The early williamson, p.5
The Early Williamson, page 5
‘Pandorina has told me,’ he said unevenly. ‘She loves him. I’m going away. I don’t know what to do.’ He paused uncertainly, and looked away. ‘But I can’t stay here. I’ll go away. Perhaps—I’ll forget. Good-by, father.’
He choked, and a lump had risen in my throat so that I could not speak. I went with him out to the garage. He got out his car and as he drove away I stood and watched the light flashing on houses and trees, and the dwindling point of red, until it all was lost in the night. Two weeks later I had a half-incoherent note that told of his driving aimlessly down to Atlantic City, and then of his going to New York. There, it seems, he fell in with an old school friend who was living at New Brunswick, and went home with him.
Pandorina was hurt by Fred’s going. To me she was more than usually demonstrative. But she spent much time with Mason. I think he took her up several times in his plane, and out over Delaware Bay.
One day when the two had gone out together for a picnic, I heard familiar footsteps on the verandah and Fred walked into my study. He was thinner than when he had gone, and looked tired and worn, but in his deep blue eyes I read hope and determination. I sprang to my feet to greet him. Smiling a little, he said, as he grasped my hand, ‘My arrival is a little sudden. And I brought a visitor. I wrote that I had gone with John to New Brunswick. Yesterday he and I started to the theatre to attend the matinee. On the street we met a man whom I took at first to be our friend Mason, although he seemed not quite so tall, and much better dressed. But John hailed him and it soon developed that the stranger was an old acquaintance of his, Irving Worrell by name. It seems that he is quite wealthy and is considered a brilliant young scientist, with many wonderful discoveries to his credit.
‘As we were talking I was struck more and more at his resemblance to Mason and presently I remembered your telling me that the first meteor fell in the direction of New Brunswick. I spoke to him about it and he told me that the cylinder had been found by a banker named Worrell, on his country place. This man had hatched and raised the Martian.
‘Worrell was intensely interested to learn of the two others of his race. He brought me over today in a remarkable conveyance of his own, a sort of rocket sailor. We covered the hundred miles in half an hour.’
We went out, and Fred introduced me to the stranger. He was, like Mason, a strange figure, with dead-white skin, brilliant green-black eyes, and an intangible aura of mysterious power. While he was not quite so powerfully built as the other man, he seemed to have an even more forceful character, emphasized by the penetrating brightness of his eyes, and the remarkable strength of his features.
He brought home to me more vividly than Mason had done, that the civilization of Mars must have been far above our own, with its people maturing much more quickly. The superiority of the planetary people speak highly for the advancement of the Lost Planet. Imagine a civilized baby brought up by primitive savages—it would have all the potential abilities to read and do algebra and play the piano, but, never having had a chance, it would not have learned to do these things. Although it could, due to a higher intelligence, outstrip the savages in their own accomplishments, its ability would be crude compared to real civilized accomplishments, because of its lack of civilized education. That is the impression those two men made upon my mind.
Presently Mason and Pandorina came in. They were very much surprised to meet the newcomers and I thought the girl was glad to see Fred. At any rate, while the others were talking, Fred and Pandorina sat down together, but the men were soon beside them. With his brilliant, cultured mind, Worrell easily dominated the conversation.
He told us something of his life and his scientific work. Beginning with a study of the cylinder in which he had fallen, with its chemicals and apparatus, the radium heater and the motion-picture plaque, he had done amazing things. Many of his discoveries had been given to the world. But as he was talking he took from his pocket a little handful of gleaming objects of metal and crystal. There were a half dozen of the little machines, very tiny and wonderfully finished.
‘I have devoted some attention to the science of warfare,’ he said, tossing the little objects lightly upon his palm. ‘Here are a few of my inventions that were too dangerous to publish. Perhaps they look insignificant enough, but with them I could defeat and destroy a battleship. They utilize the powers of radium and the disrupted atom.
‘Let us look at this one, for example.’
He held up a little double disc, about the size of a dollar. One face looked like platinum, the other gleamed with an unfamiliar red. He took it in his fingers and slowly turned each face upon the other, as he stepped toward the center of the room.
‘It creates a protonic wall that absorbs etheric vibration and stops the passage of ions,’ he said. ‘By a variation of adjustment, any desired wave length can be stopped or admitted. This one may have a clear field of vision, and, at the same time, be protected against heat or ultraviolet or cathode ray weapons, some of which I have developed to a high degree of efficiency.’
Suddenly my vision of Worrell dimmed. He seemed to be standing in a transparent red bubble ten feet in diameter, with its center at the thing in his hand. He manipulated the tiny instrument and the bubble grew darker until he looked a ghastly bloody red. And then, as we began to cower back in terrified amazement, the red thing floated up until it had melted far into the ceiling and
Worrell’s head almost touched it. As the thing floated down again, the red darkened until the thing seemed a solid sphere, densely, inconceivably, black. It was uncanny to hear the Martian’s guttural laugh coming from it. Abruptly it vanished, and he came toward us, grinning.
I was speechless, but Mason stammered:
‘Why—how did you—what made it go up?’
Worrell answered easily, ‘The shell may intercept any wave length. Gravitation is cut off as readily as any other.’
He took a tiny metal statuette off the piano and set it on the corner of the table. As we watched with some apprehension, he took from his collection a piece of green crystal in the shape of a horseshoe, with a tiny silver needle mounted between the ends. As he held it so that the needle pointed at the little figure, a blinding tongue of fire stabbed out and the metal burst into vivid incandescence, with a dull report, and was gone.
‘Cathode rays,’ Worrell said.
He took up his weapons and returned them to his pocket, and he and Mason went home to Mason’s house across the street. They came back next morning and the three Martians went for an automobile ride. Fred went along. It was when they came back in the afternoon that I first noticed that the two men were growing jealous of one another, and that they looked with black disfavor on Fred’s attentions to Pandorina.
Next morning they did not come in. After dinner Pandorina was playing the piano, with Fred sitting by her. I could tell her mood by her music and I knew she was very happy. Suddenly the door of the room was flung open and Mason strode in. At the sight of Fred with the girl he stopped short, an expression of terrible anger contorting his features. His body was disfigured by fiendish, inhuman rage. And I imagined, in the semi-gloom of the room, that a vague green aura was flickering about his body.
‘Man, didn’t I warn you? Didn’t I tell you to go?’ the heavy voice boomed out. I was sickened by the ruthlessness and malignance in the tone. Fred sprang to his feet, clasping Pandorina’s hand. He released it and stepped quickly toward Mason, clenching his fist.
The ultramundane man thrust a hand into his pocket and pulled out one of Worrell’s little instruments. I did not see the shape of the thing, but as he clasped it in his hand, a vague green fire flowed out of it and flashed across to Fred. What that force was, I do not know—some form of electric energy, or of ions, perhaps. The green radiance condensed about my son. His brave advance was abruptly checked. An expression of agony came over his face. He tottered and began a scream that ended in a rattling sob. For a moment his body was outlined sharply in the curdling green incandescence. Mason relaxed his grip of the tiny device and calmly returned it to his pocket as my son, burned and distorted, fell heavily to the floor.
Then I think I must have fainted from grief and horror. The next I knew I was lying on the sofa. Pandorina was standing by me, with her cool white hand on my brow. I sat up dazedly. I did not begin to remember what happened until I saw Fred, still lying where he had fallen. And then I saw Mason and Worrell. They were standing face to face in the middle of the room. Again I fancied the flicker of green light about them. They were talking heatedly, but in low tones, and I was so mentally befogged that I did not at first catch the drift of what they were saying. But presently I got an idea of the jealousy they felt, and of the fact that they were in a fair way to get into a fight.
Suddenly the aviator stepped back, with a sharp word that fell upon my dazed brain like a curse, and then swung forward at the other with a heavy blow. Worrell’s hand made a fleeting motion, and I caught in it the glitter of one of his tiny weapons. And, strangely, though he made no attempt to dodge, the aviator’s blow did not fall home. Out of Worrell’s hand flashed a beam of green fire. With a cry of pain, Mason staggered back as though he had received a heavy but invisible blow. Following his evident advantage, the scientist snatched from his coat pocket a little metal tube about the size of a fountain pen. As he pointed it at the aviator there was a sharp click and a little capsule flew out, seeming to ignite as it struck the air, for it burst into a ball of brilliant blue light, somewhat like a ball of lightning, that shot toward Mason’s head. By the exertion of his powerful muscles to the utmost, the man was able to hurl himself out of the path of the strange missile. By a fortunate chance it struck an open window, flew out, and struck the old elm outside, reducing it to a blazing stump.
All with a single swift motion, Mason sprang aside, picked up a chair, and hurled it at the scientist with such terrific force, that I expected to see him brained on the spot. But Worrell was ready with his little ray-machine. A green light fell upon the chair and it swerved from its path, and went crashing into the glass front of a book case by the wall.
By that time I was sufficiently recovered to understand the danger I was in from the combat. I stepped toward the middle of the room, with my hand upraised. ‘Gentlemen, just a minute—’ I began. They turned fiercely toward me. Mason lifted in his hand the deadly little weapon he had used on Fred. Doubtless he had forgotten it during the fight, but now he raised it deliberately. A pale light flashed out of it, and I felt an icy chill, a strange numbing pain, run over my arm and shoulder. But, crying out, with compassionate horror and pity on her tear-stained face, Pandorina sprang to my side and grasped my hand. And, although Mason was still muttering menacingly, the numbness left my arm. However, it was raw and painful for several days.
‘Gentlemen,’ I went on, ‘I see your problem. Grant me respect for my dead son and I’ll help you work out your question’—for a plan had sprung into my mind. Force was useless against them, but cunning might prevail.
The aviator snorted at the idea of my assisting them but, possibly for that reason, Worrell agreed to the plan I explained. Assuming blindness, while I suppressed a fear that they would read my thoughts and find my secret, I led the way out to my car. Pandorina rode with me and the muttering planetary men climbed into the rear. In half an hour we drove up before a locked gate, with an open space beyond. Stopping the car back from the gate and well to one side, I explained:
‘This is government property. The public is not permitted inside the fence, but I have secured the use of it for my botanical researches. Here you may be assured of plenty of room for your duel, and freedom from interruptions.’
‘Very well,’ said Worrell, ‘let us waste no time.’
Noticing that my watch said 10:30, I got out, unlocked the heavy gate and swung it quickly around before they could read the sign upon it, and then drove in toward the center.
‘Now suppose you separate a little way, and I will sound the horn as a signal to begin,’ I suggested.
Mason agreed with a savage monosyllable. Smiling, and haughtily polite, Worrell took from his pocket a few of his amazing weapons, also a little leather case, in which were more of them. Quickly he divided them into equal shares, handing Mason’s to him with brief words of instruction for their use. Mason was grim and belligerent but Worrell smiled superciliously. They went to their places and I gave the signal to begin. Then I drove frantically away to a distance of a half mile.
When I looked back they were already struggling. A great red transparent globe marked the place of each combatant. Slender, blinding bright tongues of white flame (electric arcs, perhaps) played back and forth between them, and the little globes of blue fire flew to and fro, exploding with terrific violence upon striking. Faint green lights flickered about them. Now and then the protonic armor of one or the other was darkened to afford greater protection, or momentarily dispensed with altogether to give greater freedom of attack.
And at one side was a slender, white-clad figure. It was Pandorina. In the heat of my grief and my plan for revenge, I had quite forgotten her. God knows that I meant her no harm! But then it was too late.
I could see few of the details of the contest until I remembered the binoculars under the car seat. I got them out and focused them on the scene of action. Indeed, that conflict of the Martians was a strange one. It was, to me, incomprehensible. They employed destructive agencies discovered ages ago, perhaps, on Mars, but inconceivable to man—powerful developments of radioactive energy, disintegrated atoms, electric arcs, cathode rays and streams of ions. And their means of defense and counter attack were as far advanced—protonic armor and screens of repulsion.
The Martians were perhaps a hundred feet apart. Mason was advancing steadily, while Worrell calmly held his ground. At times the red armor was so dim that I could see the men quite plainly. It was a strange scene, bright with the vivid flashes of the ray weapons and the globes of flame, with the impalpable green luminosity, which may have been an incidental by-product of atomic disintegration, hanging over all. The earth was scorched and smoking from the effect of the intense white rays, and the air was full of rocks and dust from the continual explosions.
Suddenly Worrell stood still, and the red armor vanished from about him. A constant stream of the blue globules poured from his weapon. The balloon-like object that sheltered the aviator bounded from side to side as the occupant made wild efforts to escape the spheres, then vanished itself as Mason determined to let down his defenses in an effort to get in a vital blow. A great blaze of incandescence left his hand and poured over Worrell. It seemed to explode with withering flames and a roar that shook the earth. And, for the moment, the scientist disappeared.
At the same instant, as Mason stood with the blue globes exploding all about him, a faint mist of green flame was thrown over him—a flame like that with which Fred had been murdered. He grew rigid, with limbs stiffly outstretched, and slowly fell. But before he struck the earth the shielding sphere sprang strong and black about him.
All the while Pandorina stood close by. I could see the expressions of pity and fear and horror that moved across her face. Still I loved her and wished I had thought to save her.
Then Worrell, with the faint red shell about him, sprang out of the hollow into which he had been thrown. And strangely, he did not curve back to earth, but floated on and on, up over the motionless shell of the aviator, flashing his deadly rays and explosive blue globes down upon him. Abruptly a blinding light beamed out of the aviator’s armor and struck full upon the one overhead. The red shell was lifted and driven back by the impact of the ray. And it changed color. Splotches of changing orange and yellow came upon it. Mason was doing something to neutralize its effect. But Worrell replied with a frantic use of his weapons; successive puffs of greenish vapor impinged upon Mason’s globe until it was almost hidden from sight.
All the time I had been keeping an eye out in the direction of Millville, twenty miles west, to the left of the fighters and the pitiful girl who watched them.
Now I heard the familiar but undescribable scream of the projectile from a great 16-inch naval gun, and I saw it as a dark speck, describing its trajectory. I saw the smoke in the distance and heard the detonation of the gun that had fired it. The shell struck and exploded with a force that shook the earth, throwing up a great fountain of dirt, rocks and fragments, that presently showered down into the great cloud of smoke that now hid the scene of the duel.
I waited patiently for the smoke to clear. It was half an hour before I could get close enough to see without getting choked by the acrid fumes. I found a vast crater, big enough to hold a house, with raw, torn earth about, and stifling odors still floating up. But no sign did I see of the Martians. There was nothing anywhere to show that they had ever existed.
When I went out I locked the gate, displaying again the sign that I had hidden by swinging it around against the fence. danger Targets for Naval Guns Heavy Artillery from 11 to 12 a.m. keep out *
The next story, all my own, was a novelette which I called ‘The Silver Sea.’ At a date when the blank spots on the map were already pretty small for that sort of thing, I let my explorers discover a land of weird powers and strange beings in the western desert of Australia.
I finished it during the Christmas break of my first college year and mailed it to Amazing Stories. Eventually I got a letter from Hugo Gernsback, who had taken my manuscript along when he left to set up his new publishing enterprises. He offered me ‘space rates’ for it. Hungry for publication, I agreed without asking what ‘space rates’ would come to. He renamed the story ‘The Alien Intelligence’ and ran it in the second and third issues of the new Science Wonder Stories. His check, when it came, was only $75. I had expected half a cent a word, which would have been nearly twice that.
(You may feel that I’m dwelling too much on low word rates and the uncertainties of pay, but every dollar mattered then. Becoming a writer was a desperate goal. To reach it, I somehow had to survive.)
