Carl Jacobi

“ Mr. Chambers pushed open the door of his house. But he did not lock it. There was no need of locks ... not any more.
A few coals of fire still smouldered in the grate and going there, he stirred them up, raked away the ash, piled on more wood. The flames leaped merrily, dancing in the chimney's throat.
Without removing his hat and coat, he sank exhausted in his favorite chair, closed his eyes then opened them again.
He sighed with relief as he saw the room was unchanged. Everything in its accustomed place: the clock, the lamp, the elephant ash tray, the marine print on the wall. ”

“ For three nights the skies over the Tapping farm were black, and a cold wind huffing down from the north kept the children indoors where they played endless games of parchesi. On the fourth night the moon broke through the clouds.
Jimmy, squatting by the window, the spyglass to his eye, stared out at the two scarecrows. At intervals he thought he saw Mr. Trask descend from the mounting pole, leap up over the shocks and begin his strange dance. ”

“ Norris smiled grimly. "All words created out of my imagination. Like the rest of you, I knew nothing of the true action of the booster. It was only gradually that truth dawned on me. But by the time we had made our first 'landing' I had guessed. That was why I demanded we always take organic surveyor readings. I knew we had traveled far into future time, far beyond the life period of man on Earth. But I wasn't sure how far we had gone, and I lived with the hope that Klae's booster might reverse itself and start carrying us backwards down the centuries." ”

“ The hills fielded the explosion, flung it back, and the thunder went grumbling over the countryside.
In the empty silence that followed, Cap's wrist watch ticked off the passing minutes. The moonlight returned from behind a passing cloud, to reveal Raine by the Dofield defender, binoculars to his eyes. Time snailed by. The night was passing.
And then the roar came again, this time from above. Cap saw a great cylindrical shadow slanting down from the sky. The Andromeda struck far out on the flat beyond the house. It struck with a crash of grinding metal and crumbling girders. ”

“ For the matter of which the street and everything upon it had been formed would now be cast in a different mold, stolen by different minds in a different dimension.
Perhaps we shall come upon a day, far distant, when our plane, our world will dissolve beneath our feet and before our eyes as some stronger intelligence reaches out from the dimensional shadows of the very space we live in and wrests from us the matter which we know to be our own. ”

“ He uttered a cry, leaped from the mount of the Dofield and began to run wildly across the flat. For an instant Cap thought he was going to reach the first low hillock that led to higher ground and safety. But Cap had reckoned without the terrific drive of that vessel.
Was it the Absorber—that strange creature of outer space—which had transposed its own inexplicable life into the shell of the dismantled Perseus and now was that ship alive with all the ship's hates, joys and sorrows? Organic into inorganic—a transmutation of a supernormal life into a materialistic structure of metal ... ”

“ Chambers moved back to his chair in the corner.
"So here I am," he said, half aloud.
So there he was. Embattled in the last corner of the world that was left to him.
Perhaps there were other men like him, he thought. Men who stood at bay against the emptiness that marked the transition from one dimension to another. Men who had lived close to the things they loved, who had endowed those things with such substantial form by power of mind alone that they now stood out alone against the power of some greater mind.
The street was gone. The rest of his house was gone. ”

“ The forward-impact delivered by the Ganeth-Klae booster was terrific, and nausea and vertigo struck us all simultaneously. But again, with all ports and observation shields sealed shut, Norris held the secret of our destination.
On July twenty-second, the ship gave that sickening lurch and came once again to a standstill.
"Same procedure as before," Norris said, stepping out of the airlock. "Those of you who desire to have their wives accompany you may do so. Mason, you'll make a final correlation on the organic surveyors. If there is no trace of animal life return here before dark." ”

“ And simultaneously Ezra Karn uttered a howl of pain. An instant later the old prospector was rolling over and over, threshing his arms wildly.
An invisible sledge hammer descended on my shoulder. The blow was followed by another and another. Heavy unseen hands held me down. Opposite me Grannie Annie and the Venusians were suffering similar punishment, the latter screaming in pain and bewilderment.
"It's the Varsoom!" Ezra Karn yelled. "We've got to make 'em laugh. Our only escape is to make 'em laugh!" ”

“ Raine looked at the old man for a long moment. "You probably don't believe in coincidences," he said. "But come upstairs. I want to show you something."
Cap followed him up to the observatory and looked through the scope. At first he couldn't believe his eyes. If he had been alone he would have said he was dreaming.
But there it was, a miniature satellite caught helplessly in the planet's polar attraction, midway between Straba's twin moons. He was looking at another antiquated space vessel; a ship that almost detail for detail was a replica of the Perseus. The truth dawned on him gradually. ”

“ Mr. Chambers shivered, reached to turn up the collar of his coat, then stopped as he realized the room must be warm. A fire blazed merrily in the grate. The cold he felt came from something ... somewhere else. The cold of fear and horror, the chill of a half whispered thought.
A deathly silence had fallen, a silence still measured by the pendulum clock. And yet a silence that held a different tenor than he had ever sensed before. Not a homey, comfortable silence ... but a silence that hinted at emptiness and nothingness. ”

“ He took a sheet of paper from the drawer, began reading it. With a start Sutter recognized his letter from the Federal Arts Museum.
And as a wave of wrath swept over him, Sutter saw that the beach scene on the television set was slowly fading away. Fear and a realization of his strange position struck him. He turned and ran madly back across the amphitheater, down the ramp and along the long hallway to the point where he had entered the shell. Even as he approached it the cone of blue light dimmed, wavered and was replaced by a wall of partial blackness. ”

“ There have been riots on Earth and Mars, police officials murdered on Pluto and a demand that government by representation be abolished on Jupiter. The time is ripe for a military dictator to step in.
"And you can lay it all to the Green Flames. It seems incredible that a single shipload of the ore could effect such a wide ranged area, but in my opinion someone has found a means of making that quantity a thousand times more potent and is transmiting it en masse."
If it had been anyone but Grannie Annie there before me, I would have called her a fool. ”

“ Mason threw back his head and burst into an hysterical peal of laughter. "Important!" he cried. "Tell him how important it is, Norris. Tell him."
Quietly the Navigator filled and lighted his pipe. "I'm afraid Mason is right," he said. "I did trick you. Not purposely, however. And in the beginning I had no intention of telling anything but the truth. Actually we're here because of a dead man's vengeance."
Norris took his pipe from his lips and stared at it absently.
"You'll remember that Ganeth-Klae, the Martian, and I worked together to invent Indurate. ”

“ One man, alone, could not stand off the irresistible march of nothingness. One man, all alone, simply couldn't do it.
He wondered what the elephant ash tray looked like in that other dimension. It certainly wouldn't be an elephant ash tray nor would the radio be a radio, for perhaps they didn't have ash trays or radios or elephants in the invading dimension. ”

“ Grannie Annie hailed a hydrocar. Five minutes later we drew up before the big doors of the Satellite.
They don't go in for style in Swamp City. A theater to the grizzled colonials on this side of the planet meant a shack on stilts over the muck, zilcon wood seats and dingy atobide lamps. But the place was packed with miners, freight-crew-men—all the tide and wash of humanity that made Swamp City the frontier post it is. ”

“ Jimmy was silent a moment as he gave this thought. Then he leaned forward and whispered,
"Mr. Trask moved last night."
"He always moves," replied Stella, unimpressed.
"I mean really moved. Toward Mr. Maudsley."
Stella choked on her porridge and the spoon all but slipped from her hand. She stared with wide open eyes. "He didn't."
Their whispers broke off as Mr. Tapping strode across the kitchen and took his place at the head of the table. A heavy-set unimaginative man who seldom entered into conversation with the children, he eyed them speculatively. ”

“ Alien and soft-hued and lovely shells that caused his collector's heart to jump wildly. He saw a delicate star-shaped thing that might have been fashioned of porcelain and enameled with the brush of the Mings. ”

“ Some other power from another dimension was fighting to supersede man's control and take his universe into its own plane!
Abruptly Mr. Chambers closed the book, shoved it back in the case and picked up his hat and coat.
He had to know more. He had to find someone who could tell him.
He moved through the hall to the door, emerged into the street. On the walk he looked skyward, trying to make out the sun. But there wasn't any sun ... only an all pervading grayness that shrouded everything ... not a gray fog, but a gray emptiness that seemed devoid of life, of any movement. ”

“ But Norris wasn't interested in that kind of run. He had knocked out bulkheads, reconverted music room and ballroom into living quarters. He had closed and sealed all observation ports, so that only in the bridge cuddy could one see into space.
"We shall travel beyond the orbit of the sun," he said. "There will be no turning back; for the search for a new world, a new life, is not a task for cowards."
Aside to me, he said: "You're to be the physician of this party, Bagley. So I'm going to tell you what to expect when we take off. We're going to have some mighty sick passengers aboard then." ”

“ I grinned. "All complete, I'll bet, with threats against the universe and beautiful Earth heroines dragged in by the hair."
"What else is there in science fiction?" she demanded. "You can't have your hero fall in love with a bug-eyed monster." ”

“ They are what their name implies: devourers of life, with the peculiar, apparently meaningless power of transforming themselves into a physical facsimile of their victims.
One of them is out there now, swirling lazily like a miasmic cloud of saffron dust....
Cap handed the book to Raine who read it and handed it back without comment. And at that moment Cap saw the kid in his true light: a cold-blooded extrovert who was interested in the ship only for what he could get out of her.
Next day, without asking permission, Raine began the task of dismantling the Perseus. ”

“ Mason said. "Enough to last two generations. We have brains and intelligence, and we certainly should be able to establish ourselves without the aid of other vertebrate forms of life.
"Coulora, Jama, Tenethon, Mokrell, R-9, and Stragella. We could have settled on any one of those planets, and apparently we should have, for conditions have grown steadily worse at each landing. But always the answer is no. Why? Because Norris says we must go on until we find animal life." ”

“ It was a simple book, really, dismissed by most authorities as merely the vagaries of an over-zealous mind.
Mr. Chambers took it down now, opened its cover and began thumbing slowly through the pages. For a moment the memory of happier days swept over him.
Then his eyes focused on the paragraph, a paragraph written so long ago the very words seemed strange and unreal:
Man himself, by the power of mass suggestion, holds the physical fate of this earth ... yes, even the universe. Billions of minds seeing trees as trees, houses as houses, streets as streets ... ”

“ If Tri-Planet wanted to train its green personnel by sending them on a wild goose chase, that was all right with Cap.
But the old man had one thing that interested young Raine: his telescope mounted in a domed observatory on the top floor. Every night, Raine spent hours staring through that scope, sighting stars, marking them on the charts. Cap tried to tell him that those charts were as perfect as human intellect could make them. Raine had an answer for that too.
"Those charts are three years old," he said. "In three years a whole universe could be created or destroyed. ”

“ The bisected shell appeared to be a spinal univalve, resembling the familiar cephalopoda, nautilus, with thin septa dividing the many chambers.
Behind him the Tanganyika TV swelled on, the screen presenting that same scene of the beach of shells. As it did so Sutter uttered a startled exclamation.
Under the magnifying glass the chambers in the bisected shell suddenly became more than outgrowths of marine organism. They were rooms! Tessellated ceilings, microscopically mosaic inlaid floors, long sweeping staircases with graceful slender balustrades and tall almost Ionic columns.... ”

“ The mold balls coming into contact with the evonium water of the swamp had undergone a chemical change and evolved into a cohesive multi-celled marine life that lived and died within a space of hours. The Venusians paddled with extreme care. Had one of them dipped his hand into one of those yellow streaks, he would have been devoured in a matter of seconds.
At high noon by my Earth watch I sighted a low white structure on one of the distant islands. Moments later we made a landing at a rude jetty, and Grannie Annie was introducing me to Ezra Karn. ”

“ Mason said. "Why else should he be so concerned with finding animal life?"
"You know the answer to that," I said. "We're here to colonize, to start a new life. We can't very well do that on a desert."
"That's poppycock," Mason replied, flinging away his cigarette. "When the Albertson expedition first landed on Mars, there was no animal life on the red planet. Now look at it. Same thing was true when Breslauer first settled Pluto. The colonies there got along. I tell you Norris has got something up his sleeve, and I don't like it." ”

“ For while the mind of man through long ages may have moulded an imagery of that space in which he lives, mind would have little conceivable influence upon the existence of that matter. What exists in our known universe shall exist always and can never be destroyed, only altered or transformed. ”

“ There's no Empire of Tanganyika."
Next morning after breakfast Sutter announced that he was driving into the country to visit a friend. There was no reason why he should not have told his roommate the truth—that he was going to look up the man who had sold him the TV set. No reason except for the odd fact that Travail had made no mention of the alien shells, and Sutter kept thinking that a shell collector would have been immediately aware of the rareness of them.
Once again Sutter drove out across state and down the highway where he had seen the roadside stand. ”

“ Don't you know women aren't allowed in the Spacemen's? What happened to the book you were writing?"
"Hold it, Billy-boy." Laughingly she threw up both hands. "Sure, I knew this place had some antiquated laws. Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what they are. Anyway, I've been thrown out of better places."
She hadn't changed. To her publishers and her readers she might be Annabella C. Flowers, author of a long list of science fiction novels. But to me she was still Grannie Annie, as old-fashioned as last year's hat, as modern as an atomic motor. ”

“ All of which mildly amused Cap Barlow.
The kid was amused too. From the Pilot Book he had learned that Cap was the sole inhabitant of Straba, and he regarded him—and rightly so—as just another hermit nut who preferred the spacial frontiers to the regular walks of civilization.
The old man packed and lit a meerschaum pipe.
"Yes sir," he said, "efficiency ... regulation ... order ... that's what's spoiling all life these days. Those addle-headed scientists aren't satisfied unless they can dovetail everything."
Raine smiled and in the pause that followed cast his eyes about the room. ”

“ By the last of September we had landed on two more planets, to which Norris gave the simple names of R-12 and R-14. Each had crude forms of vegetable life, represented principally by the blue hensorr trees, but in neither case did the organic surveyor reveal the slightest traces of animal life.
There was, however, a considerable difference in physical appearance between R-12 and R-14, and for a time that fact excited Norris tremendously. Up to then, each successive planet, although similar in size, had exhibited signs of greater age than its predecessor. ”

“ Travel was light, away from the elevated lanes and he enjoyed himself.
At four o'clock he began to look for a convenient place to turn around. It was then that he sighted the roadside stand ahead. Above it a freshly painted sign read: TV SETS. LATEST MODELS. SPECIAL WHOLESALE PRICES!
Sutter smiled. Whoever heard of selling television sets on a country highway? It was like—why, it was like selling eggs in the lobby of the Hotel International! Then it occurred to him that his own TV set had not been in good working order for more than a year. ”

“ When Doctor Universe broadcasts tomorrow night, he's going to announce that he has set himself up as supreme dictator. He'll have the Green Flame radiations coming from this ship under full power. I'm going to insert into his broadcast—the laughing of the Varsoom!"
"You're going to what?"
"Broadcast the mass laughter from those invisible creatures out there. Visualize it, Billy-boy! At the dramatic moment when Doctor Universe makes his plea for System-wide power, he will be accompanied by wild peals of laughter. The whole broadcast will be turned into a burlesque." ”

“ Clearly audible now was that distant thud ... thud ... thud ... like the beating of a great heart.
Saturday Raine announced he was ready to "shoot down" the Andromeda. Unfortunately Cap figured he wouldn't be there to see the show. He had had a signal from one of his weather-robots on the dark side of the planet that morning, reporting that a cold front was moving down and the migration of the Artoks was about to begin. The Artoks could be mighty troublesome when they came en masse. If Cap didn't want his golf course eaten to the roots he'd have to stop them before they started. ”

“ Granting then that the power of men's minds alone holds this universe, or at least this world in its present form, may we not go farther and envision other minds in some other plane watching us, waiting, waiting craftily for the time they can take over the domination of matter? Such a concept is not impossible. It is a natural conclusion if we accept the double hypothesis: that mind does control the formation of all matter ”

“ Norris stepped out of the air lock into the cold thin air, glanced briefly about him and faced the eighteen men assembled.
"We'll divide into three groups," he said. "Each group to carry an organic surveyor and take a different direction. Each group will so regulate its marching as to be back here without fail an hour before darkness sets in. If you find no sign of animal life, then we will take off again immediately on your return."
Mason paused halfway in the act of strapping on his packsack. ”

“ He unslung the packsack from his shoulders, removed its protective outer shield and began to assemble the organic surveyor, an egg-shaped ball of white carponium secured to a segmented forty-foot rod. While Brandt and I raised the rod with the aid of an electric fulcrum, Mason carefully placed his control cabinet on a piece of outcropping rock and made a last adjustment.
The moment had come. Even above the sound of the sea, you could hear the strained breathing of the men. Only Navigator Norris appeared unconcerned. ”

“ For this was the spot where he had lived for twenty years. The bedroom was for sleeping, the kitchen for eating. This room was for living. This was his last stand.
These were the walls and floors and prints and lamps that had soaked up his will to make them walls and prints and lamps.
He looked out the window into a blank world. His neighbors' houses already were gone. They had not lived with them as he had lived with this room. Their interests had been divided, thinly spread; their thoughts had not been concentrated as his upon an area four blocks by three, or a room fourteen by twelve. ”

“ The old thirst for dictatorial control of the masses. By presenting himself as an intellectual genius, Doctor Universe utilized a bizarre method to intrench himself in the minds of the people. Oh, don't you see, Billy-boy? The Green Flames' radiations spell doom to freedom, individual liberty. ”

“ Man had played unwittingly into the hands of those other minds in the other dimension. Man had waged a war and war had bred a pestilence. And the whole vast cycle of events was but a detail of a cyclopean plan. ”

“ I wrote it into a novel, and a week after it was completed, the manuscript was stolen from my study back on Earth."
"I see," I said as she lapsed into silence. "And now you've come to the conclusion that the details of your story were true and that someone is attempting to put your plot into action."
Grannie nodded. "Yes," she said. "That's exactly what I think."
I got my pipe out of my pocket, tamped Martian tobacco into the bowl and laughed heartily. "The same old Flowers," I said. "Tell me, who's your thief ... Doctor Universe?" ”

“ Minds that see things as they are and have kept things as they were.... Destroy those minds and the entire foundation of matter, robbed of its regenerative power, will crumple and slip away like a column of sand.... ”