The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe green girlThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The green girlAuthor: Jack WilliamsonIllustrator: Hans Waldemar WessolowskiRelease date: July 22, 2023 [eBook #71255]Language: EnglishOriginal publication: United States: Experimenter Publications, Inc, 1930Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREEN GIRL ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: The green girlAuthor: Jack WilliamsonIllustrator: Hans Waldemar WessolowskiRelease date: July 22, 2023 [eBook #71255]Language: EnglishOriginal publication: United States: Experimenter Publications, Inc, 1930Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Title: The green girl
Author: Jack WilliamsonIllustrator: Hans Waldemar Wessolowski
Author: Jack Williamson
Illustrator: Hans Waldemar Wessolowski
Release date: July 22, 2023 [eBook #71255]
Language: English
Original publication: United States: Experimenter Publications, Inc, 1930
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREEN GIRL ***
The Green Girl(A Serial in Two Parts) Part IBy Jack WilliamsonIllustrated by WESSO[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced fromAmazing Stories March and April 1930.Extensive research did not uncover any evidence thatthe U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
(A Serial in Two Parts) Part I
By Jack Williamson
Illustrated by WESSO
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced fromAmazing Stories March and April 1930.Extensive research did not uncover any evidence thatthe U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
In a very recent issue ofScience and InventionDr. Hartman tells of the amazing discoveries he has made in the Mediterranean, off the coast of Sicily, when he went below the sea in his newly constructed steel diving bell, which was designed to withstand a pressure of 2,500 pounds per square inch or a sub-sea depth of about 5,000 feet. During his latest venture below the sea level, Dr. Hartman discovered a prehistoric city—perhaps the Lost Atlantis. Why, then, should it be impossible to assume that there might be cities—even vast cities—submerged miles below the Pacific, for instance, and made habitable? But whatever else might be said, "The Green Girl" is a scientifiction classic that will rank with the best that have ever been published. Though it is a wild, exciting, fantastic tale, it is exceedingly plausible withal. Be sure to read the first instalment in this issue.
In a very recent issue ofScience and InventionDr. Hartman tells of the amazing discoveries he has made in the Mediterranean, off the coast of Sicily, when he went below the sea in his newly constructed steel diving bell, which was designed to withstand a pressure of 2,500 pounds per square inch or a sub-sea depth of about 5,000 feet. During his latest venture below the sea level, Dr. Hartman discovered a prehistoric city—perhaps the Lost Atlantis. Why, then, should it be impossible to assume that there might be cities—even vast cities—submerged miles below the Pacific, for instance, and made habitable? But whatever else might be said, "The Green Girl" is a scientifiction classic that will rank with the best that have ever been published. Though it is a wild, exciting, fantastic tale, it is exceedingly plausible withal. Be sure to read the first instalment in this issue.
CHAPTER I
MAY 4, 1999
At high noon on May 4, 1999, the sun went out!It had risen bright and clear. The summer sky had had an unwonted liquid brilliance. The climbing day-star had shone all the morning with unusual intensity. But just at ten o'clock, an intangible mist obscured the sky! A pale and deepening film stole over the crystal infinity of the heavens! The sky assumed a dull, almost copper tinge, that developed into a ghastly scarlet pall! In five minutes the sky changed from a soft and limpid blue to an intense, darkling scarlet! In the appalling suggestion of blood in the dusky crimson depths, there was a grim omen of the fate of earth!
I had got up at dawn for a plunge in the surf, and all the morning I had been wandering about the bit of beach and the strip of virgin woodland behind it, content in the restful, soothing peace of that untouched bit of Nature, rejoicing lazily in the vivid greenness of it, in the fresh odors of earth and plant, in the whisper of the wind in the palms. I lounged on the crisp grass in the cooling shade, living in my sympathy with the life about me, watching the long soft rollers of the green-blue Atlantic surging deliberately toward the crystal whiteness of the sunlit sandy beach. The soft cerulean skies were clear, save for the white wings of occasional airships that glanced in the bright sunshine. The morning had a singularly quiet and soothing beauty. My sleepy soul was in harmony with the distant mellow chime of a church bell. I lay back in the peaceful rest of a man ready to sink lazily into the evening of life.
Though I am still an able man of somewhat less than thirty years, I felt that morning none of the energetic exuberance of youth. I felt something of the age and the agelessness of Nature herself. I felt no fires of ambition; I was oddly devoid of feeling or emotion; I felt content to steep my soul for eternities in Nature's simple wonders. But I have always been a dreamer.
I was a worshipper come unknowingly for the last time to the shrine of life. For even then the doom was gathering! But I was spared all knowledge of the alien menace that was blotting out the sun! I had no premonition that within a few short hours the balmy Florida coast would be a frozen wilderness, whipped with bitter winds and lashed with freezing seas!
I had risen at last, and was sauntering down the hard white sand in the direction of our cottage, listening idly to the birds—singing on the eve of their doom. I came in sight of the house, a low building, covered with climbing vines and half hidden in the trees. I strolled toward it upon the narrow, curving gravel walk, lost in the peace of the rustic setting.
The Doctor was sitting on the small veranda, gazing sleepily out over the sea, with his pipe in his mouth and his hands on the arms of his chair. Dr. Samuel Walden was the sole person in the world, outside the vivid creations of my dreams, for whom I had affection. He was an unusual character. Born in 1929, he was now seventy years of age. His earlier life had been devoted to science, and he had won fame and fortune for himself by the invention of the hydrodyne sub-atomic engine. But in the last twenty years he had done no scientific work—or so I thought, for I had never been behind the little door that he kept always locked.
A close friend of my parents, he had been more than a father to me since they were lost in the turmoil of the last outbreak against the Council of Nations, when I was three years old. We had always lived in the old cottage on the hill, in this natural park on the Florida coast. He loved Nature deeply. For many years his chief interests in life had been plants and animals, for which he cared more than for society. A flower, a dog, the sound of the surf—such things were the joys of his life.
Though his hair had been white for many years, his lean, tanned face was unwrinkled, and he was among the strongest men of my acquaintance. In fact, two years before, he had won second place at the Olympic wrestling contests. He loved the simple things of life. He had a passion for cooking, and he made it a science as well as an art. He was an inveterate smoker, and clung to the habit, even when he had to have the tobacco smuggled in from Asia at vast expense. He had an old music box, of a type that went out of date half a century ago, to which he used to listen for hours on end.
There was little enough about Sam Walden's daily life to show that he was the greatest scientist of the earth, and the sole hope for the world in the amazing battle that was brewing. His simple philosophy had changed him far from the energetic young inventor of the hydrodyne. No one would have suspected the qualities of supreme heroism that he revealed.
During the days of my youth we had restlessly wandered over the globe. We had lived rather aimlessly—for the simple joy of living. The mountains, the desert, and the sea have always had a fascinating call for both of us, and we wandered in answer to that call—and during some of those years, I traveled on a strange quest of my own.
But it was a whole decade since we had left our rustic home. And as our latter years had been quiet and tranquil, so the world had lost the fierce energy and struggle for advancement, that had driven it during Sam's younger days. It had settled down to the enjoyment of peaceful content. Science had turned from the invention of new machines to the improvement of those in existence, and had died with their perfection, until, when the crisis came, Sam was the only man on earth able to understand and to cope with it!
The industrial organization had been perfected. Work was done by machines. Men attended them for short hours and played through long ones. There were no rich, and no poor. The products of industry were fairly divided. All men received their shares in content and enjoyed them to the full, without troubling themselves about the question of science or religion or of life that had received the attention of the past generation.
And upon the peaceful tranquillity of that happy, prosperous age, there fell with no warning the lurid doom that no man could explain, throwing it into frenzied confusion. In the past era, there would have been a thousand men to attack the problem, with all the power of clear, dynamic minds. Now, there was justone manwho could understand!
It was not so much that scientific knowledge was lacking. Men still studied and talked the language of science. The machines demanded it. But there were none of trained and penetrating minds, used to departing boldly from the world of the known to bring forth the new. Science was no longer living. It was mechanical.
CHAPTER II
The Radio Girl
I have said that I am a dreamer, living more truly in my fancy than in the world. Perhaps my imagination is abnormally developed. Always I have had new worlds awaiting me in my dreams, to which I could retire when life was dull or unattractive. My visions have always had a singular reality, such a definite concreteness, that it sometimes seemed to be the truth.
The old wonder stories of Wells and Verne, and of the pseudo-scientific writers of the first part of this century have always appealed to me. I had a vast collection of ancient volumes and tattered magazines, full of those old stories, which I read and reread with passionate interest. The rest of the world had forgotten them with the passing of the age of science, but I found in them the priceless food of fancy.
Psychologists say that many children have dream companions of some kind. They are very real entities of the child's imagination, playmates of fancy. They usually fade and are forgotten as the adolescent child becomes absorbed in the activities of life, and the imagination atrophies.
Since the days of my earliest recollections, I have visited in the world of my dreams a wonderful playmate. It is a girl, with dark brown hair, deep, warm violet eyes, and clear skin, so I thought, slightly tinged with green, though the lips were very red. I have always thought that she was very beautiful, and she has always been very real to me.
And the vision did not fade as the years went by! Still I visited the Green Girl, as I called her, in my fancy, and she replaced many of the normal childhood interests that I might have had. It is because of her that I have always been happiest when I was silent and alone, it is because of my dreams that I have been inclined to avoid the society of others.
The strange world of dreams in which I visited her was very real to me, a place of weird wonders, sometimes of alien terrors, in which the Green Girl and I wandered through interminable, astounding adventures. And I have always had an unaccountable persuasion that it was a real world, somewhere, through which my mind roamed in such delightful fancies!
It was twenty years ago, when I was just five years old, that the Green Girl first came into my dreams. Sam had rigged up, for my edification, an old fashioned radio set, with headphones. In the long, lonely silences of the warm Florida nights, when a less indulgent guardian would have had me in bed, I sat up with those old phones on my ears, exploring the ether, feeling near the infinite mystery of space. I listened with childish intentness to the odd noises of the static, eagerly dreaming of calls from other planets.
It was during one of those long still nights that I first entered that world of fancy, and found—the Green Girl! It seemed that I heard first a cry of delight in a silver voice, and then she was with me. She was but a tiny sprite, smaller than myself. She seemed to stand before me, smiling at me, tossing her dark curls, with the light of bright intelligence in her blue-violet eyes. I loved her from the first. She was very beautiful. Her skin had just a tinge of green, like a tinted photograph; it did not seem a strange color. The vision was very real to me.
When she spoke—and I half imagined her words were really coming over the ether—there was a childish lisp in her voice, but still a ring of confidence and courage. Her words were strange, but I soon grew to sense their meaning, almost by intuition. Night after night, when I put on the phones and tuned in on the strange noises of the ether, that vision came back. It was not long before I could speak that strange tongue as fluently as I could speak English.
With childish reserve, I told Sam nothing about my wonderful dream, until one day he heard me chattering in the language I had learned. He questioned me eagerly; and I shyly told him all about it, and even supplied material for a grammar of the language. He took a keen scientific interest in the matter, when he learned that the vision came only over the radio, and he began to formulate theories of telepathic suggestion and mind control by ether waves.
The matter was written up by a prominent psychologist to whom he reported it. The account appeared in a well known scientific magazine, with comments upon the strange language, which, oddly enough, bore not the slightest similarity to any known tongue, and appeared rather too perfect to be credited to the invention of a five-year-old. The writer mentioned Sam's ideas, that I had established telepathic contact with another planet, or perhaps with the far-distant past or future; but theories of mind reading received little welcome in a day when science was dormant, and even the suggestion that the language, because of its simplicity, power, and labial beauty, would become the long-sought international tongue, was soon completely forgotten.
But I did not forget the Green Girl. The conviction grew upon me that she was a real living entity. To find her became my ruling passion. Under Sam's tutelage I poured over geographical accounts, searching in vain for some clue to a hidden nation. But the fact that the language seemed to have no sister tongue on earth discouraged that. Between my tenth and fifteenth years Sam and I restlessly scoured the globe in search of a clue, but a decade before we had given it up.
I turned to dreams of interplanetary travel with a passionate desire to explore space and venture to other worlds in search of my dream girl; but the space flier seemed as far in the future as it had done a hundred years before. To please me, however, Sam helped design and construct a model of a machine we called the Omnimobile—because it should be able to travel in all elements.
But, as the years of my early manhood passed, I slowly relinquished all hope of finding the Green Girl in fact, and resolved to content myself with her companionship in fancy. It was then, too, that I developed my inordinate fondness for scientific romances which I devoured insatiably to feed my dreams. It was only during the first few years that I could find her only over the radio. As time went by, she became an inseparable companion of my mind.
Once, for a time, I tried to lose myself in science. I had Sam teach me chemistry, but that could not replace my dreams.
Together, the Green Girl and I went through ten thousand fantastic adventures. It was as if our two minds met in the world of dreams jointly created by both of us. Certainly it was influenced by the incidents of my life, and by the wonder tales I read. And the girl told me stories, strange and thrilling narratives they were, of mythical heroes of her race that struggled with weird terrors.
She grew up with myself, until she became a princess of incomparable beauty. Often I have wished that I were a gifted painter, that I might have tried to record her charms, but even if I had been such, her perfection would have discouraged my efforts. She was slender, erect, combining an unconscious dignity of poise with vivacious spriteliness of manner. Her hair was soft and curly and brown. Her pale green skin was very soft; her full lips very red. And her sparkling violet eyes were clear and honest—bright wells of human sympathy.
Could I believe that such a supernal being was merely a dream?
CHAPTER III
The Scarlet Pall
The coming of the terror was slow and gradual enough—and as silent as the tomb! With all the magic of the quiet woodland beauty throbbing in my being, I was strolling up the narrow gravel walk toward the peaceful vine-covered cottage, where Sam was sitting in sleepy content. Gazing idly into the measureless infinity of the liquid azure sky, I saw the beginning come, so slowly that I scarcely marked it!
A pale rosy mist seemed suddenly to condense in the sky! A ubiquitous crimson haze was born from nowhere! Even as I stood in open-mouthed amazement—with the sudden chill of alien terror grasping my limbs and tugging at my heart—the hue of the sky ran quickly from the pure deep blue to an intense and awful scarlet! It was deeper than the crimson of sunset—it had a terrible, bloody intensity! It was as if a spray of blood from the arteries of some dying monster had abruptly encrimsoned the sky!
A fearful, blood-red twilight fell swiftly upon the tranquil beauty of the scene before me, painting it with hues of weird and gruesome horror! The once blue sea rolled in like a tide of blood, flashing a million gleams of awful crimson light, as the red sun was reflected on its waves! Familiar objects took on dreadful forms of wild foreboding, in that suddenly ghastly gloom of red!
And that was but the beginning!
The Unknown is always terrible, and if ever the earth was menaced with an unfamiliar threat, it was that scarlet pall. For a moment I was gripped fast by the surprise, and the chilling, alien fear of it. Then my reason reasserted itself, and I hurried on toward the cottage, trying to convince myself that my dread was unfounded.
I knew, of course, that red light penetrated clouds much better than other colors. I knew that the red light of a neon beacon is visible through miles of mist. I knew that the sun looks red on a murky day, because all but the red rays are absorbed by the atmosphere. I had an idea that a cloud had suddenly come between earth and sun, perhaps a haze of meteoric dust. But I failed to reassure myself.
With a glance at the sun, which was gleaming at the zenith like a great red moon, I stepped upon the veranda, still feeling a slight weakness about the knees. Sam had risen to his feet. He stood gazing silently and blankly out to the eastern horizon, where the flaming intensity of the encrimsoned sky met the glancing brilliant beams from the darkened sea. There was no surprise in his expression, and little of fear—merely pain and despair.
"What is it, Sam?" I asked quickly.
He looked around slowly. "I don't know what it is, Mel, but it means the end of the earth! I've known for years that it was coming, but I hoped it wouldn't be so soon."
"You knew that this was coming! And you didn't tell anybody! Not even me!"
"It would have done no good. What would be the benefit to mankind to know that it was doomed to die like rats in a trap? A few more years, and I might have been ready to save the earth. As it is, there's just a chance—a bare chance!"
"But what does it mean? It's uncanny!"
He sat down again, wearily. There were lines of age and care on his lean face that I had never seen before. But even in the dull red light, there was still energy and determination in it.
"I've never told you, Mel, but ever since the radio brought you your dream of the Green Girl, I have been working—building delicate apparatus and exploring the ether. And I found a strange force at work—a force that is battling to control the ether! For fifteen years I have known that it was workingto freeze the earth!"
"To freeze the earth!"
"It seems so. What it is is a mystery, whose solution has resisted all my efforts. I can hardly conceive a reason for it. But I know that something is at work to cut us off from the sun! You know that light waves of different phases and the same frequency interfere, with mutual extinction—the diffraction grating is based on that fact. And interfering waves have been setting up such a disturbance in the ether about the earth as will ultimately cut off the sun's radiation! The principles of it are a bit abstruse. Even now, of course, the effect is only partially complete. In fact, the red and infra-red rays carry most of the sun's heat."
"Then there's no immediate danger?"
"No man knows at what moment the force may be synchronized. When it is, within a short time the temperature of the earth will fall to absolute zero. And even as it is, life could not go on long under this red pall, for all life depends upon the actinic rays in the ultra-violet spectrum."
"And you have kept a thing like this to yourself for years!"
"It would have done the world no good to know that any day might be its last. I have spared no efforts to find means of averting the catastrophe. And it has been terrible to know. Every day that I have walked among our trees, or listened to the birds, or watched the wonder of the sea, I have known that in a day it might all be frozen death!"
"But you say there is a chance? There's something you can do to save the earth?"
"I've built a machine to broadcast vibrations to interfere with that other force. It will upset it—I hope!—for perhaps a few days. But think, Mel, what it means! Think of the vastness of the power that would be able to cut off the sun! Earth—mankind—would mean nothing to it! It would soon get around my interference! I must save my machine for the last emergency!"
CHAPTER IV
The Amazing Night
The only difference between red and blue light is that the waves of the red are about twice as long as the others. There must have been a sort of screen in the ether that somehow intercepted all but a narrow band of frequencies in the red, the other wave-lengths being either canceled or converted into vibrations too long or too short to be perceptible. If there was such a screen, it was slowly altered, so that the lengths of the penetrating waves became shorter and shorter.
In other words, the color of the sky slowly ran through all the colors of the spectrum toward the blue! The sun changed from a vast round blood-ruby to a blazing yellow diamond, flooding the earth with a sodium light! To an emerald, huge and supernally bright, coloring the sea and the sky with a dim and ghastly green radiance! The green melted into a cold and awful blue! The frozen sapphire slowly turned violet! And the violet sun grew soft and dim—and dim—until it went out utterly!
The heavens were black at midday!
The sky was an empty, illimitable chasm of darkness! The night was almost tangible—it seemed to have an oppressive weight. It was blacker than any photographer's darkroom. Trees, cottage, sounding sea, had vanished! It made no difference to close my eyes, or to put my hand before them. A great dizziness came over me, and I groped blindly for the post of the veranda, and clung to it helplessly when I found it.
The sounds that came to me were oddly reassuring. The rustle of the wind in the palms, and the plaintive chirp of a few birds in the unseen trees, and the dull, ceaseless rumble of the waves. Then I heard a heavy sigh from Sam, and the scraping of his shoe on the floor. Then a match scratched, and a pitiful little yellow flame lit the veranda, showing Sam's lean, earnest face very clearly against the wall of night.
"Thank God we can see it burn!" he muttered. "If they had exhausted the ether here, the jig would have been up with my electrical machinery."
"They! Lord! Do you think somebody—"
He looked toward me, holding up the blazing splinter. "There is the possibility—even a probability—that we have to deal with a force directed by intelligence!"
"Who do you think—"
"I didn't say human intelligence."
"You mean Mars or—"
He grinned in the feeble light. "No. Nothing out of your stories. The human imagination is limited by human experience. And there are plenty of things possible that human beings have never experienced!"
"What do you mean, Sam?" I gasped in utter bewilderment.
"I don't know what it is that is attacking the earth. Possibly it is something so strange, so alien to my purely human experience that it would wreck my mind to know!" Abruptly he turned toward the door. "I must go in and get to work on the machine."
The match had burned out, and the utter blackness had fallen again. I heard the old scientist get briskly to his feet and walk into the house. He reached the light button, and the hall was flooded with cold white radiance. The bright, slender beam thrown out across the veranda comforted me immensely; but I still stood against the post, trying vainly to think out what Sam had said.
The breeze grew cooler. In ten minutes a thin cold wind sprang up from the north. I drew my light garments close about my body and shivered a little. For a while I did not go in. Presently I felt a cold mist on the wind. Suddenly a snowflake splashed chillingly against my face—an omen of the frigid doom that lay before the earth! I got up and stepped inside the door, to escape the icy wind. In a few minutes it began to rain, because, of course, of the chilling of the air and condensation of the moisture.
Suddenly curious about how the world was taking the weird catastrophe, and about what was happening elsewhere, I went to the radiophone in the living room, and switched it on. Not a sound came from it! Not even a hint of static! The ether was utterly dead! That meant that the strange force had already cut our civilization up into a thousand helplessly isolated units!
Then from the rear of the building I heard the peculiar rhythmic throbbing beat of a hydrodyne power generator. Sam was already at work in the little room he had always kept locked, even against me. I walked back to the door and knocked, asking to be allowed to come in.
Sam called out for me to enter, and I stepped inside. I stopped at the door in amazement. The little space was crowded with intricate electrical apparatus of modern design—in fact, much of it was new and unfamiliar to me. There were intra-atomic power generators, huge electron tubes, coils, switches, loop antennæ, and a wealth of other material that was strange to me. I saw at once that the laboratory before me must have represented vast sums of money and years of toil.
Sam, clad in a pair of greasy overalls, with a great smudge of grease already over half his lean face, was working intently over a huge complex device in the center of the room. Evidently it had been recently and hastily assembled from the materials at hand, and was not yet quite finished. In fact, a desk by the wall was still littered with the plans and calculations from which it had been set up.
It was evidently founded on an adaptation of Sam's great invention of forty years before, the hydrodyne sub-atomic engine. The hydrodyne is based in principle on the catacytic disruption, by means of a radioactive salt, of water, the products being hydrogen and oxygen gases, which are burned in the cylinders, the steam formed being condensed and pumped back into the coils. The actual energy comes from the disintegration of hydrogen atoms, and the efficiency of the device is shown by the fact that the great generators on the transoceanic aerial liners require only a half pint of water as fuel per trip.
At one end of Sam's new machine was the hydrodyne unit. From the size of the catalyzer coil, it must have been of vast capacity. The conduits led to the transformer coils, and above the coils were the giant electron tubes, six feet high, of a novel, horseshoe shape. Sam was working with deft fingers at the connections.
"It will be hours, yet," he said absently, without looking up.
For a long time I stood looking at him, as he worked with utter absorption and feverish haste. There was nothing I could do to help him—I could hardly understand what he was about. How strange it was to stand there in a freezing world and watch one lone man struggling to save it!
For a long time I stood looking at him, as he worked with utter absorption and feverish haste.... How strange it was to stand and watch one lone man in a freezing world struggling to save it!
For a long time I stood looking at him, as he worked with utter absorption and feverish haste.... How strange it was to stand and watch one lone man in a freezing world struggling to save it!
For a long time I stood looking at him, as he worked with utter absorption and feverish haste.... How strange it was to stand and watch one lone man in a freezing world struggling to save it!
The cold rain was drumming heavily on the roof, and the roar of the sea had risen. The wind was blowing a gale, but there was no lightning in the storm that night. The out-of-doors was as dark as Erebus. Presently it grew cold in the room. I went out and shut the doors, and turned on the resistance heaters. Then I made a cup of coffee and brought it to Sam. He gulped it down absently, and went on without a word. I went back to my chair by the wall, and I think I must have fallen asleep.
CHAPTER V
The Etheric Storm
The next thing I knew, Sam was shaking my shoulder. I sat up, rubbing my eyes, a bit dazed at first, and uncertain whether I could credit what I remembered to be a vivid nightmare. But when I looked at the utter fatigue and the intense anxiety on the old scientist's face, I knew that it was not a dream.
"I've got it adjusted now," he said. "Suppose you go outside and watch. We need to know exactly what happens. And it may fail."
As I got up awkwardly, stretching my tired limbs, he climbed on his stool before the complex array of instruments on the wall, and began to manipulate the switches and dials.
"I have just to pick up their vibrations and synchronize mine with them," he said in a voice dull with fatigue. "In five minutes we will know. With these instruments I can pick up and analyze any disturbance in the ether, whether it be Hertzian or wireless wave two miles long, or any of the shorter waves that extend down to heat or infra-red, through the visible and ultra-violet spectrums, and even below, to the Cosmic Rays. I can pick up vibrations that other scientists have merely reasoned ought to exist! I will analyze the force that is being used, and then put my vibrations against it. I hope to set up an effective interference, temporarily, at least."
In two minutes I was standing out of doors, with a rug about my shoulders, in a blackness that was almost palpable. The bitter wind still blew a little, but the rain had stopped. The ground was frozen, and a light fall of snow crunched underfoot. Drawing the rug close about me, I groped my shivering way to the front of the yard, thinking of the misery and death that the cold must already have brought to earth, realizing, for the first time, how dependent human welfare is on the whims of nature.
For a few minutes I waited in the frozen darkness, and nothing happened. Then began a fantastic thing, a veritable storm in the ether!
A faint living light of violet—blessed dawn of reborn day!—came in the south; thin misty streamers of violet flame flashed through the unutterable midnight of the heavens! Violet fire flickered and burned in a pale and nebulous aurora that ran with lightning speed to the four corners of the heavens! It danced, it wavered, it marched in gleaming pointed lances of pulsing flame!
And then the violet became a ubiquitous lucent background for a weirdly glorious and terrible play of bright, coruscating tongues of polychromatic fire! Suddenly a great blade of vivid, flaming green cut through the glowing violet, flashed across the sky in amazing splendor, and burst into a hundred blazing globes of brilliant emerald, that rolled down misty tracks of flame to the horizon!
A flickering, many-tongued sheet of amber was born in the east, spread over the violet haze throughout the heavens, and died into a pale saffron sheet that slowly changed and warmed to a rich glow of rosy mist. And from it grew a flickering wall of serpent tongues of orange, and scarlet, and blue, that danced and spread, and wove themselves into a curious crown of throbbing flame at the zenith.
All that wild and astounding storm of flame was as still as the grave. The chill wind had died. The air was keen and quiet. The snow-covered earth lay vast about me, queerly lit by the changing colors in the sky. Even the sea was silent, but living in the wonder of reflected light. All the world was quiet—as if the sun had been utterly gone, and it had been frozen indeed!
Brighter scarlet and green and purple lights burst up about the horizon in great fountains of wonderful fire, and poured through the sky in cyclonic whirls of burning splendor! It was like some vast pyrotechnic display; but the fire filled the heavens, and shone with incredibly splendid, living radiance, of every color in the spectrum—the pure and dripping essence of molten light!
Thin, feathery tongues of soft prismatic colors, great bars of intense and vivid fire, huge and rippling sheets of blinding brilliance, vast globes and vague shapes of bright and mist-edged flame, all interwoven in a Titanic storm of throbbing, flashing, iridescent light—a whirlwind of coruscating flame, splendid as a cascade of rubies and diamonds sweeping down in a sunlit stream of molten gold! A pulsing mist of woven flaming rainbows!
And suddenly there came a spot of pure, supernal blue at the zenith! Wonderful sight! It spread in a growing circle of blessed light! In a moment the last faint tinge of crimson fire was fading on the northern horizon! The skies were blue again!
The sun was far past the meridian! It had been hidden thirty hours! Its clear warm rays poured over the snow-clad landscape, sparkling in white brilliance on the frost and dancing on the silent sea. It was wonderful to see the world again in daylight, to feel the genial warmth of the restored sun!
Sam had won! He had torn down the curtains in the ether, and lit the sun again!
I went back in the house and found him slumped down in a chair fast asleep, with the vestiges of a happy smile left on his face. I had not realized the strain he had been under. He had been driving himself for thirty hours like a high-speed machine. The intensity of the effort had exhausted him utterly. He did not wake up while I was putting him to bed.
In an hour the radio had come to life. The ether was buzzing like an angry beehive with reports of the catastrophe, and with mad speculations as to its cause. The red gloom, followed by the absolute darkness, had fallen simultaneously upon the entire earth. All lines of power and communication had been put out of order, as in a severe magnetic storm, and utter panic had gripped the world. Every man had fancied himself to be among the few survivors of an unthinkable catastrophe.
A blanket of cold had fallen upon all the earth. In many sections there had been torrential rains as the clouds condensed, and there was considerable loss of life due to flood. In certain sections there had been terrible blizzards, and thousands had been frozen to death. Vast damage had been done to young crops, and there was a threat of famine. But, in most places, enough radiation to cause freezing weather had been prevented by the dense clouds.
Varied and fantastic theories were advanced as to the cause of the unique phenomenon. The most popular explanation was that the solar system had passed through a small, dense nebula, the particles and condensing gases of which had intercepted solar radiation.
Sam's brief statement, advanced a few days later, that he had found the disturbance to be due to a strange force acting to erect an etheric screen or shell about the earth, through which vibration could not pass, received scant attention despite his scientific reputation; and his warning that it might return again at any time, and forever, passed unheeded. He made no mention of what he had done to save the earth.
CHAPTER VI
The Omnimobile
I now come to the Omnimobile, the machine that Sam had designed with a view to use in interplanetary navigation. He had worked on it, of course, more to please me than for any other reason; and we both knew that there was little chance of the machine's being able to make a successful voyage through space.
On the day after the sun had been restored, Sam was back in his laboratory, still feeling out the strange forces in the ether, and trying to anticipate the next attack. I was wandering along the beach, rejoicing in the bright warmth of the sun, absorbing the spell of the wood and the sea and the fresh salty air, regretting that all of it might be frozen again. There an idea came abruptly to me.
Why not build the Omnimobile?
Designed to withstand the bitter cold and the absolute vacuum of space, planned to survive the shock of landing on frozen worlds, equipped to traverse the terrible mountains of the moon, to crawl over the burned deserts of Mars, or to explore the vast seas of Venus—even if it would not be able actually to leave the earth, might it not preserve our lives when the frozen night came again?
A bitter existence it might seem, to spend one's years shut up in a metal cylinder, in a dark and frozen world, traveling, perhaps, in absolute night, over still, unseen cities of the dead. But I had my books—and the Green Girl! I could live on with that wonderful princess of my dreams, and forget the doom of my kind! It seemed selfish to think of it—but my love of the Green Girl was so great that I would have given my all for her, even to dream of her!
When I reached the cottage I spoke to Sam of my idea, and he agreed with an alacrity that surprised me. We tested the little model again, and he made revisions and alterations in the design. In a few days we began construction on the beach two hundred yards below the cottage. There was no lack of funds, and we pushed the work with all speed. We had a hundred workmen on the spot, and shops all over the country were busy turning out the parts and instruments which were rushed to us by air. I superintended the work myself, since Sam still spent most of his time in the little laboratory, working with that mysterious force.
The Omnimobile, conceived and designed by Sam, would have been worthy of a Jules Verne's creative mind, and the great adventure into which it led us was far more weirdly amazing than any of those old wonder tales to which I had so passionately devoted myself. Without the hydrodyne, and a dozen other inventions of Sam's, the machine would have been impossible. Certainly it merited the name Omnimobile, for it was hard to imagine a place to which it would not be able to go.
The vessel was of a tapering cylindrical shape, ten feet in central diameter, and forty-five feet long. The construction throughout was of the strongest modern alloys of aluminum and beryllium. The hull was ingeniously braced to enable it to withstand tremendous shocks or immense pressure. The ship carried an equipment of hydrodyne generators totalling more than five hundred thousand horse-power—an absurdly large power plant, it seemed to me.
The machine had caterpillar tread for travel over-land or over the ocean floor, screws for propulsion over the water, vanes and rudders for diving, and another more unusual feature—rocket tubes to drive it through air or through empty space! They were of Sam's invention, and of novel design. They were loaded with water, and contained resistance coils through which a tremendous current could be sent from the generators, heating the special metal tubes to a temperature of some thousands of degrees, and converting the water into super-heated steam at enormous pressure, which, escaping at the nozzles, would propel the ship by reaction.
According to Sam's figures, the machine should be able to hurl itself a hundred miles in ten minutes, but it seemed very unlikely that it would ever be able to develop the speed of seven miles per second required to get clear of the earth's gravitation.
Amidships, above the control cabin, was a low revolving turret, or conning-tower, containing a second instrument board, so that the machine could be driven either from there or from below. It carried not only periscopes and other instruments, but a two-inch automatic cannon, of a recent design, capable of firing gas, shrapnel, or high-explosive shells at the rate of two hundred and twenty per minute. There was a small torpedo tube forward; and, as a further addition to the armament, Sam had installed transformer and projectors for using the half-million horse-power of the generators to produce a vast electric arc.
Arrangements for the life and comfort of the passengers were not lacking. There were oxygen tanks and caustic potash containers to purify the air. The walls were provided with heat insulation, and the temperature was automatically controlled by electricity. The control room below the conning-tower, with the instruments at one end, was fitted up like a luxurious little library. Forward was the tiny galley and dining room, aft, a miniature stateroom. The remarkably compact generators and machinery were in a compartment in the stern. There was a space in the bow for supplies of concentrated food, spare parts for the machinery, arms and ammunitions, and miscellaneous supplies.
So fast did the building proceed that, within three months after the day of darkness, the last plane of the construction fleet was gone. We began to supply the vessel at once. Sam selected the foodstuff, and had enough put on board to last us for many years. We had a supply of ammunition for the machine gun, and an assortment of rifles and pistols. Sam had a little corner fitted up for a laboratory, and stocked with instruments and apparatus of all varieties. In the cabin I put the better part of my collection of the old romances. We were preparing a little world of our own, getting ready to be cut off from civilization, forever!
Last of all, Sam set up on board of our craft the great machine with which he had battled the strange force in the ether to bring back the sun. He had not given up. I knew that, even if he saw no hope, he would not surrender so long as he lived. He would carry on the war to the end.
As it stood on the beach below the cottage, the Omnimobile was a strange-looking machine. Gleaming like silver in the bright sunshine of those last days, it looked like a vast metal monster. It was bulky, almost clumsy looking; but it had somehow the air of an irresistible strength that could force a way through forests and surmount mountain peaks. In its resistless power, it suggested the old saurian lords of the jungle. With its low, thick body, and the massive strength of its construction, there seemed little doubt that it might go almost anywhere it chose, and be able to take care of itself upon arrival.
The last day came. For two weeks we had been ready to move aboard whenever the alien force brought the frozen night again to earth. I had been living in it, while Sam spent most of his time in the laboratory. I whiled the time away by wandering on the beach, bathing in the surf, or dreaming idly. I tried to believe I did not care too much. I tried to think I could go on serenely, the last man alive, forgetting the dead earth—happy in my dreams of the Green Girl!
CHAPTER VII
The Globe of Crimson Doom
For some time I had felt that Sam was afraid of something, of a danger more personal than the freezing of the earth. He had said little about it, but from his hints I gathered that he thought the mysterious force he was struggling against might do something to sweep him and his machine out of the way. He spent hours alone in the little room, with the apparatus that registered new force in the ether, manipulating his switches and dials, with the phones on his ears, and his eyes fixed on the color screen, listening and watching intently—for what?
There was no man on earth with enough knowledge of science to follow him. None could have understood his explanations, even if he had given them. So the world will never know.
It was just after sunset that the amazing thing took place that showed the full power and alertness of the incredible force that menaced the earth. I was sitting in a folding chair on the narrow white metal deck of the machine, leaning back against the squat conning-tower, with the black muzzle of the little gun sticking out over my head. I had a book in my hand, but it was closed, and I was gazing out at the sea.
Sam was still at the house, although it was past our usual supper time. Suddenly my attention was attracted by a faint hail. I glanced toward the cottage and saw him running toward me at a desperate pace, head down and legs working like pistons.
Though I was unable to imagine what the matter might be, I got up, opened the hatch, carried down my chair and started the motors, in case he might want to move the machine. In a moment I heard him scrambling up the ladder at the side, heard his quick footsteps across the deck. He dived into the room, shouting breathlessly, "It's coming! Quick! Start—"
Before I could move, he had brushed me from the instrument board. The heavy throbbing drone of the hydrodyne units rose higher, and in an instant the Omnimobile had lunged forward, with a great rattle and clanking of metal, so suddenly that I fell against the wall.
I was amazed at the speed we developed. Sam was not sparing the machinery. The clanging roar was almost deafening. The whole machine vibrated to the engine beat, and it rolled and tossed so much that I could hardly recover my feet. With face set and expressionless, with blue eyes straight ahead, Sam stood with his hands on the levers.
He went straight up the beach, without regard for trees or fences. Suddenly he swung the wheel about in a wild attempt to avoid a shelving declivity that led down to the water. Our speed was too great. Momentum carried us on. The machine rolled over completely, tossing me about the padded conning-tower like a doll. When I got up again the invincible machine was still forging on, with Sam undisturbed at the controls.
We were two miles from the cottage when he brought the Omnimobile to a standstill on the hard white sand a hundred yards above the water, and turned off the engines. With a sigh of relief he turned to face me, pulling out a red bandanna to wipe the beads of sweat from his brow. He grinned faintly.
"Rather a narrow squeak, that! I was not looking for it—so soon. We were just in time; I thought they had us!"
"But what—what is it?" I stammered, still seeing no cause for our mad flight, though I had no doubt there had been cause enough. "Who—"
"Wait and see," Sam suggested grimly. "I hadn't imagined they could do such a thing! I just happened to pick up the warning in time. Mel, the thing we're fighting must be a million years ahead of us! I never dreamed of such a thing!"
I looked out through the thick lenticular windows of the conning-tower, but failed to see anything unusual.
"Get your binoculars and we'll go on deck," Sam said. "I'm sure we're out of danger here."
I was not so sure about that, but I got the heavy glasses, and we stepped out on the metal deck. I looked back in the direction of the place whence we had come. The world was very still. Even the sea was almost silent. The old cottage on the hill behind us seemed suddenly very desolate and lonely, standing out, a solitary dark point, against the dying glow of the westward sky. It seemed very bleak and ancient.
And then I saw a curious thing—an astonishing thing. There was somethingbrighthanging in the air a hundred yards above the building—something that shone with a silvery gleam! Steadily it grew brighter against the dull, somber curtain of the darkling western sky. Then I saw that it was a huge globe of white, metallic light. It was a great gleaming silver ball, evidently many feet in diameter! It glowed with a queer, unnatural effulgence! It was like a little floating moon!
In a moment I saw that a faint greenish haze was gathering about it. With astonishing swiftness a veil of glowing green mist was drawn about the sphere of shining white. It became a vast luminous green cloud that swirled and shifted in thin feathery streamers, drawn around the shining central globe. It swam, and swirled, and grew! It wheeled madly, dizzily, ever reaching out. It was a mist of flame like the photosphere about the sun. A strange, weird light shone from it, lighting the sea and the beach and the woodland about the doomed building with an uncanny radiance!
Quite abruptly two narrow beams of a thick, misty purple fire darted out of the silver core of the amazing thing, and, flashing over the ground, fixed themselves upon the cottage! They were like thin, unpleasant fingers of purple fog! There was something terrible in the swift sureness of their motions! They moved as if they were seeing eyes, or tentacles—feeling, searching!
Suddenly they were gone. In a moment I noted a change. The seething clouds of green were sucked down. They drew into a dense cyclonic vortex of flame about the old house, like a falling torrent of molten emerald. The building was half hidden in the thick, racing fog. I strained my ears, but not a sound did I hear, save the soft whisper of the sea. The cloak of green mist swirled about its core with a silence that was complete—and terrible!