Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 - Various 3 стр.

Hes dead as a mackerel, said Carnes in answer to the doctors look. Walter got him through the neck and broke his spinal cord. He never knew what hit him.

The plans? came in a gasping voice from the man in the corner.

We got them, too, replied Carnes. He had both packets inside his coat. They have been opened, but I guess they are all here. Who the devil are you?

Since Koskoff is dead, and I am dying, there is no reason why I shouldnt tell you, was the answer. Leave that brandy handy to keep up my strength. I have only a short time and I cant repeat.

As to who I am or what I was, it doesnt really matter. Koskoff knew me as John Smith, and it will pass as well as any other name. Let my past stay buried. I am, or was, a scientist of some ability; but fortune frowned on me, and I was driven out of the world. Money would rehabilitate memoney will do anything nowadaysso I set out to get it. In the course of my experimental work, I had discovered that cold was negative heat and reacted to the laws which governed heat.

I knew that, cried Dr. Bird; but I never could prove it.

Who are you? demanded John Smith.

Dr. Bird, of the Bureau of Standards.

Oh, Bird. Ive heard of you. You can understand me when I say that as heat, positive heat is a concomitant of ordinary light. I have found that cold, negative heat, is a concomitant of cold light. Is my apparatus in good shape outside?

The reflector is smashed.

Im sorry. You would have enjoyed studying it. I presume that you saw that it was a catenary curve?

I rather thought so.

It was, and it was also adjustable. I could vary the focal point from a few feet to several miles. With that apparatus I could throw a beam of negative heat with a focal point which I could adjust at will. Close to the apparatus, I could obtain a temperature almost down to absolute zero, but at the longer ranges it wasnt so cold, due to leakage into the atmosphere. Even at two miles I could produce a local temperature of three hundred degrees below zero.

What was the source of your cold?

Liquid helium. Those cylinders contain, or rather did contain, for I expect that Koskoff has emptied them, helium in a liquid state.

Where is your compressor?

I didnt have to use one. I developed a cold light under whose rays helium would liquefy and remain in a state of equilibrium until exposed to light rays. Those cylinders had merely enough pressure to force the liquid out to where the sun could hit it, and then it turned to a gas, dropping the temperature at the first focal point of the reflector to absolute zero. When I had this much done, Koskoff and I packed the whole apparatus here and were ready for work.

We were on the path of the transcontinental air mail, and I bided my time until an especially valuable shipment was to be made. My plans, which worked perfectly, were to freeze the plane in midair and then rob the wreck. I heard of the jewel shipment the T. A. C. was to carry and I planned to get it. When the plane came over, Koskoff and I brought it down. The unsuspected presence of another plane upset us a little, and I started to bring it down. But we had been all over this country and knew there was no place that a plane could land. I let it go on in safety.

Thank you, replied Carnes with a grimace.

We robbed the wreck and we found two packets, one the jewels I was after, and the other a sealed packet, which proved to contain certain War Department plans. That was when I learned who Koskoff was. I had hired him in San Francisco as a good mechanic who had no principles. He was to get one-fourth of the loot. When we found these plans, he told me who he was. He was really a Russian secret agent and he wanted to deliver the plans to Russia. I may be a thief and a murderer, but I am not yet ready to betray my country, and I told him so. He offered me almost any price for the plans; but I wouldnt listen. We had a serious quarrel, and he overpowered me and bound me.

We had a radio set here and he called San Francisco and sent some code message. I think he was waiting here for someone to come. Had we followed our original plans, we would have been miles from here before you arrived.

He had me bound and helpless, as he thought, but I worked my bonds a little loose. I didnt let him know it, for I knew that the plane I had let get away would guide a party here and I thought I might be able to help out. When you came and attacked the house, I worked at my bonds until they were loose enough to throw off. I saw Koskoff start my cold apparatus to working and then he quit, because he ran out of helium. When he started shooting again, I worked out of my bonds and tackled him.

He was a better man than I gave him credit for, or else he suspected me, for about the time I grabbed him he whirled and struck me over the head with his gun barrel and tore my face open. The blow stunned me, and when I came to, I was thrown into this corner. I meant to have another try at it, but I guess you rushed him too fast. He turned and ran for the tunnel, but as he did so, he shot me through the body. I guess I didnt look dead enough to suit him. You gentlemen broke open the door and came in. Thats all.

Not by a long shot, it isnt, exclaimed Dr. Bird. Where is that cold light apparatus of yours?

In the tunnel.

How do you get into it?

If you will open that cupboard on the wall, youll find an open knife switch on the wall. Close it.

Dr. Bird found the switch and closed it. As he did so the cabin rocked on its foundations and both Carnes and Walter were thrown to the ground. The thud of a detonation deep in the earth came to their ears.

What was that? cried the doctor.

That, replied Smith with a wan smile, was the detonation of two hundred pounds of T.N.T. When you dig down into the underground cave where we used the cold light apparatus, you will find it in fragments. It was my only child, and Ill take it with me.

As he finished his head slumped forward on his chest. With an exclamation of dismay Dr. Bird sprang forward and tried to lift the prostrate form.

In an agony of desire the Doctor tightened his grip on the dying mans shoulder. But Smith collapsed into a heap. Dr. Bird bent forward and tore open his shirt and listened at his chest. Presently he straightened up.

He is gone, he said sadly, and I guess the results of his genius have died with him. He doesnt strike me as a man who left overmuch to chance. Carnes, is your case completed?

Very satisfactorily, Doctor. I have both of the lost packets.

All right, then, come back to the wreck and help me pack my burros. I can make my way back to Fallon without a guide.

Where are you going, Doctor?

That, Carnes, old dear, is none of your blankety blanked business. Permit me to remind you that I am on my vacation. I havent decided yet just where I am going, but I can tell you one thing. Its going to be some place where you cant call me on the telephone.

Brigands of the Moon

I have been thinking that if, during one of those long winter evenings at Valley Forge, someone had placed in George Washingtons hands one of our present day best sellers, the illustrious Father of our Country would have read it with considerable emotion. I do not mean what we call a story of science, or fantasyjust a novel of action, adventure and romance. The sort of thing you and I like to read, but do not find amazing in any way at all.

Black mutiny and brigandage stalk the Space-ship Planetara as she speeds to the Moon to pick up a fabulously rich cache of radium-ore.

But I fancy that George Washington would have found it amazing. Dont you? It might picture, for instance, a factory girl at a sewing machine. George Washington would be amazed at a sewing machine. And the girl, journeying in the subway to and from her work! Stealing an opportunity to telephone her lover at the noon hour; going to the movies in the evening, or listening to a radio. And there might be a climax, perhaps, with the girl and the villain in a transcontinental railway Pullman, and the hero sending frantic telegrams, or telephoning the train, and then chasing it in his airplane.

George Washington would have found it amazing!

And I am wondering how you and I would feel if someone were to give us now a book of ordinary adventure of the sort which will be published a hundred and fifty years hence. I have been trying to imagine such a book and the nature of its contents.

Let us imagine it together. Suppose we walk down Fifth Avenue, a pleasant spring morning of May, 2080. Fifth Avenue, no doubt, will be there. I dont know whether the New York Public Library will be there or not. Well assume that it is, and that it has some sort of books, printed, or in whatever fashion you care to imagine.

The young man library attendant is surprised at our curiously antiquated aspect. We look as though we were dressed for some historical costume ball. We talk old-fashioned English, like actors in an historical play of the 1930 period.

But we get the book. The attendant assures us it is a good average story of action and adventure. Nothing remarkable, but he read it himself, and found it interesting.

We thank him and take the book. But we find that the language in which it is written is too strange for comfortable reading. And it names so many extraordinary things so casually! As though we knew all about them, which we certainly do not!

So we take it to the kind-hearted librarian in the language division. He modifies it to old-fashioned English of 1930, and he puts occasional footnotes to help explain some of the things we might not understand. Why he should bother to do this for us I dont know; but let us assume that he does.

And now we take the book homein the pneumatic tube, or aerial moving sidewalk, or airship, or whatever it is we take to get home.

And now that we are home, lets read the book. It ought to be interesting.

CHAPTER I

One may write about oneself and still not be an egoist. Or so, at least, they tell me. My narrative went broadcast with a fair success. It was pantomimed and the public flashed me a reasonable approval. And so my disc publishers have suggested that I record it in more permanent form.

I introduce myself, begging grace that I intrude upon your busy minutes, with my only excuse that perhaps I may amuse you. For what the commercial sellers of my pictured version were pleased to blare as my handsome face, I ask your indulgence. My feminine audience of the pantomimes was undoubtedly graciously pleased at my personality and physical aspect. That I am tall as a Viking of oldand handsome as a young Norse Godis very pretty talk in the selling of my product. But I deplore its intrusion into the personality of this, my recorded narrative. And so now, for preface, to all my audience I do give earnest assurance that Gregg Haljan is no conceited zebra, handsomely striped by nature, and proud of it. Not so. I am, I do beg you to believe, a very humble fellow, striving for your approval, hoping only to entertain you.

My introduction: My name, Gregg Haljan. My age, twenty-five years. I was, at the time my narrative begins, Third Officer on the Space-Ship Planetara. Our line was newly established; in 2070, to be exact, following the modern improvements of the Martel Magnetic Levitation.1

Our ship, whose home port was Great-New York, carried mail and passenger traffic to and from both Venus and Mars. Of astronomical necessity, our flights were irregular. This spring, with the two other planets both close to the earth, we were making two complete round trips. We had just arrived in Great-New York, this May evening, from Grebhar, Venus Free State. With only five hours in port here, we were departing the same night at the zero hour for Ferrok-Shahn, capital of the Martian Union.

We were no sooner at the landing stage than I found a code-flash summoning Dan Dean and me to Divisional Detective Headquarters. Dan Snap Dean was one of my closest friends. He was radio-helio operator of the Planetara. A small, wiry, red-headed chap, with a quick, ready laugh and a wit that made everyone like him.

The summons to Detective-Colonel Halseys office surprised us. Snap eyed me.

You havent been opening any treasury vaults, have you, Gregg?

He wants you, also, I retorted.

He laughed. Well, he can roar at me like a traffic switchman and my private life will remain my own.

We could not think why we should be wanted. It was the darkness of mid-evening when we left the Planetara for Halseys office. It was not a long trip. We went direct in the upper monorail, descending into the subterranean city at Park-Circle 30.

We had never been to Halseys office before. We found it to be a gloomy, vaultlike place in one of the deepest corridors. The door lifted.

Gregg Haljan and Daniel Dean.

The guard stood aside. Come in.

I own that my heart was unduly thumping as we entered. The door dropped behind us. It was a small blue-lit apartmenta steel-lined room like a vault.

Colonel Halsey sat at his desk. And the big, heavy-set, florid Captain Carterour commander of the Planetarawas here. That surprised us: we had not seen him leave the ship.

Halsey smiled at us gravely. Captain Carter said, Sit down, lads.

We took the seats. There was an alarming solemnity about this. If I had been guilty of anything that I could think of, it would have been frightening. But Halseys first words reassured me.

Its about the Grantline Moon Expedition. In spite of our secrecy, the news has gotten out. We want to know how. Can you tell us?

Captain Carters huge bulkhe was about as tall as I amtowered over us as we sat before Halseys desk. If you lads have told anyonesaid anythinglet slip the slightest hint about it

Snap smiled with relief; but he turned solemn at once. I havent. Not a word!

Nor have I, I declared.

The Grantline Moon Expedition! We had not thought of that as a reason for this summons. Johnny Grantline was a close friend to us both. He had organized an exploring expedition to the Moon. Uninhabited, with its bleak, forbidding, airless, waterless surface, the Mooneven though so close to the Earthwas seldom visited. No regular ship ever stopped there. A few exploring parties of recent years had come to grief.

But there was a persistent rumor that upon the Moon, mineral riches of fabulous wealth were awaiting discovery. The thing had already caused some interplanetary complications. The aggressive Martians would be only too glad to explore the Moon. But the U.S.W.2 definitely warned them away. The Moon was World Territory, we announced, and we would protect it as such.

The threatened conflict between the Earth and Mars had come to nothing. There was, this year of 2079, a thorough amity between all three of the inhabited planets. It still holds, and I pray that it may always hold.