A large anthology of sci.., p.85
A Large Anthology of Science Fiction, page 85
“This is the control board,” he explained. “With the exception of the right arm I now move my body by electricity. The batteries are concealed within a hollow below the hip of my right leg. Behold in me an artificial man who lives and breathes and has his being with a minimum of mortal flesh! My various parts can be mended and replaced as you would repair the parts of your automobile.”
During Gregory’s recital David had not withdrawn his fascinated but horrified eyes from the mechanical man. Invulnerable and almost immortal, this creature was existing as a menace to mankind, a self-made Frankenstein. When he was again complete he stood before David, a triumphant gleam in the eyes which alone, unchanged physically, were yet scarcely recognizable as Gregory’s, for the soul that peered through these windows was transformed.
In the gathering gloom Bell could see the automaton staring at him. He moved slowly toward a window hoping to elude his antagonist by a sudden exit in that direction, but Gregory crept toward him with a clock-like precision in his movements. The doctor noticed that the right hand was kept busy manipulating the control board at his chest. If this were the case, the interloper possessed only one free arm, but little had Bell reckoned on the prowess of that left arm! Like the grip of a vise the metallic fingers clutched at his throat. One thought pervaded his mind. If he could get that right hand away from the control and damage the connections to the various appendages and organs! But he soon realized how futile were his weaponless hands against the invulnerable body of his adversary. Down, down, those relentless claws bore him. The darkness fell about him like a heavy curtain. A throbbing in his temples that sounded like a distant pounding. Then oblivion.
The Thread Snaps
WHEN David Bell regained consciousness he lying in his bed. The bright sunlight shining through the curtains made delicate traceries across the counterpane. His first thought was that this was heaven by contrast to the events of his last conscious moments. Surely that was an angel hovering above him! No—at least not in the ethereal sense—but an angel nevertheless, for it was Rosalind, her sweet face beaming with love and solicitude.
“Mr. Stevens and I have been watching by your side for hours, David dear,” she said as she placed a cool hand upon his brow. “You have him to thank for saving your life, not only at the time of the attack, but during the uncertain hours that have followed.”
David turned grateful eyes toward his rescuer. “Tell me about it, Lucius,” he said quietly. Stevens seated himself in a chair by the bedside and proceeded with this narrative.
“After that demon you called Gregory ordered me from the room, Dr. Bell, I turned over in my mind what had better be done to save you from his vengeance. I thought it advisable to say nothing at the time to Mrs. Bell because I did not wish to alarm her unnecessarily, but I knew that when I forced entrance into the room, it must be with adequate assistance, and within a very short period of time. I made my way to the office as quickly as I could without arousing suspicion. Miss Cullis was at the desk. Knowing I could rely on her natural calmness of demeanor and self-possession, I told her briefly of the danger which threatened you, then I phoned police headquarters. Before ten minutes were over Copeland and Knowles had arrived armed with automatics and crow-bars. I carried an axe. Cautiously we made our way to the door of the operating room and stood without, listening. We heard no sounds of voices and Copeland wanted to force entrance immediately, but I held him in temporary restraint. I wanted to obtain some cue as to conditions on the other side of the door before taking drastic measures. But thanks to Copeland’s impatience we broke down the door and saw—I shall never forget the sight till my dying day—that fiend of hell with his talons gripping your throat. He was evidently somewhat deaf for he heard no motion of our approach. We closed in on him from the rear, but he swung around with such force in that left arm that we all went down like ten-pins. Knowles, as soon as he was on his feet again, struck him several times with the bar, but his efforts were wasted, for he might as well have rained blows upon a stone wall. Copeland aimed for his head in which he knew was encased a mortal brain, but that blow was avoided by the monster’s ever active legs and arms. I was reserving my axe for a telling stroke, when it came upon me with sudden clarity of understanding, that the man governed his movements by manipulating the fingers of his right hand upon a place of control at his breast. His right arm and the switch board! These were the vulnerable parts. At last I had found the heel of Achilles!
“While Gregory was occupied with his other two antagonists I dealt a sudden stroke with the axe at his right hand, but missed, the weapon falling heavily upon his chest. My first emotion was disappointment at having missed my mark but in another second I realized that the blow had disabled him. The left arm hung useless at his side, but what prowess it lacked was made up in the increased activity of the legs. He ran, and never have I seen such speed. He would have made Atalanta resemble a snail!
However, three against one put the odds too heavily in our favor. Between lurches and thrusts at the flying figure I managed to convey to the two policemen my discovery in regard to his mortal points, and we soon had his trusty right arm disabled. The rest was comparatively easy. We dismembered him. We did not want to kill him, but it was soon apparent to us that the damage done to the control board would prove fatal. He wanted to speak, but his voice was faint, and stooping I could barely get the words.
“ ‘Tell David,’ he said, ‘that I’ve been wrong, dead wrong ever since I was carried off the field in that football game. I had been right at first. Mental perfection does make the physical harmonious, and with the right mental attitude after that accident, I could have risen above the physical handicap. It was not the physical loss of my leg that brought me to this. It was the mind that allowed it to do so. Tell David and Rosalind I am sorry for the past, and I wish them much happiness for the future!’ Those were his last words.”
David Bell and his wife looked at each other with tear-dimmed eyes.
Next day the “slender thread” which had held George Gregory to this world was laid in its last resting place, but the soul which had realized and repented of its error, who knows whither it went?
THE END
[*] Note: An “artificial kidney” has been invented recently, and tried out successfully on dogs. A cylinder of glass contains a number of celloidin tubes which Strain the poisons out of the blood.
IN TWO WORLDS
Edward E. Chappelow
HERE is one of the most original and imaginative tales that it has been our good fortune to read. We know what your verdict will be when you have finished reading it. It is one of those stories that grows upon you as time goes on.
The science which our author develops, while it is daring and will strike you as sound, is not at all unreasonable. Neither are his adventures with the atomic world. The scientific arguments which he presents are so plausible, that somehow you must say “Why, of course! That’s perfectly right!”
We also get a most excellent insight into the mysteries of the inter-atomic world. The story cannot fail to hold your interest, arouse your curiosity and at the same time give you a world of information.
IT was on a Saturday afternoon as Ted Nelson and I were coming home from work, that I first learned of his preparations for a new radio experiment. As soon as he mentioned the subject I knew that I was in for some more excitement. Although Ted in working his different experiments would build his apparatus in secret, yet he always had me on hand when he tried them out. The last stunt he tried was to attempt to detect celestial signals in light waves, and although we got no response from space during our untiring experiments, still the tests as he had them planned were interesting, and whenever Ted explained his ideas they seemed quite plausible.
“Tom, I have been planning an experiment for over a year,” he told me as we walked down our street. His house was just a block from mine.
“Now I am ready to try it out. But I don’t know just what’s going to happen when I do; that’s why I’d like to have someone with me. Of course you know darn well that I’d pick on no one else while you were around.
Still I won’t expect you to take part in the experiment, because it’s apt to be risky, and there’s no use both of us taking the chance at first. But I want you to come over tonight anyway, and give my outfit an eyeful. I’ve got it set up in the garage behind the house.”
“Sure, I’ll be over,” I replied. “And there’ll be time enough to decide whether I’ll help you out or not when I see your outfit. And anyhow you haven’t explained the nature of your experiment yet.”
“Well it’s a device for enabling us to see into another world. A world that’s within our own.”
I looked at Ted in amused surprise and was about to make a joking reply, but seeing the seriousness of his face and knowing how sensitive he was, I remained quiet.
“I planned it out after a great deal of work,” he continued, “I had to get a tube that would produce a special type of high frequency wave, and have had them built to my specifications. In fact I’ve sunk about all my spare money into it during the last year.”
“Well I’ll be over at the garage at seven tonight,” I promised him; as we parted at my door, “And if your new waves can show me any new worlds, I’ll be right there to get an eyeful.”
The garage was built for two cars, but the Nelsons kept only their own car there, and Ted used the spare side for an experimental work shop. Here he usually had a bunch of chemicals, testing tubes, all manner of electrical and radio equipment and whatever else he decided could be used in his experiments. But on this night, the 19th of April to be exact, I was pleasantly surprised as I swung the door open and switched on the light. He must have given his work bench a thorough house cleaning for the usual litter of material was missing, and the only apparatus on the bench was two neat but queer looking radio cabinets. Ted had not arrived as yet, so I walked to the bench to look over the devices. I had no doubt but what they were the experimental apparatus, and I tried to puzzle out how he intended to use the cabinets in his attempts to see into other worlds.
His outfit consisted of one low long cabinet and a smaller but higher one, connected together end to end by six copper jumper bars that were set in spring clips, making it easy to remove them. The smaller cabinet had three rotary switches, each bearing on small copper contacts. The center one had a complete circle of contacts, while the other two switches were bearing on contacts that formed half circles. The main cabinet had in the center of the panel, a calibrated bakelite dial, similar to the tuning dials used on the old type radio sets. To the right of this was a clock, its face flush with the panel, and on the other side of the dial was a milliammeter. Below these and evenly spaced between them, were two switches of the tumbler type. Along the upper part of the panel, above the controlling devices, were five tubes, their tips projecting horizontally from the panel for about half an inch. The two outer ones I recognized as Wilkin amplifiers, but the three located in the center were new to me. They were undoubtedly the special tubes. A wire from a storage battery under the bench was connected to the lower left corner of this cabinet, and two jack holes in the opposite corner indicated that some sort of receiving device plugged into the apparatus.
“That’s the outfit,” Ted smiled coming into the room, “What do you think of it?”
“Where’s your loud speaker?” I asked, motioning to the jacks.
“You’d be surprised. But I’ll end your curiosity by showing you.” Reaching under the bench he pulled out what appeared to be skull caps with cords and plugs attached. With a mischievous smile he handed one to me.
The cap was shaped to fit the head, and between the cloth and the lining was a great deal of padding. Noticing that the cord ran up into the cap, I felt around among the padding and detected small wires all through it. A pair of straps hung from opposite sides and were designed to buckle together. This I judged was a sort of chin strap to hold the cap on one’s head.
“Now I know what you are up to,” I said, forming my own idea of what he was intending to do with the outfit. “Our idea is to enable one to hear radio programs without using the phones or loud speaker. In other words you think that you can transfer the electrical pulsations to the brain without first changing them to sound waves.”
“That’s a good guess, Tom, but you are away off. When I built this outfit I based it on the idea that you have just mentioned, that of transferring electrical pulsations direct to the brain, but not for the purpose you mentioned. I am expecting to control the mind with these electrical pulsations, and in so doing enable a man to see things that are invisible to him under ordinary conditions. In short, just as I told you this afternoon, I expect to break down the barrier that separates us from other worlds that I believe are around us, but which are in planes beyond the detecting power of our senses.”
“Well if you are going to try putting magnetic fields through your head you’d better try it on some animal first,” I warned him, “Why man, the thing might upset your reasoning powers or paralyze some vital organ.”
An Explanation
“FIRST of all I will try to give you a dear explanation of how I expect to accomplish this,” Tom continued, paying little attention to my remark, “It is my belief that the human brain operates and performs its work by means of faint electrical impulses, connecting it with the many different nerves of the body. For example, how does the eye pass its message to the brain, or the brain transmit messages to other parts of the body? When you are moving or working in any way, no matter how fast, every movement of the body is controlled by the brain. Now how does it convey these orders simultaneously to different parts of the body, telling you in a fraction of a second which finger to move, which eye to shut? Simply by means of faint electrical impulses sent out by the brain to the many parts of the nervous system.
“The eye-sight is controlled by certain beams reaching to the brain, and these faint beams are effected by the light waves that strike the eye. Impulses of a certain character set up in the feeble beam cause the brain cells to operate. It is well known that there are things that exist that the eye cannot see or else does not see in its true state, because the frequency of the light waves, that these things radiate, is beyond the range of those that the brain works best at and responds to. Also there is a limit to the frequency of the sound waves that the ear will detect, or in my own words, there is a limit to the frequency of sound waves that will operate the brain, to tell it that the ear that has received the sound waves. For any wave above or below a certain band of frequencies, we are unable to catch, and only those within the audible range are able to alter or modulate the faint beams or feelers connecting the ear with the mind, telling us that we have heard. If it was not for this mysterious connection between the ear and the brain we would hear nothing, although the loudest of roars reached our ears. One must reason to know that he has heard the sound, and the reasoning is done by the brain. Now the point that I am coming to is this: If we were able to make the brain respond to a different band of frequencies, then mentally we would be in a different world, although bodily we would still be in our own. In other words we would be in two worlds at the same time, for our brain, elevated or lowered to another plane from that of our own world, would be in a different world from that we exist in normally.”
“By jove, it sounds interesting and reasonable enough,” I commented as he paused for a moment. “But still I have my doubts as to whether it will turn out as well as it sounds.”
“The eye is not in reality the thing that we see with,” he continued. “It merely detects the vision, which produces impulses in the feeler beam operating the proper cells of the brain. It is really the brain that sees the vision, because without the brain to tell you what the eye was seeing, you would see nothing. The same applies to feelings. Anything touching the body causes an impulse to be sent to the brain in the same mysterious way, and the brain sends back to the nerves in the neighborhood of the disturbance, orders what to do. For instance, if you get stung by a hornet, you jump on the second, but not before an impulse has reasoned out the fact, and sent orders to the different nerves, the feet to jump from the sting, the hand to swat at the hornet and a score of other movements that occur simultaneously.
“So you see, Tom, the whole control system of the body must be tuned to a certain range of frequencies, and if we were able to make the brain sensitive to a new range of frequencies we would change the adjustment of all the senses, for the senses, like a radio set, would receive the waves of other frequencies and respond to them. Waves of other frequencies are undoubtedly striking our senses all the time, but we don’t realize it because the brain will not function to any wave beyond a certain range. So it is not hard to see that if we get the brain to respond to a band of waves of a higher frequency, then the senses will send to the brain, waves received at these frequencies, and will be dead to the present ones, which will be below the range at which the brain will be operating. In other words the brain will be dead to our present world but sensitive to the world of the higher plane. The nose will detect new scents, the eye will see new sights, the ear will hear new sounds, the tongue will respond to new taste and the body, dead to all former feeling, will be sensitive to the touch of the new world.”
“Then I suppose you have designed this apparatus to produce a magnetic field of the desired frequency in the head coils, and by passing this field through the head you hope to take possession of the brain and make it work at the frequency of your waves.”
“Exactly,” Ted nodded. “In each cap I have a coil of fine wire which is connected to the cord, which in turn is made to connect to the jacks on the panel.”
“You have two head sets. Are you planning on us both trying it out together?”
