Astounding Stories of Super-Science 9

Astounding Stories of Super-Science 9

No one would miss me, save my employers, and to them I would no doubt be

small loss.

 

We had put out the light in Derek's apartment and locked it carefully

after us. This journey! I own that I was trembling, and frightened. Yet

a strange eagerness was on me.

 

The cellar room was comfortably furnished. Rugs were on its floor.

Whatever apparatus of a research laboratory had been here was removed

now. But the evidence of it remained--Derek's long search for this

secret which now he was about to use. A row of board shelves at one

side of the room showed where bottles and chemical apparatus had stood.

A box of electrical tools and odds and ends of wire still lay discarded

in a corner of the room. There was a tank of running water, and gas

connections, where no doubt bunsen burners had been.

 

* * * * *

 

Derek produced his apparatus. I sat on a small low couch against the

wall and watched him as he stripped himself of his clothes. Around his

waist he adjusted a wide, flat, wire-woven belt. A small box was

fastened to it in the middle of the back--a wide, flat thing of metal, a

quarter of an inch thick, and curved to fit his body. It was a storage

battery of the vibratory current he was using. From the battery, tiny

threads of wire ran up his back to a wire necklace flat against his

throat. Other wires extended down his arms to the wrists. Still others

down his legs to the ankles. A flat electrode was connected to the top

of his head like a helmet. I was reminded as he stood there, of medical

charts of the human body with the arterial system outlined. But when he

dressed again and put on his jaunty captain's uniform, only the

electrode clamped to his head and the thin wires dangling from it in the

back were visible to disclose that there was anything unusual about him.

 

He said smilingly, "Don't stare at me like that."

 

I took a grip on myself. This thing was frightening, now that I actually

was embarked on it. Derek had explained to me briefly the workings of

his apparatus. A vibratory electronic current, for which as yet he had

no name, was stored in the small battery. He had said:

 

"There's nothing incomprehensible about this, Charlie. It's merely a

changing of the vibration rate of the basic substance out of which our

bodies are made. Vibration is the governing factor of all states of

matter. In its essence what we call substance is wholly intangible. That

is already proven. A vortex! A whirlpool of nothingness! It creates a

pseudo-substance which is the only material in the universe. And from

this, by vibration, is built the complicated structure of things as we

see and feel them to be, all dependent upon vibration. Everything is

altered, directly as the vibratory rate is changed. From the most

tenuous gas, to fluids to solids--throughout all the different states of

matter the only fundamental difference is the rate of vibration."

 

* * * * *

 

I understood the basic principle of this that he was explaining--that

now when this electronic current which he had captured and controlled

was applied to our physical body, the vibration rate of every smallest

and most minute particle of our physical being was altered. There is so

little in the vast scale of natural phenomena of which our human senses

are cognisant! Our eyes see the colors of the spectrum, from red to

violet. But a vast invisible world of color lies below the red of the

rainbow! Physicists call it the infra-red. And beyond the violet,

another realm--the ultra-violet. With sound it is the same. Our audible

range of sound is very small. There are sounds with too slow a vibratory

rate for us to hear, and others too rapid. The differing vibratory rate

from most tenuous gas to most substantial solid is all that we can

perceive in this physical world of ours. Yet of the whole, it is so very

little! This other realm to which we were now going lay in the higher,

more rapid vibratory scale. To us, by comparison, a more tenuous world,

a shadow realm.

 

I listened to Derek's words, but my mind was on the practicality of what

lay ahead. An explorer, standing upon his ship, may watch his men

bending the sails, raising the anchor, but his mind flings out to the

journey's end....

 

* * * * *

 

We were soon ready. Derek wore his jaunty uniform, I wore my ordinary

business suit. A magnetic field would be about us, so that in the

transition anything in fairly close contact with our bodies was affected

by the current.

 

Derek said, "I will go first, Charlie."

 

"But, Derek--" A fear, greater than the trembling I had felt before,

leaped at me. Left here alone, with no one on whom to depend!

 

He spoke with careful casualness, but his eyes were burning me. "Just

sit there, and watch. When I am gone, turn on the current as I showed

you and come after me. I'll wait for you."

 

"Where?" I stammered.

 

He smiled faintly. "Here. Right here. I'm not going away! Not going to

move. I'll be here on the couch waiting for you."

 

Terrifying words! He had lowered the couch, bending out its short legs

until the frame of it rested on the board floor. He drew a chair up

before it and seated me. He sat down on the couch.

 

He said, "Oh, one other thing. Just before you start, put out the light.

We can't tell how long it will be before we return."

 

Terrifying words!

 

His right hand was on his left wrist where the tiny switch was placed.

He smiled again. "Good luck to us, Charlie!"

 

Good luck to us! The open road, the unknown!

 

I sat there staring. He was partly in shadow. The room was very silent.

Derek lay propped up on one elbow. His hand threw the tiny switch.

 

There was a breathless moment. Derek's face was set and white, but no

whiter than my own, I was sure. His eyes were fixed on me. I saw him

suddenly quiver and twitch a little.

 

I murmured, "Derek--"

 

At once he spoke, to reassure me. "I'm all right, Charlie. That was just

the first feel of it."

 

* * * * *

 

There was a faint quivering throb in the room, like a tiny distant

dynamo throbbing. The current was surging over Derek; his legs

twitched.

 

A moment. The faint throbbing intensified. No louder, but rapid,

infinitely more rapid. A tiny throb, an aerial whine, faint as the

whirring wings of a humming bird. It went up the scale, ascending in

pitch, until presently it was screaming with an aerial microscopic

voice.

 

But there seemed no change in Derek. His uniform was glowing a trifle,

that was all. His face was composed now; he smiled, but did not speak.

His eyes roved away from me, as though now he were seeing things that I

could not see.

 

Another moment. No change.

 

Why, what was this? I blinked, gasped. There was a change! My gaze was

fastened upon Derek's white face. White? It was more than white now! A

silver sheen seemed to be coming to his skin!

 

I think no more than a minute had passed. His face was glowing,

shimmering. A transparent look was coming to it, a thinness, a sudden

unsubstantiality! He dropped his elbow and lay on the couch, stretched

at full length at my feet. His eyes were staring.

 

And suddenly I realized that the face that held those staring eyes was

erased! A shimmering apparition of Derek was stretched here before me. I

could see through it now! Beneath the shimmering, blurred outlines of

his body I could see the solid folds of the couch cover. A ghost of

Derek here. An apparition--fading--dissipating!

 

A gossamer outline of him, imponderable, intangible.

 

I leaped to my feet, staring down over him.

 

"Derek!"

 

The shape of him did not move. Every instant it was more vaporous, more

unreal.

 

I thought, "He's gone!"

 

No! He was still there. A white mist of his form on the couch. Melting,

dissipating in the light like a fog before sunshine. A wisp of it left,

like a breath, and then there was nothing.

 

* * * * *

 

I sat on the couch. I had put out the light. Around me the room was

black. My fingers found the small switch at my wrist. I pressed it

across its tiny arc.

 

The first shock was slight, but infinitely strange. A shuddering,

twitching sensation ran all over me. It made my head reel, swept a wave

of nausea over me, a giddiness, a feeling that I was falling through

darkness. I lay on the couch, bracing myself. The current was whining up

its tiny scale. I could feel it now. A tiny throbbing, communicating

itself to my physical being.

 

And then in a moment I realized that my body was throbbing. The

vibration of the current was communicating itself to the most minute

cells of my body. An indescribable tiny quivering within me. Strange,

frightening, sickening at first. But the sickness passed, and in a

moment I found it almost pleasant.

 

I could see nothing. The room was wholly dark. I lay on my side on the

couch, my eyes staring into the blackness around me. I could hear the

humming of the current, and then it seemed to fade. Abruptly I felt a

sense of lightness. My body, lying on the couch, pressed less heavily.

 

I gripped my arm. I was solid, substantial as before. I touched the

couch. It was the couch which was changing, not I! The couch cover

queerly seemed to melt under my hand!

 

The sense of my own lightness grew upon me. A lightness, a freedom,

pressed me, as though chains and shackles which all my life had

encompassed me were falling away. A wild, queer freedom.

 

I wondered where Derek was. Had I arrived in the other realm? Was he

here? I had no idea how much time had passed: a minute or two, perhaps.

 

Or was I still in Derek's laboratory? The darkness was as solid,

impenetrable as ever. No, not quite dark! I saw something now. A

glowing, misty outline around me. Then I saw that it was not the new,

unknown realm, but still Derek's room. A shadowy, spectral room, and the

light, which dimly illumined it, was from outside.

 

* * * * *

 

I lay puzzling, my own situation forgotten for the moment. The light

came from overhead, in another room of the apartment house. I stared.

Around me now was a dim vista of distance, and vague, blurred, misty

outlines of the apartment building above me. The shadowy world I had

left now lay bare. There was a moment when I thought I could see far

away across a spectral city street. The shadows of the great city were

around me. They glowed, and then were gone.

 

A hand gripped my arm in a solid grip. Derek's voice sounded.

 

"Are you all right?"

 

"Yes," I murmured. The couch had faded. I was conscious that I had

floated or drifted down a few inches, to a new level. The level of the

cellar floor beneath the couch. Cellar floor! It was not that now. Yet

there was something solid here, a solid ground, and I was lying upon it,

with Derek sitting beside me.

 

I murmured again, "Yes, I'm all right."

 

My groping hand felt the ground. It was soil, with a growth of

vegetation like a grass sward on it. Were we outdoors? It suddenly

seemed so. I could feel soft, warm air on my face and had a sense of

open distance around me. A light was growing, a vague, diffused light,

as though day were swiftly coming upon us.

 

I felt Derek fumbling at my wrist. "That's all, Charlie."

 

There was a slight shock. Derek was pulling me up beside him. I found

myself on my feet, with light around me. I stood wavering, gripping

Derek. It was as though I had closed my eyes, and now they were suddenly

open. I was aware of daylight, color, and movement. A world of normality

here, normal to me now because I was part of it. The realm of the

unknown!

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER IV

 

_"Hope, I Came...."_

 

 

I think I was first conscious of a queer calmness which had settled upon

me, as though now I had withdrawn contact with the turmoil of our world!

Something was gone, and in its place came a calmness. But that was a

mere transition. It had passed in a moment. I stood trembling with

eagerness, as I know Derek was trembling.

 

A radiant effulgence of light was around us, clarifying, growing. There

was ground beneath our feet, and sky overhead. A rational landscape,

strangely familiar. A physical world like my own, but, it seemed, with a

new glory upon it. Nature, calmly serene.

 

I had thought we were standing in daylight. I saw now it was bright

starlight. An evening, such as the evening we had just left in our own

world. The starlight showed everything clearly. I could see a fair

distance.

 

We stood at the top of a slight rise. I saw gentle, slightly undulating

country. A brook nearby wound through a grove of trees and lost itself.

Suddenly, with a shock, I realized how familiar this was! We stood

facing what in New York City we call West. The contour of this land was

familiar enough for me to identify it. A mile or so ahead lay a river;

it shimmered in its valley, with cliffs on its further side. Near at

hand the open country was dotted with trees and checkered with round

patches of cultivated fields. And there were occasional habitations,

low, oval houses of green thatch.

 

The faint flush of a recent sunset lay upon the landscape, mingled with

the starlight. A road--a white ribbon in the starlight--wound over the

countryside toward the river. Animals, strange of aspect, were slowly

dragging carts. There were distant figures working in the fields.

 

A city lay ahead of us, set along this nearer bank of the river. A city!

It seemed a primitive village. All was primitive, as though here might

be some lost Indian tribe of our early ages. The people were

picturesque, the field workers garbed in vivid colors. The flat little

carts, slow moving, with broad-horned oxen.

 

* * * * *

 

This quiet village, drowsing beside the calm-flowing river, seemed all

very normal. I could fancy that it was just after sundown of a quiet

workday. There was a faint flush of pink upon everything: the glory of

the sun just set. And as though to further my fancy, in the village by

the river, like an angelus, a faint-toned bell was chiming.

 

We stood for a moment gazing silently. I felt wholly normal. A warm,

pleasant wind fanned my hot face. The sense of lightness was gone. This

was normality to me.

 

Derek murmured, "Hope was to meet me here."

 

And then we both saw her. She was coming toward us along the road. A

slight, girlish figure, clothed in queerly vivid garments: a short

jacket of blue cloth with wide-flowing sleeves, knee-length pantaloons

of red, with tassels dangling from them, and a wide red sash about her

waist. Pale golden hair was piled in a coil upon her head....

 

She was coming toward us along the edge of the road, from the direction

of the city. She was only a few hundred feet from us when we first saw

her, coming swiftly, furtively it seemed. A low pike fence bordered the

road. She seemed to be shielding herself in the shadows beside it.

 

We stood waiting in the starlight. The nearest figures in the field and

on the road were too far away to notice us. The girl advanced. Her white

arm went up in a gesture, and Derek answered. She left the road,

crossing the field toward us. As she came closer, I saw how very

beautiful she was. A girl of eighteen, perhaps, a fantastic little

figure with her vivid garments. The starlight illumined her white face,

anxious, apprehensive, but eager.

 

"Derek!"

 

He said, "Hope, I came...."

 

I stood silently watching. Derek's arms went out, and the girl, with a

little cry, came running forward and threw herself into them.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER V

 

_Intrigue_

 

 

"Am I in time, Hope?"

 

"Yes, but the festival is to-night. In an hour or two now. Oh Derek, if

the king holds this festival, the toilers will revolt. They won't stand

it--"

 

"To-night! It mustn't be held to-night! It doesn't give me time, time to

plan."

 

I stood listening to their vehement, half-whispered words. For a moment

or two, absorbed, they ignored me.

 

"The king will make his choice to-night, Derek. He has announced it.

Blanca or Sensua for his queen. And if he chooses the Crimson Sensua--"

She stammered, then she went on:

 

"If he does--there will be bloodshed. The toilers are waiting, just to

learn his choice."

 

Derek exclaimed, "But to-night is too soon! I've got to plan. Hope,

where does Rohbar stand in this?"

 

Strange intrigue! I pieced it together now, from their words, and from

what presently they briefly told me. A festival was about to be held, an

orgy of feasting and merrymaking, of music and dancing. And during it,

this young King Leonto was to choose his queen. There were two

possibilities. The Crimson Sensua, a profligate, debauched woman who, as

queen, would further oppress the workers. And Blanca, a white beauty,

risen from the toilers to be a favorite at the Court. Hope was her

handmaiden.

 

If Blanca were chosen, the toilers would be appeased. She was one of

them. She would lead this king from his profligate ways, would win from

him justice for the workers.

 

But Derek and Hope both knew that the pure and gentle Blanca would

never be the king's choice. And to-night the toilers would definitely

know it, and the smoldering revolt would burst into flame.

 

* * * * *

 

And there was this Rohbar. Derek said, "He is the king's henchman,

Charlie."

 

I stood here in the starlight, listening to them. This strange primitive

realm. There were no modern weapons here. We had brought none. The

current used in our transition would have exploded the cartridges of a

revolver. I had a dirk which Hope now gave me, and that was all.

 

Primitive intrigue. I envisaged this chaotic nation, with its toilers

ignorant as the oppressed Mexican peons at their worst. Striving to

better themselves, yet, not knowing how. Ready to shout for any leader

who might with vainglorious words set himself up as a patriot.

 

This Rohbar, perhaps, was planning to do just that.

 

And so was Derek! He said, "Hope, if you could persuade the king to

postpone the festival--if Blanca would help persuade him--just until

to-morrow night...."

 

"I can try, Derek. But the festival is planned for an hour or two from

now."

 

"Where is the king?"

 

"In his palace, near the festival gardens."

 

She gestured to the south. My mind went back to New York City. This

hillock, where we were standing in the starlight beside a tree, was in

my world about Fifth Avenue and Sixteenth Street. The king's palace--the

festival gardens--stood down at the Battery, where the rivers met in the broad water of the harbor.