Amazing Stories: Giant 35th Anniversary Issue (Amazing Stories Classics) Page 11

  "Joog—stop! Stop!" Carter shouted into the microphone. Panting and growling, the great creature ceased his ruthless slaughter. He stood hunched over, the sullen, glaring hatred slowly dying away in his eyes, as the battle continued to rage at his feet.

  The apes were now completely disbanded. They broke over the trenches and ran toward the mountains, pursued by the vicious, snarling rats and the green warriors of Tars Tarkas.

  John Carter could see Kantos Kan's flagship hovering near Joog's head.

  Fearing that Joog might aim an irritated blow at the craft with its precious cargo, the earthman signalled the ship to remain aloft.

  Then his command once again rang into the microphone. "Joog, lie down. Lie down!"

  Like some tired beast of prey, Joog settled down on the ground amid the bodies of those he had killed.

  John Carter leaped out of the howdah onto the ground. He still retained hold of the microphone that was tuned to the shortwave receiving set in Joog's ear.

  "Joog!" shouted Carter again. "Go to Korvas. Go to Korvas."

  The monster glared at the earthman, not ten feet from his face, and snarled.

  FOURTEEN

  ADVENTURE'S END

  ONCE again the earthman repeated his command to Joog the giant. Now the snarl faded from his lips and from the brute's chest came a sound not unlike a sigh as he rose to his feet once again.

  Turning slowly, Joog ambled off across the plain toward Korvas.

  It was not until ten minutes later after the Heliumite soldiers had stormed from their city and surrounded the earthman and their princess that John Carter, holding Dejah Thoris tightly in his arms, saw Joog's head disappear over the mountains in the distance.

  "Why did you let him go, John Carter?" asked Tars Tarkas, as he wiped the blood from his blade on the hide of his sweating thoat.

  "Yes, why," repeated Kantos Kan, "when you had him in your power?"

  John Carter turned and surveyed the battlefield. "All the death and destruction that has been caused here today was due not to Joog but to Pew Mogel," replied John Carter.

  "Joog is harmless, now that his evil master is dead. Why add his death to all those others, even if we could have killed him—which I doubt?"

  Kantos Kan was watching the rats disappear into the far mountains in pursuit of the great, lumbering apes.

  "Tell me, John Carter," finally he said, a queer expression on his face, "how did you manage to capture those vicious rats, load them into those troop ships and even strap parachutes on them?"

  John Carter smiled. "It was really simple," he said. "I had noticed in Korvas, when I was a prisoner in their underground city, that there was only one means of entrance to the cavern in which the rats live—a single tunnel that continued back for some distance before it branched, although there were openings in the ceiling far above; but they were out of reach.

  "I led my men down into that tunnel and we built a huge smoke fire with debris from the ground above. The natural draft carried the smoke into the cavern.

  "The place became so filled with smoke that the rats passed out by the scores from lack of oxygen, for they couldn't get by the fire in the tunnel—their only means of escape. Later, we simply went in and dragged out as many as we needed to load into our troop ships."

  "But the parachutes!" exclaimed Kantos Kan. "How did you manage to get those on their backs or keep them from tearing them off when the creatures finally became conscious?"

  "They did not regain consciousness until the last minute," replied the earthman. "We kept the inside cabin of each troop ship filled with enough smoke to keep the rats unconscious all the way to Helium. We had plenty of time to attach the parachutes to their backs. The rats came to in midair after my men shoved them out of the ships."

  John Carter nodded toward the disappearing creatures in the mountains. "They were very much alive and fighting mad when they hit the ground, as you saw," added the earthman. "They simply stepped out of their parachute harnesses when they landed, and leaped for anyone in sight.

  "As for the malagors," he concluded, "they are birds—and birds on both Earth and Mars have no love for snakes or rats. I knew those malagors would prefer other surroundings when they saw and smelled their natural enemies in the air around them!"

  Dejah Thoris looked up at her chieftain and smiled. "Was there ever such a man before?" she asked. "Could it be that all earthman are like you?"

  THAT night all Helium celebrated its victory. The streets of the city surged with laughing people. The mighty, green warriors of Thark mingled—in common brotherhood with the fighting legions of Helium.

  In the royal palace was staged a great feast in honor of John Carter's service to Helium.

  Old Tardos Mors, the jeddak, was so choked with feeling at the miraculous delivery of his city from the hands of their enemy and the safe return of his granddaughter that he was unable to speak for some time when he arose at the dining table to offer the kingdom's thanks to the earthman.

  But when he finally spoke, his words were couched with the simple dignity of a great ruler. The intense gratitude of these people deeply touched the earthman's heart.

  Later that night, John Carter and Dejah Thoris stood alone on a balcony overlooking the royal gardens.

  The moons of Mars circled majestically across the heavens, causing the shadows of the distant mountains to roll and tumble in an ever-changing fantasy over the plain and the forest.

  Even the shadows of the two people on the royal balcony slowly merged into one.

  OUT OF THE SUB-UNIVERSE

  By R. F. Starzl

  Illustrated by HUGH MACKAY

  An epic romantic notion that atoms contain microscopic, universes with suns and planets like those in our solar system gained Ray Cummings instant literary success when he used it as the basis of his now-famous story, The Girl in the Golden Atom, serialized in ALL-STORY MAGAZINE beginning Mar. 15, 1919. The theme was employed over and over again after that without much variation until R. F. Starzl, with his first professional appearance in Amazing Stories QUARTERLY for Summer, 1928, introduced an element which no previous author had considered; and which, if one accepted the original concept of worlds within worlds, was plausible enough to place a damper on the enthusiasm of subsequent science fiction authors for this idea. The originality of Starzl's story won him the cover of the issue in which it appeared, and the poignancy with which he handled the humanitarian aspects won him much praise. He went on to become one of the more popular authors of his period.

  IF YOU really are so anxious to go, I won't keep you from going any more," said Professor Halley with a sigh, to the young man who sat opposite to him in his laboratory. "Eventually it will become necessary for a human being to make the journey, and no one is better qualified than you to make an accurate report."

  "Indeed, I should think not," smiled Hal McLaren, his friend and pupil, "as long as I've been your assistant, and, you might say, co-discoverer. But—" his eyes clouded.

  "I think you should let her go along if she wants to," said Halley slowly. "You know that I love my daughter even more than she loves you, but I realize that if you failed to come back, as our experimental rabbits failed to come back, she could never be happy again. She would rather be with you, no matter how inhospitable the little world to which you are going."

  "But I will come back!" insisted Hale McLaren urgently. "We know why our experimental animals did not return. As soon as they arrived on the surface of whatever little planet they happened to land on, they did not bother to wonder where they might be. They simply wandered on, and of course it was impossible for our apparatus to find them again. You may be sure that I won't leave the landing spot."

  "Nevertheless, it is possible you may fail to return. Shirley is almost a grown woman. We will explain the dangers to her, and if she still wants to go, she shall go."

  He stepped to the telephone and called the number of his home, only a short distance from the little inland college where he was
head of the physics department. In a few minutes Shirley came into the presence of the two men and regarded their soberness amusedly.

  "Whose funeral are you holding today?" she asked.

  "Don't talk of funerals at a time like this," said McLaren, little crossly. "We called you over here to explain to you again the danger of the trip you want to make with me. Frankly, I don't want you along, but your father says you can come if you want to."

  "Of course I'm going!" she retorted with mock defiance. "Do you think I want to lose you to some atomic vamp?"

  "This is serious," he persisted, refusing for once to yield to her rallying. He led the way to the corner of the big, bare room, where he moved aside a denim curtain sliding on a wire, which hid a maze of enigmatic apparatus, evidently electrical in its nature. In the center of a large helix, on a base of peculiar translucent green material, stood a great glass bell, large enough for two or three persons to stand inside. A bank of high-voltage vacuum tubes against one wall was connected by means of heavy copper tubing to various points on the helix. The translucent green base was supported on a number of cylinders, which formed a hydraulic hoist so that the heavy green disc could be lowered in order to permit the introduction of objects under the independently supported bell.

  "I'm going to start in a few minutes," McLaren informed Shirley, and despite his assumed brusqueness, his voice betrayed a tremor of tenderness. "Your father is going to explain the danger to you, and if you still want to go, we start together."

  "You know, Shirley" began Professor Halley in his best class-room manner, "that Hale and I have been engaging extensively in research work to discover the ultimate composition of matter. I will admit that we are as much in the dark regarding our primary quest as ever, but in our researches we have opened new vistas that are fully as beautiful and as interesting as the truths we first sought.

  "By utilizing the newly discovered cosmic ray, which has a wave-length infinitely shorter than any other known kind of light, we have been able to get circumstantial evidence that electrons do not consist solely of a negative electric charge, as physicists have thought before, but that this charge is actually held by a real particle of matter, so infinitely small that we would never get direct evidence of its existence by the older methods.

  "While pursuing these studies, we stumbled upon another property of the cosmic ray. We found that certain harmonics of the ray, when enormously amplified, have the property of reducing or increasing the mass and volume of all matter, without changing its form. We have discovered no limit to this power. We believe it is infinite.

  "Now this suggests a possible solution of the problem of the constitution of the universe. Could we prove that the atom, with its central nucleus and its satellites, called electrons, is really only a miniature universe, in fact and not by analogy only, we could safely assume that the constituents of the infra-universe beneath us and the super-universe above us are only links of a chain that stretches into infinity!"

  Professor Halley paused. His assistant was flushed and enthusiastic, and his daughter's cheeks glowed brightly and her eyes sparkled. But she was not looking at the apparatus; she was looking at the smooth, dark hair of her fiancé.

  "We have sent things into that sub-universe," he continued, "chairs, coins, glasses, bricks and things like that. And we have brought some of them back. But when we sent guinea pigs or rabbits, or a stray dog into the world of mystery, we could not bring them back. Hale thinks the animals may have wandered away, out of focus of our rays. I don't know. He may be right, or they may have met some terrible unknown fate. Now he offers himself for the experiment. It is dangerous. It may be ghastly. But if you wish to go with him, you may. Your mother is dead. You may leave me lonely in my old age; but you may go—for science!"

  A solemn hush followed the simple words. Then Shirley said clearly: "I will go."

  THE PHYSICIST turned his head for a moment. When he faced them again, there was no sign of his mental struggle. Firmly, he threw a lever, and the green base silently lowered to the floor. McLaren and the girl stepped upon it, and when it rose again it carried them into the glass bell. The professor turned to the raised platform where the control board was located.

  "Good-bye!" he called. "I'll bring you back when half an hour has passed."

  "Good-bye!" they returned, their voices muffled.

  A powerful generator sprang into action, filling the laboratory with its high-pitched whine. The vacuum tubes glowed dully, and a powerful odor of ozone permeated the air. With a loud crash, the, high-tension electricity discharged between adjacent turns of the helix. The professor hastened to adjust a condenser, and again the silence was broken only by the whine of the generator and a low humming.

  As the professor continued to adjust the controls, the bell gradually filled with a deep violet light that swayed and swirled tenuously like the drapes of an aurora borealis. The light swirled around the man and the girl, at times almost hiding them from view. It gradually concentrated toward the bottom of the bell, seeming to cling to the green base, intertwining the two living forms until it almost hid them from view. Yet they continued to smile and wave encouragement.

  And now it was evident that they were growing smaller. Already they were less than four-feet tall, and as the apparatus was brought more and more into perfect resonance, their rate of shrinkage accelerated. Soon they were but a foot high, standing in a sea of violet light, then six inches, then hardly an inch. The professor turned off the generator.

  The girl and the man now walked the few inches necessary to bring them to the exact center of the base. Here, in a slight depression in the smooth material, was a tiny granule of carbon, one of the atoms of which they were to explore. It was so tiny that it could hardly be seen under the microscope, ordinarily, yet to McLaren, it must already have become plainly visible, for he soon spoke to the girl and she joined him, standing with him very closely near a spot on the floor which he indicated.

  Again the mysterious harmonics of the cosmic ray were brought into action, and the two tiny figures vanished from sight. The professor stayed at the controls, his eyes fixed anxiously on his watch until the proper time had elapsed, as indicated by his calculations. He stopped the dynamo again and laid his watch on the table. He marked the time when he should recall them, 10 minutes after four, and paced nervously up and down the room in which he was now alone. Moisture beading his brow, he stopped and stared at the slight depression in which lay a million universes, each one as complete and as perfect as his own, and in one of those universes was a whirling speck on which he had deposited his daughter and best-loved assistant.

  He started as the telephone whirred and disposed of a student who wanted to make a trifling inquiry. Then he went back to his watch again, listened to see if his watch might have stopped. It was very still in the laboratory, and when a small rill of water suddenly cascaded out of the cooling jacket of one of the heavy-duty vacuum tubes, the noise seemed loud and strident.

  A new thought was now harassing Professor Halley. Suppose that in that unthinkably small world, there were dangerous creatures, whom Hale and Shirley might be battling for their lives even at that moment. Perhaps this world might happen to be a blazing sun; suppose they had gasped their lives out on a sterile and airless moon? He looked at his watch again. The half-hour was almost up. A few more minutes, and they'd be ready and waiting to come back—wouldn't do to turn on the ray while they might be a short distance away, out of focus.—-A few more seconds—now!

  WITH a fierce sweep, he threw the switch and the violet light filled the glass bell again. Quickly he reversed the current—then crept to the base of the glass dome so that he might see the returned wanderers as soon as they grew into visibility.

  Within a few minutes a small cloudy patch appeared in the glassy depression where the microscopic granule of carbon lay. Before the physicist's eyes this spot resolved itself into hundreds of tiny dots—dots that grew rapidly until they resembled minute upright pegs�
��pegs that presently grew large enough to show arms and legs. Small human-like creatures that were plainly men and women by the time they were half an inch tall. Men and women that grew and walked about, and were evidently greatly perturbed.

  Halley watched them with amazement until they were a few inches tall. He did not move until they began to be so crowded that there was danger of smothering some of them. Then he leaped to the switch to stop their growth, and lowered the green disc until it was at the same level as the table, to which some of the more venturesome now jumped for the sake of more room. As he watched them in stupefaction, looking vainly for McLaren and Shirley, a man separated himself from the crowd, walked to the edge of the table, made a deep obeisance, and called:

  "Where are we?"

  His voice was thin and reedy, like the chirp of an insect, and his accent was slurred and difficult to understand. Yet he spoke recognizable English.

  "You are on earth," said Halley automatically.

  This remark created the most profound impression. A thin, sighing cry arose from the little people, and many of them prostrated themselves. They wore filmy, short robes that came to their knees, held to their bodies by girdles. Men and women were dressed pretty nearly alike, but there was a well defined plan of ornamentation which distinguished the sexes.

  The leader turned on them and cried.

  "Hark! Hark! Is it not as we, your priests, have told you! To the faithful shall it be granted to be carried from our vale of tears to the Earth, with its portals of gold, where the milk and honey flows. You have heard the voice of the Angel. In a voice of thunder he has told you, you are at the gateway of the Earth, while those who believe not shall be cast into the outer darkness, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth!

  Someone in the background began a hymn. The mass of pygmy humanity joined, and the faint insect-like chorus filled the room.

  Halley addressed the priest again.