I knew every thought of your desertion—But we must go on. Our quest will lead, far beyond the range of the Universal Mind. Korth has followed us with the ship.”
The little space-ship grated on the rocks beside them. They filed aboard. Tall Korth was staring from the controls with frantic terror on his face.
“Berringer!” he gasped. “It has followed us, even here!”
His trembling hand pointed at a vision screen. There Forijay saw again the monstrous entity of the void, its glowing green wings rigidly extended against the dark of space.
“Drive back into space,” ordered Berringer. “The monster is the smallest of the perils before us.”
The ship flashed upward through spinning, vertiginous darkness. Abruptly the stars returned. Korth, at the controls, greeted them with a mocking laugh.
“Illusion. There are no stars.” He looked fearfully back at the screen.
“It is gaining.”
“Full acceleration,” commanded Berringer grimly. “Away from the Earth.”
The velocimeter needle crept swiftly upward. But suddenly alarm gongs jangled. White-faced, Korth snatched for the brake dial.
“Obstruction ahead. Invisible! But we are about the collide—”
“Go on,” said Berringer.
Still the needle crept upward. The pursuing monster grew larger in the screen. Korth’s staring eyes searched for the invisible border revealed by the detectors.
Young Forijay looked mutely at his chief.
“Ahead,” said Berringer, “is the etheric shell that surrounds the earth. “The mirror that reflects the illusion of the stars. Itself an illusion—”
Crash!
Forijay reeled from a stunning shock. All his body ached from a searing instant of in tolerable pain. He blinked, bewildered, at the vision screen.
“The barrier is gone,” reported Korth, incredulously. “And the pursuing monster also—”
“The atoms of our body have rebounded from impact with the etheric shell,” said Berringer. “If you will observe yourself, you will discover that what was once your left hand is now your right. You will now require a mirror to read your charts—”
“But—” Korth stammered bewilderedly, “the monster—”
“We were reflected back against it,” said the old man, the withered mask-like face beneath his helmet grim with invincible purpose. “Our combined speeds were far in the excess of the velocity of light. Impossible, you may say. Illusion of illusions.
“But the entity has experienced the illusion of death.”
[3]They were shaken, these four men in the cramped interior of the speeding little space-ship. Badly shaken by what they had just seen in space, by the weird incredible phenomenon that had overturned the life-time beliefs of at least three of them.
Berringer, thin, shrivelled little man, whose aged body was husk of a colossal brain, was the least overwhelmed of them all. Korth, the tall, solemn scientist who bad hack on earth been Berringer’s greatest rival and critic, bore on his rugged face a disturbed bewilderment.
The two younger men, Bradley and Forijay, were looking helplessly toward Berringer. In their eyes was still horror of what they had just seen, and mute appeal for knowledge. for explanation.
“Now do you believe Korth?” Berringer was asking softly. “Now are you so sure that this quest is so utterly wild and useless one?”
Korth tried to keep his voice steady. “I still see no reason for overturning all the accepted laws of human science,” he stated. “What we just experienced was incredible, unprecedented. It is true. But it does not mean that everything you have told us is true, that you can actually solve the supreme secret of the universe, storm the last citadel of the unknown.”
“I can, and I will!” Berringer’s voice rang with a super-human resolve. “For too great a time the scientists of earth have repeated parrotlike, ‘The final secrets are unknowable.’ I tell you that we are flying straight toward the core of the mystery of the cosmos. We are going to know all before we die!”
“Impossible,” muttered Korth, his gaunt face pale. “I would give my life to achieve it, to penetrate the last supreme mysteries of time and space and matter. I have in fact hazarded my life in coming with you, simply to prove that theory of your’s wrong. For it is—It must be.”
