Fiction spectacular, p.38
Fiction Spectacular, page 38
He stirred, aware that the Dean was watching him closely.
“How did you know about—this?” Jon’s voice was tense.
“It happened at the same time that Karl submitted his Master’s Thesis. He told me the story, that it was his theory the sphere was a space ship from Mars or Venus, that he planned to adopt you, and eventually rebuild the sphere, and—”
“Why have you told me all this?”
THE Dean’s features hardened.
“Because I sense in you a keen scientific mind. You would have great possibilities here at the University. I don’t want to see you waste months—possibly years on the same problem that has frustrated your—father.”
“You don’t think very much of his work.”
“Frankly, no. Karl Maddox has always been a man set apart from his fellow colleagues. He has a burning ambition to make a name for himself in the scientific world. He might very well have done so if he had taken my advice years ago. As it is he has wasted the greater part of his life on a futile project. I don’t want to see you make the same mistake.”
Jon stared for a long silent moment at the Dean. His features were strangely pale, his eyes feverish. “Am I—different from other people?” he suddenly asked.
“Different?”
“You say I survived the crash of an alien sphere. You hint of a space ship from Mars or Venus . . .”
The Dean sighed. “I never said the sphere was alien. I also only mentioned your father’s theory concerning it. I personally have no such fantastic opinions—”
“Why are they fantastic? Why didn’t you offer to help investigate it?”
“I did try. I told Karl to have the machine brought here. He refused, saying it was his discovery. For nearly two decades now he has been working alone on the farm he inherited, as you of course know. And his time has brought nothing but failure. I don’t want you to follow the same path. I’m offering you a chance most graduates would jump at, I—”
“It’s no use, sir,” Jon replied, rising.
Dean Phillips sat back adjusting his glasses. His face had a tired expression. “You’re making a great mistake, Jon.”
“Maybe I am sir, but I could never be satisfied—now.”
. . . Outside the cool afternoon breeze whispered around him. Jon Maddox walked hurriedly across the campus. There was still time to catch the afternoon train. He wanted to get home. Home . . . Was it home? Could he ever call any place home? Fleeting visions of flowers crossed his mind. Flowers and the laughing tinkle of a raven haired little girl. Unconsciously his hand touched his left shoulder. He could almost feel the mark burning into his hand . . .
“PHILLIPS is a fool! He meddles in things that are none of his business!”
Karl Maddox glared angrily across the room. Jon was pouring brandy from a long necked bottle into small tumblers. “I had to find out sometime,” he said quietly.
“I know! I wanted to tell you myself! What do you think I’ve been doing all these years—I’ve been waiting for the day when you could join me in my research—I was going to explain the whole business! But no, Phillips had to set himself up as a confessor! He’s been insanely jealous—he and the rest of the stupid dolts pushing theory across a blackboard! They’d be only too glad to share in my discovery!”
Jon looked up sharply. “Discovery?” he asked.
“Exactly . . . I made up my mind twenty years ago that I would solve the mystery of the sphere. I have.”
Jon took a deep breath. “You mean you know where it came from?—”
“I do.” Karl Maddox replied, his eyes alight with triumph.
“Then Dean Phillips was right,” Jon said lowly.
“Phillips?”
“Yes—about the space ship theory of Mars and—”
“Space ship!” Karl Maddox laughed. I only told Phillips that to keep him and the other fools guessing! The sphere didn’t come out of space—it came out of time!”
“Time?” Jon dropped his glass to the floor. It broke in a shower of tiny sounds.
Maddox glanced angrily at him. “What’s the matter with you? There was no reason to break that glass!” Jon flushed. “I’m sorry—it was what you said.” He brushed his blond hair back with nervous fingers. Do you mean that I came out of time?”
“There’s no other possibility.”
“But—but how can you be sure?” Karl Maddox scowled. “I expected something more than doubt from you, Jon. Apparently Phillips has succeeded in prejudicing you against me.”
You’re not being fair, Dad.” Jon said heatedly. “Nobody has tried to turn me against you—nobody could! You forget that I’ve had somewhat of a shock today—in what Phillips told me about my past, and now you—” Maddox shrugged. “I suppose that’s true. But you also forget that I’ve had twenty years to study and rebuild the sphere. I’m positive it came out of time because of the mechanism and forces involved.”
“What mechanisms?” Jon’s voice was tense.
Maddox set his empty glass down on a table and motioned to Jon. “Come along out to the laboratory. I’ll show you.”
Jon followed eagerly. Out in the cool night he felt better. He realized that his head had been spinning. It was one thing to be the foster child of a well known scientist. It was quite another to be suddenly told that the world he had come to know was not his own. A raven haired vision sped through his mind again.
THEY walked swiftly across the farm yard. Jon stared intently at the barn. Outside it had much the same appearance as any of countless similar barns in the neighborhood. But he knew the inside had been converted into a modern laboratory.
Maddox opened the door for him.
It hadn’t changed much since the previous year. Jon saw the same white calcimined walls, the tiers of shelves, the scattered electrical equipment, but in the center of the barn was something that hadn’t been there the year before.
It was the sphere. But no longer a wrecked mass of twisted metal rusting in a crude leanto behind the barn. It was a whole, silvery globe, towering toward the roof of the barn.
“Well?”
Jon glanced behind him. Karl Maddox was standing with his arms folded, his grayed hair shimmering in the fluorescent lights, his eyes triumphant.
“You did all this in a year—by yourself?” Jon asked incredulously.
Maddox stepped forward dropping his arms. “The final assembling was purely a mechanical process. I had the plans complete, every detail exact as far as I could determine from my years of study. The work of repairing I left to metal workers from Wausau. It is finished.”
Jon walked slowly up to the sphere. Somewhere in the dim vagueness of his mind he sensed that he had walked up to a sphere in much the same manner a long time ago. But it was a fleeting sensation, gone almost as quickly as it had sprung up.
“You were going to explain it to me.” Jon turned to the older man.
Maddox nodded, leading the way up a short ramp. Jon followed and stood inside the metal globe with a strange feeling pounding deep inside him. It was a feeling as if he had suddenly found a part of himself, as if he had returned to—
“The key to the motivating power lies within this glassite shell.” Karl Maddox was standing in the center of the oval shaped interior beside a dome-like projection rising from the floor of the sphere. The outside was a transparent glass. Inside Jon saw spiraling coils of wire, complex helixes, and in the center, what appeared to be a gyroscopic mechanism. The rest of the interior of the globe Jon took in with a swift glance. There was a panel of dials and switches in one part of the curving wall, and two padded leather seats with straps hanging loosely down their sides.
“Are you listening, Jon?”
JON focused his gaze on his foster parent. Karl Maddox was glancing impatiently at him.
“I’m listening.”
“Very well. You asked me before how I was sure this machine came out of time and not from space. The answer lies here.” He tapped the glassite dome beside him. “A space ship would have to be powered by any of a number of combustible fuels, whether it be utilized rocket power, or some sort of atomic disintegration.
“For a great while I was puzzled about this fact. For there was no such means of power utilized. The entire system was electrical in nature. I hit on the key when I studied the gyroscopic mechanism. I asked myself what possible use such a mechanism could be put to. The answer was so simple it should have been obvious from the start. It was used to balance and counteract disrupted electrical forces!—Do you follow me?”
Jon nodded frowning. “But what kind of electrical forces?”
“I asked myself the same question. If this ship had come from space, why would electrical forces be utilized? There was only one answer. The forces utilized were those separating the space time continuum! Since space can be considered to be electrical in nature, and time itself nothing more than the so-called fourth dimension, a disruption of forces governing the continuum would automatically throw the disrupting mechanism into time!”
The frown increased on Jon’s face. “But the gyroscope.”
“I was coming to that,” Maddox interrupted him. “The gyroscopic control prevented destruction of the machine while the space-warp acted upon it. It served as a balance against the power of twisting electrical forces created by the helix disrupter.
“It’s a little over my head,” Jon sighed. “They didn’t teach us that at the University.”
Karl Maddox sneered. “The fools don’t know enough to teach! After my experiment they’ll come crawling to me!”
Jon stared at him. “Experiment?” The word sounded hollow.
The older man nodded. “Of course. Why do you think I’ve spent a good part of my life rebuilding this machine? Why do you think I adopted you, raised you as my own son? If it hadn’t been for that fool Phillips sticking his nose in, I would have been able to tell you myself. Just before your mother died in my arms she uttered a number of words, with names—yours among them. One of them was Baltu, another Vartha. Do they mean anything to you?” Jon stood still and quiet. The names rang in his mind. Baltu . . . Vartha . . . Vague whisperings arose inside him but he couldn’t catch them. For long moments he tried. But it was useless. Only the fleeting vision of raven hair, flowers, and tinkling laughter were there. Nothing else.
“No.” His voice sounded dull and tired. “They don’t . . .”
Maddox shrugged. “They don’t now, but they may soon. There was a reason for this sphere hurtling through time. Why did it contain only a woman and a child—and that child you? I must know!”
“Why you?” Jon asked quietly, watching his foster father’s face. There was a strange expression there, a look he had never seen before.
“Why—for you, of course. Now that you realize how you happened to appear—here.”
THE words were suddenly lost on Jon. A burning fire had started within him. A blaze that had started in the Dean’s office that had built up from a faint smoldering spark. He wanted to know—he had to!
“When will we be able to—start?”
Karl Maddox folded his arms. “Now.”
“Now?” Jon stared uncertainly around him.
“I made the final adjustments a week ago. I was only waiting for you to return.”
“But if what you say is true, which way in time will we go?”
A faint frown creased Karl Maddox’s forehead. “That is the only thing I am uncertain of. I am relying on the original builder of the machine for direction. We will only know after we arrive. Well?”
A cold feeling came over Jon. Did they dare risk such an experiment? While he had every confidence in his foster parent’s scientific capabilities, there was always a chance he might have made a mistake in re-constructing the machine. . . No, he couldn’t back out. There was something he had to know. Raven hair fluttered in his mind.
“I’m ready,” he said.
“Good! There’s only one thing left to do. Wait here.”
Karl Maddox hurried down the ramp of the sphere. Jon saw him hurry over to a switch box on one side of the barn. There was a rumbling sound coming from overhead. Jon knew the roof of the barn was opening. Moments later Maddox rejoined him in the sphere. He went immediately to the panel of switches. He threw one of them. There was a clanging sound.
Jon turned and watched a section of metal slide smoothly into place obscuring the opening of the sphere. Then he was aware that Karl Maddox was looking at him.
“Ready? You’re not afraid?”
“I’m not afraid.”
Maddox manipulated switches. A soft hum grew in the sphere.
“Strap yourself in one of these seats.” Maddox ordered.
Jon obeyed. Beside him, Karl Maddox followed suit.
Time stood still then. And the hum grew. It rose in a steady dirge of sound. And with it a strange feeling came over Jon. He knew that this had happened to him once before . . .
There was a sudden lurch. A feeling of floating. Jon guessed that the globe had risen from the floor of the barn. He watched with sweat beading his forehead as Maddox turned another switch on the panel.
“Now,” he said hoarsely.
A whining, sobbing sound split the air. It rose in a crescendo. With it came a spinning, twisting sensation. Metal groaned, twisted in agony. There was a sharp explosive sound. Jon was thrown forward against the straps. Blood pounded in his brain. And momentarily consciousness left him . . .
CHAPTER II
IT seemed that only seconds had elapsed when Jon felt consciousness return to him. The first thing he noticed was the absence of the twisting clash of metal. Another sound had taken its place. It was a buzzing hum coming from inside the sphere. He turned his head and stared at the glassite dome. In the center of the coils and helixes, the gyroscopic mechanism was straining madly.
“Jon—you all right?”
Jon turned his head again. Karl Maddox was shaking his head and straightening against the straps of the chair.
“I’m all right. But what happens now?”
“We keep our fingers crossed,” Karl Maddox replied grimly. He reached over to the control panel and flicked a switch.
Jon heard a scraping of metal. Then suddenly daylight poured into the globe. The door of the sphere had slid open.
“Look!” Jon gasped.
The sphere was rocking in the air high above a city. The gleam of metal buildings flashed in the sun. And Jon stared unbelieving. The sun! Just a few short minutes ago they had left the Maddox farm in the middle of the night!
“It’s a city, Jon—it’s a city!”
Jon heard the older man speaking. But he was already aware of the city. And somehow it didn’t seem alien to him—the gleaming spires, the girding wall encircling it. His eyes swept through the narrow opening of the sphere on beyond the city below. Hills rose on sloping grass plains to dark forests beyond. He could see the silver ribbon of a river winding down from the hills toward the city.
Around them, suddenly, the buzzing hum roared. Jon turned anxiously.
Karl Maddox was staring at the glassite dome. “The gyroscope—something’s wrong!”
The sphere gave a sudden lurch. Jon felt his stomach jump. He glanced toward the door. They were falling!
The ground was rushing up at them with a shriek of wind. Jon watched horrified as they headed for the center of the city—toward a towering building with gleaming courts.
“We’ll be killed.” Jon shouted. “Can’t you stop it!”
Karl Maddox was working frantically with the switch panel. The sphere slowed slightly, but began spinning.
Everything after that was a kaleidoscope of sound and movement. Jon’s senses swam as the spinning sphere whirled in slowing circles toward the ground below. Around him a shrieking of sounds cut into his brain. It was as if the world had suddenly gone crazy.
Then there was a crash, thundering echoes, and oblivion . . .
JON became aware of voices. He felt hands touch his body. The sounds grew louder, the sense of touch more acute. He opened his eyes.
He was lying on the floor of the sphere. Somehow the straps that had held him to the chair were broken. He felt aches and bruises covering his body. He felt sick.
The hands were touching him again. He looked up. One side of the sphere had cracked open like an eggshell. With the light streaming through it like broken sunbeams, Jon knew two things. First, they had crashed and he was alive. Second, that strange men, in strange clothing, and holding long gleaming sword like weapons, were fussing about over him.
One of them saw his eyes open, staring. He flicked the sword at Jon’s chest. Jon felt a terrible shock, as if he had been struck by electricity. He groaned.
“Get up! Get on your feet!”
Dimly Jon heard the command. He rose painfully from the floor, and stood swaying lightly on his feet, for the first time noticing Karl Maddox standing silently off to one side, closely guarded by two of the strange men.
Jon took a moment to study them. They were clad in a strange metallic like material that covered them from the neck down. A wide plastic belt girdled them at the waist, from which hung long scabbards for the weapons they now held.
The sphere itself, as Jon took it in at a glance, was cracked and broken. When he looked over at his foster father, Karl Maddox had a puzzled look of fury and defeat on his face.
Jon felt another tingling shock sweep through him. One of the strange men was prodding him with the tip of a sword. Anger swept through Jon. He started to step forward. The sword flicked at him again. This time the shock nearly threw him back on his heels. It was electricity—there was no question about it!
“You will stand perfectly still.” Jon heard the man say.
Across from him, Jon heard Karl Maddox storming angrily.
“What is the meaning of this? Who are you people?”
Jon heard a ringing chorus of laughter. But the eyes that stared steadily at them were not humorous. One of the strangers stepped forward suddenly. He was a swaggering, blustering fellow, and for the first time, Jon noticed that his clothing was different from the others, different in color. While the others were clad in silvery material, this man had solid green. His sword scabbard too was different. The others were plain, his was gold encrusted.
