Collected short fiction, p.323
Collected Short Fiction, page 323
The Falling Sickness struck without warning. People fell suddenly, at work or in the street, shrieking in fear, clutching wildly at objects about them. The infection spread swiftly from the auditory nerve, causing blindness, agonized paroxysms, nightmarish hallucinations, coma, paralysis, often stoppage of the heart, and death.
It is impossible, now, to convey anything of the horror and the magnitude of that pandemic. Only one person in five had a natural immunity, and a frantic medical science failed to find either artificial immunization or successful treatment. A third of the victims were dead in three days, and another third were left blind or hopelessly crippled. In a century and a half, three billions died of it—more than the total population of the planet at any one time.
The clock of civilization was stopped. The brilliant scientific advance of the twentieth century seemed lost in a hundred years of stagnation, dread, and decay. Endless wars rivaled the horrors of the virus.
By 2100, however, mankind seemed on the way to slow recovery. The plague still claimed ten million lives a year, but immunity, by inexorable natural selection, was increasing. Courage began to return. Government, industry, science, and civilization struggled to resume their interrupted march.
MY FATHER, Garth Hammond, was born in the last year of the Black Century. His life might be accounted for in terms of the dark age that produced him. But I beg the visivox listener to try to see him as something more than the end product of a rugged heredity fighting to survive in a grimly hostile environment. For he was more than that. He was more, even, than the daring explorer of space, the stalwart captain of industry, the dashing Don Juan, the heartless capitalist, the greatest philanthropist, the dictator of the solar system and the conqueror of the Sun. Men have called him the most black-hearted, villainous hero the System ever knew. He was all those things, I know. But, also, he was a human being.
He was a tall and powerful man. His quick gray eyes had a keenness often disconcerting. Yet always he kept the ready geniality that came from the days when he was an impecunious and nimble-witted stock promoter. Even after the years had whitened the abundant shock of hair above his ruggedly handsome, black-browed face, he retained a vast attraction for women. My mother was not the first whose heart he broke, nor the last.
Garth Hammond has become the demigod of the whole creed of Success. Billions have been astonished at the penniless boot-boy who rose to be financial dictator of nine worlds. Millions of other boot-boys, I suppose, must have been inspired by his example to frantic application of dye and brush.
It is true enough that once, for a few months, he attended the boots of passengers on a transatlantic stratoplane. But his rise was due to something more than mere industry. He cultivated a pathetic limp, and told sympathetic travelers a pathetic story of his mother crippled for life by the Falling Sickness—actually she had died from falling down a tenement air shaft when he was two years old. Discharged for such methods of business, he began selling knickknacks and visivox spools about the stations. The eye of a young competitor was blacked by a mysterious assailant, and his missing stock in trade discovered to have been mysteriously shipped—collect—to the Mayor of Zamboanga.
That is the beginning, crooked enough perhaps, yet with its hint of the imaginative resource that accompanied my father’s ruthless ambition. His commercial career was not really launched, however, until after Cornwall’s spectacular voyage to the Moon, in 2119.
Captain Thomas Cornwall was a young ordnance engineer, on leave from the army. His rocket was the first to attain the velocity of escape—11.3 km/sec. His triumphant return, after two weeks on the Moon, won him the world’s frantic acclaim. The feat seemed symbolic of the reawakening of man, after the long night of the Black Century. And it showed my father the way to make his first millions.
For he was soon engaged in the manufacture of “Hammond’s Lunar Oil.” This elixir, secretly concocted on the prescription of a notorious quack of the time, “Dr.” Emile Molyneaux, was “warranted to contain essential oils from rare lunar shrubs.” It was advertized as a specific for most of the multitudinous ills of the human race. Sales, especially in those parts of the world where the Falling Sickness was still most prevalent, were tremendous.
CORNWALL started legal difficulties with an indignant public statement that he had brought back no plant specimens from the Moon. My father’s reply was to finance a lunar expedition of his own.
One Dr. Ared Trent, a lean, brilliant, intense young astrophysicist, had just rediscovered the cellular principle of rocket construction. Although no larger than Cornwall’s, his rocket was far more efficient. He was able to carry two companions and a good deal of equipment, including a dismantled telescope.
The “Hammond’s Oil Expedition” remained one hundred days on the Moon, and safely brought back specimens and observations of great scientific value. The adventure was well publicized—and sales of the elixir boomed again.
In order to meet the enormous demand, however, the compound was varied with cheaper chemicals and an increasing amount of water. This, together with Trent’s delay about publishing any description of the supposed plant life found on the Moon, brought more legal trouble. There were charges that mistaken dependence on the elixir had resulted in thousands of deaths. My father finally closed the plant.
But Garth Hammond had already harvested millions, and lie was ready, now, for a greater enterprise. He was not long in finding it. His first attempt led to disaster—for all but himself. Then Trent’s photographic studies of Mars, made from the Moon, precipitated the most momentous events of modern times.
Reborn after the Black Century, industry soon faced a grave “power famine.” Reserves of oil and coal were depleted; river and tidal power projects had been developed to the practicable limits; increased demands for food cut off conversion of the agricultural surplus into fuel alcohol; direct utilization of solar power still seemed as much a dream as atomic energy. And power, my father realized, was the key to greatness.
“Power, Chan,” he used to tell me, “is power!”
Prices rose; wages sank. The rich were the owners of power sites or fuel reserves; the poor, “power starved,” forbidden private transportation, actually hungry, shivered in helpless discontent.
Garth Hammond saw, in this bitter need, a great opportunity. His first, disastrous attempt to grasp it was suggested by his old associate, Molyneaux. Pseudo-engineer as well as quack doctor, Molyneaux revived an old project: a twelve-mile shaft in the planet’s crust, to tap possible mineral wealth and generate power from volcanic heat.
The Volcano Steam and Metals Corporation proved to have been a singularly apt name for the enterprise. For, after a billion dollars had been spent to sink the great pit forty thousand feet, the bottom of it suddenly split. Men and refrigerating machines were drowned in flaming lava. A rain of boiling mud drowned the new city of Hammondspit, Virginia, taking twenty thousand lives.
Molyneaux was killed in the eruption. Full responsibility for the disaster was somehow placed upon him.
All the records of the corporation had been destroyed, and its tangled affairs were never entirely straightened. A fact, however, which used to rouse the ire of luckless investors, was that my father seemed to have lost nothing by the failure of the project.
HE REMAINED prosperous enough, indeed, to purchase an entire island in the Aegean. There he built a marble replica of an ancient Roman villa, complete with all modern conveniences. There he took my mother as a bride—his second wife, she was Sabina Calhoun, frail, lovely daughter of an old aristocracy. And it was there, in 2130, the year after the disaster, that I was born.
It was to that island palace that Trent soon came. Some Napoleonic complex drove my father always onward. He was already restless and uncontent, my mother used to fell me, before that epochal visit, whose results broke her heart and opened the conquest of so many worlds.
Ared Trent had been busy for five years analyzing and publishing the results of the lunar expedition. He was a lean, tall fellow, habitually silent, methodical of habits, with a brilliant mathematical mind—and now on fire with a stupendous Idea.
“These things on Mars!” His excitement stopped my father’s weary stalking through the marble halls. “On the Moon, without atmospheric interference, they photographed unmistakably—and they are works!”
He flourished photographs and drawings.
“Engineering works! About both the ice caps there are drainage channels, dams, pumps. Still operating mind you—for I saw square fields turn olive-green in the spring! The Schiaparelli ‘canals,’ I’m convinced, are cultivated belts!”
He shuffled the photographs, excitedly.
“And here’s something else, Hammond—I don’t know what.” An odd note of awe slowed his eager voice. “A thing shaped like . . . well, like a barrel. It’s dark. It’s half a mile thick. It stands alone on the desert plain, a few hundred miles northwest of Syrtis Major. It can’t be natural. Some construction—I can’t guess what. But—tremendous!”
I can hear my father’s calm question: “Well, Trent. But what of it?”
“Machinery!” cried Trent. “Colossal machines—running! But what is their source of power?” His dark eyes stared feverishly at my father. “Coal and hydrocarbon deposits must have been used up ages ago. Without seas, they have no tidal power. Rare atmosphere makes wind plants ineffectual. Sunshine is only about half as intense as here. Atomic power? I couldn’t guess!”
He waved the papers. “No, Hammond, I don’t know what they have—but it’s something we haven’t got on Earth.”
“Well, then, Trent,” my father calmly announced his decision, “we’re going out to Mars, you and I—and get it!”
“To Mars!” The astronomer began to tremble.—“Mars—if we could!
What an opportunity!” His dark head shook. “But wait, Hammond! It’s hundreds of times as far as the Moon. Enormous technical difficulties. Trip would take two years, between oppositions. And cost millions!”
“I’ve got the millions,” said Garth Hammond. “You can build the ship. We’re going!”
MY FRIGHTENED mother pleaded in vain against the project. My father returned to America with Trent the very next day, to begin the preliminary arrangements. My mother, in frail health since my recent birth, remained on the island. He did not come back to live with her. His fancy soon turned to the visivox actress, Nada Vale. The next year my mother was quietly divorced, given the island home and a generous annuity. She was still devoted to Garth Hammond, and the separation was a hurt from which she could not recover.
The Martian ship was two years building. Finished in 2132, it was a four-step rocket, each step containing thousands of cellules, each of which was a complete rocket motor with its own load of “alumilloid” fuel, to be fired once and then detached.
The rocket stood on the summit of a mountain: a smaller mountain of glittering metal, tapering toward the top. A spidery ladder led up to a high, tiny opening. Bright sun shimmered on the metal and on the snow, but the December wind was bitterly cold. My mother lifted me off the snow, and so I found that she was sobbing.
Trent and two others climbed up the ladder. Garth Hammond waited, his smile flashing, talking to a crowd of newsmen. Someone pushed through and thrust a legal paper at him. The investors in the power pit were still bringing suits and getting out injunctions.
I heard my father’s roaring laugh, and saw him tear the paper in two.
“They say the arm of the law is long,” his great voice boomed. “But so is the road to Mars.”
He whispered something to my weeping mother, and patted me on the head.
“You used to reach for the Moon, Chan,” he said. “Well, I’m going to bring you something bigger.”
He turned to mount the ladder, and then I saw another woman clinging to him. She was Nada Vale, the red-haired actress. I thought that she was beautiful, though I knew my mother didn’t like her. She was crying wildly, and hanging to my father. He pushed her away, and swiftly climbed the ladder.
“Garth! Garth!” she was screaming. “You’ll be killed! You’ll never come back!”
White-faced and silent, my mother took me down to the little village. From the window of our room in the small hotel, we could see the rocket, like a shining crown on the mountain. A siren moaned. Mother caught her breath. The whole mountain was suddenly swept with smoke and fire. Windows rattled, and there was a huge roar of wind and thunder. And mother pointed out a tiny speck, trailing fire, vanishing in the sky.
“Your father, Chan,” she whispered. “Off to Mars!” She sat a long time, holding me tight in her arms. I was afraid to move. “That Nada Vale,” she breathed at last. “I . . . I’m sorry for her.”
We went back to the island, and waited. The whole world waited for the next opposition, when they should return. Astronomers watched the Red Planet, radio hams trained loops on it. But there was no sign or signal. My fifth birthday came and passed. Hurtling Earth overtook Mars in its orbit, and left it swiftly behind.
And still my father did not return.
II.
FOR EIGHT minutes that seemed eight centuries the four men in the ship were deafened and battered and mauled by the wild force of the rockets. Then followed sixty-seven days of silent monotony, as inertia flung them out toward the orbit of Mars.
The nine tons of “pay load” included concentrated supplies carefully calculated to last two years; the stock of manufactured goods, chemicals, metals, and jewelry’, which my father hoped to trade for the precious secret of Mars—and the arsenal of rifles, pistols and grenades, machine guns, a 37 mm. automatic cannon, and an especially designed automobile howitzer firing incendiary and demolition shells, which he planned to bring into use if the secret were not voluntarily forthcoming.
The two other men had been carefully selected. Burgess was a famous power engineer, who was also a linguist and therefore an expert in communication. Schlegel was a German artillery engineer, who had been military adviser to a dozen different revolutionists in that many countries, and was reputed to be worth two divisions. The four had drilled and practiced for six months with the weapons aboard—quite unaware of the disaster waiting.
Every day the Red Planet grew. Engineering works and cultivated strips became unmistakably clear. And gray rectangular patches hinted of—cities?
“Cities they are!” at last Trent cried. “And I’ve seen motion—some moving vehicle! Yes, Mars is alive, Hammond.—Alive—but dying. Most of the fields are dead and brown. Most of the machines are stopped. Most of the cities are already drifted with the yellow sand.
“And that . . . that thing, alone in the desert—”
He turned the telescope again toward that chief riddle of Mars.
“Looks like a rusty metal barrel,” he whispered. “Round in the middle, with hexagonal ends. Three thousand feet tall! And standing there alone, far from the nearest city, deserted. Its shadow like a mocking finger pointing—What could it be?”
“Land near it,” my father said, “and we’ll find out before we call on the natives.”
Trent eagerly agreed. But, when at last the ship was hurtling moonlike about the planet, braking her velocity in the upper atmosphere, one of the cellules in the second step exploded. Years later, a man named Grogan, whose family had all been killed in the power-pit disaster, confessed to willful sabotage in the plant where the cellules had been made. The electric firing system was wrecked. The ship plunged down, out of control.
Frantic effort averted complete catastrophe. Trent detached the entire second step, began to fire the third. But controls were completely wrecked, and the cellules began to fire one another by conducted heat.
Realizing that only a few seconds were left, Trent opened the valve, in desperate haste, to the rare atmosphere of Mars. Both of Schlegel’s legs had been broken by the fall. My father helped him out of the wreck, took him on his back, and ran after Trent and Burgess.
Behind them, the thousands of cellules were thundering and vomiting out a mountain of smoke and fire. They had staggered only a short distance when there was a terrific final explosion. Metal fragments shrieked about them. The German’s head, beside my father’s, was blown completely off. Burgess received a wound in the chest from which he died after Trent had removed a scrap of ragged steel.
BOTH INJURED, Trent and my father survived. But their plight seemed grave enough. Food, water, and oxygen masks were lost. They found the air of Mars, on account of its relatively high oxygen content, breathable, but it did not allow violent or sustained exertion. Their stock in trade was lost, also the collection of models, pictures, books, radio and motion-picture equipment, with which they had hoped to establish communication. The weapons were gone, and their fighting man. Final and most crushing blow, return to Earth seemed forever cut off.
Blackened and bleeding, Trent stood looking back at the wreckage, wringing his lacerated hands.
“My free space observations,” he was moaning. “And all our equipment—”
“Hammond Power has taken a tumble, all right,” my father agreed, and gasped painfully for breath. “But we aren’t sold out!” He wiped at the blood that kept trickling into his eyes, and stared about the flat, desolation. In every direction swept an interminable waste of low, rusty dunes. “Where”—a wisp of acrid saffron dust set him to coughing—“where are we?”
“Ten degrees, probably, north of the equator.” My father’s head still rang from the blast, and Trent’s voice, in the thin air, sounded very small and far away. “At least a thousand miles west of that barrel-thing.”
My father stared at him and up at the shrunken Sun.
“The night—”
“Unless we find shelter,” Trent agreed, “the night will kill us.” He peered southward. “There’s a settled strip. I had just a glimpse, as we came down. Maybe ten miles. Maybe two hundred. I don’t know how fast we were moving.”
