The trouble with inventing imaginary countries is that eventually someone will insist on believing they're real. For instance, after Sir Thomas More published his utopian tract Utopia in 1516, Guillaume Budé wrote to him to urge that missionaries be sent there to convert the natives to Christianity. The all-time record in this respect is held by Plato's lost continent of Atlantis, which has been believed in more firmly by more people than any other imaginary country in history.
Around 360 BC, the philosopher Plato decided to follow up his hit Socratic dialogue The Republic with a trilogy of philosophical blockbusters: Timaeus, Critias, and Hermocrates. In order to demonstrate how the ideal state described in The Republic would work in real life, Plato had the character Critias mention an Egyptian legend about a continent beyond the Strait of Gibraltar called Atlantis that had once had an ideal society just like the one described in The Republic. Sadly, Atlantis got into a war with another ideal society located in Athens, and the war ended when Atlantis sank into the sea. That was the outline Critias gave in Timaeus, and Plato intended to have him go into greater detail in his own dialogue. As it happened, though, Plato gave up on his projected trilogy halfway through Critias, and the full story of Atlantis was never told.
Plato, needless to say, didn't expect anyone to actually believe that Atlantis had really existed, and for several centuries after Timaeus came out, no one did. After the rise of Christianity, however, gullibility became fashionable, and people started to believe that Atlantis was real, and they've never stopped. Since then, Atlantis has been joined by a couple of other imaginary-lost-continents-that-people-think-were-real called Mu and Lemuria, but Atlantis still has place of pride (you won't, for instance, hear of any space shuttles being named Mu).
Countless writers, visionaries, and cranks have maintained Plato's tradition by peopling their versions of Atlantis with their own ideal societies. In his 1954 book Lost Continents, L. Sprague de Camp stated that nearly two thousand books and articles had been written about Atlantis and other lost continents, and the pace has not slackened since then. Atlantis has appeared in the 1975 Illuminatus Trilogy, at least three episodes of Doctor Who, and (of course) the Stargate sequel series Stargate: Atlantis.
Up until the late 19th century, though, arguing that Plato's Atlantis was a real place was an intellectual exercise indulged in by the occasional pedant. What made Atlantism a popular craze was the publication of Atlantis: The Antediluvian World by Ignatius Donnelly in 1882. Donnelly popularized the idea that Atlantis was the original source of human civilization, and that later civilizations that appeared in Central America and Egypt were established by Atlantian colonists before their own land drowned.
The Atlantis craze was also helped along by a proposed solution to a scientific puzzle. Back in the 19th century, paleontologists noticed a curious thing about the fossil records of Europe and North America: up until the end of the Triassic period, the same species evolved at the same time on both continents, but during the Jurassic period different species evolved on each continent. Geologists assumed that this meant that a land bridge connected the two continents up until the Triassic period, and then sank during the Jurassic period.
Atlantists seized on this idea as proof that huge land masses could indeed sink into the sea, and this gave a boost to Donnelly's Atlantis-as-the-source-of-all-civilization idea, a boost that was still going on in the 1930s when Amelia Reynolds Long decided to use it for her story "Reverse Philogeny". Using the idea of a "race memory" (another popular bit of pseudoscience at the time), she wrote her second Professor O'Flannigan story, telling how O'Flannigan used hypnosis to recover race memories of the fall of Atlantis. As many Atlantists did, Long improved on Plato's story by having the Atlanteans possess 20th century technology -- in this case, automobiles. Long also echoed contemporary Atlantists (who echoed Donnelly) by having Europe be an Atlantean colony, so that Europeans (and their American cousins) could claim to be heirs to the world's oldest civilization -- so take that, you snotty Asians, with your Mesopotamia!
(Incidentally, another manifestation of Atlantism in the 1930s occurred in Oxford, when the philologist J. R. R. Tolkien added a drowned continent motif to his Silmarillion story cycle. The literal rise and fall of the island continent of Numenor eventually became the Second Age of Middle-earth in the back-story to The Lord of the Rings.)
When the theory of plate tectonics was established in the 1960s, and geologists recognized that continental drift had actually happened, the land bridge theory went out the window, and with it the Atlantists' chief claim to scientific confirmation of their beliefs. Continents do not rise and fall thousands of feet, and Plato did, in fact, create Atlantis out of whole cloth -- as his student Aristotle put it, "he who invented it also destroyed it". Since then, no serious person has suggested that Atlantis ever existed (though countless unserious people continue to do so).
Showing posts with label Amelia Reynolds Long. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amelia Reynolds Long. Show all posts
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
"Reverse Phylogeny" by Amelia Reynolds Long, part 2
This is the second and final installment (the first installment is here) of "Reverse Phylogeny", a Gernsback Era science fiction story by Amelia Reynolds Long, and a sequel to her story "A Leak in the Fountain of Youth". "Reverse Phylogeny" was first published in the June 1937 issue of Astounding Stories, and reprinted in the 1953 anthology Science Fiction Adventures in Dimension.
The story so far:
In an attempt to settle once and for all whether Atlantis existed, Professor Aloysius O'Flannigan uses hypnosis to bring up the hidden racial memories of the pro-Atlantis scholar Theophilus Black, the anti-Atlantis scholar Kenneth McScribe, and the American Indian Rain-in-the-Face. Word of the experiment reaches the papers, and the final phase is held in an auditorium before a standing-room-only crowd . . .
* * *
At last the final night came, when, according to the best calculations, the Atlantean strata in the unconscious minds of the three subjects should be reached. Aloysius had planned to skip a few thousand years in order to get, if possible, a description of Atlantis in its heyday, then to work up gradually to the great inundation. It would, he explained, make the experiment more understandable to the audience.
I think that, of the two of us, I was the more nervous. Experience had taught me that Aloysius' experiments quite frequently ended in unforeseen results; and I did not relish the thought of how so large an audience might react in such a case. I even urged him to have a sort of dress rehearsal in private; but he refused.
"No, Eric," he said firmly. "If I did that, tonight's performance would not be a true experiment, but merely a demonstration of something already proven. I am a man of my word, and must give these people what I promised."
"But suppose there was no continent of Atlantis," I argued. "Then what?"
"In that case," he replied, unruffled, "we will have proven Mr. McScribe's contention."
I saw that there was nothing I could do, so I gave up.
Promptly at eight o'clock, Aloysius stepped out upon the stage, and explained to a packed and eager house what he proposed to do. He was followed by Mr. Black and Mr. McScribe, who, in turn, stated their positions in the matter.
Chief Rain-in-the-Face, upon being introduced next, confined himself to the usual, noncommittal, "Ugh"; since the purpose of the whole affair was still a little hazy in his mind.
Amid a silence heavy enough to be weighed, Aloysius proceeded to place his three subjects in a state of hypnosis. He had explained that the best results might be expected from Mr. Black; since he alone, once the mental transfer to the remote past had been made, seemed able to translate his awakened race memories into the language of the present. Chief Rain-in-the-Face, when under the hypnotic influence, spoke his native Indian language; while on the last two occasions, Mr. McScribe had emitted only a kind of unintelligible jabbering suggestive of an anthropoid ape.
As soon as the hypnotic trance was deep enough, Aloysius addressed the three collectively, informing them that they were now living before the dawn of recorded history, in approximately the year 20,000 B. C., and directing them to describe their experiences. There followed a minute of tense expectancy, during which a subtle change seemed to take place in all three men.
Chief Rain-in-the-Face rose and delivered a spirited oration in a language that resembled none known on earth today; after which he bowed formally and resumed his seat.
The audience understood not a word of what he had said, and accordingly was duly impressed. Aloysius raised his hand to check applause that he saw was about to break forth, and turned to Mr. Black.
"Now, Theophilus Black, tell us where you are and what you see."
The reply came at once; but the words were spoken slowly, as if the speaker was obliged to translate his thoughts into a tongue with which he was unfamiliar:
"I am in a great city -- the capital of the civilized world. On all sides, tall, white buildings rear themselves toward the sky, while the streets are thronged with busy people. There are also many horse-drawn chariots; but each year these grow fewer, for recently there has been invented a chariot that runs without horses. Since the invention of this horseless chariot, the pedestrians, too, have grown fewer. The land is rich and powerful, and its scientists are the greatest the world has ever known."
"What is the name of this land?" Aloysius put in, endeavoring to control his excitement. So far, results were turning out far better than they had before.
There was a brief pause, Mr. Black said then: "Its native name would mean nothing to you, but it has come down to you in legend as Atlantis."
* * *
A unanimous gasp arose from the audience. The authenticity of the mythical Atlantis was actually being proven! At this very moment, the man before them had returned there mentally through awakened race memory! No wonder they were excited and thrilled. I was myself.
"I have said that our scientists are the greatest the world has ever known," Mr. Black went on in the same hesitant, rather monotonous voice. "But recently they have fallen into disrepute; all because they have predicted that which it does not please the people to believe.
"For many years we have known that the ocean bottom is rising. Our own coastal plains have been sinking; while our mariners report that in the distant reaches of both the eastern and western oceans, strange new islands have appeared. Our scientists have studied these reports, and announced that the appearance of the islands mark the beginning of a great cataclysm of nature, which will raise new continents from the ocean bottom, pouring the waters that now cover them over Atlantis, burying it forever. Naturally, the people are loath to accept such a prediction; for it seems to them impossible that Atlantis, the wise and beautiful, could ever perish."
"Does no one believe the scientists?" Aloysius asked.
"None but a few religious sects, who believe that the end of the world has been predicted. One of our merchants has taken advantage of their credulity, and has advertised in his shop a special sale of fine linen for ascension robes."
"When do the scientists predict that this great catastrophe will take place?"
"They say that it will occur about ten years from now."
Aloysius waited several seconds before speaking again. Then he said, "Six years have passed. The catastrophe is only four years away. Tell us what is happening in Atlantis now."
The reply came promptly. "Earthquakes have begun to shake our land. Two volcanoes have become active. The ocean bottom to the east and west is rising rapidly.
"Do the people still doubt the predictions of the scientists?"
"A few more have ceased to doubt. These are building large boats in which, if the water begins to rise over the land, they will flee to the small, barbarous continent of Yropa to the northeast. The boats are very large. They will carry animals and supplies as well as men and women."
"Blast me eyes!" exclaimed an awed British voice from the balcony. "A whole fleet of bloomin' Noah's arks!"
Aloysius gestured sternly for silence, and returned to his subject. "Now three more years have gone by. The disaster is only one year away."
The audience leaned forward breathlessly to catch the answer. This time the voice that delivered it was strained and tense.
"The sky is dark with the ashes from the volcanoes. Whole cities have been destroyed by earthquakes. Reports reach us that the sea has rushed in over a portion of Yropa, creating a large island off the west coast, where before was a peninsula. Also, a large tract of land shaped like a boot has arisen out of the sea south of Yropa.
"At last the people of Atlantis believe that the scientists predicted correctly, but now it is too late. Most of the boats have already departed to establish colonies in Yropa and other barbarous places. As for the others, their captains grow rich conducting one-way excursions to the new islands. Atlantis is a doomed continent."
The voice moaned away into silence, like the last gasp of the dying civilization it described. It was echoed by the audibly released breath of the gallery.
From my place in the wings, I tried to catch Aloysius' eye. Surely the experiment had gone far enough and it was now time to awaken the subjects. Besides, during the last few minutes, Chief Rain-in-the-Face had shown distinct signs of restlessness, as if he was passing through the same mental experiences as Mr. Black, but was unable to express himself. To keep him in the hypnotic state much longer might lead to complications.
But Aloysius had not yet finished. A gleam came into his eyes that I knew only too well; he braced himself to launch the real climax of his experiment. "The hour of catastrophe has come!" he cried in ringing tones. "Atlantis is sinking! The waters are closing over it! Tell me what you see."
* * *
There was a moment of electric tension so strong it could have charged a battery. Then the answer came; but this time it was not in words, but in actions.
Before any one fully realized what was happening, Chief Rain-in-the-Face had leaped from his chair. The next instant he was heading for the edge of the platform, while his arms flailed about in perfect imitation of an English Channel swimmer. Pausing on the platform's edge for only a split second, he executed a perfect swan dive into the lap of an obese lady in the front row!
Instantly pandemonium broke loose. Women screamed and men shouted. There was a mad stampede for the exits, in which everybody seemed to get in everybody else's way. One well-meaning soul, attempting to switch on more lights, pressed the wrong button -- with the result that he turned on the emergency fire sprinkler instead, and streams of water began to spurt in all directions. We learned afterward that this caused several people to believe that the entire company had actually been translated bodily as well as mentally to sinking Atlantis, and were going down with it.
In vain, Aloysius entreated the crowd to be calm, assuring them that everything was all right. However, those people had but one thought in mind; to get out of there -- quickly, while they still had their scalps.
In the excitement, the two other subjects of the experiment had been completely forgotten; and it is painful to contemplate what might have been the fate of at least one of them had not a faint, gurgling sound attracted my attention. I went to investigate. There was poor Mr. Black flapping about helplessly in his chair, emitting the most awful gaspings and groanings, like a man in the last stages of drowning.
"Aloysius!" I bellowed, striving to make myself heard above the surrounding din. "You've got to get Black out of the Atlantis period, quick! The poor devil can't swim!"
Leaving the auditorium to attendants and the police, who had arrived by this time to look after the commotion in front, we rushed to the assistance of Mr. Black; while Mr. McScribe peered out at us from beneath the speaker's table, a perfect example of the atavistic came man gone to cover. Our star subject was in pretty bad shape; and even after he had been awakened from the hypnosis, it was necessary to administer artificial respiration.
* * *
After the excitement was all over, and Aloysius had been warned, by an irate police sergeant, that, "if there's any more av this foolishness, Professor O'Flannigan, ye'll find yerself in a cage with the rest of the monkeys," we were allowed to go home.
To my surprise, Aloysius was not nearly so downcast as I had expected. "I'll admit that matters did get a little out of hand toward the end," he said philosophically. "But, in spite of that, the experiment was a success. We certainly proved the one-time existence of Atlantis."
"I'm not so sure," I replied sourly. "I heard a couple of reporters say that the whole thing could be explained by pure mental suggestion."
Aloysius merely smiled. "Of course, there will always be skeptics," he said. "But I have material proof that cannot be explained away."
"Material proof?" I repeated. "What in the world do you mean?"
"For a long time," he began, "certain scientists have maintained that there exist ultra dimensions in time and space, which, if they were thoroughly understood, could be passed through physically as well as mentally. Now don't ask me how, for I'm not a mathematician. All I know is that, in some way, Mr. Black's mental rapport with the past became so strong that he was able to draw through these dimensions an actual, material specimen from the sinking continent of Atlantis. I took it from his mouth when we were reviving him. Here it is."
He put his hand into his pocket and drew out -- by the tail -- a little dead fish!
I stared at it incredulously. "Holy mackerel!" I gasped.
Aloysius shook his head. "No, Eric," he corrected, with his usual care for scientific accuracy, "just a sucker."
THE END
(continue to review)
The story so far:
In an attempt to settle once and for all whether Atlantis existed, Professor Aloysius O'Flannigan uses hypnosis to bring up the hidden racial memories of the pro-Atlantis scholar Theophilus Black, the anti-Atlantis scholar Kenneth McScribe, and the American Indian Rain-in-the-Face. Word of the experiment reaches the papers, and the final phase is held in an auditorium before a standing-room-only crowd . . .
* * *
At last the final night came, when, according to the best calculations, the Atlantean strata in the unconscious minds of the three subjects should be reached. Aloysius had planned to skip a few thousand years in order to get, if possible, a description of Atlantis in its heyday, then to work up gradually to the great inundation. It would, he explained, make the experiment more understandable to the audience.
I think that, of the two of us, I was the more nervous. Experience had taught me that Aloysius' experiments quite frequently ended in unforeseen results; and I did not relish the thought of how so large an audience might react in such a case. I even urged him to have a sort of dress rehearsal in private; but he refused.
"No, Eric," he said firmly. "If I did that, tonight's performance would not be a true experiment, but merely a demonstration of something already proven. I am a man of my word, and must give these people what I promised."
"But suppose there was no continent of Atlantis," I argued. "Then what?"
"In that case," he replied, unruffled, "we will have proven Mr. McScribe's contention."
I saw that there was nothing I could do, so I gave up.
Promptly at eight o'clock, Aloysius stepped out upon the stage, and explained to a packed and eager house what he proposed to do. He was followed by Mr. Black and Mr. McScribe, who, in turn, stated their positions in the matter.
Chief Rain-in-the-Face, upon being introduced next, confined himself to the usual, noncommittal, "Ugh"; since the purpose of the whole affair was still a little hazy in his mind.
Amid a silence heavy enough to be weighed, Aloysius proceeded to place his three subjects in a state of hypnosis. He had explained that the best results might be expected from Mr. Black; since he alone, once the mental transfer to the remote past had been made, seemed able to translate his awakened race memories into the language of the present. Chief Rain-in-the-Face, when under the hypnotic influence, spoke his native Indian language; while on the last two occasions, Mr. McScribe had emitted only a kind of unintelligible jabbering suggestive of an anthropoid ape.
As soon as the hypnotic trance was deep enough, Aloysius addressed the three collectively, informing them that they were now living before the dawn of recorded history, in approximately the year 20,000 B. C., and directing them to describe their experiences. There followed a minute of tense expectancy, during which a subtle change seemed to take place in all three men.
Chief Rain-in-the-Face rose and delivered a spirited oration in a language that resembled none known on earth today; after which he bowed formally and resumed his seat.
The audience understood not a word of what he had said, and accordingly was duly impressed. Aloysius raised his hand to check applause that he saw was about to break forth, and turned to Mr. Black.
"Now, Theophilus Black, tell us where you are and what you see."
The reply came at once; but the words were spoken slowly, as if the speaker was obliged to translate his thoughts into a tongue with which he was unfamiliar:
"I am in a great city -- the capital of the civilized world. On all sides, tall, white buildings rear themselves toward the sky, while the streets are thronged with busy people. There are also many horse-drawn chariots; but each year these grow fewer, for recently there has been invented a chariot that runs without horses. Since the invention of this horseless chariot, the pedestrians, too, have grown fewer. The land is rich and powerful, and its scientists are the greatest the world has ever known."
"What is the name of this land?" Aloysius put in, endeavoring to control his excitement. So far, results were turning out far better than they had before.
There was a brief pause, Mr. Black said then: "Its native name would mean nothing to you, but it has come down to you in legend as Atlantis."
* * *
A unanimous gasp arose from the audience. The authenticity of the mythical Atlantis was actually being proven! At this very moment, the man before them had returned there mentally through awakened race memory! No wonder they were excited and thrilled. I was myself.
"I have said that our scientists are the greatest the world has ever known," Mr. Black went on in the same hesitant, rather monotonous voice. "But recently they have fallen into disrepute; all because they have predicted that which it does not please the people to believe.
"For many years we have known that the ocean bottom is rising. Our own coastal plains have been sinking; while our mariners report that in the distant reaches of both the eastern and western oceans, strange new islands have appeared. Our scientists have studied these reports, and announced that the appearance of the islands mark the beginning of a great cataclysm of nature, which will raise new continents from the ocean bottom, pouring the waters that now cover them over Atlantis, burying it forever. Naturally, the people are loath to accept such a prediction; for it seems to them impossible that Atlantis, the wise and beautiful, could ever perish."
"Does no one believe the scientists?" Aloysius asked.
"None but a few religious sects, who believe that the end of the world has been predicted. One of our merchants has taken advantage of their credulity, and has advertised in his shop a special sale of fine linen for ascension robes."
"When do the scientists predict that this great catastrophe will take place?"
"They say that it will occur about ten years from now."
Aloysius waited several seconds before speaking again. Then he said, "Six years have passed. The catastrophe is only four years away. Tell us what is happening in Atlantis now."
The reply came promptly. "Earthquakes have begun to shake our land. Two volcanoes have become active. The ocean bottom to the east and west is rising rapidly.
"Do the people still doubt the predictions of the scientists?"
"A few more have ceased to doubt. These are building large boats in which, if the water begins to rise over the land, they will flee to the small, barbarous continent of Yropa to the northeast. The boats are very large. They will carry animals and supplies as well as men and women."
"Blast me eyes!" exclaimed an awed British voice from the balcony. "A whole fleet of bloomin' Noah's arks!"
Aloysius gestured sternly for silence, and returned to his subject. "Now three more years have gone by. The disaster is only one year away."
The audience leaned forward breathlessly to catch the answer. This time the voice that delivered it was strained and tense.
"The sky is dark with the ashes from the volcanoes. Whole cities have been destroyed by earthquakes. Reports reach us that the sea has rushed in over a portion of Yropa, creating a large island off the west coast, where before was a peninsula. Also, a large tract of land shaped like a boot has arisen out of the sea south of Yropa.
"At last the people of Atlantis believe that the scientists predicted correctly, but now it is too late. Most of the boats have already departed to establish colonies in Yropa and other barbarous places. As for the others, their captains grow rich conducting one-way excursions to the new islands. Atlantis is a doomed continent."
The voice moaned away into silence, like the last gasp of the dying civilization it described. It was echoed by the audibly released breath of the gallery.
From my place in the wings, I tried to catch Aloysius' eye. Surely the experiment had gone far enough and it was now time to awaken the subjects. Besides, during the last few minutes, Chief Rain-in-the-Face had shown distinct signs of restlessness, as if he was passing through the same mental experiences as Mr. Black, but was unable to express himself. To keep him in the hypnotic state much longer might lead to complications.
But Aloysius had not yet finished. A gleam came into his eyes that I knew only too well; he braced himself to launch the real climax of his experiment. "The hour of catastrophe has come!" he cried in ringing tones. "Atlantis is sinking! The waters are closing over it! Tell me what you see."
* * *
There was a moment of electric tension so strong it could have charged a battery. Then the answer came; but this time it was not in words, but in actions.
Before any one fully realized what was happening, Chief Rain-in-the-Face had leaped from his chair. The next instant he was heading for the edge of the platform, while his arms flailed about in perfect imitation of an English Channel swimmer. Pausing on the platform's edge for only a split second, he executed a perfect swan dive into the lap of an obese lady in the front row!
Instantly pandemonium broke loose. Women screamed and men shouted. There was a mad stampede for the exits, in which everybody seemed to get in everybody else's way. One well-meaning soul, attempting to switch on more lights, pressed the wrong button -- with the result that he turned on the emergency fire sprinkler instead, and streams of water began to spurt in all directions. We learned afterward that this caused several people to believe that the entire company had actually been translated bodily as well as mentally to sinking Atlantis, and were going down with it.
In vain, Aloysius entreated the crowd to be calm, assuring them that everything was all right. However, those people had but one thought in mind; to get out of there -- quickly, while they still had their scalps.
In the excitement, the two other subjects of the experiment had been completely forgotten; and it is painful to contemplate what might have been the fate of at least one of them had not a faint, gurgling sound attracted my attention. I went to investigate. There was poor Mr. Black flapping about helplessly in his chair, emitting the most awful gaspings and groanings, like a man in the last stages of drowning.
"Aloysius!" I bellowed, striving to make myself heard above the surrounding din. "You've got to get Black out of the Atlantis period, quick! The poor devil can't swim!"
Leaving the auditorium to attendants and the police, who had arrived by this time to look after the commotion in front, we rushed to the assistance of Mr. Black; while Mr. McScribe peered out at us from beneath the speaker's table, a perfect example of the atavistic came man gone to cover. Our star subject was in pretty bad shape; and even after he had been awakened from the hypnosis, it was necessary to administer artificial respiration.
* * *
After the excitement was all over, and Aloysius had been warned, by an irate police sergeant, that, "if there's any more av this foolishness, Professor O'Flannigan, ye'll find yerself in a cage with the rest of the monkeys," we were allowed to go home.
To my surprise, Aloysius was not nearly so downcast as I had expected. "I'll admit that matters did get a little out of hand toward the end," he said philosophically. "But, in spite of that, the experiment was a success. We certainly proved the one-time existence of Atlantis."
"I'm not so sure," I replied sourly. "I heard a couple of reporters say that the whole thing could be explained by pure mental suggestion."
Aloysius merely smiled. "Of course, there will always be skeptics," he said. "But I have material proof that cannot be explained away."
"Material proof?" I repeated. "What in the world do you mean?"
"For a long time," he began, "certain scientists have maintained that there exist ultra dimensions in time and space, which, if they were thoroughly understood, could be passed through physically as well as mentally. Now don't ask me how, for I'm not a mathematician. All I know is that, in some way, Mr. Black's mental rapport with the past became so strong that he was able to draw through these dimensions an actual, material specimen from the sinking continent of Atlantis. I took it from his mouth when we were reviving him. Here it is."
He put his hand into his pocket and drew out -- by the tail -- a little dead fish!
I stared at it incredulously. "Holy mackerel!" I gasped.
Aloysius shook his head. "No, Eric," he corrected, with his usual care for scientific accuracy, "just a sucker."
THE END
(continue to review)
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
"Reverse Phylogeny" by Amelia Reynolds Long, part 1
As promised, the Johnny Pez blog now presents "Reverse Phylogency", the second and last in Amelia Reynolds Long's "Professor O'Flannigan" series. The stories, narrated by a young man named Eric Dale, tell of the comic misadventures of Dale's schoolchum, the brilliant biochemist Professor Aloysius O'Flannigan. The first story, "A Leak in the Fountain of Youth", appeared in the August 1936 issue of Astounding Stories magazine, and this follow-up appeared in the June 1937 issue, both as by "A. R. Long". Like its predecessor, "Reverse Phylogeny" was eventually reprinted in an anthology, in this case Science Fiction Adventures in Dimension (1953), edited by Groff Conklin. The Johnny Pez blog is proud to present this classic story in a blog-friendly multi-part format. And now, without further ado, here is
Reverse Phylogeny
by Amelia Reynolds Long
Once more I have before me the task of explaining to the public another of the escapades of my friend, Professor Aloysius O'Flannigan. Not that Aloysius has asked me to do so; he is far too proud for that. But when -- because of a minor incident that had no place in his original plan, and for which he can in no way be held responsible -- remarks are made that the whole experiment concerning the lost continent of Atlantis had a decidedly fishy flavor, and when certain malicious-tongued individuals begin to accuse an inoffensive, peace-loving man like Aloysius of deliberately attempting to drown Mr. Theophilus Black on dry land, it seems to me that in mere fairness something ought to be done about it.
It all began with a series of articles of a well-known science magazine, or which Aloysius is an ardent reader. Dropping into his library one day, I found him sitting cross-legged upon the floor, with several copies of the magazine strewn around him. As I entered, he glanced up, made a dive for one of the magazines, and thrust it at me.
"Eric, I want you to read this!" he exclaimed, his eyes gleaming behind his thick-lensed spectacles. "Then tell me what you think of it."
He had turned the magazine open at an article entitled: "Atlantis; Proof of Its Existence," written by a Mr. Theophilus black. It was a well-constructed article, exhibiting excellent imaginative qualities and, to my mind at least, quite a bit of erudition on the part of its author. As I finished it and was about to comment, Aloysius pushed a second magazine into my hand.
"Read this before you say anything," he directed. "Then give me your reaction to both of them."
The article in the second magazine was called, "Atlantis Debunked"; and it lived up to its title. I read it as Aloysius directed; and, whereas Mr. Black had had me ready to swallow the whole continent of Atlantis, Mr. Kenneth McScribe, the author of the second article, now had me gagging on the first pebble. I looked helplessly at Aloysius, feeling a trifle groggy.
"There are several other articles here, but you needn't go into them," he said understandingly. "But what do you think of the Atlantis theory as a whole?"
"I hardly know," I answered, trying to sort out my jumbled reactions. "There seem to be equally good arguments on both sides."
"That's what I felt, too." He nodded. "Mr. Black's logic is excellent; but he builds it upon a rather porous situation, upon which Mr. McScribe has very cleverly turned a microscope. But, in his enthusiasm, Mr. McScribe has used too powerful a lens, and blurred matters a little. For example" -- he picked up one of the magazines and selected a particular paragraph -- "Mr. McScribe would throw out the evidence of the air-cooled volcanic rocks found in the Atlantic Ocean because Mr. Black cannot quote their geological age. I fail to see where their age has a great deal to do with it. After all, the question is not when Atlantis might have existed, but whether it existed at any time."
"True," I agreed hopefully. "And the very existence of those rocks is a strong indication --"
"Not so fast!" he broke in. "The existence of those rocks need indicate nothing more than a now-submerged island; and it's going a little strong to construct a whole continent out of that -- a little like making a mountain out of a molehill, on an exalted scale."
"You have the darndest way of switching from one side of a question to another!" I complained. "A fellow can't tell whether you actually turn the corners, or just wander in a circle."
"I'm afraid you haven't got the scientific mind, Eric." He sighed. "What I'm trying to do is sift the evidence."
"And what have you found so far?" I inquired with a touch of sarcasm.
"Not much, I'm afraid," he admitted. "You see, both Mr. Black and Mr. McScribe have made the same error of arguing over material evidence; such things as similarity of place names on both sides of the Atlantic, prehistoric remains, social development, and the like. They should look for psychological indications; racial characteristics or instincts in man himself that would either prove or disprove his descent from inhabitants of a continent --"
* * *
He broke off in mid-sentence, and a rapt expression came over his face. "Divil an' all!" he exclaimed, slapping his right fist into the palm of his left hand. "I believe it could be done; I'm going to try it!"
"Now what?" I asked a little fearfully, knowing from past experience that when Aloysius used that tone anything might be expected to happen.
"I'm going to awaken racial memory," he replied. "After all, our so-called instincts are nothing more than inherited race memory, as any psychologist will tell you. If those dormant memories can be aroused, brought up from the unconscious into the conscious mind and --"
"But how can it be done?" I wanted to know.
"Through hypnotism, of course," he answered. "I could turn the mind of a subject back through the deep strata of instinct bequeathed to him by his ancestors, inducing him to relive them as if they were a part of his own experience, until we had discovered whether there was or was not an Atlantean layer. Why, we might even settle the mooted question of whether mental traits can be inherited!"
There are times, I reflected, when nothing else in the English language is so expressive as the single word, "Nuts." But I said nothing, hoping that he would work off his enthusiasm by writing a letter to the magazine. I should have known better.
It was only a week later that he sent for me to come around again. Upon arriving at his house, I found that he already had three other guests; two very scholarly-looking gentlemen and a full-blooded Indian, feathers and all.
"Eric," he said, "I want you to meet Mr. Black, Mr. McScribe, and Chief Rain-in-the-Face. Gentlemen, my friend and sometimes colleague, Mr. Dale."
Mr. Black and Mr. McScribe acknowledged the introduction with the usual polite phrases.
Chief Rain-in-the-Face (ah! the appropriateness of that name!) confined himself to a noncommittal, "Ugh."
As for me, I'm afraid I let my jaw fall open rather foolishly.
"I wrote to Mr. Black and Mr. McScribe about my planned experiment to settle the Atlantis question," Aloysius went on, "and they very graciously consented to act as subjects. The fact that they are on opposite sides in that debate will give added significance to our findings."
"I see," I managed a trifle weakly. "And where does -- er -- Chief Rain-in-the-Face come in?"
"In order to prove or disprove Mr. Black's contention that the first settlers on the American continent were from Atlantis, it was necessary that a genuine Indian take part in the experiment," he explained. "Of course, in order to be really scientific, we should have an Egyptian as well; but none was procurable. However, Mr. Black is convinced that his earliest forebears were Atlanteans; so that will have to suffice.
"And now, gentlemen," he continued, "if you are ready, we will begin the first step. Eric, you will act as witness and recording secretary."
He lined his subjects up in chairs facing him, and, after a few minutes, succeeded in placing all three of them in a state of deep hypnosis. He then undertook, by suggestion, to turn their minds backward through the layers of inherited instinct, making them relive their "race memories," as he called them, as actual experiences.
I will say this much for what followed: it was extremely interesting, and would have convinced the Reincarnationists that their day of justification had arrived. During the next two hours, Chief Rain-in-the-Face told us all about what had happened to Henry Hudson after he had sailed on his last voyage up the river that now bears his name; while Mr. Black and Mr. McScribe furnished us with some interesting sidelights in the lives of several prominent personages at the courts of Louis XIV and Henry VIII respectively. All in all, it was a morning well spent.
* * *
Upon being awakened, none of the three men retained any memory of their mental experiences while in the hypnotic state; and they were exceedingly surprised when I read my notes to them. At Aloysius' request, they all promised to return the next day, when the experiment would be continued.
"Of course, today was only the beginning," Aloysius said when we were alone. "A mere scratching of the surface. Tomorrow we will go deeper, and the next day deeper still, until, eventually, we reach the level that will prove conclusively from what source these races have sprung."
"I hope you're not claiming that today's performance had anything to do with instinct," I remarked. "Why, the very latest of our instincts was developed long before the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Moreover, according to your own statement, instinct is race memory. What these men related today were the experiences of single individuals."
"I know that," he admitted unperturbed. "But it only goes to verify another theory of mine. For a long time I have believed that the life experiences of our not-too-distant ancestors are inherited in certain cells of the brain, just as their physical characteristics are duplicated in our bodies. They bear the same relationship to racial memory that family resemblance bears to racial resemblance. For example it --"
"Never mind the example," I cut in. "I'll probably understand better without it. And now, if I may speak figuratively, how long in this experiment of yours before we get though the topsoil and strike bed rock?"
"Oh, about two weeks," he replied. "Incidentally, I like your metaphor. It has such a -- er -- archeological flavor."
I will not go into a detailed account of all the subsequent steps in the experiment, but will only note the highlights. There was, for instance, the time when Chief Rain-in-the-Face went on the warpath, and attempted to translate his mental experience into physical action with the aid of the table lamp and a letter opener. He entirely wrecked the experiment for that day, and had to be brought out of his hypnotic trance by the somewhat crude means of a crack over the head with a volume of the encyclopedia.
Then there was the time when Mr. McScribe thought he was with Joshua before the walls of Jericho, and insisted upon going out and marching around the block until the policeman on the beat picked him up as a suspicious character.
It was this incident, together with the explanation it entailed, that was responsible for bringing the whole affair to the attention of the public. When we went to the police station to collect Mr. McScribe, an overenterprising reporter was present; and that evening the story, embellished with lurid details, appeared in his paper. The result was that the next morning representatives of every newspaper in the city descended upon us.
Now Aloysius is retiring by nature, and at first he refused to have anything to do with them. But it is easier to rid oneself of dandruff than of the gentlemen of the press. By sheer persistence, they wore him down, until at last he consented to their being present at the next experiment.
By this time he had got back to the early Egyptian period, and had actually begun to accomplish things with race memory. The reporters were duly impressed; and when their stories appeared, the reading public got its money's worth. Interest in the subject became so acute that the editor of the paper which carried the first story got the brilliant idea that the remainder of the experiment be put on in a public auditorium, the affair to be sponsored by his newspaper.
Naturally, Aloysius would have refused anything so spectacular, had not both Mr. Black and Mr. McScribe intervened. What weight, they argued, would our findings carry if they could be attested to only by one or two men? For the sake of science, the final steps should be taken before a sufficient number of witnesses, so that the outcome could never be doubted. The argument undeniably had its points; and at last, in spite of his better judgment, Aloysius gave in.
It was arranged for the final stage of the experiment to be conducted in the city's largest auditorium. Free tickets could be had by taking a year's subscription to the sponsoring newspaper; and the public's response would have turned Barnum green with envy. Within three days every seat in the house had been taken; and tickets for standing room were being issued on six months' subscriptions.
(continue to part 2)
Reverse Phylogeny
by Amelia Reynolds Long
Once more I have before me the task of explaining to the public another of the escapades of my friend, Professor Aloysius O'Flannigan. Not that Aloysius has asked me to do so; he is far too proud for that. But when -- because of a minor incident that had no place in his original plan, and for which he can in no way be held responsible -- remarks are made that the whole experiment concerning the lost continent of Atlantis had a decidedly fishy flavor, and when certain malicious-tongued individuals begin to accuse an inoffensive, peace-loving man like Aloysius of deliberately attempting to drown Mr. Theophilus Black on dry land, it seems to me that in mere fairness something ought to be done about it.
It all began with a series of articles of a well-known science magazine, or which Aloysius is an ardent reader. Dropping into his library one day, I found him sitting cross-legged upon the floor, with several copies of the magazine strewn around him. As I entered, he glanced up, made a dive for one of the magazines, and thrust it at me.
"Eric, I want you to read this!" he exclaimed, his eyes gleaming behind his thick-lensed spectacles. "Then tell me what you think of it."
He had turned the magazine open at an article entitled: "Atlantis; Proof of Its Existence," written by a Mr. Theophilus black. It was a well-constructed article, exhibiting excellent imaginative qualities and, to my mind at least, quite a bit of erudition on the part of its author. As I finished it and was about to comment, Aloysius pushed a second magazine into my hand.
"Read this before you say anything," he directed. "Then give me your reaction to both of them."
The article in the second magazine was called, "Atlantis Debunked"; and it lived up to its title. I read it as Aloysius directed; and, whereas Mr. Black had had me ready to swallow the whole continent of Atlantis, Mr. Kenneth McScribe, the author of the second article, now had me gagging on the first pebble. I looked helplessly at Aloysius, feeling a trifle groggy.
"There are several other articles here, but you needn't go into them," he said understandingly. "But what do you think of the Atlantis theory as a whole?"
"I hardly know," I answered, trying to sort out my jumbled reactions. "There seem to be equally good arguments on both sides."
"That's what I felt, too." He nodded. "Mr. Black's logic is excellent; but he builds it upon a rather porous situation, upon which Mr. McScribe has very cleverly turned a microscope. But, in his enthusiasm, Mr. McScribe has used too powerful a lens, and blurred matters a little. For example" -- he picked up one of the magazines and selected a particular paragraph -- "Mr. McScribe would throw out the evidence of the air-cooled volcanic rocks found in the Atlantic Ocean because Mr. Black cannot quote their geological age. I fail to see where their age has a great deal to do with it. After all, the question is not when Atlantis might have existed, but whether it existed at any time."
"True," I agreed hopefully. "And the very existence of those rocks is a strong indication --"
"Not so fast!" he broke in. "The existence of those rocks need indicate nothing more than a now-submerged island; and it's going a little strong to construct a whole continent out of that -- a little like making a mountain out of a molehill, on an exalted scale."
"You have the darndest way of switching from one side of a question to another!" I complained. "A fellow can't tell whether you actually turn the corners, or just wander in a circle."
"I'm afraid you haven't got the scientific mind, Eric." He sighed. "What I'm trying to do is sift the evidence."
"And what have you found so far?" I inquired with a touch of sarcasm.
"Not much, I'm afraid," he admitted. "You see, both Mr. Black and Mr. McScribe have made the same error of arguing over material evidence; such things as similarity of place names on both sides of the Atlantic, prehistoric remains, social development, and the like. They should look for psychological indications; racial characteristics or instincts in man himself that would either prove or disprove his descent from inhabitants of a continent --"
* * *
He broke off in mid-sentence, and a rapt expression came over his face. "Divil an' all!" he exclaimed, slapping his right fist into the palm of his left hand. "I believe it could be done; I'm going to try it!"
"Now what?" I asked a little fearfully, knowing from past experience that when Aloysius used that tone anything might be expected to happen.
"I'm going to awaken racial memory," he replied. "After all, our so-called instincts are nothing more than inherited race memory, as any psychologist will tell you. If those dormant memories can be aroused, brought up from the unconscious into the conscious mind and --"
"But how can it be done?" I wanted to know.
"Through hypnotism, of course," he answered. "I could turn the mind of a subject back through the deep strata of instinct bequeathed to him by his ancestors, inducing him to relive them as if they were a part of his own experience, until we had discovered whether there was or was not an Atlantean layer. Why, we might even settle the mooted question of whether mental traits can be inherited!"
There are times, I reflected, when nothing else in the English language is so expressive as the single word, "Nuts." But I said nothing, hoping that he would work off his enthusiasm by writing a letter to the magazine. I should have known better.
It was only a week later that he sent for me to come around again. Upon arriving at his house, I found that he already had three other guests; two very scholarly-looking gentlemen and a full-blooded Indian, feathers and all.
"Eric," he said, "I want you to meet Mr. Black, Mr. McScribe, and Chief Rain-in-the-Face. Gentlemen, my friend and sometimes colleague, Mr. Dale."
Mr. Black and Mr. McScribe acknowledged the introduction with the usual polite phrases.
Chief Rain-in-the-Face (ah! the appropriateness of that name!) confined himself to a noncommittal, "Ugh."
As for me, I'm afraid I let my jaw fall open rather foolishly.
"I wrote to Mr. Black and Mr. McScribe about my planned experiment to settle the Atlantis question," Aloysius went on, "and they very graciously consented to act as subjects. The fact that they are on opposite sides in that debate will give added significance to our findings."
"I see," I managed a trifle weakly. "And where does -- er -- Chief Rain-in-the-Face come in?"
"In order to prove or disprove Mr. Black's contention that the first settlers on the American continent were from Atlantis, it was necessary that a genuine Indian take part in the experiment," he explained. "Of course, in order to be really scientific, we should have an Egyptian as well; but none was procurable. However, Mr. Black is convinced that his earliest forebears were Atlanteans; so that will have to suffice.
"And now, gentlemen," he continued, "if you are ready, we will begin the first step. Eric, you will act as witness and recording secretary."
He lined his subjects up in chairs facing him, and, after a few minutes, succeeded in placing all three of them in a state of deep hypnosis. He then undertook, by suggestion, to turn their minds backward through the layers of inherited instinct, making them relive their "race memories," as he called them, as actual experiences.
I will say this much for what followed: it was extremely interesting, and would have convinced the Reincarnationists that their day of justification had arrived. During the next two hours, Chief Rain-in-the-Face told us all about what had happened to Henry Hudson after he had sailed on his last voyage up the river that now bears his name; while Mr. Black and Mr. McScribe furnished us with some interesting sidelights in the lives of several prominent personages at the courts of Louis XIV and Henry VIII respectively. All in all, it was a morning well spent.
* * *
Upon being awakened, none of the three men retained any memory of their mental experiences while in the hypnotic state; and they were exceedingly surprised when I read my notes to them. At Aloysius' request, they all promised to return the next day, when the experiment would be continued.
"Of course, today was only the beginning," Aloysius said when we were alone. "A mere scratching of the surface. Tomorrow we will go deeper, and the next day deeper still, until, eventually, we reach the level that will prove conclusively from what source these races have sprung."
"I hope you're not claiming that today's performance had anything to do with instinct," I remarked. "Why, the very latest of our instincts was developed long before the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Moreover, according to your own statement, instinct is race memory. What these men related today were the experiences of single individuals."
"I know that," he admitted unperturbed. "But it only goes to verify another theory of mine. For a long time I have believed that the life experiences of our not-too-distant ancestors are inherited in certain cells of the brain, just as their physical characteristics are duplicated in our bodies. They bear the same relationship to racial memory that family resemblance bears to racial resemblance. For example it --"
"Never mind the example," I cut in. "I'll probably understand better without it. And now, if I may speak figuratively, how long in this experiment of yours before we get though the topsoil and strike bed rock?"
"Oh, about two weeks," he replied. "Incidentally, I like your metaphor. It has such a -- er -- archeological flavor."
I will not go into a detailed account of all the subsequent steps in the experiment, but will only note the highlights. There was, for instance, the time when Chief Rain-in-the-Face went on the warpath, and attempted to translate his mental experience into physical action with the aid of the table lamp and a letter opener. He entirely wrecked the experiment for that day, and had to be brought out of his hypnotic trance by the somewhat crude means of a crack over the head with a volume of the encyclopedia.
Then there was the time when Mr. McScribe thought he was with Joshua before the walls of Jericho, and insisted upon going out and marching around the block until the policeman on the beat picked him up as a suspicious character.
It was this incident, together with the explanation it entailed, that was responsible for bringing the whole affair to the attention of the public. When we went to the police station to collect Mr. McScribe, an overenterprising reporter was present; and that evening the story, embellished with lurid details, appeared in his paper. The result was that the next morning representatives of every newspaper in the city descended upon us.
Now Aloysius is retiring by nature, and at first he refused to have anything to do with them. But it is easier to rid oneself of dandruff than of the gentlemen of the press. By sheer persistence, they wore him down, until at last he consented to their being present at the next experiment.
By this time he had got back to the early Egyptian period, and had actually begun to accomplish things with race memory. The reporters were duly impressed; and when their stories appeared, the reading public got its money's worth. Interest in the subject became so acute that the editor of the paper which carried the first story got the brilliant idea that the remainder of the experiment be put on in a public auditorium, the affair to be sponsored by his newspaper.
Naturally, Aloysius would have refused anything so spectacular, had not both Mr. Black and Mr. McScribe intervened. What weight, they argued, would our findings carry if they could be attested to only by one or two men? For the sake of science, the final steps should be taken before a sufficient number of witnesses, so that the outcome could never be doubted. The argument undeniably had its points; and at last, in spite of his better judgment, Aloysius gave in.
It was arranged for the final stage of the experiment to be conducted in the city's largest auditorium. Free tickets could be had by taking a year's subscription to the sponsoring newspaper; and the public's response would have turned Barnum green with envy. Within three days every seat in the house had been taken; and tickets for standing room were being issued on six months' subscriptions.
(continue to part 2)
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Mopping up "A Leak in the Fountain of Youth"
In "A Leak in the Fountain of Youth", Amelia Reynolds Long follows an old tradition common to science fiction in particular and to fiction in general. When works of prose fiction were a recent invention in the late 17th and early 18th century, writers such as Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, and Jonathan Swift would ease their readers into their fictional worlds by writing in the first person, and having their narrators explain how they came to set their experiences down in writing. Later, in the late 19th and early 20th century, when science fiction was a new genre, the same thing happened: writers would ease their readers into their worlds by writing in the first person, such as the unnamed narrators of H. G. Wells' The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds, or John Carter, the narrator of Edgar Rice Burroughs' early Barsoom novels. Long follows this tradition by having Eric Dale, the narrator of "A Leak in the Fountain of Youth", explain to the reader why he has chosen to publish an account of the doings of his friend Professor O'Flannigan.
Long also sets out to produce a humorous story, which has always been relatively rare in science fiction. Mind you, the story's humor is broad even by 1930s standards: the reliance on Irish surnames (especially McGillicuddy) as intrinsically funny, and the poet-as-esthete stereotype (first popularized by Oscar Wilde in the 19th century).
As for the story's science content, it's mostly a handwave to allow for the story gimmick, a serum to reverse the aging process. The functions Long assigns to the various glands are largely erroneous, and I have been unable to find any mention of separate amoebas joining together to form a single individual.
Long wrote a second story featuring Professor O'Flannigan, "Reverse Phylogeny", which will also be appearing in this blog. It seems reasonable to assume that Long intended to write a whole series of "Professor O'Flannigan" stories, but by the end of the 1930s she had become unhappy with the direction science fiction was taking, and turned to writing mystery novels instead.
Long also sets out to produce a humorous story, which has always been relatively rare in science fiction. Mind you, the story's humor is broad even by 1930s standards: the reliance on Irish surnames (especially McGillicuddy) as intrinsically funny, and the poet-as-esthete stereotype (first popularized by Oscar Wilde in the 19th century).
As for the story's science content, it's mostly a handwave to allow for the story gimmick, a serum to reverse the aging process. The functions Long assigns to the various glands are largely erroneous, and I have been unable to find any mention of separate amoebas joining together to form a single individual.
Long wrote a second story featuring Professor O'Flannigan, "Reverse Phylogeny", which will also be appearing in this blog. It seems reasonable to assume that Long intended to write a whole series of "Professor O'Flannigan" stories, but by the end of the 1930s she had become unhappy with the direction science fiction was taking, and turned to writing mystery novels instead.
"A Leak in the Fountain of Youth" by Amelia Reynolds Long, part 3
This is the third and final installment of "A Leak in the Fountain of Youth", a science fiction story from the Gernsback Era by Amelia Reynolds Long. The story first appeared in the August 1936 issue of Astounding Stories and was reprinted in the 2003 anthology Sci-Fi Womanthology edited by Forrest J. Ackerman and Pam Keesey.
The story so far:
Professor Aloysius O'Flannigan, a brilliant young biochemist, has invented a serum that will reverse the aging process. An opportunity to test it on a human subject unexpectedly presents itself when his old college chum, the poet Gustavus Adolphus Lindstrom, shows up on the lam from the police, suspected of bank robbery in a case of mistaken identity. Lindstrom needs some way to elude the police, so O'Flannigan offers to make him look sixteen years old.
However, due to a miscalculated dosage, Lindstrom is regressed to a baby, and O'Flannigan must hire a nurse, Miss McGillicuddy, to look after him. When the police find the real bank robber, O'Flannigan fires McGillicuddy as a prelude to restoring Lindstrom, but she is suspicious of his motives and takes the baby with her . . .
* * *
Two months passed, not entirely uneventful. The police, for some reason that we never entirely fathomed, were positive that Gustavus had come to Aloysius the day after the bank robbery, but they could prove nothing. Repeated questioning of Aloysius and even a search of the premises during his absence, got them nowhere. And, meanwhile, he for whom they searched rode out in his own perambulator under their very noses.
Of course, we knew that this state of things could not go on indefinitely; but when the next move came, it found us unprepared. It was, in fact, nothing more nor less than the arrest of the real bank robber, taken in the attempted holdup of a bank in the neighboring city. Upon being identified by the teller of the Suburban, he admitted the first robbery. So the good name of Gustavus Adolphus Lindstrom had been cleared.
It would now seem that all that remained for us to do was to administer the serum that would restore Gustavus to his normal phisiological age. That was what we thought, too, but we soon learned that it was not so simple. The realization came when we approached the nursery door with a hypodermic of the serum and discovered that Gustavus was not alone. We had forgotten Miss McGillicuddy.
"What," I inquired, "are you going to tell the nurse?"
Aloysius looked blank. "I hadn't thought of that," he confessed. "You -- you don't suppose she'd believe the truth?"
"I know she wouldn't," I answered with conviction. "You'll have to do better than that."
He sighed. "The only thing I can think of is to tell her that her services are no longer needed," he said, "and I'll have an awful slim chance of getting away with it."
"There's only one other way," I pointed out. "The woman must sleep some time out of the twenty-four hours. You'll have to watch for your chance and give Gussie the serum then."
But it was easier said than accomplished. All our visits to the nursery found Miss McGillicuddy wide awake and on the job. Finally, we divided the day into six-hour shifts during which we alternately kept watch in an effort to catch her napping, but this met with no success either.
Worse yet, Miss McGillicuddy now seemed to know that she was under secret surveillence, for she began to regard Aloysius and me with a suspicious eye, and kept the nursery door locked most of the time so that we had to knock to gain admittance.
It was about this time that Aloysius discovered that we ourselves were being spied on. He mentioned it to me when I dropped around one morning.
"Eric," he began uneasily, "I don't know what can be the matter, now that the bank robber has been arrested and Gussie is no longer under suspicion, but a policeman's been watching this house for the past three days. He's taken a room across the street and he keeps looking over here with a pair of field glasses."
"Miss McGillicuddy --" I suggested.
He nodded. "I'm afraid so," he said. "That female never did like me from the beginning. And now our watching her has made her suspect Heaven alone knows what, and she's gone to the police about it."
"I'm afraid we'll have to do what we should have done in the beginning," I told him gloomily. "Definitely discharge the woman."
We each took a neat drink of Irish whiskey to help our courage. Then we tackled the job. To our amazement, it was easier than we had anticipated. Miss McGillicuddy said nothing, but she gave us one long, unreadable look. Then she executed a military about-face and marched off to her room to pack her belongings. A half-hour later we heard the front door close firmly behind her.
* * *
With a combined sigh of relief that sounded like the open steam valve of a locomotive, Aloysius and I bounded upstairs to the nursery. He was ahead of me as we reached the nursery door, and so it was he who first bent over the bassinet. The next instant I saw him clap his hands to his head and stagger back.
"Good Lord!" he groaned. "She's taken Gussie along with her!"
For a minute or so we could only stare at each other in dumb stupefaction. Then my brain cleared a little.
"It's kidnapping!" I cried indignantly. "She can't do this! We'll go to the police ourselves, and enter a complaint."
But we were saved the trouble. At that very minute the doorbell rang.
On the step stood the policeman who had called on us two months before!
"Professor O'Flannigan," he pronounced severely when he had shouldered his way into the hall. "I want to know what it is you've done with Gustavus Lindstrom."
And then the awful facts came out. Gustavus had been known to come to Aloysius' house that day aftr the bank robbery, but had not been known to leave. It had been assumed by the police that Aloysius was protecting his friend from arrest for the bank robbery, but when the real criminal had been apprehended and Gustavus still failed to appear, it was felt that something serious must be the matter.
When a check-up with Gustavus' relatives revealed no clue to his whereabouts, the police had formulated a theory. It was that Gussie had been foully murdered by his mad scientist friend, professor Aloysius O'Flannigan!
"But that's proposterous!" Aloysius protested indignantly. "I haven't harmed Gussie!"
"Then what have you done with him?" the policeman asked, not unreasonably.
Aloysius opened his mouth to reply, but closed it again without uttering a word. If he told the truth now, he'd be locked up as a raving lunatic.
"Professor O'Flannigan is not quite himself this morning," I put in helpfully. "His little nephew has just been kidnapped by the nurse who was employed to look after him."
The policeman smiled sourly. "We know all about that," he told me. "That nurse told us how the professor here was actin', and it was what decided us in thinkin' that something was wrong up here." He turned back to Aloysius, "I guess you'd better come along with me to the station, professor," he said. "The sergeant'll be wantin' to talk to you."
Aloysius paled. "Very well, officer," he said weakly. "Excuse me while I get my hat and coat."
He started slowly down the hall toward the laboratory. At the door, however, he turned.
"Eric, remember Socrates," he called, and disappeared into the room.
We waited in stony silence. What the policeman's thoughts were, I have no idea, but I know that mine were in a turmoil. If Aloysius was locked up on suspicion of having murdered Gussie, how would he be able to bring Gussie back to normal? And unless Gussie was brought back to normal, how was Aloysius going to prove his innocence? It would do no good to tell the truth. There are some things that even the police refuse to believe.
* * *
Suddenly I began to realize that Aloysius had been gone a very long time. The policeman, too, realized it, for his face became ominous and he made for the laboratory door. I, beset by a hundred whirling fears, followed and was immediately behind him when he entered the room. It was empty, but an open window told the story. Aloysius had realized his predicament and had chosen liberty by way of the laboratory window and the back fence.
For the next five minutes that policeman's language was awful. But he finally calmed down and, after grilling me on Aloysius' habits and possible hide-out, left for police headquarters. I, much to my surprise, was permitted to go home.
I spent the next few hours listening to police descriptions of Aloysius over the radio and wondering what he was doing. I had not the faintest idea where he could have gone, but I knew that I would have to get in touch with him some way to arrange for the restoration of Gussie.
And then, like enlightenment from Heaven, came the memory of his parting words to me, "Eric, remember Socrates."
I jammed on my hat and made a dash for the university museum.
The Greek wing was empty when I entered it. Nevertheless, I approached the stone sarcophagus with caution. I was in the act of lighting a cigarette with elaborate nonchalance when a voice spoke from the sarcophagus' interior.
"Eric, if you drop ashes in here I'll come out and murder you."
"Aloysius!" I gasped in relief. "Thank Heaven you're here!"
"According to Gussie's experience, it seemed the one sure place where nobody would look," he replied. He squirmed to a sitting posture, so that his head protruded just above the opening in the sarcophagus. "You've got to help me get Gussie back in shape," he said. "Do you think you can carry out a few simple instructions?"
"I'll try," I promised. "What are they?"
"First," he went on, go to my laboratory and get the hypodermic with the corrective serum. You know which one it is. Next, take another hypodermic and make it one quarter full from the bottle on the end of the second shelf in my closet. It's a sleeping formula of my own, and is pretty powerful, so don't take too much of it. Then drive back here after dark and pick me up."
"What are you going to do?" I asked apprehensively.
"Never mind," he answered. "You know enough for the present. Now get going."
I had less trouble than I anticipated getting into the laboratory. The policeman on guard accepted my story that I had come for medicine for a sick dog, and let me take what I wanted from the drug cupboard, as long as I made no effort to disturb anything else. I had a moment's uncertainty over preparing the second hypodermic, for Aloysius had not told me which end of the second shelf he meant. I finally decided upon the right end, and took down a bottle that stood there. Then I returned to the museum.
Aloysius was waiting for me behind a tree across the street. "I nearly got caught getting out," he said, climbing into the car. "The damned burglar alarm went off."
"Where to now?" I asked, releasing the brake.
He gave me an address. "It's Miss McGillicuddy's," he added.
* * *
While I drove, he explained his plan. I was to get in to talk to Miss McGillicuddy on some pretext, while he remained hidden in the car. Then, when I had talked her off her guard, I was to plunge the second hypodermic into her arm. As soon as she had gone under, I was to snatch up Gussie and dash back to the car. Aloysius would do the rest.
It sounded easy enough until I found myself standing on the doorstep facing Miss McGillicuddy.
"Well, what do you want?" she demanded uncompromisingly. Her iron jaw, when it moved, was overpoweringly suggestive of a cement mixer.
"Miss McGillicuddy," I began weakly, "I've got to speak to you about -- about little Gussie. It's very important. May I come in?"
She moved aside reluctantly for me to enter. But the entrance was narrow and she was a large woman. In that minute I saw my chance and with a swiftness that surprised me myself, I plunged the hypodermic home. Miss McGillicuddy gave one startled snort and wilted before my eyes.
Fighting down a feeling of panic, I darted on into the house in search of Gussie. I found him without difficulty and was back to the car and had handed him to Aloysius in the back seat in less than two minutes.
"Now," Aloysius cried triumphantly, "drive somewhere -- anywhere -- until this stuff takes effect! It acts quickly."
We dashed off at top speed, with Gussie yelling like an Indian on the back seat. We took the corner on two wheels and almost collided with another car that was coming toward us. I heard the driver bawl a command at me to stop but I paid no attention. There was no time to stand by ceremony just then.
But a moment later I heard an exclamation from Aloysius. "Divil an' all!" he gasped. "That was a police car, Eric, and they're following us!"
My only answer was to step on the gas.
I shall never forget that wild ride, although its details were, even at the time, a series of blurs to me. I remember vaguely crashing through two or three red lights, while the shrilling of police whistles all but deafened me. Gussie's yells made our progress as conspicuous as that of the fire chief, and to add to our confusion, shouts of "Kidnappers!" began to arise from all sides.
At Aloysius' suggestion, I made for the open country but when I passed the city limits there were already three police cars and a whole squad of motorcycle police on our tail.
"If we can only hold out for an hour or two," Aloysius said, "we'll be all -- Ow! Devil fly away with you!"
"What's wrong?" I demanded, wondering fearfully whether one of the police cars had opened fire and Aloysius had been hit.
But his reply reassured me. "Gussie's cutting teeth," he answered. "The little fiend just bit me."
During the next hour Gussie's growth and phenomenal. By the time we crossed the State line, he had reached the obstreperous stage, and was trying to climb over the back of the seat to assist me at the wheel.
It had been a little past eight o'clock in the evening when Aloysius had injected the corrective serum. By six o'clock the next morning, it had completely taken effect and, to our unbounded relief, Gussie was quite himself again, and with only a hazy memory of what had transpired in the interval. But now two problems had arisen. The car was almost out of gas and Gussie -- except for the car's best blanket -- was embarrassingly out of raiment.
"We'll have to stop at the next gas station," I told Aloysius. "We can do it in safety, for the police haven't followed us across the State line."
* * *
But I had reckoned without my radio. The keeper of the gasoline station glanced at our license plate, deliberately raised the hood of our car and did something to our spark plugs. Then he walked calmly into his house and closed the door. Before we realized what was happening, two State troopers had appeared from nowhere and taken possession of us!
"It's all right," Aloysius reassured us as we were herded into a police car to be taken back whence we had come. "We can produce Gussie now, so that will squash the murder charge. As for the remarks about kidnapping, Gussie can prove that he was the baby by the mole on his left thigh. Miss McGillicuddy, the nurse, can identify it."
"Ye Gods," exclaimed Gussie, aghast. "Did I have a nurse and does she know about that?"
Returned to our home city, we told our story, individually and collectively, to a skeptical desk sergeant.
"A likely soundin' tale you be tellin' me," he said. "I'm after thinkin' it's not Mr. Lindstrom alone that's had a second childhood, but all three of you. And I've a mind to put you all in the jug until you grow up."
Aloysius drew himself up. He can be impressive as well as persuasive when he tries. "Sergeant," he said, "I am a man of science and what I tell you about the gland control serum is the truth. You must, at least, give us an opportunity to prove it by calling in the nurse, Miss McGillicuddy."
The sergeant was not unreasonable. He dispatched a man to summon our witness.
Fifteen minutes passed. Then the telephone rang frantically. The sergeant took the call.
"My man O'Reilly's at the nurse's house," he announced tersely, as he hung up. "He says something's happened to her and he needs help. I'm going over there, and I'm takin' you birds along."
My heart sank. Aloysius had said that the sleeping formula was pretty powerful. Suppose I had given her too much and --
Aloysius must have been thinking something of the same sort, for he whispered to me as we entered Miss McGillicuddy's residence, "Eric, tell me quick. From which bottle did you fill that hypodermic? Right or left end of the shelf?"
"Right," I answered and then, from his horrified expression, I knew the worst. The bottle I had used had contained poison and now Miss McGillicuddy was a stiffened corpse! What, I wondered, was the penalty in our State for manslaughter?
And then a voice from the next room on our left spoke protestingly. "Nix, lady, lay off!" it was saying. "I'm a married man with a family!"
We rushed after the sergeant into the room beyond. And there a startling spectacle confronted us. Seated stiffly on the edge of a chair was Officer O'Reilly, while perched coyly upon his knee -- and very much alive -- was Miss McGillicuddy! But not the Miss McGillicuddy we had known. Instead of an equine forty-odd, she was now a coltish twenty-one!
"O'Reilly, what's the meaning of this?" the sergeant roared, but I think he must have guessed even before he got the explanation.
Aloysius turned to me and there was a look of mingled reproach and relief in his eyes.
"Eric, you're a blundering idiot!" he exclaimed. "But you've proven our story. You gave a shot of the gland serum to Miss McGillicuddy!"
THE END
Saturday, January 23, 2010
"A Leak in the Fountain of Youth" by Amelia Reynolds Long, part 2
This is the second installment of "A Leak in the Fountain of Youth", a science fiction story from the Gernsback Era by Amelia Reynolds Long. The story first appeared in the August 1936 issue of Astounding Stories and was reprinted in the 2003 anthology Sci-Fi Womanthology edited by Forrest J. Ackerman and Pam Keesey.
The story so far:
Professor Aloysius O'Flannigan, a brilliant young biochemist, has invented a serum that will reverse the aging process. An opportunity to test it on a human subject unexpectedly presents itself when his old college chum, the poet Gustavus Adolphus Lindstrom, shows up on the lam from the police, suspected of bank robbery in a case of mistaken identity. Lindstrom needs some way to elude the police, so O'Flannigan offers to make him look sixteen years old . . .
* * *
A sudden, businesslike ring at the front doorbell was like an exclamation point after his words!
"The police!" Gustavus gasped, and went limp.
Aloysius seized him by the scruff of the neck, and propelled him toward the laboratory. "Answer the door, Eric," he said. "If it's the police, hold them off until I get back."
I had the sensation that each board I trod upon was on springs and gave under me as I walked down the hall to the front door. When I opened it, the worst was realized as a burly policeman confronted me!
"Are you Professor O'Flannigan?" he bellowed. I realized afterward that he must have spoken in only an ordinary tone of voice, but it sounded differently to me then.
"No, officer," I replied, glad that my first words, at least, could be the truth. "I'm only his friend, Eric Dale. Did you want to see the professor?"
"An' what would I be doin' here if I didn't?" he answered.
This didn't seem to call for an answer, so I didn't attempt one. "If you'll excuse me a moment, I'll go and call him," I offered instead, and started back down the hall. To my horror, the policeman followed me!
For a moment I had a hideous vision of his forcing me to guide him straight to the laboratory where Aloysius was doing heaven alone knew what to Gustavus Adolphus, and, then, clapping irons on both of us for aiding and abetting a dangerous criminal; but the situation was saved by the entrance of Aloysius in person, alone and wholly self-possessed.
"Was someone at the door, Eric?" he inquired innocently. Then, pretending to see the policeman for the first time, "Oh, good morning, officer. Can I do something for you?"
The policeman touched his cap. "It's about a friend of yours I've come, professor," he explained. "A man named Gustavus Adolphus Lindstrom. Have you seen him this mornin'?"
Aloysius registered just the right amount of annoyance and concern. "Don't tell me that Gussie's gone and got himself into trouble again!" he exclaimed protestingly.
The policeman explained that Gustavus was wanted for the robbery of the Suburban Bank. Aloysius was properly shocked.
"I simply can't believe it!" he declared. "Why, I saw him only the day before yesterday, and he said nothing at all about intending to rob a bank."
"They seldom do," the policeman said. "But seein' as you're such a good friend of his, he may try to get in touch with you now that it's over and, if he does, will you let us know, professor? If he's innocent, you'll be doin' him a favor by helpin' him prove it."
Aloysius intimated that he would -- without, however, definitely committing himself, and the policeman departed.
"Now," I demanded, turning with the ferocity of overwrought nerves upon Aloysius, "what have you done with Gussie?'
He raised a calming hand. "Gussie's all right," he assured me. "I gave him a large dose of the glandular control serum, and he's sleeping quietly in my room. Would you like to see him?"
I replied that I most certainly would.
He conducted me to his bedroom adjoining the laboratory. There lay Gussie sleeping peacefully, and with an expression on his face that for sheer guilelessness would have done credit to a hydrocephalic idiot.
I bent over him and examined him. "Heavens!" I cried almost at once. "He's young already!"
Aloysius laughed. "Your imagination, Eric," he said. "The serum won't begin to take effect for nearly an hour."
In spite of Aloysius' assurance that everything was now all right and that Gustavus would be safe until the real bank robber was discovered, I returned to my home with a feeling of strong misgiving. Suppose the serum should fail to take effect upon a human being; or suppose, having ben given in one large portion instead of small quantities, it should kill or cripple Gustavus! But, as the day wore on and none of the papers brought out an extra featuring either his capture or his murder, I decided that I was giving myself needless worry. And so I banished the matter from my mind.
* * *
But it was false security. At three o'clock the next morning my telephone rang. Aloysius was on the wire.
"Eric," he almost whispered, "come over at once! We're in the devil's own predicament!"
"Gussie --" I began incautiously, but he interrupted.
"Don't ask questions over the phone," he warned. "I'll explain when you get here." He rang off.
I dressed as quickly as possible and hurried around to where he lived. He was waiting for me at the door.
"What on earth's happened?" I demanded. "Have the police --"
He waived the police aside as if they had been of no consequence.
"It's got nothing to do with the police," he said. "Eric, we've got a real problem on our hands now. Come into the study."
He seized me by the arm and almost propelled me into the room. "Look," he commanded, and pointed dramatically at a large, overstuffed armchair.
I looked. Something was lying upon the seat of the chair. At first I thought that it was merely a blanket roll. Then, I realized that it was alive. Bending closer, I discovered with a sense of shock that it was a very young baby!
"Merciful heaven!" I gasped, and took a step backward. "Where did that come from?"
"Don't you know?" Aloysius asked.
I raised my eyebrows. "Doorstep contribution?" I inquired.
He made an impatient gesture. "Won't you understand, Eric?" he asked piteously. There was soul sickness in his eyes. "It's Gussie!"
* * *
"Gussie!" I sat down weakly upon the nearest chair and tried to keep my head from spinning while he explained. It seemed that either he had given Gustavus a slight overdose of the serum, or the stuff taken in quantity acted differently than when taken in small amounts. In any case, Gustavus had failed to stop rejuvinating when he had reached the physiological age of sixteen, but had continued to grow younger and younger until he had reached his present state.
"It was terrible!" Aloysius said, shuddering. "For a while I was afraid he was going to vanish entirely right there before my eyes. Eric, what are we going to do with him?"
I considered the situation. Once the shock of beholding Gustavus as an infant had abated, matters did not look so bad. After all, what Aloysius had set out to do was to disguise Gustavus so that the police would not recognize him, and that was precisely what he had done. Why not, I argued, permit Gustavus to remain as he was until after the real criminal had been apprehended, when he could be restored to his normal state?
This suggestion relieved Aloysius enormously. He permitted me to go home and finish my night's sleep in peace.
The following noon I dropped around again to see how he was getting on. I found him preparing a bottle for Gustavus.
"Eric," he said through clenched teeth, "this can't go on. I've done nothing since five o'clock this morning but wait on Gussie."
"Five o'clock!" I echoed. "That's no hour to get a child up. Why didn't you let him sleep?"
He looked at me in disgust. "That shows how much you know about it," he retorted resentfully. "He got me up. A five o'clock he started to yell like a banshee, and I had to walk the floor with him for two hours before he'd quiet down. Since then it's been one thing after another. I tell you, I can't stand it!"
It was on the tip of my tongue to remind him that I had warned him against the experiment in the first place, but I saw the dark circles under his eyes and refrained. After all, it would be unkind to twist the weapon in the wound just then.
"There's only one thing to do that I can think of," I told him. "You'll have to hire a nurse."
He hired a nurse, a grim-visaged professional named Miss Mabel McGillicuddy. She was a woman with an iron jaw and a physique like a horse, but she understood the care of infants. Aloysius gave her an apologetic-sounding story about Gustavus' being his orphaned nephew, and conducted her to the nursery. She appeared a trifle dashed when she discovered that her charge's entire wardrobe consisted of an old, cut-down polo shirt and a dozen and a half dinner napkins, but she said nothing and got to work.
Friday, January 22, 2010
"A Leak in the Fountain of Youth" by Amelia Reynolds Long, part 1
Amelia Reynolds Long (1904 - 1978) was a writer, poet, and museum curator from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Long was part of the first generation of fantastic fiction writers to appear in the pulp genre magazines, publishing her first story, "The Twin Soul", in the March 1928 issue of Weird Tales. Long went on to publish twenty-two fantasy and science fiction stories, mostly in Weird Tales and Astounding Stories, before switching to mystery novels in the late 1930s.
All of Long's early stories have passed into the public domain, but for the most part are unavailable online. We here at the Johnny Pez blog have chosen to correct this oversight by posting some of her short fiction here in a blog-friendly multipart format. Earlier this month, we published Long's story "Cosmic Fever" from the February 1937 issue of Astounding. We now follow up with a pair of stories featuring the character of Professor Aloysius O'Flannigan. First up, from the August 1936 issue of Astounding, is "A Leak in the Fountain of Youth", originally published as by A. R. Long. Unlike most of the stories posted on this blog, "A Leak in the Fountain of Youth" is not confined to the pages of a pulp fiction magazine -- it was reprinted in the 2003 anthology Sci-Fi Womanthology, edited by Forrest J. Ackerman and Pam Keesey. So now, without further ado, we present:
A Leak in the Fountain of Youth
by Amelia Reynolds Long
This is not an attempt to seek vulgar publicity for the extraordinary experimental work in gland control carried on by my friend, Professor Aloysius O'Flannigan; neither is it an effort to exonerate him in the public mind of the supposed murder of Gustavus Adolphus Lindstrom. In the first place, any type of publicity whatsoever is highly distasteful to Aloysius; and, in the second, the living presence of Gustavus himself is exoneration enough. All I wish to do is to set down the truth, in order that the wild rumors accusing a reputable man of science of such preposterous -- not to say scandalous -- behavior, may be stilled.
Although Aloysius O'Flannigan is still a very young man, he has already accomplished some most remarkable things in the field of biochemistry. Not least among these is his growth-and-age-control serum, based upon a series of highly intricate experiments with the glandular system.
"It is really quite simple when you get down to it, Eric," he told me one day in his laboratory. "Science has known for a long time that the growth and aging of the body are governed by certain glands. There is, for example, the pituitary gland, controlling skeletal growth; the thymus, regulating physical development to adolescence; the thyroid, governing mental and nervous development; and all the rst of them.
"Science has even realized that the control of these glands and their hormones means practical control of the development of the individual. And that is what I plan to do, Eric."
Here he leaned forward and tapped me impressively on the knee, while his blue eyes shone excitedly behind his shell-rimmed spectacles. "I mean to control the entire glandular system, so that a man may become old or young, large or small, at will. It's entirely logical."
I shook my head. "It may sound entirely logical in theory," I told him, "but you'll find it's going to be something else in practice. I don't want to hurt your feelings, Aloysius, but if you think, for example, that you can turn an old man into a boy, you're -- well, due for a keen disappointment. It can't be done."
"And why not?' he demanded.
"Why not!" I echoed. "Well, for one thing, there's skeletal growth. Be reasonable, Aloysius. It is perfectly comprehensible that you may be able to arrest bodily development through control of the glandular system; but to claim that you can reverse the process is sheer nonsense."
"You understand the process of coalition in the unicellular animals, don't you?" he asked. The light of battle was beginning to appear in his unusually mild eyes.
"Certainly," I answered, a little nettled that he should question my knowledge on such an elementary point of zoology. "It is the reverse of the process of subdivision. Instead of one amoeba or protozoan subdividing to form two new individuals, two amoebae coalesce to form one. But what has that got to do with --"
He interrupted me. "And you realize that the individual cell structure of the human body is similar to that of the unicellular animals, including cell division in the process of growth, don't you?" he persisted. "Well, then, why couldn't coalition take place in a similar manner, also?"
"But it doesn't," I protested. "You know very well that it doesn't."
"But it could through control of the glandular system. Don't you see it?"
All I could see was that we were arguing in a circle, so I gave it up.
* * *
It was about three months after this that the bank robbery occurred. I read the account of it in the morning paper as I ate my breakfast; but at the time noticed nothing beyond the fact that our largest Suburban Bank had been relieved of one hundred thousand dollars by a masked man who had entered just a minute before closing time the day before, and held up the place single-handed. Just as he was leaving, his mask had slipped down; the paying teller had seen . . . Here the story was continued on an inside page, and I, being in something of a hurry, did not take the time to finish it.
I had planned to drop around to see Aloysius that morning to ask his opinion on an article I had written on the unemployment situation in early Babylonia, but when I reached his home, all thoughts of the matter were driven from my mind. Our old college friend, Gustavus Adolphus Lindstrom, had just arrived ahead of me and he was in trouble.
Now, being in trouble is not precisely a new position for Gustavus Adolphus. In the first place he is a free-verse poet, and in the second -- But the first will cover everything, so I will not trouble to elaborate.
Usually his escapades are of the picturesque but comparatively harmless variety, but this one was different. In fact, it was so different that it centered around the Suburban Bank robbery, with Gustavus Adolphus cast in the leading role.
It was one of those damning cases of circumstantial evidence and mistaken identification. The paying teller of the bank had been taken down to police headquarters to try to identify the holdup man in the rogues' gallery. When he had failed to find his man among the accepted celebrities, the police, in desperation, had brought out a collection of minor offenders; and from these the misguided bank clerk had picked out Gustavus Adolphus!
"But, Gussie," inquired Aloysius, "how in the world did your picture ever get in the rogues' gallery?"
Gustavus Adolphus looked somewhat embarrassed. "You see, it was this way," he began. "A few years ago, I headed a movement for the practical revival of classicism. One of our aims was to bring back the ancient Greek forms of dress for both men and women, and I, as head of the movement, felt it my duty to put the theory into practice.
"But, when I walked down Broadway in the tunic and sandals of Sophocles' time, I was arrested at Forty-second Street and charged with both appearing in public improperly clad and attracting a crowd that obstructed traffic. I -- I spent three months in jail," he finished lamely.
* * *
While he was explaining this to Aloysius, my mind was busy with the problem at hand. "Of course, it's a case of wrong identification based on coincidental resemblance," I said now. To assume that Gustavus Adolphus would have held up a bank, even if he had known how, was naturally ridiculous. "But the mistake can be cleared up readily enough. All you need to do is produce your alibi for yesterday afternoon and then --"
"But that's just the trouble," he interrupted piteously. "I haven't got an alibi."
"You -- what?" Aloysius and I stared at him in blank amazement.
"What I mean is, I've got an alibi, but I can't prove it," he explained. He looked pathetically from one of us to the other.
"But where were you?" I demanded.
"In a Greek sarcophagus at the university museum," he answered meekly.
I began to lose patience. "This is no time for flippancy," I told him. "Stop trying to create a sensation, and tell us where you were."
"But I have told you," he protested. "I wanted to write a poem on the death of Socrates, so I went to the Greek wing of the museum and climbed into the stone sarcophagus -- the one with the opening above the face and shoulder of the occupant -- to put myself in the mood. I -- I'm afraid no one saw me there."
"Didn't anyone come into the Greek wing?" Aloysius inquired.
"Oh, yes," Gustavus Adolphus said. "One of the university students came in with a young lady. He came quite close to where I was, and flicked cigarette ashes through the opening of the sarcophagus. But since the interior of one of those things is rather dark, he couldn't have seen me unless he had deliberately leaned over and peered in."
"But you must have been able to see him," I pointed out. "Couldn't you recognize him if you saw him again?"
"I'm afraid not," he admitted regretfully. "You see, the cigarette ashes landed in my eye and I wasn't able to see anything for quite some time. All I know about him is that the young lady addressed him as Lover Boy, and that is hardly sufficient for identification."
Aloysius and I agreed that it was not.
"This is beginning to be serious," Aloysius said gravely, as we appeared to be at a deadlock. "If you can't prove an alibi, you'll never be able to convince the police that a mistake has been made."
"I realize it," Gustavus said, "and I don't know what to do or where to go."
I was tempted to suggest back into the sarcophagus, but, as I had warned him only a minute before, it was hardly the time for levity. Something had to be done, and done quickly.
I looked at Aloysius. "What are we going to do?" I queried.
"I thought," Gustavous Adolphus ventured timidly, "that perhaps Aloysius could do something to me with his science, so that the police couldn't recognize me."
Aloysius' nostrils quivered. "Be quiet, both of you," he commanded, "while I think."
He began to stride up and down the room, his chin sunk forward upon his breast, and his hands clasped loosely behind his back. Gustavus and I watched him anxiously. We both knew that if he was to think of something, it would have to be fast and it would have to be good.
Suddenly he stopped in the middle of his pacing, and smote his left palm with his right fist. His eyes were gleaming behind his thick-lensed spectacles.
"I've got it!" he cried. "My glandular controls serum, of course!"
I sprang out of my chair at the words. "No, Aloysius, no!" I exclaimed aghast. "You wouldn't dare!"
He ignored me, and addressed Gustavus Adolphus. "Its a new formula that I completed less than a week ago," he explained. "By its use, I can change you temporarily to a boy of about sixteen. Shall I do it?"
"Don't you let him," I warned Gustavus. "It's liable to kill you."
Gustavus looked uncertainly from me to Aloysius. "Is it dangerous?" he inquired.
"Of course not," Aloysius declared impatiently. "Why, only yesterday I changed a battled-scarred tomcat to a mewling kitten, and today it's enjoying life to the full."
"Will it hurt?"
"You'll have to ask the tomcat. But it's practically certain to be painless, since you merely fall asleep, and when you waken, years have dropped from your age."
"It sounds rather attractive," Gustavus confessed.
"It sounds too quick to be good," I commented.
"Eric, you be quiet," Aloysius snapped at me. Now that the chance to try out his pet theory upon a human being had been practically dropped in his lap, he wasn't going to have it snatched away by anybody. "Under ordinary circumstances, the treatment would cover a period of months, but we've got no time for that now. We've got to act fast."
(to be continued)
All of Long's early stories have passed into the public domain, but for the most part are unavailable online. We here at the Johnny Pez blog have chosen to correct this oversight by posting some of her short fiction here in a blog-friendly multipart format. Earlier this month, we published Long's story "Cosmic Fever" from the February 1937 issue of Astounding. We now follow up with a pair of stories featuring the character of Professor Aloysius O'Flannigan. First up, from the August 1936 issue of Astounding, is "A Leak in the Fountain of Youth", originally published as by A. R. Long. Unlike most of the stories posted on this blog, "A Leak in the Fountain of Youth" is not confined to the pages of a pulp fiction magazine -- it was reprinted in the 2003 anthology Sci-Fi Womanthology, edited by Forrest J. Ackerman and Pam Keesey. So now, without further ado, we present:
A Leak in the Fountain of Youth
by Amelia Reynolds Long
This is not an attempt to seek vulgar publicity for the extraordinary experimental work in gland control carried on by my friend, Professor Aloysius O'Flannigan; neither is it an effort to exonerate him in the public mind of the supposed murder of Gustavus Adolphus Lindstrom. In the first place, any type of publicity whatsoever is highly distasteful to Aloysius; and, in the second, the living presence of Gustavus himself is exoneration enough. All I wish to do is to set down the truth, in order that the wild rumors accusing a reputable man of science of such preposterous -- not to say scandalous -- behavior, may be stilled.
Although Aloysius O'Flannigan is still a very young man, he has already accomplished some most remarkable things in the field of biochemistry. Not least among these is his growth-and-age-control serum, based upon a series of highly intricate experiments with the glandular system.
"It is really quite simple when you get down to it, Eric," he told me one day in his laboratory. "Science has known for a long time that the growth and aging of the body are governed by certain glands. There is, for example, the pituitary gland, controlling skeletal growth; the thymus, regulating physical development to adolescence; the thyroid, governing mental and nervous development; and all the rst of them.
"Science has even realized that the control of these glands and their hormones means practical control of the development of the individual. And that is what I plan to do, Eric."
Here he leaned forward and tapped me impressively on the knee, while his blue eyes shone excitedly behind his shell-rimmed spectacles. "I mean to control the entire glandular system, so that a man may become old or young, large or small, at will. It's entirely logical."
I shook my head. "It may sound entirely logical in theory," I told him, "but you'll find it's going to be something else in practice. I don't want to hurt your feelings, Aloysius, but if you think, for example, that you can turn an old man into a boy, you're -- well, due for a keen disappointment. It can't be done."
"And why not?' he demanded.
"Why not!" I echoed. "Well, for one thing, there's skeletal growth. Be reasonable, Aloysius. It is perfectly comprehensible that you may be able to arrest bodily development through control of the glandular system; but to claim that you can reverse the process is sheer nonsense."
"You understand the process of coalition in the unicellular animals, don't you?" he asked. The light of battle was beginning to appear in his unusually mild eyes.
"Certainly," I answered, a little nettled that he should question my knowledge on such an elementary point of zoology. "It is the reverse of the process of subdivision. Instead of one amoeba or protozoan subdividing to form two new individuals, two amoebae coalesce to form one. But what has that got to do with --"
He interrupted me. "And you realize that the individual cell structure of the human body is similar to that of the unicellular animals, including cell division in the process of growth, don't you?" he persisted. "Well, then, why couldn't coalition take place in a similar manner, also?"
"But it doesn't," I protested. "You know very well that it doesn't."
"But it could through control of the glandular system. Don't you see it?"
All I could see was that we were arguing in a circle, so I gave it up.
* * *
It was about three months after this that the bank robbery occurred. I read the account of it in the morning paper as I ate my breakfast; but at the time noticed nothing beyond the fact that our largest Suburban Bank had been relieved of one hundred thousand dollars by a masked man who had entered just a minute before closing time the day before, and held up the place single-handed. Just as he was leaving, his mask had slipped down; the paying teller had seen . . . Here the story was continued on an inside page, and I, being in something of a hurry, did not take the time to finish it.
I had planned to drop around to see Aloysius that morning to ask his opinion on an article I had written on the unemployment situation in early Babylonia, but when I reached his home, all thoughts of the matter were driven from my mind. Our old college friend, Gustavus Adolphus Lindstrom, had just arrived ahead of me and he was in trouble.
Now, being in trouble is not precisely a new position for Gustavus Adolphus. In the first place he is a free-verse poet, and in the second -- But the first will cover everything, so I will not trouble to elaborate.
Usually his escapades are of the picturesque but comparatively harmless variety, but this one was different. In fact, it was so different that it centered around the Suburban Bank robbery, with Gustavus Adolphus cast in the leading role.
It was one of those damning cases of circumstantial evidence and mistaken identification. The paying teller of the bank had been taken down to police headquarters to try to identify the holdup man in the rogues' gallery. When he had failed to find his man among the accepted celebrities, the police, in desperation, had brought out a collection of minor offenders; and from these the misguided bank clerk had picked out Gustavus Adolphus!
"But, Gussie," inquired Aloysius, "how in the world did your picture ever get in the rogues' gallery?"
Gustavus Adolphus looked somewhat embarrassed. "You see, it was this way," he began. "A few years ago, I headed a movement for the practical revival of classicism. One of our aims was to bring back the ancient Greek forms of dress for both men and women, and I, as head of the movement, felt it my duty to put the theory into practice.
"But, when I walked down Broadway in the tunic and sandals of Sophocles' time, I was arrested at Forty-second Street and charged with both appearing in public improperly clad and attracting a crowd that obstructed traffic. I -- I spent three months in jail," he finished lamely.
* * *
While he was explaining this to Aloysius, my mind was busy with the problem at hand. "Of course, it's a case of wrong identification based on coincidental resemblance," I said now. To assume that Gustavus Adolphus would have held up a bank, even if he had known how, was naturally ridiculous. "But the mistake can be cleared up readily enough. All you need to do is produce your alibi for yesterday afternoon and then --"
"But that's just the trouble," he interrupted piteously. "I haven't got an alibi."
"You -- what?" Aloysius and I stared at him in blank amazement.
"What I mean is, I've got an alibi, but I can't prove it," he explained. He looked pathetically from one of us to the other.
"But where were you?" I demanded.
"In a Greek sarcophagus at the university museum," he answered meekly.
I began to lose patience. "This is no time for flippancy," I told him. "Stop trying to create a sensation, and tell us where you were."
"But I have told you," he protested. "I wanted to write a poem on the death of Socrates, so I went to the Greek wing of the museum and climbed into the stone sarcophagus -- the one with the opening above the face and shoulder of the occupant -- to put myself in the mood. I -- I'm afraid no one saw me there."
"Didn't anyone come into the Greek wing?" Aloysius inquired.
"Oh, yes," Gustavus Adolphus said. "One of the university students came in with a young lady. He came quite close to where I was, and flicked cigarette ashes through the opening of the sarcophagus. But since the interior of one of those things is rather dark, he couldn't have seen me unless he had deliberately leaned over and peered in."
"But you must have been able to see him," I pointed out. "Couldn't you recognize him if you saw him again?"
"I'm afraid not," he admitted regretfully. "You see, the cigarette ashes landed in my eye and I wasn't able to see anything for quite some time. All I know about him is that the young lady addressed him as Lover Boy, and that is hardly sufficient for identification."
Aloysius and I agreed that it was not.
"This is beginning to be serious," Aloysius said gravely, as we appeared to be at a deadlock. "If you can't prove an alibi, you'll never be able to convince the police that a mistake has been made."
"I realize it," Gustavus said, "and I don't know what to do or where to go."
I was tempted to suggest back into the sarcophagus, but, as I had warned him only a minute before, it was hardly the time for levity. Something had to be done, and done quickly.
I looked at Aloysius. "What are we going to do?" I queried.
"I thought," Gustavous Adolphus ventured timidly, "that perhaps Aloysius could do something to me with his science, so that the police couldn't recognize me."
Aloysius' nostrils quivered. "Be quiet, both of you," he commanded, "while I think."
He began to stride up and down the room, his chin sunk forward upon his breast, and his hands clasped loosely behind his back. Gustavus and I watched him anxiously. We both knew that if he was to think of something, it would have to be fast and it would have to be good.
Suddenly he stopped in the middle of his pacing, and smote his left palm with his right fist. His eyes were gleaming behind his thick-lensed spectacles.
"I've got it!" he cried. "My glandular controls serum, of course!"
I sprang out of my chair at the words. "No, Aloysius, no!" I exclaimed aghast. "You wouldn't dare!"
He ignored me, and addressed Gustavus Adolphus. "Its a new formula that I completed less than a week ago," he explained. "By its use, I can change you temporarily to a boy of about sixteen. Shall I do it?"
"Don't you let him," I warned Gustavus. "It's liable to kill you."
Gustavus looked uncertainly from me to Aloysius. "Is it dangerous?" he inquired.
"Of course not," Aloysius declared impatiently. "Why, only yesterday I changed a battled-scarred tomcat to a mewling kitten, and today it's enjoying life to the full."
"Will it hurt?"
"You'll have to ask the tomcat. But it's practically certain to be painless, since you merely fall asleep, and when you waken, years have dropped from your age."
"It sounds rather attractive," Gustavus confessed.
"It sounds too quick to be good," I commented.
"Eric, you be quiet," Aloysius snapped at me. Now that the chance to try out his pet theory upon a human being had been practically dropped in his lap, he wasn't going to have it snatched away by anybody. "Under ordinary circumstances, the treatment would cover a period of months, but we've got no time for that now. We've got to act fast."
(to be continued)
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Diagnosing "Cosmic Fever"
The first half of the 1930s saw a curious foreshadowing of the Space Race of the 1950s and 1960s: the Stratosphere Race. It came about because Auguste Piccard, a Swiss physicist, became curious about the upper atmosphere. Since the air became too thin to breathe above four miles or so, Piccard invented a pressurized capsule to maintain a breathable air pressure, and on May 27, 1931 Piccard and his assistant Paul Kipfer set a record by rising up 9.8 miles in a balloon. The following year, on August 18, Piccard and Max Cosyns flew to a height of 10.4 miles. This touched off an international competition between the United States and the Soviet Union to reach the highest altitude, which formed the background for Amelia Reynolds Long's story "Cosmic Fever", published in the February 1937 issue of Astounding Stories.
When Long wrote her story in 1936, the altitude record was held by the U.S. Army Air Corps' Explorer II, which reached an altitude of 13.7 miles on November 11, 1935 while manned by Captain Albert Stevens and Captain Orvil Anderson. Long's hero, Pat Marsh, plans to fly his balloon up to an altitude of 60 miles, more than four times as high, in order to study cosmic rays.
Cosmic Rays had been discovered by a balloon-borne researcher named Victor Francis Hess in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1912. Hess found that radiation levels increased the higher he rose into the atmosphere, leading him to conclude that the radiation was coming from outer space. Hess's observations were confirmed by Robert A. Millikan of CalTech in 1925, and it was Millikan who named the phenomenon "cosmic rays". Millikan thought the rays were just that: electromagnetic radiation, but in 1930 Arthur Compton of the University of Chicago proposed that they were subatomic particles. Piccard agreed with Millikan, and in her story Long also assumes that cosmic rays are, like sunlight, a form of radiation.
Long also assumed that, like sunlight, most cosmic rays were reflected by the Earth's atmosphere, and that as one rose higher above the Earth, the energy from cosmic rays would grow stronger until they would heat Pat Marsh's balloon hundreds of degrees when it rose above the stratopause. As evidence she cited Piccard's ascent in 1931, when he reported his gondola growing uncomfortably warm. However, Piccard's experiences actually contradicted Long. For his 1931 flight he had painted his gondola half white and half black, and had installed a mechanism that would allow him to rotate it to regulate the temperature. The mechanism became jammed, though, with the black side of the gondola facing the sun, and that caused the temperature rise. On his later flight in 1932, when he rose even higher, Piccard reported that the temperature in the gondola fell below freezing, and during their flight in 1935 Stevens and Anderson found their gondola becoming even colder. However, as science fiction writers frequently did (and do), Long was willing to fudge the facts in order to consider an unusual idea: the idea that cosmic rays were energetic enough to drastically heat objects in space. In effect, Long predicted that outer space would turn out to be one big microwave oven.
As it turned out, the balloon altitude record set by Stevens and Anderson remained in place for 21 years. They had reached the upper limit of what could be accomplished with the available technology, and it wasn't until November 8, 1956 that a manned balloon flew higher. By that time, though, Arthur Murray had already broken the Explorer II altitude record on May 28, 1954, reaching 16.5 miles in the experimental jet aircraft Bell X-1A. The current record for a manned balloon flight was set on May 4, 1961 when Commander Malcolm D. Ross and Lieutenant Victor A. Prather, Jr. flew in the USN Strato-Lab V to a height of 21.5 miles.
It also turned out that Millikan and Piccard were wrong, and Compton was right, about the nature of cosmic rays, which are indeed subatomic particles. Most cosmic rays are deflected by the Earth's magnetic field rather than its atmosphere, and the launch of Sputnik I on October 4, 1957 demonstrated that they would not, in fact, cook an object in outer space.
The American Institute of Technology, the research institute that built Pat Marsh's first two unmanned balloons, and of which Professor Roy Anthony was a member, was an invention on Long's part, though the name was used for real by a truck driving school founded in Phoenix, Arizona in 1981.
When Long wrote her story in 1936, the altitude record was held by the U.S. Army Air Corps' Explorer II, which reached an altitude of 13.7 miles on November 11, 1935 while manned by Captain Albert Stevens and Captain Orvil Anderson. Long's hero, Pat Marsh, plans to fly his balloon up to an altitude of 60 miles, more than four times as high, in order to study cosmic rays.
Cosmic Rays had been discovered by a balloon-borne researcher named Victor Francis Hess in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1912. Hess found that radiation levels increased the higher he rose into the atmosphere, leading him to conclude that the radiation was coming from outer space. Hess's observations were confirmed by Robert A. Millikan of CalTech in 1925, and it was Millikan who named the phenomenon "cosmic rays". Millikan thought the rays were just that: electromagnetic radiation, but in 1930 Arthur Compton of the University of Chicago proposed that they were subatomic particles. Piccard agreed with Millikan, and in her story Long also assumes that cosmic rays are, like sunlight, a form of radiation.
Long also assumed that, like sunlight, most cosmic rays were reflected by the Earth's atmosphere, and that as one rose higher above the Earth, the energy from cosmic rays would grow stronger until they would heat Pat Marsh's balloon hundreds of degrees when it rose above the stratopause. As evidence she cited Piccard's ascent in 1931, when he reported his gondola growing uncomfortably warm. However, Piccard's experiences actually contradicted Long. For his 1931 flight he had painted his gondola half white and half black, and had installed a mechanism that would allow him to rotate it to regulate the temperature. The mechanism became jammed, though, with the black side of the gondola facing the sun, and that caused the temperature rise. On his later flight in 1932, when he rose even higher, Piccard reported that the temperature in the gondola fell below freezing, and during their flight in 1935 Stevens and Anderson found their gondola becoming even colder. However, as science fiction writers frequently did (and do), Long was willing to fudge the facts in order to consider an unusual idea: the idea that cosmic rays were energetic enough to drastically heat objects in space. In effect, Long predicted that outer space would turn out to be one big microwave oven.
As it turned out, the balloon altitude record set by Stevens and Anderson remained in place for 21 years. They had reached the upper limit of what could be accomplished with the available technology, and it wasn't until November 8, 1956 that a manned balloon flew higher. By that time, though, Arthur Murray had already broken the Explorer II altitude record on May 28, 1954, reaching 16.5 miles in the experimental jet aircraft Bell X-1A. The current record for a manned balloon flight was set on May 4, 1961 when Commander Malcolm D. Ross and Lieutenant Victor A. Prather, Jr. flew in the USN Strato-Lab V to a height of 21.5 miles.
It also turned out that Millikan and Piccard were wrong, and Compton was right, about the nature of cosmic rays, which are indeed subatomic particles. Most cosmic rays are deflected by the Earth's magnetic field rather than its atmosphere, and the launch of Sputnik I on October 4, 1957 demonstrated that they would not, in fact, cook an object in outer space.
The American Institute of Technology, the research institute that built Pat Marsh's first two unmanned balloons, and of which Professor Roy Anthony was a member, was an invention on Long's part, though the name was used for real by a truck driving school founded in Phoenix, Arizona in 1981.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
"Cosmic Fever" by Amelia Reynolds Long, part 2
This is the second half of "Cosmic Fever", a story by pioneering science fiction writer Amelia Reynolds Long that was first published in the February 1937 issue of Astounding Stories magazine (the first half is here). This is the first time the story has seen the light of day since its original magazine appearance 73 years ago, and its publication on this blog will represent the first complete story by Miss Long to appear online.
UPDATE: Richard Simms informs me that he once had Miss Long's story "Bride of the Antarctic" on his tribute page, but has since taken it down.
The story so far:
Pat Marsh, a young scientist, has overseen the construction of a manned research balloon in New Mexico that he intends to fly above the turbopause, sixty miles above the ground, in order to study cosmic rays. He also hopes to learn the fate of two previous unmanned balloons that returned to earth after suffering intense heat damage. The launch is successful, and Marsh finds himself rising above the New Mexico plateau . . .
* * *
From the observation window of the gondola, Pat Marsh saw the earth drop from beneath him, saw the panorama of plateaus, valleys, and mountain peaks spread out like a giant relief map. A moment or so he watched it, with a sort of half fascination; then he turned away from it to his instruments.
The altimeter was climbing steadily. One mile, two miles, two and a half -- Presently the light began to take on a grayish, silvery luminescence, and he knew that he was entering the earth's ragged cloud blanket. This lasted for only a few minutes. Then, suddenly, it was gone, and vivid sunshine, almost dazzling in its brilliance, took its place.
Again he looked out of the window. Beneath him spread a billowing, nebulous sea, flecked with turquoise and amethyst shadows. A feeling of tremendous loneliness swept over him. Although he had often flown above the clouds in an ordinary airplane, it had never been quite like this. It was now as though a door had been closed upon him, blotting out a familiar face.
For the next half hour or so he busied himself with his instruments. The air in the gondola was beginning to grow stale, and he turned on his oxygen tank to replenish it. The balloon was now nine miles up, almost into the stratosphere. Already the sky had begun to grow dark, but not quite dark enough for the stars to be visible. Pat looked at his electroscope, and saw that it indicated a noticeable increase in the presence of cosmic rays.
Another half hour, and he was well into the stratosphere. Glancing downward, he could discern the curvature of the earth, its edges faintly shining in the reflected light of the sun. The balloon was still rising rapidly; for, although the atmosphere was much thinner, the gravitational pull of the earth was decreasing as the distance between it and the balloon increased. The gondola had now attained an altitude of twenty-one and a half miles -- higher than man had ever ventured before.
The sky was taking on the familiar blue-black of night, with the stars breaking through in clustered brilliance. To the north, the Great and Little Dippers swung in their eternal march around the polestar, while against the zenith was set the mighty constellation of Orion, with the orange glory of Betelgeuse, giant of the heavens, flashing from his right shoulder. In front of him, the beautiful cluster of the Hyades marked the head of Taurus, whose red eye, the fiery Aldebaran, glowed balefully. And between and beyond these and all the other familiar sky marks, a hundred thousand lesser stars, ordinarily invisible to the naked eye, gleamed in lambent splendor.
Pat peered through the observation window on his left, and beheld the awesome phenomenon of the sun blazing in a black sky, the angry red of its chromosphere pulsating like the inflamed rim of a bloodshot eye, from which the fiery tentacles of its protuberances writhed and darted into the roseate pearl of its corona. The dazzling spectacle of that unveiled majesty was endurable only for an instant; then he pressed his hands over his face in fear of blindness.
* * *
When the brilliant afterimage, caused by that brief glance into the sun's dazzling face, had vanished from before his eyes, he returned once more to his instruments. The leaves of the electroscope were wide apart, while the inked line on the automatically revolving drum rose steadily, indicating the continued increase of cosmic rays. The balloon had now attained an altitude of twenty-six miles.
Outside, the temperature registered minus 134 degrees Fahrenheit -- almost fifty degrees colder than the lowest temperature ever recorded on earth. Yet, oddly enough, Pat experienced no discomfort. On the contrary, he was growing too warm, heavy beads of persperation were forming upon his forehead and the back of his neck.
He unbuttoned his coat and removed it. For some time he had been vaguely conscious of the rising temperature inside the gondola, but he had been so engrossed by the panorama of the heavens unrolling before him that he had paid it scant attention. Now he glanced at the thermometer on the wall in front of him. It registered ninety-six degrees, Fahrenheit, the temperature of an exceedingly hot summer day on earth!
"That's funny," he muttered half aloud. "It isn't possible that the absorption from the sun's rays could be so great through these heavily insulated walls."
He examined the little electric heater that had been installed in case of emergency, to ascertain whether it could have been turned on by accident. But no; it was not even connected. The only heat being generated inside the sphere was the practically negligible amount incidental to the running of the electric drums.
He looked again from one of the observation windows, this time almost fearfully, half expecting to see some flaming, giant meteor that was responsible for the condition. Yet, as he looked, his scientist's reason told him that this was out of the question. Even had it been possible for such a body to become more than faintly incandescent in this highly rarified atmosphere, his instruments would have warned him of its approach long ago. Moreover, the meteor belt was down in the tropopause, now almost twenty miles below him.
The balloon was now over twenty-nine miles up, in the very outer fringes of the stratosphere. In another minute it would have entered the nitrogen layer beyond. Then would come the real test of his experiment, for it was doubtful whether even the great hydrogen balloon could carry his weight and that of the gondola much farther; since, although the atomic weight of nitrogen is 14.008, while that of hydrogen is only 1.0077, the atmospheric pressure at that great height was dropping rapidly.
Pat was bending tensely over his instruments. Already the degree of ascent was slowing perceptibly. The altimeter now registered thirty and a quarter miles, while the pressure gage indicated a swift drop from 1.84 to nearly .403 millimeters. He turned to the electroscope and its revolving drum; one of the most important pieces of apparatus on board, so far as the purpose of the expedition was concerned. If his calculations and those of other scientists were correct, the number of cosmic rays should now begin to increase with even greater rapidity than it had done in the stratosphere.
With a feeling of exultation, he saw the line being traced on the drum scud higher and higher. Then, with a suddenness that was startling, the stylus shot almost vertically toward the top of the slowly moving graph paper! The next instant Pat beheld drum, electroscope, everything within his range of vision, swim before his eyes in a distorting heat haze, while at the same time the air about him became like the stifling breath of a furnace. With trembling hands, he fumbled for the rip cord that opened the outer balloon, while the sweat ran in rivers into his eyes, totally blinding him --
* * *
* * *
"Tell me, lad," Professor Anthony entreated, as he sat opposite Pat Marsh twenty-four hours later in the young man's hotel room, "why did you decide to come down when you had reached only one half of your intended altitude? You say nothing went wrong with the apparatus; then what happened? Was the balloon unable to rise higher in the nitrogen layer?"
Pat shook his head slowly. He was still weak and a trifle shaky, having been found unconscious inside the gondola when the balloon had drifted back to earth.
"Oh, it would have continued to go up, all right," he replied. "That is," he added with a grim smile, "if it hadn't exploded on the way."
"Exploded?" Professor Anthony repeated. "You mean that the outer balloon was in danger of bursting through the lessening of the atmospheric pressure? But I thought that possibility had been taken into account in the construction of the bag."
"It was," Pat answered. "I didn't mean that." An expression of apprehension came into his tired eyes. "My records!" he exclaimed abruptly. "Were they all right?"
"They were," the little professor assured him. "And even from my brief examination of them, I am confident that they are going to add materially to our knowledge of cosmic rays. But there was one thing about them that puzzled me: part of the paper was slightly discolored, as if it had been exposed to heat or intense sunlight. I can't account for it."
"I can." Little, grim lines appeared at the corners of Pat Marsh's mouth. "It was heat, sir, heat that was increasing so rapidly that, if I had gone on, it would have caused spontaneous combustion in the gondola, and exploded the hydrogen in both the inner and outer balloons, just as it did the two other times."
"What!" The professor stared incredulously through the thick lenses of his spectacles. "Heat in what is practically outer space? But that is impossible, Pat. Why, your own temperature records showed --"
"Yes, I know," Pat interrupted. "It sounds impossible, but it's true, nevertheless. We should have suspected it long ago. Why, the clue was in our hands as early as 1931, when Piccard made his first ascent into the stratosphere."
"But I -- I don't understand." Professor Anthony passed a thin hand through his silvery hair in a gesture of bewilderment.
"You'll remember," Pat explained, "how, when Piccard made that ascent, the temperature of the gondola rose so high that he had to lick drops of moisture from the inner walls to assuage his thirst. I believe this rise in temperature was explained as absorption of the sun's rays; but that was only a very small part of the real story. The true explanation lay in the very phenomenon that he was attempting to study."
"You mean," the professor began, "that the cosmic rays themselves --"
"Exactly," Pat nodded. "Cosmic rays are pure cosmic energy, bombarding our earth from outer space. And energy, as we both learned in our very first course in elementary physics, is anything which, under the proper conditions, can be converted into heat. The dense atmosphere of the earth serves to refract most of these rays, just as it does ordinary heat and light rays from the sun. But up there at a height of over thirty miles, where there is no protective atmosphere, they struck the gondola with their full intensity, and, with their almost incalculable powers of penetration, passed straight through its walls. The almost pure oxygen within furnished the proper conditions for converting them into heat."
"Amazing!" Professor Anthony exclaimed. "And yet, as you say, Pat, we should have suspected the truth long ago." Then his face fell. "I suppose," he said with a sigh, "that puts an end to man's explorations in the earth's upper atmosphere, and an end to his dreams of future space flight as well."
"Looks that way," Pat agreed; then he added with a grin, "Unless he can figure out some way to insure himself against the hazard of fire from beyond."
THE END
(continue to review)
UPDATE: Richard Simms informs me that he once had Miss Long's story "Bride of the Antarctic" on his tribute page, but has since taken it down.
The story so far:
Pat Marsh, a young scientist, has overseen the construction of a manned research balloon in New Mexico that he intends to fly above the turbopause, sixty miles above the ground, in order to study cosmic rays. He also hopes to learn the fate of two previous unmanned balloons that returned to earth after suffering intense heat damage. The launch is successful, and Marsh finds himself rising above the New Mexico plateau . . .
* * *
From the observation window of the gondola, Pat Marsh saw the earth drop from beneath him, saw the panorama of plateaus, valleys, and mountain peaks spread out like a giant relief map. A moment or so he watched it, with a sort of half fascination; then he turned away from it to his instruments.
The altimeter was climbing steadily. One mile, two miles, two and a half -- Presently the light began to take on a grayish, silvery luminescence, and he knew that he was entering the earth's ragged cloud blanket. This lasted for only a few minutes. Then, suddenly, it was gone, and vivid sunshine, almost dazzling in its brilliance, took its place.
Again he looked out of the window. Beneath him spread a billowing, nebulous sea, flecked with turquoise and amethyst shadows. A feeling of tremendous loneliness swept over him. Although he had often flown above the clouds in an ordinary airplane, it had never been quite like this. It was now as though a door had been closed upon him, blotting out a familiar face.
For the next half hour or so he busied himself with his instruments. The air in the gondola was beginning to grow stale, and he turned on his oxygen tank to replenish it. The balloon was now nine miles up, almost into the stratosphere. Already the sky had begun to grow dark, but not quite dark enough for the stars to be visible. Pat looked at his electroscope, and saw that it indicated a noticeable increase in the presence of cosmic rays.
Another half hour, and he was well into the stratosphere. Glancing downward, he could discern the curvature of the earth, its edges faintly shining in the reflected light of the sun. The balloon was still rising rapidly; for, although the atmosphere was much thinner, the gravitational pull of the earth was decreasing as the distance between it and the balloon increased. The gondola had now attained an altitude of twenty-one and a half miles -- higher than man had ever ventured before.
The sky was taking on the familiar blue-black of night, with the stars breaking through in clustered brilliance. To the north, the Great and Little Dippers swung in their eternal march around the polestar, while against the zenith was set the mighty constellation of Orion, with the orange glory of Betelgeuse, giant of the heavens, flashing from his right shoulder. In front of him, the beautiful cluster of the Hyades marked the head of Taurus, whose red eye, the fiery Aldebaran, glowed balefully. And between and beyond these and all the other familiar sky marks, a hundred thousand lesser stars, ordinarily invisible to the naked eye, gleamed in lambent splendor.
Pat peered through the observation window on his left, and beheld the awesome phenomenon of the sun blazing in a black sky, the angry red of its chromosphere pulsating like the inflamed rim of a bloodshot eye, from which the fiery tentacles of its protuberances writhed and darted into the roseate pearl of its corona. The dazzling spectacle of that unveiled majesty was endurable only for an instant; then he pressed his hands over his face in fear of blindness.
* * *
When the brilliant afterimage, caused by that brief glance into the sun's dazzling face, had vanished from before his eyes, he returned once more to his instruments. The leaves of the electroscope were wide apart, while the inked line on the automatically revolving drum rose steadily, indicating the continued increase of cosmic rays. The balloon had now attained an altitude of twenty-six miles.
Outside, the temperature registered minus 134 degrees Fahrenheit -- almost fifty degrees colder than the lowest temperature ever recorded on earth. Yet, oddly enough, Pat experienced no discomfort. On the contrary, he was growing too warm, heavy beads of persperation were forming upon his forehead and the back of his neck.
He unbuttoned his coat and removed it. For some time he had been vaguely conscious of the rising temperature inside the gondola, but he had been so engrossed by the panorama of the heavens unrolling before him that he had paid it scant attention. Now he glanced at the thermometer on the wall in front of him. It registered ninety-six degrees, Fahrenheit, the temperature of an exceedingly hot summer day on earth!
"That's funny," he muttered half aloud. "It isn't possible that the absorption from the sun's rays could be so great through these heavily insulated walls."
He examined the little electric heater that had been installed in case of emergency, to ascertain whether it could have been turned on by accident. But no; it was not even connected. The only heat being generated inside the sphere was the practically negligible amount incidental to the running of the electric drums.
He looked again from one of the observation windows, this time almost fearfully, half expecting to see some flaming, giant meteor that was responsible for the condition. Yet, as he looked, his scientist's reason told him that this was out of the question. Even had it been possible for such a body to become more than faintly incandescent in this highly rarified atmosphere, his instruments would have warned him of its approach long ago. Moreover, the meteor belt was down in the tropopause, now almost twenty miles below him.
The balloon was now over twenty-nine miles up, in the very outer fringes of the stratosphere. In another minute it would have entered the nitrogen layer beyond. Then would come the real test of his experiment, for it was doubtful whether even the great hydrogen balloon could carry his weight and that of the gondola much farther; since, although the atomic weight of nitrogen is 14.008, while that of hydrogen is only 1.0077, the atmospheric pressure at that great height was dropping rapidly.
Pat was bending tensely over his instruments. Already the degree of ascent was slowing perceptibly. The altimeter now registered thirty and a quarter miles, while the pressure gage indicated a swift drop from 1.84 to nearly .403 millimeters. He turned to the electroscope and its revolving drum; one of the most important pieces of apparatus on board, so far as the purpose of the expedition was concerned. If his calculations and those of other scientists were correct, the number of cosmic rays should now begin to increase with even greater rapidity than it had done in the stratosphere.
With a feeling of exultation, he saw the line being traced on the drum scud higher and higher. Then, with a suddenness that was startling, the stylus shot almost vertically toward the top of the slowly moving graph paper! The next instant Pat beheld drum, electroscope, everything within his range of vision, swim before his eyes in a distorting heat haze, while at the same time the air about him became like the stifling breath of a furnace. With trembling hands, he fumbled for the rip cord that opened the outer balloon, while the sweat ran in rivers into his eyes, totally blinding him --
* * *
* * *
"Tell me, lad," Professor Anthony entreated, as he sat opposite Pat Marsh twenty-four hours later in the young man's hotel room, "why did you decide to come down when you had reached only one half of your intended altitude? You say nothing went wrong with the apparatus; then what happened? Was the balloon unable to rise higher in the nitrogen layer?"
Pat shook his head slowly. He was still weak and a trifle shaky, having been found unconscious inside the gondola when the balloon had drifted back to earth.
"Oh, it would have continued to go up, all right," he replied. "That is," he added with a grim smile, "if it hadn't exploded on the way."
"Exploded?" Professor Anthony repeated. "You mean that the outer balloon was in danger of bursting through the lessening of the atmospheric pressure? But I thought that possibility had been taken into account in the construction of the bag."
"It was," Pat answered. "I didn't mean that." An expression of apprehension came into his tired eyes. "My records!" he exclaimed abruptly. "Were they all right?"
"They were," the little professor assured him. "And even from my brief examination of them, I am confident that they are going to add materially to our knowledge of cosmic rays. But there was one thing about them that puzzled me: part of the paper was slightly discolored, as if it had been exposed to heat or intense sunlight. I can't account for it."
"I can." Little, grim lines appeared at the corners of Pat Marsh's mouth. "It was heat, sir, heat that was increasing so rapidly that, if I had gone on, it would have caused spontaneous combustion in the gondola, and exploded the hydrogen in both the inner and outer balloons, just as it did the two other times."
"What!" The professor stared incredulously through the thick lenses of his spectacles. "Heat in what is practically outer space? But that is impossible, Pat. Why, your own temperature records showed --"
"Yes, I know," Pat interrupted. "It sounds impossible, but it's true, nevertheless. We should have suspected it long ago. Why, the clue was in our hands as early as 1931, when Piccard made his first ascent into the stratosphere."
"But I -- I don't understand." Professor Anthony passed a thin hand through his silvery hair in a gesture of bewilderment.
"You'll remember," Pat explained, "how, when Piccard made that ascent, the temperature of the gondola rose so high that he had to lick drops of moisture from the inner walls to assuage his thirst. I believe this rise in temperature was explained as absorption of the sun's rays; but that was only a very small part of the real story. The true explanation lay in the very phenomenon that he was attempting to study."
"You mean," the professor began, "that the cosmic rays themselves --"
"Exactly," Pat nodded. "Cosmic rays are pure cosmic energy, bombarding our earth from outer space. And energy, as we both learned in our very first course in elementary physics, is anything which, under the proper conditions, can be converted into heat. The dense atmosphere of the earth serves to refract most of these rays, just as it does ordinary heat and light rays from the sun. But up there at a height of over thirty miles, where there is no protective atmosphere, they struck the gondola with their full intensity, and, with their almost incalculable powers of penetration, passed straight through its walls. The almost pure oxygen within furnished the proper conditions for converting them into heat."
"Amazing!" Professor Anthony exclaimed. "And yet, as you say, Pat, we should have suspected the truth long ago." Then his face fell. "I suppose," he said with a sigh, "that puts an end to man's explorations in the earth's upper atmosphere, and an end to his dreams of future space flight as well."
"Looks that way," Pat agreed; then he added with a grin, "Unless he can figure out some way to insure himself against the hazard of fire from beyond."
THE END
(continue to review)
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
"Cosmic Fever" by Amelia Reynolds Long, part 1
Last month, we at the Johnny Pez blog, as part of our ongoing effort to revive interest in the Gernsback Era of science fiction, noted the existence of a website dedicated to Amelia Reynolds Long (1904 - 1978), pioneering science fiction writer, mystery novelist, and poet. We also pointed out that none of Miss Long's stories are available online except for the first half of a story called "The Dimension Drug" that appeared in the first two issues of the fanzine Spaceways in 1938.
Well, we can't have that, can we? Given this blog's history of posting public domain science fiction stories online, it seems only right and proper that we correct that oversight by posting one or two samples of Miss Long's work here. Thus, we now present, for the first time since its original appearance in the February 1937 issue of Astounding Stories magazine, "Cosmic Fever" by Amelia Reynolds Long (originally published under the byline A. R. Long). As with our previous science fiction posts, the story will be published in a blog-friendly multipart format. Take it away, Miss Long . . .
Cosmic Fever
by Amelia Reynolds Long
Pat Marsh turned at the foot of the short rope ladder that led to the opening of the gondola of the stratosphere balloon, and held out his hand to the little, silver-haired Professor Anthony.
"Well: I guess we're all set, professor," he said, with his boyish grin. "Wish me luck."
"With all my heart, lad." The older man gripped the young scientist's hand fervently. Then a shadow flitted across his scholarly features. "You're sure everything is all right, Pat?" he asked anxiously. "There's no danger this time of any -- accident?"
Pat Marsh nodded his fair head reassuringly, but there was an expression of grimness in his blue eyes. "I made another check-up just before you got here," he replied. "Everything is in perfect condition. What's more, I know definitely this time that there's nothing in the gondola except the instruments that I put there myself. If it's possible to be sure of anything in this world, I'm positive that there can be no repitition of what happened the other two times."
On two former occasions, Pat had attempted to send sounding balloons into the upper regions of the earth's atmosphere. Each of these had consisted of the usual two gas bags, a smaller inside a larger. It had been estimated that the outer bag would burst at an altitude of sixty miles, well into the nitrogen layer that exists above the stratosphere proper. When this occurred, the smaller, inner bag would act as a parachute, and descend gently, with its attached container, in which Pat had placed his newly improved set of instruments for the recording of cosmic-ray activity.
On the first occasion, the container had been recovered four days later in the prairie section of the Middle West; but when it had been opened, the records upon the drums were found charred beyond legibility, while some of the more delicate instruments were warped and twisted into uselessness.
Concluding that some unforeseen accident had taken place, the American Institute of Technology, which was financing the experiment, had backed Pat in the construction of a second set of instruments and the release of another sounding balloon. But when again a mysterious fire within the three-foot container had destroyed the records and wrecked hundreds of dollars' worth of instruments, the directors of the institute had lost patience. Such an accident could not occur twice in succession, they argued, unless the apparatus itself was at fault.
Pat had protested, in vain, that his instruments had been in no way responsible for the combustion. His inventions had been condemned as impractical by the institute's committee, while he himself had been pronounced a failure.
But there had been one man who had not been satisfied with the committee's findings. Professor Roy Anthony, Pat's old friend and teacher, now head of the institute's department of astrophysics, was convinced that there was more behind the mysterious fires than appeared upon superficial examination. And so, in order to prove his faith in his young protégé, he had offered to privately finance the building of a third balloon, for a final test.
At Pat's suggestion, this one was to be different from its two predecessors. Instead of the small sounding balloon, with its attached case of instruments, it was to be large enough to support a spherical gondola similar to those used by Piccard and other stratosphere explorers, in which Pat himself would accompany his instruments into the upper atmosphere.
This, he had pointed out, was the only possible way to discover the cause of the trouble -- whether it was, indeed, the fault of the mechanism or, as one of the more sensation-loving newspapers had begun to hint, the work of some inimical outside agency. There were, the paper had observed, certain foreign governments intensely interested in stratosphere flights, who might prefer to keep the field exclusively to themselves.
* * *
For the following six months, Pat and two trusted assistants had isolated themselves in the lonely plateau land of New Mexico, where the gondola was assembled and equipped. None of the three ever left the grounds, while the only person allowed to visit them was Professor Anthony. At last came the day when all preparations had been completed, and the ascent into the regions of the superstratosphere, a height never before dared by man, was about to be attempted.
With a wave of his hand to the assembled newspapermen, photographers, and news-reel cameramen at the edge of the field, Pat climbed into the gondola and drew the short ladder up after him. A kick of his foot threw over the lever that closed the heavy sliding door, sealing him in the hollow sphere. Casting a quick glance through one of the observation windows, to make sure that Professor Anthony and the two workmen had got clear, he stepped to the tiny table built against the wall, and, with a hand that trembled slightly, pressed the key of an electric switch box, touching off the detonation caps that were to cut loose all of the ground moorings at once, thus allowing the balloon to rise evenly into the air.
The dull boom that followed was inaudible to him in his soundproof compartment, but he felt the quick tug as the four great cables parted. Then all sensation of motion vanished, as the balloon shot upward into the resistless atmosphere.
From the little group on the edge of the field a lusty cheer went up, and cameras clicked madly as the great silver gas bag, with its bulging top and steeply sloping, still uninflated lower portion -- that gave it the appearance of an inverted, giant drop of mercury -- rose higher and higher, carrying the comparatively tiny gondola with it, until, with the increasing altitude, the two dwindled into one single, shining speck. For a moment that speck seemed to hover almost directly overhead, like a belated morning star; then it vanished completely into the fathomless blue.
(continue to part 2)
Well, we can't have that, can we? Given this blog's history of posting public domain science fiction stories online, it seems only right and proper that we correct that oversight by posting one or two samples of Miss Long's work here. Thus, we now present, for the first time since its original appearance in the February 1937 issue of Astounding Stories magazine, "Cosmic Fever" by Amelia Reynolds Long (originally published under the byline A. R. Long). As with our previous science fiction posts, the story will be published in a blog-friendly multipart format. Take it away, Miss Long . . .
Cosmic Fever
by Amelia Reynolds Long
Pat Marsh turned at the foot of the short rope ladder that led to the opening of the gondola of the stratosphere balloon, and held out his hand to the little, silver-haired Professor Anthony.
"Well: I guess we're all set, professor," he said, with his boyish grin. "Wish me luck."
"With all my heart, lad." The older man gripped the young scientist's hand fervently. Then a shadow flitted across his scholarly features. "You're sure everything is all right, Pat?" he asked anxiously. "There's no danger this time of any -- accident?"
Pat Marsh nodded his fair head reassuringly, but there was an expression of grimness in his blue eyes. "I made another check-up just before you got here," he replied. "Everything is in perfect condition. What's more, I know definitely this time that there's nothing in the gondola except the instruments that I put there myself. If it's possible to be sure of anything in this world, I'm positive that there can be no repitition of what happened the other two times."
On two former occasions, Pat had attempted to send sounding balloons into the upper regions of the earth's atmosphere. Each of these had consisted of the usual two gas bags, a smaller inside a larger. It had been estimated that the outer bag would burst at an altitude of sixty miles, well into the nitrogen layer that exists above the stratosphere proper. When this occurred, the smaller, inner bag would act as a parachute, and descend gently, with its attached container, in which Pat had placed his newly improved set of instruments for the recording of cosmic-ray activity.
On the first occasion, the container had been recovered four days later in the prairie section of the Middle West; but when it had been opened, the records upon the drums were found charred beyond legibility, while some of the more delicate instruments were warped and twisted into uselessness.
Concluding that some unforeseen accident had taken place, the American Institute of Technology, which was financing the experiment, had backed Pat in the construction of a second set of instruments and the release of another sounding balloon. But when again a mysterious fire within the three-foot container had destroyed the records and wrecked hundreds of dollars' worth of instruments, the directors of the institute had lost patience. Such an accident could not occur twice in succession, they argued, unless the apparatus itself was at fault.
Pat had protested, in vain, that his instruments had been in no way responsible for the combustion. His inventions had been condemned as impractical by the institute's committee, while he himself had been pronounced a failure.
But there had been one man who had not been satisfied with the committee's findings. Professor Roy Anthony, Pat's old friend and teacher, now head of the institute's department of astrophysics, was convinced that there was more behind the mysterious fires than appeared upon superficial examination. And so, in order to prove his faith in his young protégé, he had offered to privately finance the building of a third balloon, for a final test.
At Pat's suggestion, this one was to be different from its two predecessors. Instead of the small sounding balloon, with its attached case of instruments, it was to be large enough to support a spherical gondola similar to those used by Piccard and other stratosphere explorers, in which Pat himself would accompany his instruments into the upper atmosphere.
This, he had pointed out, was the only possible way to discover the cause of the trouble -- whether it was, indeed, the fault of the mechanism or, as one of the more sensation-loving newspapers had begun to hint, the work of some inimical outside agency. There were, the paper had observed, certain foreign governments intensely interested in stratosphere flights, who might prefer to keep the field exclusively to themselves.
* * *
For the following six months, Pat and two trusted assistants had isolated themselves in the lonely plateau land of New Mexico, where the gondola was assembled and equipped. None of the three ever left the grounds, while the only person allowed to visit them was Professor Anthony. At last came the day when all preparations had been completed, and the ascent into the regions of the superstratosphere, a height never before dared by man, was about to be attempted.
With a wave of his hand to the assembled newspapermen, photographers, and news-reel cameramen at the edge of the field, Pat climbed into the gondola and drew the short ladder up after him. A kick of his foot threw over the lever that closed the heavy sliding door, sealing him in the hollow sphere. Casting a quick glance through one of the observation windows, to make sure that Professor Anthony and the two workmen had got clear, he stepped to the tiny table built against the wall, and, with a hand that trembled slightly, pressed the key of an electric switch box, touching off the detonation caps that were to cut loose all of the ground moorings at once, thus allowing the balloon to rise evenly into the air.
The dull boom that followed was inaudible to him in his soundproof compartment, but he felt the quick tug as the four great cables parted. Then all sensation of motion vanished, as the balloon shot upward into the resistless atmosphere.
From the little group on the edge of the field a lusty cheer went up, and cameras clicked madly as the great silver gas bag, with its bulging top and steeply sloping, still uninflated lower portion -- that gave it the appearance of an inverted, giant drop of mercury -- rose higher and higher, carrying the comparatively tiny gondola with it, until, with the increasing altitude, the two dwindled into one single, shining speck. For a moment that speck seemed to hover almost directly overhead, like a belated morning star; then it vanished completely into the fathomless blue.
(continue to part 2)
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