He had striven to perfect the faultless man of the future, and
had succeeded--too well. For in the pitilessly cold eyes of
Adam, his super-human creation, Dr. Mundson saw only
contempt--and annihilation--for the human race.
had come for an hour of forgetfulness and an execrable dinner, John
Northwood was suddenly conscious that Fate had begun shuffling the cards
of his destiny for a dramatic game.
First, he was aware that the singularly ugly and deformed man at the
next table was gazing at him with an intense, almost excited scrutiny.
But, more disturbing than this, was the scowl of hate on the face of
another man, as handsome as this other was hideous, who sat in a far
corner hidden behind a broad column, with rude elbows on the table,
gawking first at Northwood and then at the deformed, almost hideous
man.
fair-haired stranger's perfectly carved face. If a figure in marble
could display a fierce, unnatural passion, it would seem no more
eldritch than the hate in the icy blue eyes.
It was not a new experience for Northwood to be stared at: he was not
merely a good-looking young fellow of twenty-five, he was scenery,
magnificent and compelling. Furthermore, he had been in the public eye
for years, first as a precocious child and, later, as a brilliant young
scientist. Yet, for all his experience with hero worshippers to put an
adamantine crust on his sensibilities, he grew warm-eared under the gaze
of these two strangers--this hunchback with a face like a grotesque mask
in a Greek play, this other who, even handsomer than himself, chilled
the blood queerly with the cold perfection of his godlike masculine
beauty.
* * * * *
Northwood sensed something familiar about the hunchback. Somewhere he
had seen that huge, round, intelligent face splattered with startling
features. The very breadth of the man's massive brow was not altogether
unknown to him, nor could Northwood look into the mournful, near-sighted
black eyes without trying to recall when and where he had last seen
them.
But this other of the marble-perfect nose and jaw, the blond,
thick-waved hair, was totally a stranger, whom Northwood fervently hoped
he would never know too well.
Trying to analyze the queer repugnance that he felt for this handsome,
boldly staring fellow, Northwood decided: "He's like a newly-made wax
figure endowed with life."
Shivering over his own fantastic thought, he again glanced swiftly at
the hunchback, who he noticed was playing with his coffee, evidently to
prolong the meal.
One year of calm-headed scientific teaching in a famous old eastern
university had not made him callous to mysteries. Thus, with a feeling
of high adventure, he finished his supper and prepared to go. From the
corner of his eye, he saw the hunchback leave his seat, while the
handsome man behind the column rose furtively, as though he, too,
intended to follow.
Northwood was out in the dusky street about thirty seconds, when the
hunchback came from the foyer. Without apparently noticing Northwood, he
hailed a taxi. For a moment, he stood still, waiting for the taxi to
pull up at the curb. Standing thus, with the street light limning every
unnatural angle of his twisted body and every queer abnormality of his
huge features, he looked almost repulsive.
On his way to the taxi, his thick shoulder jostled the younger man.
Northwood felt something strike his foot, and, stooping in the crowded
street, picked up a black leather wallet.
"Wait!" he shouted as the hunchback stepped into the waiting taxi.
But the man did not falter. In a moment, Northwood lost sight of him as
the taxi moved away.
* * * * *
He debated with himself whether or not he should attempt to follow. And
while he stood thus in indecision, the handsome stranger approached him.
"Good evening to you," he said curtly. His rich, musical voice, for all
its deepness, held a faint hint of the tremulous, birdlike notes heard
in the voice of a young child who has not used his vocal chords long
enough for them to have lost their exquisite newness.
"Good evening," echoed Northwood, somewhat uncertainly. A sudden aura of
repulsion swept coldly over him. Seen close, with the brilliant light of
the street directly on his too perfect face, the man was more sinister
than in the cafe. Yet Northwood, struggling desperately for a reason to
explain his violent dislike, could not discover why he shrank from this
splendid creature, whose eyes and flesh had a new, fresh appearance
rarely seen except in very young boys.
"I want what you picked up," went on the stranger.
"It isn't yours!" Northwood flashed back. Ah! that effluvium of hatred
which seemed to weave a tangible net around him!
"Nor is it yours. Give it to me!"
"You're insolent, aren't you?"
"If you don't give it to me, you will be sorry." The man did not raise
his voice in anger, yet the words whipped Northwood with almost physical
violence. "If he knew that I saw everything that happened in there--that
I am talking to you at this moment--he would tremble with fear."
"But you can't intimidate me."
"No?" For a long moment, the cold blue eyes held his contemptuously.
"No? I can't frighten you--you worm of the Black Age?"
Before Northwood's horrified sight, he vanished; vanished as though he
had turned suddenly to air and floated away.
* * * * *
The street was not crowded at that time, and there was no pressing group
of bodies to hide the splendid creature. Northwood gawked stupidly,
mouth half open, eyes searching wildly everywhere. The man was gone. He
had simply disappeared, in this sane, electric-lighted street.
Suddenly, close to Northwood's ear, grated a derisive laugh. "I can't
frighten you?" From nowhere came that singularly young-old voice.
As Northwood jerked his head around to meet blank space, a blow struck
the corner of his mouth. He felt the warm blood run over his chin.
"I could take that wallet from you, worm, but you may keep it, and see
me later. But remember this--the thing inside never will be yours."
The words fell from empty air.
For several minutes, Northwood waited at the spot, expecting another
demonstration of the abnormal, but nothing else occurred. At last,
trembling violently, he wiped the thick moisture from his forehead and
dabbed at the blood which he still felt on his chin.
But when he looked at his handkerchief, he muttered:
"Well, I'll be jiggered!"
The handkerchief bore not the slightest trace of blood.
* * * * *
Under the light in his bedroom, Northwood examined the wallet. It was
made of alligator skin, clasped with a gold signet that bore the initial
M. The first pocket was empty; the second yielded an object that sent a
warm flush to his face.
It was the photograph of a gloriously beautiful girl, so seductively
lovely that the picture seemed almost to be alive. The short, curved
upper lip, the full, delicately voluptuous lower, parted slightly in a
smile that seemed to linger in every exquisite line of her face. She
looked as though she had just spoken passionately, and the spirit of her
words had inspired her sweet flesh and eyes.
Northwood turned his head abruptly and groaned, "Good Heavens!"
He had no right to palpitate over the picture of an unknown beauty. Only
a month ago, he had become engaged to a young woman whose mind was as
brilliant as her face was plain. Always he had vowed that he would never
marry a pretty girl, for he detested his own masculine beauty sincerely.
He tried to grasp a mental picture of Mary Burns, who had never stirred
in him the emotion that this smiling picture invoked. But, gazing at the
picture, he could not remember how his fiancee looked.
Suddenly the picture fell from his fingers and dropped to the floor on
its face, revealing an inscription on the back. In a bold, masculine
hand, he read: "Your future wife."
"Some lucky fellow is headed for a life of bliss," was his jealous
thought.
He frowned at the beautiful face. What was this girl to that hideous
hunchback? Why did the handsome stranger warn him, "_The thing inside
never will be yours_?"
Again he turned eagerly to the wallet.
In the last flap he found something that gave him another surprise: a
plain white card on which a name and address were written by the same
hand that had penned the inscription on the picture.
Emil Mundson, Ph. D.,
44-1/2 Indian Court
Emil Mundson, the electrical wizard and distinguished scientific writer,
friend of the professor of science at the university where Northwood was
an assistant professor; Emil Mundson, whom, a week ago, Northwood had
yearned mightily to meet.
Now Northwood knew why the hunchback's intelligent, ugly face was
familiar to him. He had seen it pictured as often as enterprising news
photographers could steal a likeness from the over-sensitive scientist,
who would never sit for a formal portrait.
* * * * *
Even before Northwood had graduated from the university where he now
taught, he had been avidly interested in Emil Mundson's fantastic
articles in scientific journals. Only a week ago, Professor Michael had
come to him with the current issue of New Science, shouting excitedly:
"Did you read this, John, this article by Emil Mundson?" His shaking,
gnarled old fingers tapped the open magazine.
Northwood seized the magazine and looked avidly at the title of the
article, "Creatures of the Light."
"No, I haven't read it," he admitted. "My magazine hasn't come yet."
"Run through it now briefly, will you? And note with especial care the
passages I have marked. In fact, you needn't bother with anything else
just now. Read this--and this--and this." He pointed out penciled
paragraphs.
Northwood read:
Man always has been, always will be a creature of the light. He
is forever reaching for some future point of perfected evolution
which, even when his most remote ancestor was a fish creature
composed of a few cells, was the guiding power that brought him
up from the first stinking sea and caused him to create gods in
his own image.
It is this yearning for perfection which sets man apart from all
other life, which made him _man_ even in the rudimentary stages
of his development. He was man when he wallowed in the slime of
the new world and yearned for the air above. He will still be
man when he has evolved into that glorious creature of the
future whose body is deathless and whose mind rules the
universe.
Professor Michael, looking over Northwood's shoulder, interrupted the
reading:
"_Man always has been man_," he droned emphatically. "That's not
original with friend Mundson, of course; yet it is a theory that has not
received sufficient investigation." He indicated another marked
paragraph. "Read this thoughtfully, John. It's the crux of Mundson's
thought."
Northwood continued:
Since the human body is chemical and electrical, increased
knowledge of its powers and limitations will enable us to work
with Nature in her sublime but infinitely slow processes of
human evolution. We need not wait another fifty thousand years
to be godlike creatures. Perhaps even now we may be standing at
the beginning of the splendid bridge that will take us to that
state of perfected evolution when we shall be Creatures who have
reached the Light.
Northwood looked questioningly at the professor. "Queer, fantastic
thing, isn't it?"
* * * * *
Professor Michael smoothed his thin, gray hair with his dried-out hand.
"Fantastic?" His intellectual eyes behind the thick glasses sought the
ceiling. "Who can say? Haven't you ever wondered why all parents expect
their children to be nearer perfection than themselves, and why is it a
natural impulse for them to be willing to sacrifice themselves to better
their offspring?" He paused and moistened his pale, wrinkled lips.
"Instinct, Northwood. We Creatures of the Light know that our race shall
reach that point in evolution when, as perfect creatures, we shall rule
all matter and live forever." He punctuated the last words with blows
on the table.
Northwood laughed dryly. "How many thousands of years are you looking
forward, Professor?"
The professor made an obscure noise that sounded like a smothered sniff.
"You and I shall never agree on the point that mental advancement may
wipe out physical limitations in the human race, perhaps in a few
hundred years. It seems as though your profound admiration for Dr.
Mundson would win you over to this pet theory."
"But what sane man can believe that even perfectly developed beings,
through mental control, could overcome Nature's fixed laws?"
"We don't know! We don't know!" The professor slapped the magazine with
an emphatic hand. "Emil Mundson hasn't written this article for nothing.
He's paving the way for some announcement that will startle the
scientific world. I know him. In the same manner he gave out veiled
hints of his various brilliant discoveries and inventions long before he
offered them to the world."
"But Dr. Mundson is an electrical wizard. He would not be delving
seriously into the mysteries of evolution, would he?"
"Why not?" The professor's wizened face screwed up wisely. "A year ago,
when he was back from one of those mysterious long excursions he takes
in that weirdly different aircraft of his, about which he is so
secretive, he told me that he was conducting experiments to prove his
belief that the human brain generates electric current, and that the
electrical impulses in the brain set up radioactive waves that some day,
among other miracles, will make thought communication possible. Perfect
man, he says, will perform mental feats which will give him complete
mental domination over the physical."
* * * * *
Northwood finished reading and turned thoughtfully to the window. His
profile in repose had the straight-nosed, full-lipped perfection of a
Greek coin. Old, wizened Professor Michael, gazing at him covertly,
smothered a sigh.
"I wish you knew Dr. Mundson," he said. "He, the ugliest man in the
world, delights in physical perfection. He would revel in your splendid
body and brilliant mind."
Northwood blushed hotly. "You'll have to arrange a meeting between us."
"I have." The professor's thin, dry lips pursed comically. "He'll drop
in to see you within a few days."
And now John Northwood sat holding Dr. Mundson's card and the wallet
which the scientist had so mysteriously dropped at his feet.
* * * * *
Here was high adventure, perhaps, for which he had been singled out by
the famous electrical wizard. While excitement mounted in his blood,
Northwood again examined the photograph. The girl's strange eyes, odd in
expression rather than in size or shape, seemed to hold him. The young
man's breath came quicker.
"It's a challenge," he said softly. "It won't hurt to see what it's all
about."
His watch showed eleven o'clock. He would return the wallet that night.
Into his coat pocket he slipped a revolver. One sometimes needed weapons
in Indian Court.
He took a taxi, which soon turned from the well-lighted streets into a
section where squalid houses crowded against each other, and dirty
children swarmed in the streets in their last games of the day.
Indian Court was little more than an alley, dark and evil smelling.
The chauffeur stopped at the entrance and said:
"If I drive in, I'll have to back out, sir. Number forty-four and a half
is the end house, facing the entrance."
"You've been here before?" asked Northwood.
"Last week I drove the queerest bird here--a fellow as good-looking as
you, who had me follow the taxi occupied by a hunchback with a face
like Old Nick." The man hesitated and went on haltingly: "It might sound
goofy, mister, but there was something funny about my fare. He jumped
out, asked me the charge, and, in the moment I glanced at my taxi-meter,
he disappeared. Yes, sir. Vanished, owing me four dollars, six bits. It
was almost ghostlike, mister."
Northwood laughed nervously and dismissed him. He found his number and
knocked at the dilapidated door. He heard a sudden movement in the
lighted room beyond, and the door opened quickly.
Dr. Mundson faced him.
"I knew you'd come!" he said with a slight Teutonic accent. "Often I'm
not wrong in sizing up my man. Come in."
Northwood cleared his throat awkwardly. "You dropped your wallet at my
feet, Dr. Mundson. I tried to stop you before you got away, but I guess
you did not hear me."
He offered the wallet, but the hunchback waved it aside.
"A ruse, of course," he confessed. "It just was my way of testing what
your Professor Michael told about you--that you are extraordinarily
intelligent, virile, and imaginative. Had you sent the wallet to me, I
should have sought elsewhere for my man. Come in."
* * * * *
Northwood followed him into a living room evidently recently furnished
in a somewhat hurried manner. The furniture, although rich, was not
placed to best advantage. The new rug was a trifle crooked on the floor,
and the lamp shades clashed in color with the other furnishings.
Dr. Mundson's intense eyes swept over Northwood's tall, slim body.
"Ah, you're a man!" he said softly. "You are what all men would be if we
followed Nature's plan that only the fit shall survive. But modern
science is permitting the unfit to live and to mix their defective
beings with the developing race!" His huge fist gesticulated madly.
"Fools! Fools! They need me and perfect men like you."
"Why?"
"Because you can help me in my plan to populate the earth with a new
race of godlike people. But don't question me too closely now. Even if I
should explain, you would call me insane. But watch; gradually I shall
unfold the mystery before you, so that you will believe."
He reached for the wallet that Northwood still held, opened it with a
monstrous hand, and reached for the photograph. "She shall bring you
love. She's more beautiful than a poet's dream."
A warm flush crept over the young man's face.
"I can easily understand," he said, "how a man could love her, but for
me she comes too late."
"Pooh! Fiddlesticks!" The scientist snapped his fingers. "This girl was
created for you. That other--you will forget her the moment you set eyes
on the sweet flesh of this Athalia. She is an houri from Paradise--a
maiden of musk and incense." He held the girl's photograph toward the
young man. "Keep it. She is yours, if you are strong enough to hold
her."
Northwood opened his card case and placed the picture inside, facing
Mary's photograph. Again the warning words of the mysterious stranger
rang in his memory: "_The thing inside never will be yours._"
"Where to," he said eagerly; "and when do we start?"
"To the new Garden of Eden," said the scientist, with such a beatific
smile that his face was less hideous. "We start immediately. I have
arranged with Professor Michael for you to go."
* * * * *
Northwood followed Dr. Mundson to the street and walked with him a few
blocks to a garage where the scientist's motor car waited.
"The apartment in Indian Court is just a little eccentricity of mine,"
explained Dr. Mundson. "I need people in my work, people whom I must
select through swift, sure tests. The apartment comes in handy, as
to-night."
Northwood scarcely noted where they were going, or how long they had
been on the way. He was vaguely aware that they had left the city
behind, and were now passing through farms bathed in moonlight.
At last they entered a path that led through a bit of woodland. For half
a mile the path continued, and then ended at a small, enclosed field. In
the middle of this rested a queer aircraft. Northwood knew it was a
flying machine only by the propellers mounted on the top of the huge
ball-shaped body. There were no wings, no birdlike hull, no tail.
"It looks almost like a little world ready to fly off into space," he
commented.
"It is just about that." The scientist's squat, bunched-out body,
settled squarely on long, thin, straddled legs, looked gnomelike in the
moonlight. "One cannot copy flesh with steel and wood, but one can make
metal perform magic of which flesh is not capable. My sun-ship is not a
mechanical reproduction of a bird. It is--but, climb in, young friend."
* * * * *
Northwood followed Dr. Mundson into the aircraft. The moment the
scientist closed the metal door behind them, Northwood was instantly
aware of some concealed horror that vibrated through his nerves. For one
dreadful moment, he expected some terrific agent of the shadows that
escaped the electric lights to leap upon him. And this was odd, for
nothing could be saner than the globular interior of the aircraft,
divided into four wedge-shaped apartments.
Dr. Mundson also paused at the door, puzzled, hesitant.
"Someone has been here!" he exclaimed. "Look, Northwood! The bunk has
been occupied--the one in this cabin I had set aside for you."
He pointed to the disarranged bunk, where the impression of a head could
still be seen on a pillow.
"A tramp, perhaps."
"No! The door was locked, and, as you saw, the fence around this field
was protected with barbed wire. There's something wrong. I felt it on my
trip here all the way, like someone watching me in the dark. And don't
laugh! I have stopped laughing at all things that seem unnatural. You
don't know what is natural."
Northwood shivered. "Maybe someone is concealed about the ship."
"Impossible. Me, I thought so, too. But I looked and looked, and there
was nothing."
All evening Northwood had burned to tell the scientist about the
handsome stranger in the Mad Hatter Club. But even now he shrank from
saying that a man had vanished before his eyes.
Dr. Mundson was working with a succession of buttons and levers. There
was a slight jerk, and then the strange craft shot up, straight as a
bullet from a gun, with scarcely a sound other than a continuous
whistle.
"The vertical rising aircraft perfected," explained Dr. Mundson. "But
what would you think if I told you that there is not an ounce of
gasoline in my heavier-than-air craft?"
"I shouldn't be surprised. An electrical genius would seek for a less
obsolete source of power."
* * * * *
In the bright flare of the electric lights, the scientist's ugly face
flushed. "The man who harnesses the sun rules the world. He can make the
desert places bloom, the frozen poles balmy and verdant. You, John
Northwood, are one of the very few to fly in a machine operated solely
by electrical energy from the sun's rays."
"Are you telling me that this airship is operated with power from the
sun?"
"Yes. And I cannot take the credit for its invention." He sighed. "The
dream was mine, but a greater brain developed it--a brain that may be
greater than I suspect." His face grew suddenly graver.
A little later Northwood said: "It seems that we must be making fabulous
speed."
"Perhaps!" Dr. Mundson worked with the controls. "Here, I've cut her
down to the average speed of the ordinary airplane. Now you can see a
bit of the night scenery."
Northwood peeped out the thick glass porthole. Far below, he saw two
tiny streaks of light, one smooth and stationery, the other wavering as
though it were a reflection in water.
"That can't be a lighthouse!" he cried.
The scientist glanced out. "It is. We're approaching the Florida Keys."
"Impossible! We've been traveling less than an hour."
"But, my young friend, do you realize that my sun-ship has a speed of
over one thousand miles an hour, how much over I dare not tell you?"
Throughout the night, Northwood sat beside Dr. Mundson, watching his
deft fingers control the simple-looking buttons and levers. So fast was
their flight now that, through the portholes, sky and earth looked the
same: dark gray films of emptiness. The continuous weird whistle from
the hidden mechanism of the sun-ship was like the drone of a monster
insect, monotonous and soporific during the long intervals when the
scientist was too busy with his controls to engage in conversation.
For some reason that he could not explain, Northwood had an aversion to
going into the sleeping apartment behind the control room. Then, towards
morning, when the suddenly falling temperature struck a biting chill
throughout the sun-ship, Northwood, going into the cabin for fur coats,
discovered why his mind and body shrank in horror from the cabin.
* * * * *
After he had procured the fur coats from a closet, he paused a moment,
in the privacy of the cabin, to look at Athalia's picture. Every nerve
in his body leaped to meet the magnetism of her beautiful eyes. Never
had Mary Burns stirred emotion like this in him. He hung over Mary's
picture, wistfully, hoping almost prayerfully that he could react to her
as he did to Athalia; but her pale, over-intellectual face left him
cold.
"Cad!" he ground out between his teeth. "Forgetting her so soon!"
The two pictures were lying side by side on a little table. Suddenly an
obscure noise in the room caught his attention. It was more vibration
than noise, for small sounds could scarcely be heard above the whistle
of the sun-ship. A slight compression of the air against his neck gave
him the eery feeling that someone was standing close behind him. He
wheeled and looked over his shoulder. Half ashamed of his startled
gesture, he again turned to his pictures. Then a sharp cry broke from
him.
Athalia's picture was gone.
He searched for it everywhere in the room, in his own pockets, under the
furniture. It was nowhere to be found.
In sudden, overpowering horror, he seized the fur coats and returned to
the control room.
* * * * *
Dr. Mundson was changing the speed.
"Look out the window!" he called to Northwood.
The young man looked and started violently. Day had come, and now that
the sun-ship was flying at a moderate speed, the ocean beneath was
plainly visible; and its entire surface was covered with broken floes of
ice and small, ragged icebergs. He seized a telescope and focused it
below. A typical polar scene met his eyes: penguins strutted about on
cakes of ice, a whale blowing in the icy water.
"A part of the Antarctic that has never been explored," said Dr.
Mundson; "and there, just showing on the horizon, is the Great Ice
Barrier." His characteristic smile lighted the morose black eyes. "I am
enough of the dramatist to wish you to be impressed with what I shall
show you within less than an hour. Accordingly, I shall make a landing
and let you feel polar ice under your feet."
After less than a minute's search, Dr. Mundson found a suitable place on
the ice for a landing, and, with a few deft manipulations of the
controls, brought the sun-ship swooping down like an eagle on its prey.
For a long moment after the scientist had stepped out on the ice,
Northwood paused at the door. His feet were chained by a strange
reluctance to enter this white, dead wilderness of ice. But Dr.
Mundson's impatient, "Ready?" drew from him one last glance at the cozy
interior of the sun-ship before he, too, went out into the frozen
stillness.
They left the sun-ship resting on the ice like a fallen silver moon,
while they wandered to the edge of the Barrier and looked at the gray,
narrow stretch of sea between the ice pack and the high cliffs of the
Barrier. The sun of the commencing six-months' Antarctic day was a low,
cold ball whose slanted rays struck the ice with blinding whiteness.
There were constant falls of ice from the Barrier, which thundered into
the ocean amid great clouds of ice smoke that lingered like wraiths
around the edge. It was a scene of loneliness and waiting death.
"What's that?" exclaimed the scientist suddenly.
Out of the white silence shrilled a low whistle, a familiar whistle.
Both men wheeled toward the sun-ship.
Before their horrified eyes, the great sphere jerked and glided up, and
swerved into the heavens.
* * * * *
Up it soared; then, gaining speed, it swung into the blue distance
until, in a moment, it was a tiny star that flickered out even as they
watched.
Both men screamed and cursed and flung up their arms despairingly. A
penguin, attracted by their cries, waddled solemnly over to them and
regarded them with manlike curiosity.
"Stranded in the coldest spot on earth!" groaned the scientist.
"Why did it start itself, Dr. Mundson!" Northwood narrowed his eyes as
he spoke.
"It didn't!" The scientist's huge face, red from cold, quivered with
helpless rage. "Human hands started it."
"What! Whose hands?"
"_Ach!_ Do I know?" His Teutonic accent grew more pronounced, as it
always did when he was under emotional stress. "Somebody whose brain is
better than mine. Somebody who found a way to hide away from our eyes.
_Ach, Gott!_ Don't let me think!"
His great head sank between his shoulders, giving him, in his fur suit,
the grotesque appearance of a friendly brown bear.
"Doctor Mundson," said Northwood suddenly, "did you have an enemy, a man
with the face and body of a pagan god--a great, blond creature with eyes
as cold and cruel as the ice under our feet?"
"Wait!" The huge round head jerked up. "How do you know about Adam? You
have not seen him, won't see him until we arrive at our destination."
"But I have seen him. He was sitting not thirty feet from you in the Mad
Hatter's Club last night. Didn't you know? He followed me to the street,
spoke to me, and then--" Northwood stopped. How could he let the insane
words pass his lips?
"Then, what? Speak up!"
* * * * *
Northwood laughed nervously. "It sounds foolish, but I saw him vanish
like that." He snapped his fingers.
"_Ach, Gott!_" All the ruddy color drained from the scientist's face. As
though talking to himself, he continued:
"Then it is true, as he said. He has crossed the bridge. He has reached
the Light. And now he comes to see the world he will conquer--came
unseen when I refused my permission."
He was silent for a long time, pondering. Then he turned passionately to
Northwood.
"John Northwood, kill me! I have brought a new horror into the world.
From the unborn future, I have snatched a creature who has reached the
Light too soon. Kill me!" He bowed his great, shaggy head.
"What do you mean, Dr. Mundson: that this Adam has arrived at a point in
evolution beyond this age?"
"Yes. Think of it! I visioned godlike creatures with the souls of gods.
But, Heaven help us, man always will be man: always will lust for
conquest. You and I, Northwood, and all others are barbarians to Adam.
He and his kind will do what men always do to barbarians--conquer and
kill."
"Are there more like him?" Northwood struggled with a smile of unbelief.
"I don't know. I did not know that Adam had reached a point so near the
ultimate. But you have seen. Already he is able to set aside what we
call natural laws."
Northwood looked at the scientist closely. The man was surely mad--mad
in this desert of white death.
"Come!" he said cheerfully. "Let's build an Eskimo snow house. We can
live on penguins for days. And who knows what may rescue us?"
For three hours the two worked at cutting ice blocks. With snow for
mortar, they built a crude shelter which enabled them to rest out of the
cold breath of the spiral polar winds that blew from the south.
* * * * *
Dr. Mundson was sitting at the door of their hut, moodily pulling at his
strong, black pipe. As though a fit had seized him, he leaped up and let
his pipe fall to the ice.
"Look!" he shouted. "The sun-ship!"
It seemed but a moment before the tiny speck on the horizon had swept
overhead, a silver comet on the grayish-blue polar sky. In another
moment it had swooped down, eaglewise, scarcely fifty feet from the ice
hut.
Dr. Mundson and Northwood ran forward. From the metal sphere stepped the
stranger of the Mad Hatter Club. His tall, straight form, erect and
slim, swung toward them over the ice.
"Adam!" shouted Dr. Mundson. "What does this mean? How dare you!"
Adam's laugh was like the happy demonstration of a boy. "So? You think
you still are master? You think I returned because I reverenced you
yet?" Hate shot viciously through the freezing blue eyes. "You worm of
the Black Age!"
Northwood shuddered. He had heard those strange words addressed to
himself scarcely more than twelve hours ago.
Adam was still speaking: "With a thought I could annihilate you where
you are standing. But I have use for you. Get in." He swept his hand to
the sun-ship.
Both men hesitated. Then Northwood strode forward until he was within
three feet of Adam. They stood thus, eyeing each other, two splendid
beings, one blond as a Viking, the other dark and vital.
"Just what is your game?" demanded Northwood.
The icy eyes shot forth a gleam like lightning. "I needn't tell you, of
course, but I may as well let you suffer over the knowledge." He curled
his lips with superb scorn. "I have one human weakness. I want Athalia."
The icy eyes warmed for a fleeting second. "She is anticipating her
meeting with you--bah! The taste of these women of the Black Age! I
could kill you, of course; but that would only inflame her. And so I
take you to her, thrust you down her throat. When she sees you, she will
fly to me." He spread his magnificent chest.
"Adam!" Dr. Mundson's face was dark with anger. "What of Eve?"
"Who are you to question my actions? What a fool you were to let me,
whom you forced into life thousands of years too soon, grow more
powerful than you! Before I am through with all of you petty creatures
of the Black Age, you will call me more terrible than your Jehovah! For
see what you have called forth from unborn time."
He vanished.
* * * * *
Before the startled men could recover from the shock of it, the vibrant,
too-new voice went on:
"I am sorry for you, Mundson, because, like you, I need specimens for my
experiments. What a splendid specimen you will be!" His laugh was ugly
with significance. "Get in, worms!"
Unseen hands cuffed and pushed them into the sun-ship.
Inside, Dr. Mundson stumbled to the control room, white and drawn of
face, his great brain seemingly paralyzed by the catastrophe.
"You needn't attempt tricks," went on the voice. "I am watching you
both. You cannot even hide your thoughts from me."
And thus began the strange continuation of the journey. Not once, in
that wild half-hour's rush over the polar ice clouds, did they see Adam.
They saw and heard only the weird signs of his presence: a puffing cigar
hanging in midair, a glass of water swinging to unseen lips, a ghostly
voice hurling threats and insults at them.
Once the scientist whispered: "Don't cross him; it is useless. John
Northwood, you'll have to fight a demigod for your woman!"
Because of the terrific speed of the sun-ship, Northwood could
distinguish nothing of the topographical details below. At the end of
half-an-hour, the scientist slowed enough to point out a tall range of
snow-covered mountains, over which hovered a play of colored lights like
the _aurora australis_.
"Behind those mountains," he said, "is our destination."
* * * * *
Almost in a moment, the sun-ship had soared over the peaks. Dr. Mundson
kept the speed low enough for Northwood to see the splendid view below.
In the giant cup formed by the encircling mountain range was a green
valley of tropical luxuriance. Stretches of dense forest swept half up
the mountains and filled the valley cup with tangled verdure. In the
center, surrounded by a broad field and a narrow ring of woods, towered
a group of buildings. From the largest, which was circular, came the
auroralike radiance that formed an umbrella of light over the entire
valley.
"Do I guess right," said Northwood, "that the light is responsible for
this oasis in the ice?"
"Yes," said Dr. Mundson. "In your American slang, it is canned sunshine
containing an overabundance of certain rays, especially the Life Ray,
which I have isolated." He smiled proudly. "You needn't look startled,
my friend. Some of the most common things store sunlight. On very dark
nights, if you have sharp eyes, you can see the radiance given off by
certain flowers, which many naturalists say is trapped sunshine. The
familiar nasturtium and the marigold opened for me the way to hold
sunshine against the long polar night, for they taught me how to apply
the Einstein theory of bent light. Stated simply, during the polar
night, when the sun is hidden over the rim of the world, we steal some
of his rays; during the polar day we concentrate the light."
"But could stored sunshine alone give enough warmth for the luxuriant
growth of those jungles?"
"An overabundance of the Life Ray is responsible for the miraculous
growth of all life in New Eden. The Life Ray is Nature's most powerful
force. Yet Nature is often niggardly and paradoxical in her use of her
powers. In New Eden, we have forced the powers of creation to take
ascendency over the powers of destruction."
At Northwood's sudden start, the scientist laughed and continued: "Is it
not a pity that Nature, left alone, requires twenty years to make a man
who begins to die in another ten years? Such waste is not tolerated in
New Eden, where supermen are younger than babes and--"
"Come, worms; let's land."
It was Adam's voice. Suddenly he materialized, a blond god, whose eyes
and flesh were too new.
* * * * *
They were in a world of golden skylight, warmth and tropical vegetation.
The field on which they had landed was covered with a velvety green
growth of very soft, fine-bladed grass, sprinkled with tiny, star-shaped
blue flowers. A balmy, sweet-scented wind, downy as the breeze of a
dream, blew gently along the grass and tingled against Northwood's skin
refreshingly. Almost instantly he had the sensation of perfect well
being, and this feeling of physical perfection was part of the ecstasy
that seemed to pervade the entire valley. Grass and breeze and golden
skylight were saturated with a strange ether of joyousness.
At one end of the field was a dense jungle, cut through by a road that
led to the towering building from which, while above in the sun-ship,
they had seen the golden light issue.
From the jungle road came a man and a woman, large, handsome people,
whose flesh and eyes had the sinister newness of Adam's. Even before
they came close enough to speak, Northwood was aware that while they
seemed of Adam's breed, they were yet unlike him. The difference was
psychical rather than physical; they lacked the aura of hate and horror
that surrounded Adam. The woman drew Adam's head down and kissed him
affectionately on both cheeks.
Adam, from his towering height, patted her shoulder impatiently and
said: "Run on back to the laboratory, grandmother. We're following
soon. You have some new human embryos, I believe you told me this
morning."
"Four fine specimens, two of them being your sister's twins."
"Splendid! I was sure that creation had stopped with my generation. I
must see them." He turned to the scientist and Northwood. "You needn't
try to leave this spot. Of course I shall know instantly and deal with
you in my own way. Wait here."
He strode over the emerald grass on the heels of the woman.
Northwood asked: "Why does he call that girl grandmother?"
"Because she is his ancestress." He stirred uneasily. "She is of the
first generation brought forth in the laboratory, and is no different
from you or I, except that, at the age of five years, she is the
ancestress of twenty generations."
"My God!" muttered Northwood.
"Don't start being horrified, my friend. Forget about so-called natural
laws while you are in New Eden. Remember, here we have isolated the Life
Ray. But look! Here comes your Athalia!"
* * * * *
Northwood gazed covertly at the beautiful girl approaching them with a
rarely graceful walk. She was tall, slender, round-bosomed,
narrow-hipped, and she held her lovely body in the erect poise of
splendid health. Northwood had a confused realization of uncovered
bronzy hair, drawn to the back of a white neck in a bunch of short
curls; of immense soft black eyes; lips the color of blood, and
delicate, plump flesh on which the golden skylight lingered graciously.
He was instantly glad to see that while she possessed the freshness of
young girlhood, her skin and eyes did not have the horrible newness of
Adam's.
When she was still twenty feet distant, Northwood met her eyes and she
smiled shyly. The rich, red blood ran through her face; and he, too,
flushed.
She went to Dr. Mundson and, placing her hands on his thick shoulders,
kissed him affectionately.
"I've been worried about you, Daddy Mundson." Her rich contralto voice
matched her exotic beauty. "Since you and Adam had that quarrel the day
you left, I did not see him until this morning, when he landed the
sun-ship alone."
"And you pleaded with him to return for us?"
"Yes." Her eyes drooped and a hot flush swept over her face.
Dr. Mundson smiled. "But I'm back now, Athalia, and I've brought some
one whom I hope you will be glad to know."
Reaching for her hand, he placed it simply in Northwood's.
"This is John, Athalia. Isn't he handsomer than the pictures of him
which I televisioned to you? God bless both of you."
He walked ahead and turned his back.
* * * * *
A magical half hour followed for Northwood and Athalia. The girl told
him of her past life, how Dr. Mundson had discovered her one year ago
working in a New York sweat shop, half dead from consumption. Without
friends, she was eager to follow the scientist to New Eden, where he
promised she would recover her health immediately.
"And he was right, John," she said shyly. "The Life Ray, that marvelous
energy ray which penetrates to the utmost depths of earth and ocean,
giving to the cells of all living bodies the power to grow and remain
animate, has been concentrated by Dr. Mundson in his stored sunshine.
The Life Ray healed me almost immediately."
Northwood looked down at the glorious girl beside him, whose eyes
already fluttered away from his like shy black butterflies. Suddenly he
squeezed the soft hand in his and said passionately:
"Athalia! Because Adam wants you and will get you if he can, let us set
aside all the artificialities of civilization. I have loved you madly
ever since I saw your picture. If you can say the same to me, it will
give me courage to face what I know lies before me."
Athalia, her face suddenly tender, came closer to him.
"John Northwood, I love you."
Her red lips came temptingly close; but before he could touch them, Adam
suddenly pushed his body between him and Athalia. Adam was pale, and all
the iciness was gone from his blue eyes, which were deep and dark and
very human. He looked down at Athalia, and she looked up at him, two
handsome specimens of perfect manhood and womanhood.
"Fast work, Athalia!" The new vibrant voice was strained. "I was hoping
you would be disappointed in him, especially after having been wooed by
me this morning. I could take you if I wished, of course; but I prefer
to win you in the ancient manner. Dismiss him!" He jerked his thumb over
his shoulder in Northwood's direction.
Athalia flushed vividly and looked at him almost compassionately. "I am
not great enough for you, Adam. I dare not love you."
* * * * *
Adam laughed, and still oblivious of Northwood and Dr. Mundson, folded
his arms over his breast. With the golden skylight on his burnished
hair, he was a valiant, magnificent spectacle.
"Since the beginning of time, gods and archangels have looked upon the
daughters of men and found them fair. Mate with me, Athalia, and I,
fifty thousand years beyond the creature Mundson has selected for you,
will make you as I am, the deathless overlord of life and all nature."
He drew her hand to his bosom.
For one dark moment, Northwood felt himself seared by jealousy, for,
through the plump, sweet flesh of Athalia's face, he saw the red blood
leap again. How could she withhold herself from this splendid superman?
But her answer, given with faltering voice, was the old, simple one: "I
have promised him, Adam. I love him." Tears trembled on her thick
lashes.
"So! I cannot get you in the ancient manner. Now I'll use my own."
He seized her in his arms crushed her against him, and, laughing over
her head at Northwood, bent his glistening head and kissed her on the
mouth.
There was a blinding flash of blue electric sparks--and nothing else.
Both Adam and Athalia had vanished.
* * * * *
Adam's voice came in a last mocking challenge: "I shall be what no other
gods before me have been--a good sport. I'll leave you both to your own
devices, until I want you again."
White-lipped and trembling, Northwood groaned: "What has he done now?"
Dr. Mundson's great head drooped. "I don't know. Our bodies are electric
and chemical machines; and a super intelligence has discovered new laws
of which you and I are ignorant."
"But Athalia...."
"She is safe; he loves her."
"Loves her!" Northwood shivered. "I cannot believe that those freezing
eyes could ever look with love on a woman."
"Adam is a man. At heart he is as human as the first man-creature that
wallowed in the new earth's slime." His voice dropped as though he were
musing aloud. "It might be well to let him have Athalia. She will help
to keep vigor in the new race, which would stop reproducing in another
few generations without the injection of Black Age blood."
"Do you want to bring more creatures like Adam into the world?"
Northwood flung at him. "You have tampered with life enough, Dr.
Mundson. But, although Adam has my sympathy, I'm not willing to turn
Athalia over to him."
"Well said! Now come to the laboratory for chemical nourishment and rest
under the Life Ray."
They went to the great circular building from whose highest tower issued
the golden radiance that shamed the light of the sun, hanging low in the
northeast.
"John Northwood," said Dr. Mundson, "with that laboratory, which is the
center of all life in New Eden, we'll have to whip Adam. He gave us what
he called a 'sporting chance' because he knew that he is able to send us
and all mankind to a doom more terrible than hell. Even now we might be
entering some hideous trap that he has set for us."
* * * * *
They entered by a side entrance and went immediately to what Dr. Mundson
called the Rest Ward. Here, in a large room, were ranged rows of cots,
on many of which lay men basking in the deep orange flood of light which
poured from individual lamps set above each cot.
"It is the Life Ray!" said Dr. Mundson reverently. "The source of all
growth and restoration in Nature. It is the power that bursts open the
seed and brings forth the shoot, that increases the shoot into a giant
tree. It is the same power that enables the fertilized ovum to develop
into an animal. It creates and recreates cells almost instantly;
accordingly, it is the perfect substitute for sleep. Stretch out, enjoy
its power; and while you rest, eat these nourishing tablets."
Northwood lay on a cot, and Dr. Mundson turned the Life Ray on him. For
a few minutes a delicious drowsiness fell upon him, producing a spell of
perfect peace which the cells of his being seemed to drink in. For
another delirious, fleeting space, every inch of him vibrated with a
thrilling sensation of freshness. He took a deep, ecstatic breath and
opened his eyes.
"Enough," said Dr. Mundson, switching off the Ray. "After three minutes
of rejuvenation, you are commencing again with perfect cells. All
ravages from disease and wear have been corrected."
Northwood leaped up joyously. His handsome eyes sparkled, his skin
glowed. "I feel great! Never felt so good since I was a kid."
A pleased grin spread over the scientist's homely face. "See what my
discovery will mean to the world! In the future we shall all go to the
laboratory for recuperation and nourishment. We'll have almost
twenty-four hours a day for work and play."
* * * * *
He stretched out on the bed contentedly. "Some day, when my work is
nearly done, I shall permit the Life Ray to cure my hump."
"Why not now?"
Dr. Mundson sighed. "If I were perfect, I should cease to be so
overwhelmingly conscious of the importance of perfection." He settled
back to enjoyment of the Life Ray.
A few minutes later, he jumped up, alert as a boy. "_Ach!_ That's fine.
Now I'll show you how the Life Ray speeds up development and produces
four generations of humans a year."
With restored energy, Northwood began thinking of Athalia. As he
followed Dr. Mundson down a long corridor, he yearned to see her again,
to be certain that she was safe. Once he imagined he felt a gentle,
soft-fleshed touch against his hand, and was disappointed not to see her
walking by his side. Was she with him, unseen? The thought was sweet.
Before Dr. Mundson opened the massive bronze door at the end of the
corridor, he said:
"Don't be surprised or shocked over anything you see here, John
Northwood. This is the Baby Laboratory."
They entered a room which seemed no different from a hospital ward. On
little white beds lay naked children of various sizes, perfect,
solemn-eyed youngsters and older children as beautiful as animated
statues. Above each bed was a small Life Ray projector. A white-capped
nurse went from bed to bed.
"They are recuperating from the daily educational period," said the
scientist. "After a few minutes of this they will go into the growing
room, which I shall have to show you through a window. Should you and I
enter, we might be changed in a most extraordinary manner." He laughed
mischievously. "But, look, Northwood!"
* * * * *
He slid back a panel in the wall, and Northwood peered in through a
thick pane of clear glass. The room was really an immense outdoor arena,
its only carpet the fine-bladed grass, its roof the blue sky cut in the
middle by an enormous disc from which shot the aurora of trapped
sunshine which made a golden umbrella over the valley. Through openings
in the bottom of the disc poured a fine rain of rays which fell
constantly upon groups of children, youths and young girls, all clad in
the merest scraps of clothing. Some were dancing, others were playing
games, but all seemed as supremely happy as the birds and butterflies
which fluttered about the shrubs and flowers edging the arena.
"I don't expect you to believe," said Dr. Mundson, "that the oldest
young man in there is three months old. You cannot see visible changes
in a body which grows as slowly as the human being, whose normal period
of development is twenty years or more. But I can give you visible proof
of how fast growth takes place under the full power of the Life Ray.
Plant life, which, even when left to nature, often develops from seed to
flower within a few weeks or months, can be seen making its miraculous
changes under the Life Ray. Watch those gorgeous purple flowers over
which the butterflies are hovering."
Northwood followed his pointing finger. Near the glass window through
which they looked grew an enormous bank of resplendent violet colored
flowers, which literally enshrouded the entire bush with their royal
glory. At first glance it seemed as though a violent wind were
snatching at flower and bush, but closer inspection proved that the
agitation was part of the plant itself. And then he saw that the
movements were the result of perpetual composition and growth.
* * * * *
He fastened his eyes on one huge bud. He saw it swell, burst, spread out
its passionate purple velvet, lift the broad flower face to the light
for a joyous minute. A few seconds later a butterfly lighted airily to
sample its nectar and to brush the pollen from its yellow dusted wings.
Scarcely had the winged visitor flown away than the purple petals began
to wither and fall away, leaving the seed pod on the stem. The visible
change went on in this seed pod. It turned rapidly brown, dried out, and
then sent the released seeds in a shower to the rich black earth below.
Scarcely had the seeds touched the ground than they sent up tiny green
shoots that grew larger each moment. Within ten minutes there was a new
plant a foot high. Within half an hour, the plant budded, blossomed, and
cast forth its own seed.
"You understand?" asked the scientist. "Development is going on as
rapidly among the children. Before the first year has passed, the
youngest baby will have grandchildren; that is, if the baby tests out
fit to pass its seed down to the new generation. I know it sounds
absurd. Yet you saw the plant."
"But Doctor," Northwood rubbed his jaw thoughtfully, "Nature's forces of
destruction, of tearing down, are as powerful as her creative powers.
You have discovered the ultimate in creation and upbuilding. But
perhaps--oh, Lord, it is too awful to think!"
"Speak, Northwood!" The scientist's voice was impatient.
"It is nothing!" The pale young man attempted a smile. "I was only
imagining some of the horror that could be thrust on the world if a
supermind like Adam's should discover Nature's secret of death and
destruction and speed it up as you have sped the life force."
"_Ach Gott!_" Dr. Mundson's face was white. "He has his own laboratory,
where he works every day. Don't talk so loud. He might be listening. And
I believe he can do anything he sets out to accomplish."
Close to Northwood's ear fell a faint, triumphant whisper: "Yes, he can
do anything. How did you guess, worm?"
It was Adam's voice.
* * * * *
"Now come and see the Leyden jar mothers," said Dr. Mundson. "We do not
wait for the child to be born to start our work."
He took Northwood to a laboratory crowded with strange apparatus, where
young men and women worked. Northwood knew instantly that these people,
although unusually handsome and strong, were not of Adam's generation.
None of them had the look of newness which marked those who had grown up
under the Life Ray.
"They are the perfect couples whom I combed the world to find," said the
scientist. "From their eugenic marriages sprang the first children that
passed through the laboratory. I had hoped," he hesitated and looked
sideways at Northwood, "I had dreamed of having the children of you and
Athalia to help strengthen the New Race."
A wave of sudden disgust passed over Northwood.
"Thanks," he said tartly. "When I marry Athalia, I intend to have an
old-fashioned home and a Black Age family. I don't relish having my
children turned into--experiments."
"But wait until you see all the wonders of the laboratory! That is why I
am showing you all this."
Northwood drew his handkerchief and mopped his brow. "It sickens me,
Doctor! The more I see, the more pity I have for Adam--and the less I
blame him for his rebellion and his desire to kill and to rule. Heavens!
What a terrible thing you have done, experimenting with human life."
"Nonsense! Can you say that all life--all matter--is not the result of
scientific experiment? Can you?" His black gaze made Northwood
uncomfortable. "Buck up, young friend, for now I am going to show you a
marvelous improvement on Nature's bungling ways--the Leyden jar mother."
He raised his voice and called, "Lilith!"
The woman whom they had met on the field came forward.
"May we take a peep at Lona's twins?" asked the scientist. "They are
about ready to go to the growing dome, are they not?"
"In five more minutes," said the woman. "Come see."
* * * * *
She lifted one of the black velvet curtains that lined an entire side of
the laboratory and thereby disclosed a globular jar of glass and metal,
connected by wires to a dynamo. Above the jar was a Life Ray projector.
Lilith slid aside a metal portion of the jar, disclosing through the
glass underneath the squirming, kicking body of a baby, resting on a bed
of soft, spongy substance, to which it was connected by the navel cord.
"The Leyden jar mother," said Dr. Mundson. "It is the dream of us
scientists realized. The human mother's body does nothing but nourish
and protect her unborn child, a job which science can do better. And so,
in New Eden, we take the young embryo and place it in the Leyden jar
mother, where the Life Ray, electricity, and chemical food shortens the
period of gestation to a few days."
At that moment a bell under the Leyden jar began to ring. Dr. Mundson
uncovered the jar and lifted out the child, a beautiful, perfectly
formed boy, who began to cry lustily.
"Here is one baby who'll never be kissed," he said. "He'll be nourished
chemically, and, at the end of the week, will no longer be a baby. If
you are patient, you can actually see the processes of development
taking place under the Life Ray, for babies develop very fast."
Northwood buried his face in his hands. "Lord! This is awful. No
childhood; no mother to mould his mind! No parents to watch over him, to
give him their tender care!"
"Awful, fiddlesticks! Come see how children get their education, how
they learn to use their hands and feet so they need not pass through the
awkwardness of childhood."
* * * * *
He led Northwood to a magnificent building whose facade of white marble
was as simply beautiful as a Greek temple. The side walls, built almost
entirely of glass, permitted the synthetic sunshine to sweep from end to
end. They first entered a library, where youths and young girls poured
over books of all kinds. Their manner of reading mystified Northwood.
With a single sweep of the eye, they seemed to devour a page, and then
turned to the next. He stepped closer to peer over the shoulder of a
beautiful girl. She was reading "Euclid's Elements of Geometry," in
Latin, and she turned the pages as swiftly as the other girl occupying
her table, who was devouring "Paradise Lost."
Dr. Mundson whispered to him: "If you do not believe that Ruth here is
getting her Euclid, which she probably never saw before to-day, examine
her from the book; that is, if you are a good enough Latin scholar."
Ruth stopped her reading to talk to him, and, in a few minutes, had
completely dumbfounded him with her pedantic replies, which fell from
lips as luscious and unformed as an infant's.
"Now," said Dr. Mundson, "test Rachael on her Milton. As far as she has
read, she should not misquote a line, and her comments will probably
prove her scholarly appreciation of Milton."
Word for word, Rachael was able to give him "Paradise Lost" from memory,
except the last four pages, which she had not read. Then, taking the
book from him, she swept her eyes over these pages, returned the book to
him, and quoted copiously and correctly.
* * * * *
Dr. Mundson gloated triumphantly over his astonishment. "There, my
friend. Could you now be satisfied with old-fashioned children who spend
long, expensive years in getting an education? Of course, your children
will not have the perfect brains of these, yet, developed under the Life
Ray, they should have splendid mentality.
"These children, through selective breeding, have brains that make
everlasting records instantly. A page in a book, once seen, is indelibly
retained by them, and understood. The same is true of a lecture, of an
explanation given by a teacher, of even idle conversation. Any man or
woman in this room should be able to repeat the most trivial
conversation days old."
"But what of the arts, Dr. Mundson? Surely even your supermen and women
cannot instantly learn to paint a masterpiece or to guide their fingers
and their brains through the intricacies of a difficult musical
composition."
"No?" His dark eyes glowed. "Come see!"
Before they entered another wing of the building, they heard a violin
being played masterfully.
Dr. Mundson paused at the door.
"So that you may understand what you shall see, let me remind you that
the nerve impulses and the coordinating means in the human body are
purely electrical. The world has not yet accepted my theory, but it
will. Under superman's system of education, the instantaneous records
made on the brain give immediate skill to the acting parts of the body.
Accordingly, musicians are made over night."
He threw open the door. Under a Life Ray projector, a beautiful,
Juno-esque woman was playing a violin. Facing her, and with eyes
fastened to hers, stood a young man, whose arms and slender fingers
mimicked every motion she made. Presently she stopped playing and handed
the violin to him. In her own masterly manner, he repeated the score she
had played.
"That is Eve," whispered Dr. Mundson. "I had selected her as Adam's
wife. But he does not want her, the most brilliant woman of the New
Race."
Northwood gave the woman an appraising look. "Who wants a perfect woman?
I don't blame Adam for preferring Athalia. But how is she teaching her
pupil?"
"Through thought vibration, which these perfect people have developed
until they can record permanently the radioactive waves of the brains of
others."
Eve turned, caught Northwood's eyes in her magnetic blue gaze, and
smiled as only a goddess can smile upon a mortal she has marked as her
own. She came toward him with outflung hands.
"So you have come!" Her vibrant contralto voice, like Adam's, held the
birdlike, broken tremulo of a young child's. "I have been waiting for
you, John Northwood."
* * * * *
Her eyes, as blue and icy as Adam's, lingered long on him, until he
flinched from their steely magnetism. She slipped her arm through his
and drew him gently but firmly from the room, while Dr. Mundson stood
gaping after them.
They were on a flagged terrace arched with roses of gigantic size, which
sent forth billows of sensuous fragrance. Eve led him to a white marble
seat piled with silk cushions, on which she reclined her superb body,
while she regarded him from narrowed lids.
"I saw your picture that he televisioned to Athalia," she said. "What a
botch Dr. Mundson has made of his mating." Her laugh rippled like
falling water. "I want you, John Northwood!"
Northwood started and blushed furiously. Smile dimples broke around her
red, humid lips.
"Ah, you're old-fashioned!"
Her large, beautiful hand, fleshed more tenderly than any woman's hand
he had ever seen, went out to him appealingly. "I can bring you amorous
delight that your Athalia never could offer in her few years of youth.
And I'll never grow old, John Northwood."
She came closer until he could feel the fragrant warmth of her tawny,
ribbon bound hair pulse against his face. In sudden panic he drew back.
"But I am pledged to Athalia!" tumbled from him. "It is all a dreadful
mistake, Eve. You and Adam were created for each other."
"Hush!" The lightning that flashed from her blue eyes changed her from
seductress to angry goddess. "Created for each other! Who wants a
made-to-measure lover?"
* * * * *
The luscious lips trembled slightly, and into the vivid eyes crept a
suspicion of moisture. Eternal Eve's weapons! Northwood's handsome face
relaxed with pity.
"I want you, John Northwood," she continued shamelessly. "Our love will
be sublime." She leaned heavily against him, and her lips were like a
blood red flower pressed against white satin. "Come, beloved, kiss me!"
Northwood gasped and turned his head. "Don't, Eve!"
"But a kiss from me will set you apart from all your generation, John
Northwood, and you shall understand what no man of the Black Age could
possibly fathom."
Her hair had partly fallen from its ribbon bandage and poured its
fragrant gold against his shoulder.
"For God's sake, don't tempt me!" he groaned. "What do you mean?"
"That mental and physical and spiritual contact with me will temporarily
give you, a three-dimension creature, the power of the new sense, which
your race will not have for fifty thousand years."
White-lipped and trembling, he demanded: "Explain!"
Eve smiled. "Have you not guessed that Adam has developed an additional
sense? You've seen him vanish. He and I have the sixth sense of Time
Perception--the new sense which enables us to penetrate what you of the
Black Age call the Fourth Dimension. Even you whose mentalities are
framed by three dimensions have this sixth sense instinct. Your very
religion is based on it, for you believe that in another life you shall
step into Time, or, as you call it, eternity." She leaned closer so that
her hair brushed his cheek. "What is eternity, John Northwood? Is it not
keeping forever ahead of the Destroyer? The future is eternal, for it is
never reached. Adam and I, through our new sense which comprehends Time
and Space, can vanish by stepping a few seconds into the future, the
Fourth Dimension of Space. Death can never reach us, not even accidental
death, unless that which causes death could also slip into the future,
which is not yet possible."
"But if the Fourth Dimension is future Time, why can one in the third
dimension feel the touch of an unseen presence in the Fourth
Dimension--hear his voice, even?"
"Thought vibration. The touch is not really felt nor the voice heard:
they are only imagined. The radioactive waves of the brain of even you
Black Age people are swift enough to bridge Space and Time. And it is
the mind that carries us beyond the third dimension."
* * * * *
Her red mouth reached closer to him, her blue eyes touched hidden forces
that slept in remote cells of his being. "You are going into Eternal
Time, John Northwood, Eternity without beginning or end. You understand?
You feel it? Comprehend it? Now for the contact--kiss me!"
Northwood had seen Athalia vanish under Adam's kiss. Suddenly, in one
mad burst of understanding, he leaned over to his magnificent temptress.
For a split second he felt the sweet pressure of baby-soft lips, and
then the atoms of his body seemed to fly asunder. Black chaos held him
for a frightful moment before he felt sanity return.
He was back on the terrace again, with Eve by his side. They were
standing now. The world about him looked the same, yet there was a
subtle change in everything.
Eve laughed softly. "It is puzzling, isn't it? You're seeing everything
as in a mirror. What was left before is now right. Only you and I are
real. All else is but a vision, a dream. For now you and I are existing
one minute in future time, or, more simply, we are in the Fourth
Dimension. To everything in the third dimension, we are invisible. Let
me show you that Dr. Mundson cannot see you."
They went back to the room beyond the terrace. Dr. Mundson was not
present.
"There he goes down the jungle path," said Eve, looking out a window.
She laughed. "Poor old fellow. The children of his genius are worrying
him."
* * * * *
They were standing in the recess formed by a bay window. Eve picked up
his hand and laid it against her face, giving him the full, blasting
glory of her smiling blue eyes.
Northwood, looking away miserably, uttered a low cry. Coming over the
field beyond were Adam and Athalia. By the trimming on the blue dress
she wore, he could see that she was still in the Fourth Dimension, for
he did not see her as a mirror image.
A look of fear leaped to Eve's face. She clutched Northwood's arm,
trembling.
"I don't want Adam to see that I have passed you beyond," she gasped.
"We are existing but one minute in the future. Always Adam and I have
feared to pass too far beyond the sweetness of reality. But now, so that
Adam may not see us, we shall step five minutes into what-is-yet-to-be.
And even he, with all his power, cannot see into a future that is more
distant than that in which he exists."
She raised her humid lips to his. "Come, beloved."
Northwood kissed her. Again came the moment of confusion, of the awful
vacancy that was like death, and then he found himself and Eve in the
laboratory, following Adam and Athalia down a long corridor. Athalia was
crying and pleading frantically with Adam. Once she stopped and threw
herself at his feet in a gesture of dramatic supplication, arms
outflung, streaming eyes wide open with fear.
Adam stooped and lifted her gently and continued on his way, supporting
her against his side.
* * * * *
Eve dug her fingers into Northwood's arm. Horror contorted her face,
horror mixed with rage.
"My mind hears what he is saying, understands the vile plan he has made,
John Northwood. He is on his way to his laboratory to destroy not only
you and most of these in New Eden, but me as well. He wants only
Athalia."
Striding forward like an avenging goddess, she pulled Northwood after
her.
"Hurry!" she whispered. "Remember, you and I are five minutes in the
future, and Adam is only one. We are witnessing what will occur four
minutes from now. We yet have time to reach the laboratory before him
and be ready for him when he enters. And because he will have to go back
to Present Time to do his work of destruction, I will be able to destroy
him. Ah!"
Fierce joy burned in her flashing blue eyes, and her slender nostrils
quivered delicately. Northwood, peeping at her in horror, knew that no
mercy could be expected of her. And when she stopped at a certain door
and inserted a key, he remembered Athalia. What if she should enter with
Adam in Present Time?
* * * * *
They were inside Adam's laboratory, a huge apartment filled with queer
apparatus and cages of live animals. The room was a strange paradox.
Part of the equipment, the walls, and the floor was glistening with
newness, and part was moulding with extreme age. The powers of
disintegration that haunt a tropical forest seemed to be devouring
certain spots of the room. Here, in the midst of bright marble, was a
section of wall that seemed as old as the pyramids. The surface of the
stone had an appalling mouldiness, as though it had been lifted from an
ancient graveyard where it had lain in the festering ground for
unwholesome centuries.
Between cracks in this stained and decayed section of stone grew fetid
moss that quivered with the microscopic organisms that infest age-rotten
places. Sections of the flooring and woodwork also reeked with
mustiness. In one dark, webby corner of the room lay a pile of bleached
bones, still tinted with the ghastly grays and pinks of putrefaction.
Northwood, overwhelmingly nauseated, withdrew his eyes from the bones,
only to see, in another corner, a pile of worm-eaten clothing that lay
on the floor in the outline of a man.
Faint with the reek of ancient mustiness, Northwood retreated to the
door, dizzy and staggering.
"It sickens you," said Eve, "and it sickens me also, for death and decay
are not pleasant. Yet Nature, left to herself, reduces all to this.
Every grave that has yawned to receive its prey hides corruption no less
shocking. Nature's forces of creation and destruction forever work in
partnership. Never satisfied with her composition, she destroys and
starts again, building, building towards the ultimate of perfection.
Thus, it is natural that if Dr. Mundson isolated the Life Ray, Nature's
supreme force of compensation, isolation of the Death Ray should closely
follow. Adam, thirsting for power, has succeeded. A few sweeps of his
unholy ray of decomposition will undo all Dr. Mundson's work in this
valley and reduce it to a stinking holocaust of destruction. And the
time for his striking has come!"
She seized his face and drew it toward her. "Quick!" she said. "We'll
have to go back to the third dimension. I could leave you safe in the
fourth, but if anything should happen to me, you would be stranded
forever in future time."
She kissed his lips. In a moment, he was back in the old familiar world,
where right is right and left is left. Again the subtle change wrought
by Eve's magic lips had taken place.
* * * * *
Eve went to a machine standing in a corner of the room.
"Come here and get behind me, John Northwood. I want to test it before
he enters."
Northwood stood behind her shoulder.
"Now watch!" she ordered. "I shall turn it on one of those cages of
guinea pigs over there."
She swung the projector around, pointed it at the cage of small,
squealing animals, and threw a lever. Instantly a cone of black mephitis
shot forth, a loathsome, bituminous stream of putrefaction that reeked
of the grave and the cesspool, of the utmost reaches of decay before the
dust accepts the disintegrated atoms. The first touch of seething,
pitchy destruction brought screams of sudden agony from the guinea pigs,
but the screams were cut short as the little animals fell in shocking,
instant decay. The very cage which imprisoned them shriveled and
retreated from the hellish, devouring breath that struck its noisome rot
into the heart of the wood and the metal, reducing both to revolting
ruin.
Eve cut off the frightful power, and the black cone disappeared, leaving
the room putrid with its defilement.
"And Adam would do that to the world," she said, her blue eyes like
electric-shot icicles. "He would do it to you, John Northwood--and to
me!" Her full bosom strained under the passion beneath.
"Listen!" She raised her hand warningly. "He comes! The destroyer
comes!"
* * * * *
A hand was at the door. Eve reached for the lever, and, the same moment,
Northwood leaned over her imploringly.
"If Athalia is with him!" he gasped. "You will not harm her?"
A wild shriek at the door, a slight scuffle, and then the doorknob was
wrenched as though two were fighting over it.
"For God's sake, Eve!" implored Northwood. "Wait! Wait!"
"No! She shall die, too. You love her!"
Icy, cruel eyes cut into him, and a new-fleshed hand tried to push him
aside. The door was straining open. A beloved voice shrieked. "John!"
Eve and Northwood both leaped for the lever. Under her tender white
flesh she was as strong as a man. In the midst of the struggle, her red,
humid lips approached his--closer. Closer. Their merest pressure would
thrust him into Future Time, where the laboratory and all it contained
would be but a shadow, and where he would be helpless to interfere with
her terrible will.
He saw the door open and Adam stride into the room. Behind him, lying
prone in the hall where she had probably fainted, was Athalia. In a mad
burst of strength he touched the lever together with Eve.
The projector, belching forth its stinking breath of corruption swung in
a mad arc over the ceiling, over the walls--and then straight at Adam.
Then, quicker than thought, came the accident. Eve, attempting to throw
Northwood off, tripped, fell half over the machine, and, with a short
scream of despair, dropped into the black path of destruction.
* * * * *
Northwood paused, horrified. The Death Ray was pointed at an inner wall
of the room, which, even as he looked, crumbled and disappeared,
bringing down upon him dust more foul than any obscenity the bowels of
the earth might yield. In an instant the black cone ate through the
outer parts of the building, where crashing stone and screams that were
more horrible because of their shortness followed the ruin that swept
far into the fair reaches of the valley.
The paralyzing odor of decay took his breath, numbed his muscles, until,
of all that huge building, the wall behind him and one small section of
the room by the doorway alone remained whole. He was trying to nerve
himself to reach for the lever close to that quiet formless thing still
partly draped over the machine, when a faint sound in the door
electrified him. At first, he dared not look, but his own name, spoken
almost in a gasp, gave him courage.
Athalia lay on the floor, apparently untouched.
He jerked the lever violently before running to her, exultant with the
knowledge that his own efforts to keep the ray from the door had saved
her.
"And you're not hurt!" He gathered her close.
"John! I saw it get Adam." She pointed to a new mound of mouldy clothes
on the floor. "Oh, it is hideous for me to be so glad, but he was going
to destroy everything and everyone except me. He made the ray projector
for that one purpose."
Northwood looked over the pile of putrid ruins which a few minutes ago
had been a building. There was not a wall left intact.
"His intention is accomplished, Athalia," he said sadly. "Let's get out
before more stones fall."
* * * * *
In a moment they were in the open. An ominous stillness seemed to grip
the very air--the awful silence of the polar wastes which lay not far
beyond the mountains.
"How dark it is, John!" cried Athalia. "Dark and cold!"
"The sunshine projector!" gasped Northwood. "It must have been
destroyed. Look, dearest! The golden light has disappeared."
"And the warm air of the valley will lift immediately. That means a
polar blizzard." She shuddered and clung closer to him. "I've seen
Antarctic storms, John. They're death."
Northwood avoided her eyes. "There's the sun-ship. We'll give the ruins
the once over in case there are any survivors; then we'll save
ourselves."
Even a cursory examination of the mouldy piles of stone and dust
convinced them that there could be no survivors. The ruins looked as
though they had lain in those crumbling piles for centuries. Northwood,
smothering his repugnance, stepped among them--among the green, slimy
stones and the unspeakable revolting debris, staggering back and faint
and shocked when he came upon dust that was once human.
"God!" he groaned, hands over eyes. "We're alone, Athalia! Alone in a
charnal house. The laboratory housed the entire population, didn't it?"
"Yes. Needing no sleep nor food, we did not need houses. We all worked
here, under Dr. Mundson's generalship, and, lately under Adam's, like a
little band of soldiers fighting for a great cause."
"Let's go to the sun-ship, dearest."
"But Daddy Mundson was in the library," sobbed Athalia. "Let's look for
him a little longer."
* * * * *
Sudden remembrance came to Northwood. "No, Athalia! He left the library.
I saw him go down the jungle path several minutes before I and Eve went
to Adam's laboratory."
"Then he might be safe!" Her eyes danced. "He might have gone to the
sun-ship."
Shivering, she slumped against him. "Oh, John! I'm cold."
Her face was blue. Northwood jerked off his coat and wrapped it around
her, taking the intense cold against his unprotected shoulders. The low,
gray sky was rapidly darkening, and the feeble light of the sun could
scarcely pierce the clouds. It was disturbing to know that even the
summer temperature in the Antarctic was far below zero.
"Come, girl," said Northwood gravely. "Hurry! It's snowing."
They started to run down the road through the narrow strip of jungle.
The Death Ray had cut huge swathes in the tangle of trees and vines, and
now areas of heaped debris, livid with the colors of recent decay,
exhaled a mephitic humidity altogether alien to the snow that fell in
soft, slow flakes. Each hesitated to voice the new fear: had the
sun-ship been destroyed?
By the time they reached the open field, the snow stung their flesh like
sharp needles, but it was not yet thick enough to hide from them a
hideous fact.
The sun-ship was gone.
* * * * *
It might have occupied one of several black, foul areas on the green
grass, where the searching Death Ray had made the very soil putrefy, and
the rocks crumble into shocking dust.
Northwood snatched Athalia to him, too full of despair to speak. A
sudden terrific flurry of snow whirled around them, and they were almost
blown from their feet by the icy wind that tore over the unprotected
field.
"It won't be long," said Athalia faintly. "Freezing doesn't hurt, John,
dear."
"It isn't fair, Athalia! There never would have been such a marriage as
ours. Dr. Mundson searched the world to bring us together."
"For scientific experiment!" she sobbed. "I'd rather die, John. I want
an old-fashioned home, a Black Age family. I want to grow old with you
and leave the earth to my children. Or else I want to die here now under
the kind, white blanket the snow is already spreading over us." She
drooped in his arms.
Clinging together, they stood in the howling wind, looking at each other
hungrily, as though they would snatch from death this one last picture
of the other.
Northwood's freezing lips translated some of the futile words that
crowded against them. "I love you because you are not perfect. I hate
perfection!"
"Yes. Perfection is the only hopeless state, John. That is why Adam
wanted to destroy, so that he might build again."
They were sitting in the snow now, for they were very tired. The storm
began whistling louder, as though it were only a few feet above their
heads.
"That sounds almost like the sun-ship," said Athalia drowsily.
"It's only the wind. Hold your face down so it won't strike your flesh
so cruelly."
"I'm not suffering. I'm getting warm again." She smiled at him sleepily.
* * * * *
Little icicles began to form on their clothing, and the powdery snow
frosted their uncovered hair.
Suddenly came a familiar voice: "_Ach Gott!_"
Dr. Mundson stood before them, covered with snow until he looked like a
polar bear.
"Get up!" he shouted. "Quick! To the sun-ship!"
He seized Athalia and jerked her to her feet. She looked at him sleepily
for a moment, and then threw herself at him and hugged him frantically.
"You're not dead?"
Taking each by the arm, he half dragged them to the sun-ship, which had
landed only a few feet away. In a few minutes he had hot brandy for
them.
While they sipped greedily, he talked, between working the sun-ship's
controls.
"No, I wouldn't say it was a lucky moment that drew me to the sun-ship.
When I saw Eve trying to charm John, I had what you American slangists
call a hunch, which sent me to the sun-ship to get it off the ground so
that Adam couldn't commandeer it. And what is a hunch but a mental
penetration into the Fourth Dimension?" For a long moment, he brooded,
absent-minded. "I was in the air when the black ray, which I suppose is
Adam's deviltry, began to destroy everything it touched. From a safe
elevation I saw it wreck all my work." A sudden spasm crossed his face.
"I've flown over the entire valley. We're the only survivors--thank
God!"
"And so at last you confess that it is not well to tamper with human
life?" Northwood, warmed with hot brandy, was his old self again.
"Oh, I have not altogether wasted my efforts. I went to elaborate pains
to bring together a perfect man and a perfect woman of what Adam called
our Black Age." He smiled at them whimsically.
"And who can say to what extent you have thus furthered natural
evolution?" Northwood slipped his arm around Athalia. "Our children
might be more than geniuses, Doctor!"
Dr. Mundson nodded his huge, shaggy head gravely.
"The true instinct of a Creature of the Light," he declared.
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