Ray Cummings

“ It whistled over Sanjan's head, thudded into the ceiling above him. It startled him. Never must he forget that he was human!
Then the workmen in the laboratory were gasping, numbed, suddenly mute with incredulous astonishment. The figure of the young man intruder clad in heavy high boots, broad leather belt and heavy dark shirt, had suddenly vanished from the doorway! Only the glow of him was there. But almost instantly they saw him again at the other side of the room.
"Run!" Sanjan shouted. "Get out of here! You'll be killed, I tell you!" ”

“ To leave the task uncompleted, that would be failure. So quickly the dread name of Sanjan would just be a memory and the world could resume its normal activities. It would go on, of course, just as it had before. That universal cry, "We need defense!" would sound again. And Sanjan knew there was truth in that, of course. Everyone, weak or strong, must have the means of war—or they all must have none.
"But if I should fail, Vana?"
"You will not. You cannot. It's too important, Sanjan." ”

“ Definite ultimatums had been sent. A dozen nations were mobilizing because it was obvious that the ultimatums would be rejected. Someone would strike, with atomic bombs.
There was a mirror on the wall of Sanjan's bedroom. The glow of the faint streaming opalescence from his pajamaed body showed him his reflection—his tall, slim, muscular figure, with his strange high-cheek-boned face shaded by his crisp, unruly blond hair. ”

“ Both of them were scientists. Mary Thome knew, of course, that there were things very strange about this little son, but she was a mother as well as a scientist, and she had tried to ignore it, even while it terrorized her. Thome felt that the time had come now when they couldn't ignore it any longer.
"But Robert, that radiance—the way his little body glows in the dark—is like radioactivity."
"It isn't that," Thome said.
A queer opalescent glow kept streaming from the baby's body. When Sanjan was asleep, it could hardly be seen, even in darkness. The glow grew stronger when he was awake. ”

“ Across the cave he saw the blob of a dark crouching figure with a revolver leveled at him!
In that flash, when he became aware that he was being attacked, Sanjan could have escaped. Thought of that munitions plant in the Ural Mountains again came to him, but he thrust it away. He must not always vanish when attacked, like a craven coward. To the world then he would be just a fugitive, to be hunted and assailed with impunity. This was his chance to show his prowess.
Officer McGuffy's revolver spat yellow-red flame. The bullet sang through the radiant space where Sanjan had been. ”

“ The leaders of the world feared to let him live.
He must be destroyed.
And here in Smee's Cave, he clung in the darkness to Vana, in the warmth of her arms. They both heard the babble around them, but they hardly heeded it.
A little wooden runway had been erected, from the cave down to where a huge electronic furnace now yawned with its open pit of monstrous heat. And on the ragged, stony hillside here at dawn, a crowd of people now had gathered to witness the execution. Sanjan, the fiend, was going to his death.... ”

“ Nor did it occur to him that, so far, Sanjan, the superhuman fiend, actually had done nothing for which he deserved death. McGuffy was only thinking how wonderful it would be if Jonathan McGuffy could spring into world fame, right now, by killing the monster.
He steadied himself, bracing his arm against the tree. He took careful aim. He was a crack shot. Though Sanjan did not know it, that was his first moment of supreme peril. His body was only human. A bullet would kill him. He was thinking of the interior of the big laboratory down in the valley. ”

“ But with the acid eating into his eyes, there was only the darkness of Sanjan's futile thoughts. There would be nothing but this eternal darkness for him now, in Labrador, or anywhere else. Alone there, he would be helpless.
"We've got him."
"He doesn't go! See, he stays here."
"We did it! Maybe a bullet wouldn't have killed him, but this did the business. He's helpless and he knows it!"
"What can a blind man do?"
Sanjan was murmuring, "Vana! Vana, dear." ”

“ Then in the darkness he could feel Vana and his father being taken away from him....
The blood-colored sun of the new day was peering over the eastern horizon when Sanjan stood up and was guided to the runway. In the flush of pink dawn-light, the watching people on the hillside were suddenly hushed with awe as they stared at the lone figure. But some of them were murmuring to each other:
"Will the war come now?"
"If only he could have succeeded!"
"Impossible!"
"He has to die. He's a man ahead of his time!" ”

“ With a blow of cat-like swiftness Sanjan knocked the weapon from his hand.
"You're not quick enough," Sanjan said. "Come on! Can't you fight?"
McGuffy did. Or at least, in his desperate terror he tried to strike back at this weird, glowing adversary. He straightened, staggered, and then Sanjan was cuffing him, nimbly avoiding the bigger man's bull-like rushes. With doubled fist he struck McGuffy in the face, parried what to Sanjan was a slow, clumsy swing, and hit his assailant again. McGuffy went down. Sanjan bent over him. ”

“ That's human nature, isn't it? Being greedy. Taking what you can get, because you're stronger?"
"Yes," Thome said gravely. "Yes, it is."
"And if people are that way, of course, nations are that way too," Sanjan said. "They do what I did to Vana. Only when it's nations, it's called war."
Then out of another silence, Sanjan said, "And the atomic bomb makes a nation pretty strong. I can see why every nation wants it."
The atomic bomb—Sanjan, of course, had heard of it all his life. ”

“ Sanjan put his thoughts on the Great Smoky Mountains and that war plant there in Tennessee. Sanjan knew that there was a huge laboratory there. The finished atomic bombs were not assembled in the war plant; merely the basic materials, and the intricate parts of the firing mechanisms. There would be no atomic bomb explosion. He did not want that, here in America.
But it would be a good place to start. When suddenly the Great Smoky Mountain plant, so famous, was wrecked, it would shock all the world.
Thoughts are instant things. ”

“ But the inflammatory ultimatums had been withdrawn and in mid-Europe, the massed armies did not move. A week passed. Then another. The world had been upon the brink of war, but there had been a change, a halting change, perhaps merely temporary. Every leader, as he went to bed, could not help thinking:
"Will the supernatural monster come here and try to kill me? Our war plants are being destroyed. Without our weapons of war, we will be defenceless against the enemy. Sanjan must be trapped!" ”

“ Though Sanjan, of course, could not know it, the blob was Officer Jonathan McGuffy, of the local police. McGuffy had finished his long day's work and was on his way home. Down in the nearby village he had heard the startling news with which the world was ringing.
Then, quite suddenly, he saw a figure on the other path above him, plain in the moonlight. It was Sanjan, the supernatural fiend! McGuffy had heard the radio descriptions of how Sanjan looked, how he was dressed. He was sure the figure above him was the mutant human who had tonight startled the world. ”

“ The leader, a police inspector, turned to Robert Thome.
"Tell him not to make any trouble, Mr. Thome."
"They won't hurt you," Sanjan's father said.
"No," Sanjan said. "I know that, Dad." There was an ironic smile on his lips, but no one noticed it.
"You're not being arrested," his father said. "They just want you to go with them to a comfortable place that's better than this. I'll come there in the morning, Sanjan."
"I understand, Dad, of course."
"Go quietly with them," Peter Grant said, "We don't mean it as any indignity, Sanjan." ”

“ The world soon forgets. Science called Sanjan Thome a biological abnormality. To science he symbolized a new eugenics, a product of the New Era of Atomic fission, a mutation. Mary Thome, as a war prisoner in Japan, had been in the outskirts of Hiroshima when the first atomic bomb was dropped. ”

“ Sanjan saw now that he must bring other factors than mere sabotage to aid him in stopping this war. There must be intimidation of the world's leaders. The Ural Mountain plant still was unharmed. The Tennessee plant was destroyed. From what the world knew, so far, this monster Sanjan was only attacking America. Sanjan realized that this was the strategic moment for him to appear in Washington. ”

“ The Smolensk atomic bomb plant has been wrecked.... The Alaskan airbase has been attacked by the monster!... Great atomic bomb plant explodes in Chile, and the area of dangerous radioactivity spreads. Santiago has been evacuated! South America, last night, received its first visitation by the supernatural monster. Panic is spreading in the capitals of the southern Republics. Conference in Buenos Aires forms new plans for hunting down this menace to the world."
How could there be time for nations to be making war on each other? There was only the cry:
"Sanjan must be destroyed!" ”

“ Supernatural! Even the word itself inspires a thrill of instinctive fear. The Unknown! No one can face it without a surge of emotion. Even now, just at the beginning of Sanjan's activities, the very thought of him was inspiring terror—a terror which was to prove his greatest asset.
The Unknown. Already Science was explaining it.
"Sanjan's power, miraculous as it seems, of course can be explained scientifically." That was the verdict of a learned scientist, who for a big fee had been summoned to a broadcasting studio in such a rush that he had to plan his talk enroute. ”

“ And so many others have spoken and written of a latent power—something which might be within one's self—a power with a vibration so infinitely rapid, so infinitely tiny, that it could be compared only to the vibrations of thought. ”

“ And matter has only a seeming solidity, like the whirling of propellor blades. When in motion, the blades seem like a solid disc. They feel like it, if you put a hand against them. And motion Itself, which creates matter, is the motion of what? Eddington had the answer to that! It is motion which is just a maelstrom of nothingness! ”

“ Radiance quivered where he had been, and then he was gone....
With the quickness of thought, Sanjan returned to the Ural Mountains to carry out his plans there. Within twenty minutes a powerful radio was announcing to the startled world:
"The great Ural Mountains plant has just been destroyed by an explosion. Sanjan, the monster, has made his appearance in Europe."
In England and America great multiple presses started to roll, rushing out special editions of newspapers. Excitement mounted throughout the world. ”

“ There is no continuity of existence of anything material. For an infinitesimal instant it exists, instantly is blotted out, re-existing again an infinitesimal instant later. And each time it is not what it was before. ”

“ Quickly he was gone, with only his radiance lingering after him....
A few days later, the Head of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, in Washington, was conferring with the President, the cabinet members, congressional leaders and police commissioners from the leading cities of the nation.
"Every effort must be made," the President was saying. "We must try and persuade him to turn his activities only against our enemies."
They discussed it.
"But he couldn't be trusted," the F.B.I. head said. "That's obvious. He is deranged mentally." Sanjan departed. ”

“ I'm a man. I'm ten."
Vana Grant was the little girl next door. She was his only playmate. Her father was the mayor of the town. The Grant garden adjoined that of the Thomes, with only a small hedge between. Long ago, now, Robert Thome had withdrawn his strange child from the world. School was impractical. Sanjan had his own tutors. Peter Grant, Vana's father, was a close friend of the Thomes. ”