"I am not well. I ... I must not be out in the damp air," I said. "Buttoday I just had to go out and walk. I had to."
"I can understand." I warmed to the wave of aloneness that lay in hiswords. "I too have been ill. I know you, Otis Marlin. I have visitedyour shop off Market Street. You are not rich, but the feel of thecovers on a fine book between your hands suffices. Am I right?"
I nodded, "But how...."
"You have tried writing, but have had no success. Alone in the world,your loneliness has much a family man, harassed might envy."
"That's true," I admitted, wondering if he could be a seer, a fakemystic bent on arousing in me an interest in spiritism favorable to hispocket-book. His next words were a little amused, but he didn't smile.
"No, I'm not a psychic--in the ordinary sense, I've visited your shop. Iwas there only yesterday," he said. And I remembered him. In returningfrom my lunch I had met him coming out of my humble place of business.One glimpse into those brooding eyes was not a thing to soon forget, andI recalled pausing to watch his stiff-legged progress down the streetand around the corner.
There was now a pause, while I watched leaves scuttling along the oiledwalk in the growling wind. Then a sound like a sigh came from mycompanion. It seemed to me that the wind and the sea spoke loudly of asudden, as tho approaching some dire climax. The sea wind chilled me asit had not before, I wanted to leave.
"Dare I tell you? DARE I!" His white face turned upward. It was asthough he questioned some spirit in the winds.
I was silent; curious, yet fearful of what it might be he might not beallowed to tell me. The winds were portentously still.
"Were you ever told, as a child, that you must not attempt to count thestars in the sky at night--that if you did you might _lose your mind_?"
"Why, yes. I believe I've heard that old superstition. Very reasonable,I believe; based on the assumption that the task would be too great forone brain. I...."
"I suppose it never occurred to you," he interrupted, "that thissuperstition might hold even more truth than that, truth as malignant asit is vast. Perhaps the cosmos hold secrets beyond comprehension of man;and what is your assurance that these secrets are beneficent and kind?Is nature rather not terrible, than kind? In the stars arepatterns--designs which if read, might lure the intrepid miserable onewho reads them out of earth and beyond ... beyond, to immeasurableevil.... Do you understand what I am saying?" His voice quiveredmetallically, was vibrant with emotion.
I tried to smile, but managed only a sickly grin. "I understand you,sir, but I am not in the habit of accepting nebulous theories such asthat without any shred of evidence."
"There is, sad to say, only too much evidence. But do you believe thatmen have _lost their minds_ from incessant study of the stars?"
"Perhaps some have, I don't know," I returned. "But in the South of thisstate in one of the country's leading observatories, I have a friend whois famous as an astronomer. He is as sane as you or I. If not saner." Itacked the last sentence on with significant emphasis.
The fellow was muttering something into his muffler, and I fancied Icaught the words "danger ..." and "fools ..." We were silent again. Lowdark clouds fled over the roaring sea and the gloom intensified.
Presently, in his clipt speech, the stranger said, "Do you believe thatlife exists on other planets, other stars? Have you ever wondered whatkind of life might inhabit the other stars in this solar system, andthose beyond it?" His eyes were near mine as he spoke, and theybewitched me. There was something in them, something intangible andawful. I sensed that he was questioning me idly, as an outlander mightbe questioned about things with which the asker is familiar, as I mightask a New Yorker, "What do you think of the Golden Gate Bridge?"
"I wouldn't attempt to guess, to describe, for instance, a Martian man,"I said. "Yet I read with interest various guesses by writers offiction." I was striving to maintain a mood of lightness and ease, butinwardly I felt a bitter cold, as one on the rim of a nightmare. Isuddenly realized, with childish fear, that night was falling.
"Writers of fiction! And what if they were to _guess too well_? Whatthen? Is it safe for them to have full rein over their imaginations?Like the star-gazers...." I said nothing, but smiled.
"Perhaps, man, there have been those whose minds were acute beyond mostearthly minds--those who have guessed too closely to truth. Perhaps_those who are Beyond_ are not yet ready to make themselves known toEarthlings? And maybe THEY, are annoyed with the puny publicity theyreceive from imaginative writers.... Ask yourself, _what isimagination_? Are earth-minds capable of conceiving that which is notand has never been; or is this imagination merely a deeper insightinto worlds you know not of, worlds glimpsed dimly in the throes ofdream? And whence come these dreams? Tell me, have you ever awakenedfrom a dream with the sinister feeling that all was not wellinside your mind?--that while you, the real you, were away inLimbo--_someone_--some_thing_ was probing in your mind, invading it andreading it. Might not THEY leave behind them in departure shadowytrailings of _their_ own minds?"
Now I was indeed speechless. For a strange nothing had started myneck-hairs to prickling. Authors who might have guessed too well....Two, no three, writers whose stories had hinted at inconceivable yetinevitable dooms; writers I had known; had recently died, by accident.
"What of old legends? Of the serpent who shall one day devour the sun.That legend dates back to Mu and Atlantis. Who, man, was and is Satan?Christ? And Jehovah? benevolent and all-saving, were but a monstrousjest fostered by THEY to keep man blindly content, and keep him dividedamong himself so that he strove not to unravel the stars?"
"Man, in my foolish youth I studied by candleflame secrets that wouldscorch your very soul. Of women who with their own bare hands havestrangled the children they bore so that the world might not know....Disease and sickness at which physicians throw up their hands inhelpless bafflement. When strong men tear at their limbs and heads andagony--seeking to drive forth alien forces that have netted themselvesinto their bodies. I need scarcely recount them all, each with its ownabominable significance. It is THEM. Who are eternal and nameless, whosend their scouts down to test earth-man. Don't you realize that theyhave watched man creep out of primal slimes, take limbs and shamble, andfinally walk? And that they are waiting, biding their time...." Ishivered with a fear beyond name. I tried to laugh and could not. Then,bold with stark horror, I shouted quite loudly: "How do you know this?Are you one of THEM?" He shook his head violently. "No, no!" I made asto go, feeling an aching horror within me.
"Stay only a moment more, man. I will have pity on you and will not tellyou all. I will not describe _them_. And I will not assay that which,when upon first seeing you here by the sea, _I first intended_...." Ilistened. Not daring to look at him; as in the grip of daemonaic dream.My fingers clutched at the edges of the bench so tightly that I havebeen unable to write with them until now. He concluded thus:
"So you see that I am everywhere a worldless alien. Sometimes thissecret is too great for one mind to contain, and I must talk. I mustfeel the presence of someone human near me, else I shall attempt tocommit suicide and again fail. It is without end--my horror. Have pityon me, man of earth, as I have had pity on you."
It was then that I gripped him by the shoulders and looked with pleadingdesperation into his staring eyes. "Why have you told me? What--" Myvoice broke. My hands fell to my sides. I shuddered.
He understood. Shrieked one word: "PITY!" into my insensible ear, andwas gone.
That was 3 nites ago and each nite since has been hell. I cannotremember how long it was after the STRANGER left that I found myselfable to move, to rise, hobble home, suddenly ancient with knowledge. AndI cannot--WILL NOT--reveal to you all that I heard.
I thot myself insane, but after an examination, a physician pronouncedme that I had been strained mentally. I am competent. But I wonder if heis wrong.
I view the silken stars tonight with loathing. HE sought to master theirinscrutable secret meaning, and
succeeded. He imagined, he dreamed; andhe fed his sleep with potions, so that he might learn where his mindmight be during sleep, and himself probe into the mind that wanderedfrom space into his resting body-shell. I am no scientist, nobio-chemist, so I learned little of his methods. Only that he didsucceed in removing his mind from Earth, and soaring to some remoteworld over and beyond this universe--where THEY dwell. And THEY knew himto be a mind of Earth, he told me. He but hinted of the evil he beheld,so potent with dread that it shattered his mind. And THEY cured him, andsent him back to earth.... "They are waiting!" he shrieked, in hisgrating skeleton of a voice. "They are contemptuous of man and hisfeeble colonies. But they fear that some day, like an overgrown idiotchild, he may do them harm. But before this time--when Man hasprogressed into a ripeness--THEY will descend! Then they will come inhordes to exploit the world as THEY did before!"
Of his return, and his assuming the role of a man, the Alien spokeevasively. It was to be assurred that this talk of his was not somerepulsive caprice; to know that all of it was true, that I gripped himand beheld him. To my everlasting horror, I must know. Little in itself,what I saw, but sufficient to cause me to sink down on the stone benchin a convulsive huddle of fear. Never again in life can I tear thisclutching terror from my soul. Only this: That when I looked into hisstaring eyes in the dimness of murky twilight, and before he understoodand quickly avaunted, I glimpsed with astoundment and repugnance thatbetween the muffling of his coat and black scarf _the INTRUDER wore ameticulously painted metal mask--to hide what I must not see_....
ASPHODEL:
by E. T. PINE
Down where skies are always dark, Where is ever heard the bark Of monstrous ebon hounds of hell, In a dreadful fearsome knell, Never fading, ever bright, With a weird and spectral light, Blooms a flower of ancient days, Shining in a crimson maze; When the black bat shrilly screams Asphodel, you haunt my dreams--
From the lands of distant death Steals the perfume of your breath:
Some night soon the wind will blow Saffron seeds to fall and grow By my casement window, where, Sleeps my loved one, still and fair; Then, the night you are to bloom I shall creep from out my room, From your blossom by the wall Shall I hear her dear voice call: Mournfully the wind will cry, And shadows cover all the sky-- My lips will touch the loved dead When where you nod I lay my head....
MARMOK
by Emil Pataja
Sleep that doth harbour a dream of dread, Whence come the fingers that beckoned and led My dream-stung soul from my canopied bed-- Whither dost take me, ere I am dead? Beyond the skull-grinning mid-March moon Over the phosphorous-lit lagoon Out past the darkest pits of the night, Fast thru the stars in this evil flight; Lead thee me out past the rim of space, Show me that ravenous, pain-black face, Marmok, whose myrmidons ever are questing For souls who wander at nite, unresting. Then shall I know an ultimate bliss Tasting the fury of that cosmic kiss, Whilst my earth-cloak lies limply on the floor To waken and gibber forevermore.
* * * * *
What is the dim monstrosity that shimmers across the stars, what hand isthat to cradle planets, earth and mars. What misshapen gargantuan ofnebulous formed flesh, hurls out its flood of darkness, the systems toenmesh. What is it walks across the universes chanting cosmic choruseswith endless verses--what thing unutterable has visited our Earth longyears ago, and now, tonite, returns, in the shadows lurking glow. Whatancient fear is with me, cold and terrible? Is that the shape of manupon the constellations, blotting out the light--or something gasping inhideous delight, plucking at the planets in insanity, at play, causingsuns to boil like cauldrons, meteors to sing upon their way withmournful voices, lost ghosts upon lonely trails--wailing--wailing. Istonight our rendezvous with the Cosmos Thing, the Colossus bigger thanAndromeda that sits upon the throne of space--or are these fantasiesupon my aged eyes?
HADES
Upon the shores of molten seas stand men, stand men alone,
And down below, in the molten flow, in the waves that cry and moan
Are women bare with flaming hair, whose passions have no surcease.
And in the air, midst the scarlet glare, are more who will never know Peace.
THE BEST WAYS TO GET AROUND
I don't mean socially; I mean off the Earth and between the planets.There are a few really good ways, as invented by perspiring authors inscience-fiction magazines. And if I miss any, which is extremelydoubtful, remember that I'm writting from memory, that I hadn't read_all_ the scientifiction magazines from 1926 and on, and that I am notgoing to go researching through the tremendous stacks of oldscientifiction magazines that I now have in my possession.
Now, what DO I mean by THE BEST WAYS TO GET AROUND? Briefly, by the wordBEST, I mean so pseudo-logical that you could almost leave off the"pseudo". See? (No)
For instance, Jack Williamson's geodesic machinery, wherein he warpsspace around, appeals to me as being pure fairy tale stuff. He justgives a lot of verbal hocus-pocus, and runs off reams of litteraryfertilizer until we throw up our hands in disgust and say; "O.K., O.K.,Jack, to hell with that, let's get on with the 'story'. We'll grant youthat you _can_ get around."--And we're willing to grant E.E. Smith thesame privilege. He _DOES_ get around--anybody disagree? The question is;how? Oh, by useing "X", and the inertialess drive. The same with brotherBurroughs. What do we care if dear old John Carter "yearns" himself toMars? He gets there, and we are happy, or were happy.
So, we exclude all those from THE BEST WAYS TO GET AROUND. They are verynice and convenient to get people places; but, when we run across one ofthe "BEST WAYS" we often wonder if it REALLY WOULDN'T be possible,provided----. Of course, that word "provided" is the catch--the reasonwhy we really aren't going around that way.
Again--So, way back there, Edmond Hamilton, and a hundred others, haveused the idea of _light-preasure_ in an attempt to get away fromrockets. But he didn't tell us how, scientifictionaly. In directcontrast to vauge statements made regarding the use of _light-preasure_as propulsion, I remember the MOON CONQUORS, by R.H. Romans, in a 1931(I think) (You're right, 4SJ) quarterly. You've seen radiometers. Thethings with black and white vanes placed in a vacuum. The theory is thatthe opposite shades cause unbalanced light preasure, so that the vanesgo around and around. Romans invented a pseudo-scientifically logicalway to use _light-preasure_, once he got his ship in space. Hisscientist invented a compound of _absolute black_. (Which is alsoobtainable in a darkroom) A small square of darkroom--or, I mean,absolute black painted on the posterior of the ship, and regulated atwill, gave the same ship quite respectable speeds. Certainly it won'twork outside of a story--but, I'm talking scientifictionally. Romansused his imagination, and we all had fun.
In the same story, Romans used a swell device to get the ship off theearth. He used a mile-long tube, composed of circular magnets. It was a_magnetic gun_. Each magnet pulled the ship towards it, and then, as theship passed it, the magnet's poles were reversed, and made to repel theship. With each magnet at maximum charge, either pulling or pushing theship, according to whether it was in front or behind the latter, thesame erupted from the tube with the necessary 7 M.P.S. velocity ofescape, and so was off on the way to the moon. What's wrong with theidea? I dunno.
John W. Campell (Jr.) used to have brainstorms: in fact, he invented_two_ of THE BEST WAYS TO GET AROUND. One, in the first of the ARCOT,MOREY, and WADE stories, "PIRACY PREFERRED", was that of molecularmotion. All the little molecules in a bar of metal go madly around inevery possible direction. If you could invent, as Campbell did in thestory, an electro-magnetic vibration that would force all the molleculesto go in the same direction, then the bar of metals would go in thatdirection, since it would be them. So Mr. Campbell hooked the thing upto his ship, and off he went to Venus, or some other planet. Well, it_would_ work, wouldn't it, _provided_ (ah yes!) you could make all themollecules
go into one directional flow.
And the other brainstorm was when Aarn Munro, in the MIGHTIEST MACHINE,decided that momentum and velocity were wave formations, and therefore,one should be able to _tune into them_! (Anyone should be able to thinkup a simple theory like that.) Not a bad WAY TO GET AROUND--in ascience fiction story.
Back in 1930, or some such year, Charles R. Tanner wrote THE FLIGHT OFTHE MERCURY, in the old WONDER STORIES. In that story he told you justhow to go ahead and make an ETHERPROPELLER, provided there is such athing as ether, and Osmium B. The theory is: you use water screws, airpropellers, and so why not an ether propeller? Put a cork in motionlesswater. Start a wave motion in the water with your hand. If the length ofthe wave is greater than the diameter of the cork, the cork just bobs upand down and stays where it is. If the lengths of the waves are shorterthan the diameter of the cork, the waves go around it, and the cork stillstays right where it is. If the length of the wave is exactly thediameter of the cork, tho cork rides right off, in the trough of thewave, at the same speed as that of the wave formation. Now invent anelectro-magnetic vibration--by useing the metal Osmium B--exactly thelength of a Copper atom. Make your ship of copper, putting the etherpropeller, that which causes vibration in the ether, at the end of theship, and presto! all the copper atoms move along in the trough of theether waves, at the same speed as the other waves, which is the speed oflight. And, Mr. Tanner is off for Mars, in a super-plausiblyscientifictional way.