Harl Vincent Resurrected

Longtime readers of this blog (assuming there are any) will know that I have been determined to make it the internet's central source for the works of Harl Vincent, a prolific science fiction writer of the Gernsback Era who has since fallen into near-total obscurity. (Never mind why.)

It is therefore with great emotion that I announce the publication, um, eight months ago, of the first Harl Vincent story collection, Harl Vincent Resurrected: The Astounding Stories of Harl Vincent by the Resurrected Press. Resurrected seems to specialize in publishing science fiction and mysteries that have entered the public domain and been posted at Project Gutenberg. Thus, all eleven stories in Harl Vincent Resurrected come from the pages of Astounding Stories magazine between 1930 and 1933 (and all of them can be found on this blog's Harl Vincent sidebar).

In addition to a dead-tree version, Harl Vincent Resurrected is also available as an ebook on Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook platforms.

And if anyone at the Resurrected Press is reading this and would like to publish a companion volume of Vincent's Amazing stories, drop me a line. I've posted nine stories from Amazing on this blog, all of them in the public domain, and I'm sure they'd make for a fine book.

A deep look at "Undersea Prisoner"

February 1940 was a big month for Harl Vincent; he had stories appearing in no less than two science fiction magazines. There was "Undersea Prisoner" in the venerable Amazing Stories, and "High-Frequency War" in the almost-as-venerable Astounding Science-Fiction. I've speculated elsewhere that "Master Control" from the April 1940 Astonishing Stories was written before "High-Frequency War", and that Astounding editor John Campbell rejected the former story while suggesting one of the characters from it be made the protagonist of the latter story. I now speculate that "Undersea Prisoner" was also written before "High-Frequency War", on the basis that any story was likely to be submitted to the more prestigious Astounding first, and only after being rejected there would be submitted to Amazing. I speculate further that "Master Control" would also have been rejected by Amazing before being submitted to the upstart Astonishing, and therefore was written before "Undersea Prisoner", even though it appeared two months later.

Like Amelia Reynolds Long before him, Harl Vincent looked to the Swiss physicist Auguste Piccard for inspiration. By the late 1930s, though, Professor Piccard had moved on from stratospheric ballooning and was investigating undersea exploration. At the time Vincent wrote "Undersea Prisoner", Professor Piccard had designed a small steel gondola that could withstand great external pressure, and an undersea version of a balloon filled with a lighter-than-water liquid to provide buoyancy. As it happened, Piccard's research was interrupted when the Germans invaded and occupied Belgium in 1940, and it was not until after World War II that he was able to complete work on an undersea balloon filled with gasoline. In the story, it is Professor Francis Augustine who makes Piccard's undersea balloon a reality, some seventy years after the original proposal -- which would place the story around the year 2007.

The early 21st century Vincent imagines is remarkably similar to the early 21st century we're living in now. He describes in vivid detail the media circus that greets Burke and Augustine when they emerge from their gondola onto the deck of the Scipio. There are hordes of television cameras iconoscopic eyes pointed at the two men and helicopters gyrocopters circling in the air above the ship. He even has the captain of the Scipio receive a cell phone televis call from Al Smith Brown, the Governor of New York.

A couple points of interest: Zybyski's crime of kidnaping and murdering a small child is doubtless a reference to the Lindbergh kidnaping and the arrest and trial of Bruno Hauptmann, which occurred earlier in the decade and would still have been fresh in Vincent's mind. I note without comment that Vincent made his Hauptmann-analog a Pole rather than a German. The ship that rescues Burke and Augustine, the Scipio, would have been named after one of the Scipios of the late Roman Republic, either Scipio Africanus the elder, who defeated Hannibal of Carthage at the Battle of Zama, or his grandson-by-adoption Scipio Africanus the younger, who destroyed Carthage sixty years later. The choice of name doesn't seem to have any deeper meaning.

Editorial note: Raymond Palmer, the editor of Amazing Stories, didn't like long sections of scientific exposition in his stories. When he encountered one, he would either eliminate it altogether, or condense it and turn it into a footnote. Isaac Asimov pointed out where Palmer had done this to his story "The Weapon Too Dreadful to Use" in The Early Asimov. Palmer did the same with "Undersea Prisoner", reducing two of that story's passages to footnotes. In reproducing the story in this blog, I have taken the liberty of un-footnoting the two passages and re-inserting them into the main body of the text. I make no apologies.

"Undersea Prisoner" by Harl Vincent, part 5

(part 4) (review)

This is the fifth and final installment of "Undersea Prisoner", a science fiction story by pioneering writer Harl Vincent. The story first appeared in the February 1940 issue of Amazing Stories, and was reprinted in the Spring 1971 issue of Science Fiction Adventure Classics.

The story so far:
After being framed for his friend's murder, Richard Burke avoids a prison sentence by volunteering to take part in a dangerous experiment, riding an undersea balloon to a depth of six miles. Burke suspects that the balloon's inventor, Professor Francis Augustine, is the man who framed him. With the aid of another prisoner, Burke is able to trap Augustine with him in the descending balloon.

When Augustine regains consciousness, he tells Burke that he welded the iron ballast weights to the bottom of the gondola, so that they will be unable to return to the surface. The balloon is more than three miles down when a giant squid attacks it, ripping the gondola from the balloon and swallowing it whole.

Burke switches on the gondola's antimonster defense, causing the outer shell to become electrified. This heats up the giant squid's gastric juices, causing them to evaporate and expand, and causing the giant squid to rise to the surface. When Burke and Augustine get into a brawl, the antimonster defense is accidentally set to full power, causing the giant squid to burst open.

Burke is knocked unconscious from the shock, and wakes to find that the gondola has come to rest on a plateau a mere eight hundred feet below the surface, that Augustine has made contact with the surface, and that a ship is on its way to rescue them. Augustine confesses to killing Burke's friend and framing him, then says that when they are rescued, Burke will be going back to prison for assault and kidnaping. He then prepares to wipe the whole thing from Burke's mind . . .


Chapter V
Battle on the Ocean Floor

Knowing that no man can perform two differing actions simultaneously with any degree of success in either, Burke took his chances on that last word of the professor's. Figured he was concentrating on the amnesia.

Swinging sharply with his right hand, he knocked the regrader from the man's grasp and hooked a stiff left into his paunch at the instant the capsule gun popped. Its deadly missile crashed harmlessly into an instrument panel as Burke's right fist caught Augustine in his gaping mouth, splashing out a gush of blood and knocking him into the bunk. But the professor clung fast to the pistol, gasping, stuttering primeval wrath and spitting out teeth. The engineer clamped on his gun wrist just as the sphere swayed to the tugging cables and commenced rising.

Augustine brought up a knee violently as Burke twisted his thick wrist. Burke went dizzy and weak with pain. His antagonist was a powerful brute, as he'd learned before. It took superhuman efforts of will and half-paralyzed muscles to keep him down and hold on to his gun hand at the same time. Slamming away weakly with his right, Burke willed a desperate newe accession of vigor into his left and tore the projector loose. It clattered to the floor and he had both fists free to use on the professor. His head was clearing now and muscular strength flowing back. In a few moments the big man was groggy and Burke retrieved both gun and regrader.

"Now!" he rasped, "I'm the boss. Get back there." He prodded Augustine with the capsule gun and experienced savage glee at the bulging of his victim's eyes.

"Don't shoot," babbled the professor. "I'll do anything. I'll --"

"Shut up!" Burke twisted a tiny dial on the regrader and pressed its latch. A blue haze bathed Augustine's head for an instant, then vanished as if soaked up by a sponge. A blank look came into the popping eyes and the big man went stiff-limbed as an automaton.

There was a clank overhead. The sphere had ceased rising. They were alongside the Scipio -- or possibly on deck already. The televis shrilled insistently. Burke switched it off, knowing this would send back an "out-of-order" signal to the ship.

Immediately there were sounds at the manhole. And in two minutes its cover clanked off. Burke shoved the disjointed professor through and tumbled after him. They were on the deck of the Scipio.

It was to have been a notable occasion. It was, though not as had been intended. They moved into a circle of staring iconoscopic eyes. Above them swung the microphones of the telecasters and high above these hovered a swarm of gyrocopters. The sea around was dotted with bobbing amphibians. Everywhere were goggling human eyes.

The captain of the ship, his officers and most of the crew, were there. There were many strangers in the crowd, some of them obvious dignitaries of one sort or another. This was to have been a crowning triumph for one Professor Augustine.

Burke looked around for the deputies, whom he had thought would be there to rearrest him. Then he remembered; they had returned Zybyski to Sing Sing. He remembered, too, that this was on the high seas. That Captain Jameson was the sole authority. He walked over to the amazed officer and surrendered the capsule gun.

"What's this all about?" bellowed Jameson, peering amazedly into the blank eyes of Augustine, who stood rigidly before the iconoscopic eyes and microphones. "What have you done to the professor?"

"Nothing serious," Burke assured him. "If you'll give me a chance to prove it, I'll show you and the world that he's a faker. That he's the criminal, not I."

The crowd was closing in around them. "Put him in irons!" came a shout. "Hang him from the foremast," another. An angry murmur rose and swelled as the telecasters stood irresolute.

Gun in hand, Captain Jameson faced Burke as his officers and crew gathered around. The surrendering of that gun had confused them, and Augustine's condition made them uncertain.

"What's this all about?" demanded the captain. "I asked you before. Now I want it all."

All over the ship, in the surrounding sea, high in the air, there was commotion. Excitement. Expectation of the unexpected. The cries for Burke's scalp died down. His gray eyes looked frankly and levelly into the captain's brown ones.

"I only ask -- first -- that you have one of your officers examine the ballast weights of Augustine's sphere and report to you what he finds. Then I believe you'll trust me to show you the rest."

Jameson nodded to the mate.

The first officer was back in a moment. "The weights are welded fast to the shell, Captain, he reported in an amazed voice.

"You may proceed, Burke," said Jameson.

* * *

Dick moved to Augustine's side and, with the regrader still in his pocket, made a new adjustment. Pressed the latch. The professor was at once erect, his usual debonair self. Seeing the microphones, he blinked, then bowed before the iconoscopic battery. Immediately the telecasters became frantically busy. This was to be the scoop of the year. It was.

Instead of addressing his beloved public in the usual way, the professor wandered a bit over the deck, gazed importantly at the sphere, and began to talk with extreme rapidity.

"Well, my hearties," were his first words. "Ready for the plunge? It won't be long. But while the bag's filling . . . "

From then on, his words became so rapid they could be followed only with the strictest attention.

" . . . It's all right, boys . . . there's only room for three inside . . . we're down . . . we've submerged . . . I welded the ballast weights . . . I guess I deserve what I'm getting, too . . . Dick, before I die, I must confess. I was the one who killed Van den Broek . . . you wouldn't turn me in, would you, Dick? . . . used your pistol with a rubber glove, then put it back . . . your cigaret case . . . I put that there, too . . . it'll blast out your memory of the past ten hours entirely . . . . "

In a very few minutes it was over. Every word Augustine had used during the past ten hours went out over a world-wide hook-up. For an instant after he had finished he seemed dazed. Everyone on the deck of the Scipio was dazed. Even the gyrocopters overhead seemed to be drawing back in astonishment. At millions of televis sets throughout the world must have sat dazed listeners and observers.

Suddenly the great professor came to full realization of what he had done. He leaped for the rail and would have plunged overboard. But Captain Jameson and his officers were too quick for him. They had him under arrest about as quickly as Zybyski had been taken before.

It was the end for Francis Augustine, the beginning for Richard Burke.

* * *

Later, in the captain's cabin, Burke sat before the scanners and mikes and told his story in detail, questioned and prompted by Jameson himself from time to time.

"But, Mr. Burke," said the captain, when he had reached the point of the final landing on deck. "Tell the telecast audience what it was that Augustine intended using on you to blank out your memory. What it was you used to force his confession."

"A very simple discovery of my own. One that the professor had st -- er -- appropriated and which he did not fully understand. It is well known, of course, that the nerve currents and the activities of the cells of the brain itself are electrical or electro-chemical in nature. Well, investigating multitudes of these phenomena, I stumbled upon a means of controlling the nerve and brain impulses in a number of ways. One of these is a simple blocking process. Another is a means of running back along the thought train for any desired period and then blocking to produce amnesia. And this process can be reversed.

"I merely set back Augustine's clock ten hours, so to speak, and left him in a state of complete amnesia and partial neural paralysis. Then, by a simple reverse adjustment of my pocket apparatus, and an increase in the normal thought rate in the normal forward direction, combined with a hypnotic compulsion impulse, I caused him to repeat at greatly accelerated speed, all his speech of the amnesia period. It was really nothing at all."

"Hm-m. Probably not," commented Captain Jameson. "And do you intend to give this invention to the world, Mr. Burke?"

"To the medical profession only, where it may have uses. Do you think it would be safe in other hands, Captain?" laughed Burke.

"Not in hands like Augustine's, that's sure."

The telecasters signed for a cut off and Burke sank back into the captain's own chair with a sigh of relief. "Thank God, that's over," he said.

Upon which there was an insistent shrilling of the captain's personal televis. It was Al Brown, New York State's governor calling for Richard Burke.

"Mr. Burke," his mellow voice started, without preamble. "This entire remarkable performance has been witnessed by me here in Albany. I congratulate you and greet you as an outstanding citizen our our great State. And I wish to assure you that your legal status is clear in all respects. I shall so direct the Attorney-General at once. Good-bye, Mr. Burke and good luck."

THE END

(part 4) (review)

"Undersea Prisoner" by Harl Vincent, part 4

(part 3) (part 5)

This is the fourth installment of "Undersea Prisoner", a science fiction story by pioneering writer Harl Vincent. The story first appeared in the February 1940 issue of Amazing Stories, and was reprinted in the Spring 1971 issue of Science Fiction Adventure Classics.

The story so far:
After being framed for his friend's murder, Richard Burke avoids a prison sentence by volunteering to take part in a dangerous experiment, riding an undersea balloon to a depth of six miles. Burke suspects that the balloon's inventor, Professor Francis Augustine, is the man who framed him. With the aid of another prisoner, Burke is able to trap Augustine with him in the descending balloon.

When Augustine regains consciousness, he tells Burke that he welded the iron ballast weights to the bottom of the gondola, so that they will be unable to return to the surface. The balloon is more than three miles down when a giant squid attacks it, ripping the gondola from the balloon and swallowing it whole.

Burke switches on the gondola's antimonster defense, causing the outer shell to become electrified. This heats up the giant squid's gastric juices, causing them to evaporate and expand, and causing the giant squid to rise to the surface. When Burke and Augustine get into a brawl, the antimonster defense is accidentally set to full power, causing the giant squid to burst open . . .


Chapter IV
A Submarine Plateau

Burke's first conscious impression was of a continuous six foot length of aching bone and sinew that was obviously his own body, next of something freezing cold and steel-hard that pressed flatly and determinedly against his cheek. He opened an experimental eye. And with it he gazed directly into two frigidly staring optics of the most fearsome creature he had ever beheld. This nightmare object was not more than three feet from his face. He closed one eye and concentrated with his muddled wits on what he had seen. Or had it been hallucination merely? Such things couldn't exist.

It had been like a fish, yet it was not a fish. A head like that of one of the Furies, but larger than a man's, had faced him with such a malevolent stare as only a basilisk might achieve. And the head, though attached to a sinuously scaly body with iridescent fins, was covered with long black hair that streamed upward as if each strand was electrified and straining to be away. The mouth had been most horrible of all, with two long curved tusks projecting from the lower jaw to the level of the glaring eyes, and a dozen smaller tusks arching down from the upper jaw. The face itself, if it could be called a face, was a distorted, evilly grinning gargoyle. It was purple. Burke opened both of his eyes suddenly. The thing was still there.

Then his mind began working normally. He remembered. The surface against his cheek was one of the thick glass ports of Augustine's sphere. His aches and pains were from the fight with the professor. No, not from the fight; something had happened. Of course -- the big octopus thing had blown up. That accounted for the shock which had stunned him and flung him where he now lay. And they were in the water once more; this was a denizen of the ultimate depths hovering outside the port. Where was Augustine? Was he alive? Recalling his former rash spouting of words, Burke decided to keep quiet until he could learn for himself.

Turning slightly, repressing a groan at the pain it caused, he cast his eyes upward. He was under the instrument table. His attention was drawn by a shuffling of feet on the steel floorplates. Augustine, then, was alive and conscious.

Deep silence followed; there was not even the faint whine of the tiny battery-powered energy generator. Of course, with the monster no more, they would not need that now. Further reflection convinced Burke they hadn't dropped any great distance. The shock of falling to the ocean floor at a depth of even two or three miles would have broken their bones, probably killed them. Slowly he turned his head toward where he'd heard the shuffling.

The professor was seated on the edge of the lower bunk, eating from an opened tin and regarding him curiously. He was somehow changed; his mien was composed, confident, gloating. None of his former panicky nervousness; he was sure of himself now. He actually grinned.

"Nice long sleep you had," he remarked. "Sorry I fell on you."

"Uh-huh." Painfully, Burke crawled out from under the table, his head throbbing as if it would split as he struggled to his feet, where he stood swaying. "Where are we?"

The professor waved his spoon airily toward one of the other ports. "On the very rim of a submarine plateau where our giant creature kindly deposited us when his sudden rise in the watery world rent him asunder."

Burke gasped. Not only was Augustine trying to be flowery in his speech, but what he said was true. Out there in the brilliance of the sphere's floods there showed the edge of a precipice. Vast chunks of the defunct monster draped over its jagged outline, huge oozing and quivering blobs on which a score of miscellaneous horrors of the deep were feeding. The young engineer shuddered. He looked at the pressure gauge. Three hundred forty pounds, eight hundred feet. So near and yet so far. There still remained twenty percent of the battery charge.

"So now what?" he demanded.

"So now the Scipio is on her way to haul us up from here. Have something to eat? You need it." Leering, Augustine passed can and opener.

"You mean you've had them on the televis?" Burke's eyes narrowed. Realizing suddenly that he was very hungry, he opened the tin and ate.

* * *

"I have and they're on their way. That damned living sub we were in carried us nearly two hundred miles toward Ireland. But the Scipio will reach us in a few hours." The triumph in Augustine's insolent stare was patent. He had put something over.

"So then what?" Burke mumbled through a mouthful of corned beef.

The professor shrugged. "Then I go back to work and you go back to jail." His little black eyes glittered and he patted the capsule gun where it lay beside him on the bunk.

"So you frisked me," growled the engineer.

"Why not? The tables had to turn somehow."

"The law's been satisfied. I'm free now, Prof. And you're the one who's in jeopardy. You told me you killed Van den Broek." Burke was only sparring for time and opportunity; he knew what the reaction would be.

Augustine laughed harshly. "Who'd take the word of a convict against mine? And there are two more charges against you now. You'll be a third offender now and will surely be sentenced to life imprisonment, don't forget that."

"What do you mean, two more charges?"

"First degree assault on me for one thing, kidnaping me for another." The professor's grin was ghoulish.

Burke was silent for a long time after this. Everything Augustine had said was true. They wouldn't take his unsupported word that the professor had confessed. And the assault and kidnaping charges were bad -- they'd stick. He hadn't thought of those at the time. Then, he hadn't the faintest idea he'd ever come up alive in this sphere. He'd only thought of taking Augustine with him. Hadn't cared about the rest. Now it was of great importance. But, maybe . . . Burke remembered his foolishness in talking too much previously; now he would keep his own counsel. Get out of this as best he could.

Augustine's eyes never left him nor did his fingers stray far from that destructive capsule projector. He had the upper hand now and he intended to keep things this way.

"But you did kill Van den Broek," Burke said. Whether it would be of any use or not, he determined to get more detail.

"Certainly I did!" Augustine was vigorously defiant. "And for good reason. Time after time, he embarrassed me before the Academy of Science. Time after time he bungled my experiments and made a laughing stock of me. He would have ruined me if I had let him live. Of course I killed Van den Broek, but you can't prove it. Nor can anyone else."

"You mean you stole some of his inventions and called them yours. And you were afraid he'd expose you. That's why you killed him."

The professor reddened, puffing out his fat cheeks as if about to explode in a tirade. But he subsided, again laughing harshly. "Oh, maybe that did have something to do with it," he admitted. "Might as well admit it to you privately; you'll never be able to tell. It was necessary that Van be removed, necessary too that someone other than myself be found guilty of the murder."

"And that's where I came in," Burke said bitterly. "You hated me for the same reason you hated Van, so you planted the evidence on me."

Augustine now chuckled, much pleased with himself. "Quite right, my boy. And I did it cleverly, too. Used your pistol with a rubber glove on my hand to prevent fingerprints, then put it back in your own drawer, from which I'd taken it. Your cigaret case, which was found beside the body -- I put that there, too. And your prints were on that. You hadn't a chance and you haven't now."

"And then when you found I'd won this alternative sentence, you welded the ballast weights to the bottom of the car to be sure I'd never come up. Swell setup." Burke talked deliberately with dully hopeless tones. He was getting an idea.

"All true, my boy. I think I've done a pretty good job, even if I missed out on this and nearly lost my own life. With Van out of the way and you behind bars for life, it will be plain sailing for me now." Fat fingers caressed the capsule gun. "At first I was going to kill you -- when the squid blew up. I figured one could live longer than two and knew I could get away with that, too. Self defense, you know. But then I saw where we had landed and found there'd be enough battery and air, so I decided life imprisonment was probably better after all. You won't like that, will you?"

Burke stared at the man in open astonishment. "No, I wouldn't like that," was all he could say.

Augustine was so utterly cold-blooded about it all, so completely sure of himself, so entirely self-satisfied, that it seemed incredible.

* * *

After that, Burke wandered aimlessly in the narrow confines of the sphere, tinkering with this instrument and that, always under the professor's watchful eye. Few words passed between them. Each was too occupied with his own thoughts.

There were frequent televis calls, always answered by the older man in pompous voice. World Telecasts came in with a request for a speech and Augustine's triumph knew no bounds.

Burke listened in mounting disgust as he mouthed long strings of superlatives and posed before the iconoscopic scanning eye with the capsule projector against his prisoner's temple for added effect. Forgetting entirely that this was his first deep sea dive in his own or any other contrivance. Bragging of scientific achievement, dramatizing his kidnaping, boasting of subduing a dangerous criminal and returning him to justice, lying blatantly about the means of their salvation from a watery grave, taking full credit for himself. It was sickening. But Burke held his peace.

"See what chance you'll have?" gloated the man, when wiping the perspiration from his brow after this effort.

The engineer did not reply.

Another silent hour passed before the Scipio was overhead and her grappling hooks were reaching down for them, taking hold.

Then Augustine played his trump card. "I suppose you think you'll get somewhere mentioning the welded weights," he said.

Burke started. "I had thought of that," he admitted.

The professor drew a slender tube from his pocket with one hand, keeping his prisoner covered with the capsule gun in his other. "Well, you won't do it," he grated. "You know what this is. Your own invention, the psycho-neural regrader. It'll blast out your memory of the past ten hours entirely. You will never be able to tell anything of this, because you won't remember. And you get it now."

Burke tensed as the tube leveled at him.

(part 3) (part 5)

"Undersea Prisoner" by Harl Vincent, part 3

(part 2) (part 4)

This is the third installment of "Undersea Prisoner", a science fiction story by pioneering writer Harl Vincent. The story first appeared in the February 1940 issue of Amazing Stories, and was reprinted in the Spring 1971 issue of Science Fiction Adventure Classics.

The story so far:
After being framed for his friend's murder, Richard Burke avoids a prison sentence by volunteering to take part in a dangerous experiment, riding an undersea balloon to a depth of six miles. Burke suspects that the balloon's inventor, Professor Francis Augustine, is the man who framed him. With the aid of another prisoner, Burke is able to trap Augustine with him in the descending balloon. When Augustine regains consciousness, he tells Burke that he welded the iron ballast to the gondola's hull, so that they will be unable to return to the surface. The balloon is more than three miles down when a giant squid attacks it, ripping the gondola from the balloon and swallowing it whole . . .


Chapter III
Monster with a Stomachache

Finally the car lurched to rest with its floor cocked at an angle. Not so bad, though; at least they could stand. They took stock of their bruises and of the bizarre surroundings.

"Hell of a note," grumbled Burke. Out through the port he saw only the swirling green stickiness of the digestive juices of their captor's interior. "Ugh!"

Augustine was blubbering again. "Dick," he whined, "before I die, I must confess. I was the one who killed Van den Broek. I set the police on you. I planted the evidence. Forgive me, Dick."

Forgive? Burke forgot their plight, forgot everything but blind rage. This man would've let him rot in the pen. He'd have sent him to the hot seat if he could. And now this! But rage was futile now.

"Hell of a time to confess!" snarled Burke. "You make me think of a guy who paid his pal fifty bucks he'd owed him for ten years -- just when the boat they were on was torpedoed. Sinking. Shut up your blubbering and tell me where's the gadget you charge the shell with."

"What gadget?"

"You built a weapon into these things to ward off undersea monsters. What good is it? How does it work?"

The demoralized professor shakily indicated a small control panel. Burke examined it, then yanked the rheostat all the way over. The result was instant and nearly catastrophic. A blinding flash outshone their floods in the green murk outside. The car heaved wildly, smashed him to the floor. Then he came up against the wall under a table.

There were violent upheavals and shudderings.

"The thing's trying to vomit us out," moaned the professor. "And we're stuck in its throat."

Burke could see that this was so. A port faced directly out toward the creature's mouth. The mouth was stretched wide. Through its gaping maw the engineer could see reflected in the glare of their flood lights the rocky rim of the cavern entrance. And the frayed cable ends dangling from above. Then, with a wild lunge, the monster flung out of its lair into the black abyss of the sea.

Clinging to the bolted-down legs of the table, Burke managed to get to his feet. He switched off the floods and saw that the green murk remained alight. The lambent flame that told of intense heat generated by this weapon that had been loosed within the beast. There were momentary flashes of emptiness where the thick green fluid would clear away only to be replaced by rolling whiteness. Steam!

"Hey, Prof!" Burke yelped. "What kind of energy's this?"

No answer. Augustine had fainted. He couldn't take it.

While the car swayed and teetered in the mad flight of the tortured beast, Burke clung to the table and studied the instruments. There was an indicator of horizontal speed and a compass. They were traveling east-northeast at ninety miles an hour! The pressure was decreasing. Which meant they were rising as well! Could this thing travel! Burke shut off the energy, just to see what would happen.

Their tremendous pace continued, but the pressure began to mount. The monster was diving. Or was it that? An inspiration; he switched on the energy again. The flaming in the green stuff commenced anew. Once more the pressure outside was decreasing. It was due to a gas generated in those digestive juices by the energy. They were making a veritable balloon of a living creature, their own container plugging its throat to retain the gas.

Burke could envision the bloating of the vast body which was taking place to such an extent that the weight of water displaced was considerably greater than its own. He found he could vary its buoyancy by manipulating the rheostat and thus regulate the speed of ascent. They were in the body of a living, though probably slowly dying, submarine balloon that was to an extent navigable. But the creature continued to propel itself madly in the northeasterly direction and this was entirely out of control. "What a belly-ache it must have!" thought Burke, grinning in spite of himself.

* * *

He was careful to keep the current low so they would not rise too swiftly, knowing that if the ascent became so rapid as to permit insufficient time for internal and external pressures to equalize, the creature would explode violently. Though he couldn't see how it would do him any good personally, he had a mad desire to get up to the surface. If the monster should expire then, as undoubtedly it would, and its carcass should float, there was still a bare chance for life. Even if it did mean prison for himself. He wondered how much pressure difference the thickly armored hide of the beast would stand. How much stretching due to the expansion in volume by tissue penetration of the gases. Undoubtedly there was some escape through natural orifices other than the gullet. Enough to act as a safety-valve, he hoped.

Augustine was stirring, groaning. The pressure gauge showed less than two thousand pounds when he tottered to his feet. Burke wasn't at all sure now how nearly this was an accurate indication of depth, since he didn't know the pressure differential between the inside and outside of their animate balloon. He thought this differential would not be very great. Their forward speed was slowing considerably; the monster was losing strength.

The professor gazed disbelievingly at the instruments. "Dick!" he exclaimed. "We're going up. We're saved!"

"Not yet," -- drily. "Think it out, stupid. We've a chance in a million, is all."

Fifteen hundred pounds, a thousand. The swirling green murk outside the ports had almost vanished. Burke could see the distended wall of the creature's stomach. It was dripping great blobs of sticky black stuff from several torn spots. The thing was hemorrhaging internally. He backed off further on the rheostat and the pressure gauge pointer moved slowly toward the lower end of the scale. They would have to keep their carrier intact as long as possible.

Augustine was talking again and was still excited. "You're wrong, Dick. There's more than a chance in a million; there's a good chance. Listen: I see you're easing it upward as gently as possible. That's right. We'll make the surface. The monster will die, of course; it's dying now. But it will float when we get up there. The carcass won't burst. Not if the pressures inside and outside are kept from differing too greatly, especially too suddenly. Don't you see?"

"Sure I see. As far as you've gone. So then what?"

"Why, the televis, naturally. We can start calling for help even before we're afloat -- a thousand feet before. Our own ship, any ship can easily come to us. We're saved, I tell you!" The professor's voice screeched as he tried to convince himself of his own words.

"Ever stop to think how much battery power this is taking? Take a slant at the charge indicator."

Augustine gasped. The battery charge was already down to thirty percent of full capacity. "I -- I didn't think of that," he faltered.

"Lots of things you haven't thought of," sneered Burke. "For one, the murder rap that'll be facing you if you do get up top alive."

This was a blunder. Burke had underestimated his companion's cunning and the courage which would come from desperation. In fact, he'd talked too much. He'd put ideas into the other's head that wouldn't have sunk in of their own accord.

The professor's voice changed subtly. He moved near and peered at the pressure gauge. "Eight hundred fifty pounds, two thousand feet," he murmured. Then: "You wouldn't turn me in, would you, Dick?"

"What did you do to me?"

Then, taken completely by surprise, Burke went down under the full weight of the enraged scientist. As he lurched from the instrument table, his hand automatically clung to the rheostat handle. He felt it slam over to the full "on" position. Then his grip tore loose.

* * *

Augustine's pudgy but powerful fingers twisted around his windpipe as they rolled over and over on the floor. Burke tore at them frantically, finally got them free. The squid mustn't explode!

"You fool!" he croaked. "The energy's full on. We'll go up like a shot. We'll --"

The professor, fighting blindly, evidently did not get the import of the scarcely intelligible words. He was pounding at Burke's face with everything he had and it was all the younger man could do to wriggle himself free and roll back against the wall.

"The energy!" he managed to howl before Augustine's two feet struck him together. "You damn --"

He lashed out blindly as pain from the heavy double kick flashed racing torture through his body. With sudden new energy, he scrambled erect and dived for the rheostat. Then he came down hard with his chin on the table. His antagonist had wrapped those huge arms around his knees and was dragging him down. Hell of a way to fight! Thoughts weren't at all clear now to Burke but he knew he must get to that rheostat. They were rising like a rocket.

"Wait, Prof!" he groaned.

He twisted free and lurched upward, starting a swift right to his opponent's bobbing jaw. But it never landed. There came a terrific wrench and a simultaneous crash as of the entire universe disrupting. Then utter blankness.

(part 2) (part 4)

"Undersea Prisoner" by Harl Vincent, part 2

(part 1) (part 3)

This is the second installment of "Undersea Prisoner" by Harl Vincent, a science fiction story that first appeared in the February 1940 issue of Amazing Stories.

The story so far:
After being framed for his friend's murder, Richard Burke avoids a prison sentence by volunteering to take part in a dangerous experiment, riding an undersea balloon to a depth of six miles. Burke suspects that the balloon's inventor, Professor Francis Augustine, is the man who framed him. With the aid of another prisoner, Burke is able to trap Augustine with him in the descending balloon . . .


Chapter II
Monster of the Deep

The real Francis Augustine did not recover consciousness until the outside pressure gauge registered more than eleven hundred pounds. They were nearly a half mile beneath the surface. Trussed and gagged as he was, the professor could only struggle madly and make horrible grunting noises as his eyes seemed about to fall from their sockets.

Ungently, Burke ripped the gag from his mouth.

"G-god!" babbled Augustine, looking wildly at the gauges. "We're down. We've submerged."

Burke was untying the professor's feet. "You're telling me!" he said savagely. "And how do you like it?"

"But, Dick!" Augustine's stare was frenzied and perspiration oozed out in great beads from his forehead as he struggled to a sitting position. "You don't understand. You --"

"Damn right I understand. You fixed things so I'd stay sunk and now you're in the same boat. Don't think so much of it, do you?"

"But I didn't mean --"

"No, you didn't mean to come alone. But here you are. It was all right for me, wasn't it? When it's you it's different. Now, see if you can figure out a way out -- for both of us."

Augustine's flabby jowls twitched violently; his pendulous lower lip quivered. "Un-tie my hands, Dick," he begged.

Burke obliged, first patting his own hip pocket, to which the professor's capsule projector had been transferred. "Don't try anything funny," he warned. I've your gun. Not that I'd need it."

The older man was almost as white now as had been Zybyski when he stepped outside the sphere. With his hands finally free, he at once buried his face in them. His big frame shook convulsively. He was in a mortal funk.

"Snap out of it!" snarled Burke. "Get your think tank working. What'd you do to this thing to wreck it so it couldn't rise?"

The professor looked up with an agony of craven fear in his every expression. He was suddenly an old, old man. "I -- I welded the ballast weights to the shell," he admitted.

"That's nice. Lovely. All beautifully taken care of on the outside where we can't get at them. Where the pressure'd flatten us like chewing gum even if we could get out there. You're good, you are."

Augustine slumped to his knees, started alternately praying and cursing. Incoherently. Burke slapped him back to blubbering sanity.

"Get yourself together and face the facts. If we have to die, let's die sane anyway. And if there's any chance at all, let's try and dope it out."

"There's no chance in the world," sobbed the professor.

Burke drew back his arm for another swing. "Don't, don't," the demoralized man pleaded. "I'll be good."

He was like a child. The young research engineer regarded him contemptuously, turned his back and moved to the televis. "This is no good down this far, is it?" he asked.

"No -- not below a thousand feet."

Burke looked at the pressure gauge. Two thousand pounds, it read. "We're not sinking very fast," he said.

"No, the difference in weight of the car in excess of the buoyancy of the balloon is very little. The descent must be gradual for safety."

"Safety -- hmpf. Call this safety?"

"I mean under ordinary circumstances." Augustine was coming around to normal.

"Then we wouldn't need to discard much weight to halt our downward progress, would we?"

"A couple of hundred pounds would do it now. But there is no way of throwing off any weight at all. The manhole can't be opened from inside; even if it could be the pressure would swamp us. No hope!"

"How long will our air last? Food and water?"

"Four days with two aboard."

Burke's eyes narrowed, then he laughed. "Hell's bells," he chuckled. "No need of killing you or of you killing me to make it last eight days, is there? That would only prolong the agony for the one that was left alive. Might just as well wait for what's coming to us."

He stared at the professor. Augustine stared back. The spectre of certain death was between them.

* * *

Three thousand pounds, nearly seven thousand feet, they were down before either of them thought of switching on the outside lights to see what there was to see of the fabled denizens of the deep. Until now no man still alive and sane had seen ore than vague shadows on a color screen. That is, at any depth such as this.

"You can finishe telling me about the gadgets now," said Burke. "How do you turn on the outer floods?"

Augustine showed him, first illuminating the huge balloon that swayed above them, then the sides, then below. There were five of the thick glass ports, one above, one below, and three spaced around the middle. They saw absolutely nothing outside the circles of misty brilliance and nothing within the zones of illumination excepting a few wriggling, corkscrewlike glistening threads that slithered upward over the circular ports. They were utterly alone in the depths.

"Showing you about the gadgets, as you call them, reminds me," said the professor. "How did you and the other manage this? Where's he? All I remember is when the mountain fell on my head."

Burke laughed in spite of the seriousness of the situation. His companion was taking it better than he'd expected -- so far. "That was Teddy," he told him. "He slugged you from behind. You didn't make a sound to warn those outside. Then he took your sun glasses and stuck on the false mustache we'd made from his own hair in imitation of your real one. We stripped you and he changed into your clothing. Then he went outside and bossed the job of closing us up and dropping us over."

Augustine nodded. "Yes, that way, he could easily pass for me." Dropping his eyes to the unfamiliar clothing he'd not even noticed yet, the professor snapped: "But you -- you aided a criminal to escape. He would get away in my plane and not be suspected!"

"That's what you think. And that's what Teddy thought. I kidded him along so I could get you right here where you are. I won -- he lost. Once we were down I used the televis -- quick. Zybyski will say it was a double cross. I call it justice -- turning him in again. Think I'd let a rat like that loose? He'd be murdering someone else's baby in a year or so. Oh, no."

Augustine looked thoughtful. "You did a pretty good job at that," he admitted. "And I guess I deserve what I'm getting, too."

Burke was amazed; his companion was as cool now as a cucumber. Was he cooking up something in his treacherously inventive mind?

"You certainly do deserve it. But isn't there something we can do? No possible chance at all?"

The professor shook his head dolefully. Then his eyes widened suddenly and he pointed to one of the viewing ports. "Look!" he yelped. "What on earth is that?"

They had switched off the outer floodlight to save the batteries as much as possible, though why they needed to save them was not clear. "Looks like a submarine," exclaimed Burke.

It did. Something was approaching steadily in the inky blackness out there, something with a long row of small lights along its side and with a twin beam exploring ahead. Burke switched on their side floods and the creature was revealed, not as any man-made duplication of Captain Nemo's Nautilus, but as a gigantic living, swimming monster that carried its own lights. One look at its enormous bulk, its ten foot long razor fins, its huge head and broad, tusk-filled mouth was enough for Burke. He switched off the lights both inside and outside the sphere. The creature was five hundred feet long if it was an inch.

"Holy Smoke!" he gasped. "That thing could swallow us whole. And if it should get tangled up in the cables above or puncture the balloon, it'll be just too bad. Hope he didn't see us."

Augustine moaned a little in the darkness. "As well go that way as the other," he whispered.

It was true. Burke felt a little foolish over his useless precaution. But he didn't turn on the inside lights until they'd seen the monster that was like a lighted ocean liner in the blackness drift on up past the bulking shadow of the balloon and out of sight.

* * *

Fifty-five hundred pounds. About two and a half miles of ocean lay above them. A distinct sense of movement was felt suddenly; the pointer of the gauge swung rapidly across the scale to sixty-two hundred, then remained stationary.

"What the hell," said Burke. "Did we fall?"

Augustine looked at another of the gauges. "We were swept downward by a submarine current. And we're still in it, but it has leveled off and is carrying us rapidly toward the northeast. Sa-ay!"

The professor's eyes brightened on the exclamation.

"Say what?" Burke couldn't see anything to be jubilant over.

"There is a chance, just one remote chance," said Augustine, "that we may be swept into a rising current. Sort of an updraft, you know. We're heading for the Irish coast now. Where we started, the depth was more than five miles. It'll be getting shallower after a while. And if there is such an upward current and we strike it . . . "

"What are the probabilities?" asked the younger man dubiously.

Augustine's face fell. "About ten million to one," he admitted.

"That's what I thought."

They had started dropping again at about the former rate; the current had been unable to hold them. It was like drifting in the car of an ancient gas-filled balloon, at the mercy of every errant wind, falling for lack of ballast to throw out. They could discharge oil from the bag above, of course, the same as you could use the ripcord of a gas balloon. But that would hasten the end, not prolong it.

"Let's light up outside," said Burke for want of action. And he switched on the floods as he spoke. He hadn't the heart to go to work on Augustine right now. He'd suffer enough -- later.

A mountain peak looked immediately alongside, vanished into the blackness above. They were slithering downt the sheer face of a granite cliff, the great balloon overhead bouncing over its jutting edges. Fortunately, their descent was very gradual.

And then the balloon had lodged between two projecting fingers of rock. They jerked to a stop. The car dangled, swaying before the mouth of a huge cavern. The pressure was seventy-one hundred.

Burke's eyes tried to penetrate the gloom beyond the white wall of light that pushed perhaps a hundred feet into the cavern. He had thought he saw something flicker back there. He had! Four discs of luminosity swam into view, like the eyes of a team of dogs gleaming in an automobile headlight glare. But these four ghastly orbs grew steadily larger.

And then an ugly, squirmy monster hove into view. This was a giant squid, an octopus thing with four eyes that reared its hideous body forty feet from the cavern floor on three of its sucker-lined arms while the other five arms weaved and twined toward the dangling sphere. Two eyes were beneath, two above a cavernous, wide-open mouth that was lined with row upon row of glistening incisors. A tentative arm reached out as the terrifying creature advanced, its tip curling around a few of the cables that connected their car with the balloon. The car swung crazily in toward that yawning mouth, spilling the two men in a heap on the floor.

"God!" screamed Augustine. "It's going to swallow us."

The car jerked as cabled snapped. And then the great jaws closed in over them. There was the crunch of huge teeth on the berylumin shell. But the creature, powerful as it was, could make no impression on that glass-hard surface. The car rolled inside and the teeth snapped shut on what was left of the frayed cables.

There were convulsive heavings of the sphere and it rolled over and over in the huge cavity of a mouth, battering its two occupants against bunks, instrument tables and walls. A few dizzying flashes came to them in the tumbling, of great reddish-purple splotches and dangling fleshy members, of a constricted opening down which their sphere spun madly.

The monster was swallowing them whole!

(part 1) (part 3)

"Undersea Prisoner" by Harl Vincent, part 1

Harl Vincent (1893 - 1968) was a mechanical engineer whose hobby was writing science fiction stories for the early genre pulp magazines. His first published story, "The Golden Girl of Munan", appeared in the June 1928 issue of Amazing Stories, and he went on to publish over seventy more stories over the next fourteen years before retiring from writing.

"Undersea Prisoner", from the February 1940 issue of Amazing, was one of his later stories. In order to promote interest in this neglected pioneer in the field of science fiction, the Johnny Pez blog will be reproducing this story in a blog-friendly multipart format. And now, without further ado, we present the first installment of:


Undersea Prisoner
by Harl Vincent

Chapter I
Into the Depths

"Richard Burke, I sentence you to confinement in Attica Prison for a period of not less than ten nor more than twenty years . . . . "

It would have been longer if he'd been a repeat offender or if they could have shown a motive for the killing of which he was accused. They couldn't show that. Kill Jack Van den Broek, the best friend he'd ever had? Impossible. But the jury had thought otherwise. There was circumstantial evidence that looked perfect. Alibis that seemingly broke down. And Burke was morally certain, knowing that the evidence had been planted, that Francis Augustine had somehow been at the bottom of his framing. The great Professor Augustine, for whom Dick had long worked, who had so many times . . . well, he just had the hunch, put it that way.

For which reason, he had engineered his plans through Slim Curran. And now he was waiting for the reply to his application.

Burke had a good friend in Slim Curran, one of the Sheriff's finer deputies. Slim had pulled some strings on the outside in Burke's behalf, otherwise, he'd have long since been on his way to Attica and already starting his ten to twenty bit.

Waiting in growing animosity toward Augustine, and in a state of nerves that was rapidly coming to the snapping point. Suppose the Court refused his application!

Burke wasn't the first, nor would he be the last man to suffer for the crime of another. He couldn't prove his innocence. He had but one hope now. In these days, where evidence was purely circumstantial, there were the chances for alternative sentences. In the interest of science, or rather in the interest of the scientists who were coming to be such a factor in all braches of government and jurisprudence. And one such possible alternative would give Burke his chance to get close to Augustine, might even enable him to go further . . . .

This was the Augustine Undersea Balloon, which was to descend six miles in the ocean in a couple of weeks. And in which would descend as observers two convicts who, thereby, would satisfy their sentences in full. None of Augustine's devices had returned from depths greater than two miles. But Burke was not concerned with that; he only wanted to get near to the man he was sure had framed him. And Augustine couldn't prevent that, once his application was appproved.

Whether or not he ever came up from the depths made no difference. To rot in the Big House would be worse. He knew Augustine, knew his influence, and felt certain that the man would see to it that he served his full time once he was sent away. By the same token, he knew that the professor, once he learned to his chagrin who was going down in his machine -- if Burke could make the grade -- would find some means of making sure he never came back alive. Augustine was full of dirty tricks. In the meantime, though, Burke would have a chance at him himself, some sort of chance . . . .

Days passed. He had about given up hope when there was a shout from the main gate of the gallery: "Burke -- going out! Get everything together. Going out!"

Going out? Burke was going down. His pulses raced with the excitement of the thought.

* * *

He had never thought much of these undersea contrivances of Augustine's. They were developments of the free balloon first proposed some seventy years previously by the more famous professor, Auguste Piccard. Strange, the slight similarity in names. The things had been an expensive hobby with Augustine; several had been built and tested. Two had never returned from the mysterious deep. The one which had at last come up to bob alongside the mother ship brought with it two madmen, two utterly crazed young scientists who were never able to discuss their adventure. Only their films were of value and even these recorded nothing beyond the two mile depth.

Augustine, unlike the originator of the underwater free balloon and one of the first to make stratosphere balloon flights, had never had the courage to go down in one of his own contraptions. The new Alternative Sentence Law was a help to him.

Burke's companion-to-be was Thaddeus Zybyski, a former radio man who had done three years of a life sentence in Sing Sing. Through some underworld connections he had somehow managed this alternative. He was a confessed kidnaper. Of a five year old baby, who had died on his hands! Burke was forced to occupy the same cell with the man on the ship that was to take them to the scene of the descent. The kidnaper, a surly and murderous-looking brute, insisted on being called Teddy. And Teddy was getting cold feet.

"I'm damn near tempted to back out," he told Burke on their second day out. "Hell, it's an easy life in the radio room up the river. So what the hell? The boys may make a break one of these days. And the hacks aren't so bad anyway. This way it's curtains sure. We'll never come up in that thing."

Which gave Burke an idea. He eyed the big man contemplatively. Teddy was about Augustine's build, same bulky frame, same paunchy jowls. If it weren't for the prison pallor, his lockstep gait and the absence of the square black mustache, he could easily pass for the scheming professor.

"Maybe we can rig up that break right here," he suggested to Teddy.

"A getaway! From here? You're nuts. What do you think two hacks came along from Sing Sing for? To see damn well I get in that machine and am properly sunk. Same as the two screws that came with you. Hell, they aren't giving us any breaks."

"I still think you might make it," Burke insisted. "Not me. I'm in this to stay. But you can get away with it."

"How?" The con was impressed.

Burke started outlining his plot.

* * *

At length there came a time when the whine of the atomic motors slowed and finally stopped. The ship was rolling and pitching without headway in deep water. "Too damn deep for me," growled Teddy. He and Burke were herded up on deck by the four guards. The professor greeted them unctuously, rubbing his pudgy hands together and showing tobacco-stained teeth beneath his square mustache. He wore sun goggles, which was a break Burke hadn't anticipated.

"Well, my hearties," he offered. "Ready for the plunge?"

"Sure we're ready," rasped Teddy. "How else could we be?"

Burke made no comment.

The car, suspended a few feet above the deck from the boom of a derrick, seemed huge viewed from nearby. It was a gleaming sphere of eighteen feet diameter, with three heavy conical ballast weights on its underside and with six broad vertical fins spaced around its circumference to keep its inner floor level when in the water. The ballast cones, Burke knew, could be unlatched from inside when it was desired to return to the surface. Provided the hatches hadn't been tampered with . . . .

From sturdy steel eyes on the top of the sphere, a dozen steel cables draped over the ship's rail and looped down to the wire net that enclosed the balloon. The balloon itself was an envelope of oil-and-water-tight metallic fabric filled with oil. Oil, being lighter than water, would buoy up the heavy goldola in water as helium or hydrogen lifted the car of a balloon in air. Only in this case the ballast was of sufficient weight to draw the balloon gradually to the bottom of the ocean.

Augustine turned to the guards. "It's all right, boys," he assured them, patting his hip. "I want to take them inside. There's only room for three inside. But I'm armed."

Burke saw from the corner of his eye that the professor's amphibian plane was on the after deck of the ship. Even as he looked, the pilot started warming up the motors. Just as he'd guessed and told Zybyski. Augustine was flying for home as soon as the sphere was in the water.

The three men were inside the gondola then and the professor started explaining its many apparatuses. The inner chamber was twelve feet in diameter, its three foot thickness of triple berylumin wall sufficient to withstand an external pressure of twenty thousand pounds per square inch. This was equivalent to more than forty-six thousand feet of sea water, so that the car was safe at depths fifty percent greater than any likely to be encountered in either Atlantic or Pacific.

In a half hour the watchers on the ship's deck saw Augustine climb through the manhole of the car and emerge. He looked over the side and saw that the huge oil bag was filled. The hose couplings had been disconnected and the bag nipples capped. Chuckling, he swung home the heavy plug to close the manhole and told the mechanics to make it fast. Then he turned to the grinning guards.

"They're as safe there as they would be anywhere," he said. "And I guess you fellows aren't sorry. Your work is done; you only have to wait for the cutter that is to take you back. When they return to the surface they're free according to law. And I wish them luck, for my sake as well as their own."

This last seemed sincere, spoken huskily. None of those who heard could doubt the professor's real feelings. He was a man of science, the listeners were convinced, who had a heart. Anxious to see his experiments succeed, anxious to give the world any new discoveries that might result. At the same time, ready to cooperate with and serve the ends of justice under the new laws. Why, he was positively pale with emotion!

As the great three-legged and six-finned sphere was lowered over the side, the professor stood with arms folded, his face hidden from the rest. Obviously, he was deeply moved as the waters closed over his brain child. And when the great oil-filled balloon began to sink and the cable from the derrick was let loose from the gondola below, he turned and hurried toward the amphibian.

"So long," he called back. "I'll keep in . . . "

Just then the deck televis shrieked: "Grab him! That's not Augustine! It's Zybyski. Take off his goggles and mustache."

The guards closed in swiftly and surely.

(continue to part 2)

Smartening up "The Morons"

John W. Campbell, Jr., who became editor of Astounding Stories magazine in 1937 and remained its editor through thirty-four years and two name changes, displayed a number of valuable character traits, but a skeptical mind was not one of them. He was a prominent exemplar of what is now known as truthiness, the art of believing something because you want it to be true. In addition to acting as midwife to the psychological theory/religion/con game known as $cientology, Campbell was almost single-handedly responsible for psychic powers becoming a common trope in science fiction, due to his insistence on having his own beliefs reflected in Astounding's stories. The way he did this was to suggest story ideas to his stable of writers (Isaac Asimov's story "Nightfall" is a notable example of the process). Naturally, the story ideas he suggested reflected his own beliefs in various bits of pseudoscience.

At present we have no way of knowing the genesis of Harl Vincent's story "The Morons", which appeared in the June 1939 issue of Astounding, about a year and a half after Campbell first took over as editor, and about a year after Vincent resumed writing after a three-year hiatus. However, given the prominent role played by telepathy in the story, it is reasonable to suspect that, like "Nightfall", "The Morons" was the result of a story idea suggested to Vincent by Campbell. One clue that the story idea originated with Campbell rather than Vincent is that the Venusian natives in the story are not simply human beings, as was the case with earlier stories by Vincent such as "The War of the Planets" and "Venus Liberated", and as would be the case with later stories such as "Neutral Vessel". Instead, the Venusians are quite clearly a different species, rather apelike in appearance, and thus incapable of crossbreeding with humans (as Grayson points out in the story).

The planet Venus we see in the story is the standard version of Venus common to science fiction stories in the period before 1962: a wet, swampy, primitive planet populated by Mesozoic-era monsters and primitive savages. This view of the planet dated back to the 19th century, when the French mathematician Pierre Simon Laplace suggested that the Solar System began as a cloud of dust and gas which gradually contracted, throwing off a series of rings as a result of centrifugal force which coalesced to form the planets.

One of the implications of Laplace's suggestion was that the closer to the sun a planet was, the younger it was. Percival Lowell seized on this idea to suggest that Mars, being older than Earth, was suffering the loss of its original water supply, and that the Martian canals were the result of an engineering project by a native Martian race to bring meltwater from the polar ice caps to the rest of the planet. By the same reasoning, Venus ought to be younger than Earth, and thus ought to be in an earlier stage of its existence, one featuring either cavemen, or dinosaurs, or both. Since Venus' perpetual cloud cover prevented scientists from finding out what conditions were actually like there, writers such as Vincent could be (and were) as creative as they liked.

Mind you, Laplace's nebular hypothesis (as it was known) had fallen out of favor by the time the science fiction magazines appeared, replaced by the near-collision hypothesis of Thomas Chamberlin, which held that the material that formed the planets had been drawn out of the sun by a near-collision with another star. Since the near-collision hypothesis implied that all the planets were the same age, the logic behind the primitive Venus trope was no longer valid, but inertia ensured that the trope continued to be used anyway. The primitive, swampy Venus was finally finished off for good in 1962, when the Mariner II probe discovered that Venus was literally hotter than an oven.

"The Morons" by Harl Vincent, part 5

(part 4) (review)

This is the fifth and final installment of "The Morons", an early science fiction story by pioneering writer Harl Vincent. This is the first appearance of "The Morons" since its original publication in the June 1939 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction.

The story so far:
Grayson, Matthews, and Nelson are the crew of the Dragon, a spaceship that has crash-landed on Venus. When they encounter Throg, one of the simple-minded natives, he surprises them by speaking Italian. They soon learn why when they meet Signor Polto, the sole survivor of an earlier expedition to Venus launched by Italy. Grayson is astonished when Throg takes a pen and paper and draws an improved version of his ship's engine. Theresa, the queen of the Venusians, arrives, and the three Earthmen are equally astonished to discover that she is an Earth woman. They learn that she is Polto's daughter, born just after his wife died in the wreck of his ship.

When a large carnivore attacks Theresa she kills it with a crude weapon made of a tree limb with bits of crystal and metal attached. She tells them it is a heat ray invented by Throg. The Earthmen question Throg, who is unable to explain where his advanced knowledge comes from. He then writes a long series of equations in Matthews' notebook, and after a long night of calculations Grayson figures out that the equations describe twelve different methods of unleashing atomic energy . . .

* * *

They tackled Throg eventually, when Polto had finally induced the native to sit down near the ship for a while. Nelson finally turned the trick; he had some of his favorite rock candy stowed away somewhere aboard the Dragon, crystallized sugar as hard as stone. The moron sat down and sucked it with beaming joy on his broad, stupid face. He growled something.

Polto made a wry face. "It was a so-brilliant idea, your engineer's. But now he can't click his tongue, and nobody, not even I, can understand him. He will not stop. I still do not believe what you say. These people are wholly crazy. That insanity of ashes in the sky and being too cold and liking it when the temperature here never varies ten degrees."

"Hm-m-m," said Matthews suddenly, and sat down.

"Throg, what do you mean about the ashes and the flames and going into the big house?" Grayson asked patiently.

Throg grinned amiably. "Dunno. Crazy, I guess."

Polto shrugged his shoulders and turned away.

For a solid hour they questioned Throg, while his answers became gradually more intelligible as the lump of rock candy dissolved. Finally, Grayson had worked a complete circle back to the ashes and flame.

This time Throg grinned amiably and shook his head. "No." The guttural clacking of his native language sputtered out in a broken stream.

"He's changed his mind," sighed Polto resignedly, rather annoyedly. "He says the ashes and flame aren't there at all. And it isn't cold, it's too hot; all the trees and grass are burning like ashes in a fire, and he likes it. They are," he announced determinedly, "crazy."

"No," said Matthews softly. "Not at all. Ask Throg if this is right." He thrust the series of formulas at the moronic giant.

Throg grinned, looked at it blankly for a moment, and shook his head. With a pencil he scrawled over it, crossing it out, and turned the page. He set down a dozen mathematical symbols of an entirely new type, then two more lines. Grayson groaned.

"Throg . . . Throg, draw the engine," snapped Matthews. "Candy, and we leave you alone . . . draw the machine."

Grayson stared at Matthews in amazement. Polto turned on him a gaze of whimsical questioning that made Matthews answer in self-defense. "No, I'm not crazy, Polto. I think . . . I think I get it. If I'm right, it's crazier than you ever thought."

Throg was scrawling lines and drawings on the sheet, holding the pencil like a dagger in his huge, brawny fist. Sudden crackling gutturals came forth, as he looked up in amiable understanding, and then bent over his work.

"Now," said Polto, "he says there aren't any big houses any more. They were long ago and not good."

"Inherited memory!" Grayson gasped, grasping Matthews' arm savagely. "Memories from a long-forgotten civilization!"

"Memories hell!" snapped Matthews.

Throg looked up again for a moment. Again the harsh syllables of his own language came forth, then once more he was laboring over the drawing.

"He said he'd show you how the crystal stick works now," Polto explained. "He 'has the knowingness now,' as he puts it."

Throg handed Grayson the notebook, looked toward Nelson eagerly, and mouthed, "Candy?" laboriously.

Grayson shook his head in bewilderment. "This isn't anything I can imagine. It must be that crystal-stick thing, but it doesn't look like it. It's simple enough -- a few tubes of metal and glass -- a couple of coils and a crystal oscillator of some sort --"

"Throg, what is that machine for?" asked Matthews sharply.

"He said, 'You go away,' I think," Polto reported.

"Give him the candy, Nels," said Matthews. "I think we go home!"

"What do you mean, Matt? What is this?" Grayson asked.

Matthews was hurriedly examining the drawing. A few very simple little parts, a curiously designed oscillator, and a series of coils, and some queerly designed controls. "Gray, look at that. That's a control lever obviously, isn't it?"

"Yes . . . Si --" Polto answered as well.

"All right. Now, pray tell, what kind of a hand would grip that controller, please?"

Grayson stared. The grip indicated -- very clearly indicated -- could obviously be held by no human hand! It was a quadruple control, with obvious placement for eight independent digits!

"Throg," asked Matthews, "what color is the fire in the sky?"

* * *

He grunted a single syllable, then three more. Polto turned and looked sharply at old Nels, then gasped. "He says -- like Nelson's shirt!"

Nelson looked down at his chest in surprise, rather stupidly lifted eyebrows startled at the idea. His shirt was a very bright blue, almost violet.

Matthews grinned. "Get it?" he asked at length.

"No! In the name of Heaven what is the answer?" demanded Grayson.

"That gadget he drew -- I'm beginning to see what it is," Matthews explained. "He crossed out all the work he did last night, and wrote those new formulas. The last two he translated to our mathematical system. I can recognize two parts of them -- one from last night's efforts, and one from your equations of the gravity repulser. That gadget turns the energy of atoms directly into gravity repulsion, or, if you change the setting just a little -- a repulsion beam. Throg said 'You go away' because he meant that's what we'd do. He likes candy, but for two days we've been pestering blazes out of him. He'll be glad to see the last of us. That's our new drive system -- three sheets of tin, and a homemade oscillator, or I'm a Dutchman."

"But how . . . how . . . how does he know?" stammered Grayson.

"Look. Last 'night' he talked about going in the big house because it was cold, but he liked cold, and about the ashes in the sky going out and the flame going out. Then he wrote down those atomic equations we never would have guessed at.

"Now, my friends, watch." Matthews continued, and stood silently looking at Throg. Throg turned leisurely and crackled his queer language to Polto.

"He says now that he has two hands on one hand and four feet and two feet and one foot. I know he is crazy," said Polto hopelessly.

"And I," said Matthews, "thought the question 'How many fingers and toes has the one who told you about this machine you drew?' He's a moron -- but, like many Terrestrial morons, he's a telepath. Many of his race are, seemingly. And telepathy is queer -- it doesn't weaken over any distance, so far as is known. You know the earliest Terrestrial experiments . . . the later Mars-Earth experiments. All faulty, all utterly unreliable -- but all equally good. Distance doesn't matter.

"Somewhere in space, there's a planet circling a double-sun system, one of which stars is red -- like dying ashes, and one of which is yellow -- like flames, and the people live in huge buildings. And . . . those people know a great deal about atomic power. Last night our moronic telepath was picking up the thoughts of some scientist unguessable billions of miles away. Perhaps even in another galaxy.

"That crystal weapon?" Matthews went on to explain. "They picked up the thoughts of the race that doesn't live in great buildings any more -- all that was long ago to them -- and lives under a sun as blue as Nels' shirt. And they know tremendously more, even, than the race of the twin suns. Throg crossed out their elementary equations. You'll find, I'll bet, that these are a thousand times further advanced. And this machine gets us home . . . . Polto, do they have any other gadgets like the crystal weapon?"

Polto was thinking deeply, with constant waves of surprise and comprehension chasing over his mobile face. He burst into Italian at a speed the two Americans could scarcely follow: "They have, they have, they have! I . . . I am the crazy one. I am crazier than I even thought they were! They have a thing made out of crystals and stones and scraps of metal from my ship and bits of bark. They put a crystal stick in one part of it, press the catch, and the ray is absorbed by the crystal without burning. But if they strap the contraption onto the carcass of a xyll, it floats so that a few men can tow it through the jungle!"

"Simple, eh?" said Matthews. "They are morons, with the poor neuro-muscular co-ordination of the moron, and the low concentrative powers. But they have at their command the knowledge of the greatest minds of the Universe. The simple things, they make. A bow and arrow are simple. They make them. But a transformer is simple too -- just wrap wire around a chunk of iron -- no matter how complex the electromagnetic theory is.

"The theory of their crystal-stick weapon is beyond us, but the mechanics of the actual gadget is well within their simple limits."

Grayson groaned. "We can do -- but they can know. Matt . . . Matt, you take Polto and Theresa and Nels back to Earth -- you can easily enough with that drive -- and bring back an expedition with psychologists. I'll study here. But hurry. I want the psychologists to help --"

Polto roared in anger. "Take me back! You ship me from my Venus! I wait here twenty years, me, alone with my Theresa waiting, and now . . . now when something interesting is found, then you . . . you Americans who have just come, you try to drive me out! No! No, by ten thousand devils no! I stay. I will not go whatever! You shall go. I shall study. I shall learn, learn, learn again at last like a true scientist should!"

Matthews grinned. "Nels, you don't want to stay?"

Old Nelson grinned back. "Not if I can help it. If that thing works --"

"It'll work. Probably the best engineers within this galaxy -- and perhaps the next one, for all we know -- designed it. And --"

Theresa came over toward them. Throg, sucking a block of candy, was leading her. "Gooobugh," said Throg. He turned back into the jungle, a half dozen other natives disappearing with him.

Theresa looked up at the Americans. "Throg said you wanted me," she said in a half-timid tone.

"You want to go to Earth?" asked Matthews.

Theresa looked up at him doubtfully. "Maybe you tell me about it first, eh?"

Grayson snorted softly. Theresa would go all right, and Matthews would do a job of telling her about Earth. He looked at Polto. Polto stuck out his straggly gray beard and solemnly nodded.

"She go," he said softly.

THE END

(part 4) (review)

"The Morons" by Harl Vincent, part 4

(part 3) (part 5)

This is the fourth installment of "The Morons", an early science fiction story by pioneering writer Harl Vincent. This is the first appearance of "The Morons" since its original publication in the June 1939 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction.

The story so far:
Grayson, Matthews, and Nelson are the crew of the Dragon, a spaceship that has crash-landed on Venus. When they encounter Throg, one of the simple-minded natives, he surprises them by speaking Italian. They soon learn why when they meet Signor Polto, the sole survivor of an earlier expedition to Venus launched by Italy. Grayson is astonished when Throg takes a pen and paper and draws an improved version of his ship's engine. Theresa, the queen of the Venusians, arrives, and the three Earthmen are equally astonished to discover that she is an Earth woman. They learn that she is Polto's daughter, born just after his wife died in the wreck of his ship.

When a large carnivore attacks Theresa she kills it with a crude weapon made of a tree limb with bits of crystal and metal attached. She tells them it is a heat ray invented by Throg . . .

* * *

Grayson and Matthews collared Polto. "We want to talk with this Throg," the scientist told him. "Will you interpret for us? You know his language, don't you?"

"But I don't think I'll help much," Polto shrugged in the characteristic, hopeless gesture. "He doesn't speak any English -- but he understands you."

"What?" Matthews exclaimed.

"It is so . . . you'll see," the Italian affirmed.

Grayson looked significantly at the young pilot of the Dragon.

Matthews nodded solemnly. "Let's get Throg."

They found the smiling, vacant-eyed Venusian at the base of the white cliff.

"Ugh," was all he said.

"You understand what I say?" Grayson asked him, in English.

Again the native nodded, smiling foolishly but engagingly. He uttered a string of harsh gutterals this time.

"What did he say?" the scientist asked Polto.

"He says as usual -- that he understands. They always say -- and do." The old Italian shrugged.

"Not so nuts as Polto thinks, maybe," Matthews said under his breath.

Then, turning to Throg, Grayson asked: "Can you tell us how you made the weapon used by the queen?"

This time Throg shook his head in the negative.

"But you made it!" protested the scientist.

Throg grinned amiably, and with a characteristic Poltonian shrug, said: "You're hopeless . . . you're nuts. You'll drive me crazy."

"You get that knowledge from somewhere," insisted Grayson.

Again Throg nodded amiably, with a funny little concentration of bush brows that were never meant for thought.

"Where do you get it?" Grayson was becoming patient and interested. The problem, the mystery of this queer creature's half-glimpsed wisdom was baffling -- and intriguing.

Throg sputtered and mouthed difficult Italian, then, surprisingly, mouthed a clearly English word, "Dunno," and burst into gutteral cluckings and clickings. One laboriously mouthed word intruded, something like "benzul."

Polto shook his head slowly and translated. "I've tried for twenty years, signori, and it is hopeless. It does not make sense. He is crazy with an astounding craziness, I tell you. He says he's cold, but he likes it, and he's going in the house -- the big house -- because the ashes fire is going out and the flame fire will, too, and he wants the 'benzul' -- whatever that is."

Matthews swore gently. "That," said he, "is this thing." From his pocket he drew his notebook and pencil. Throg nodded amiably and grabbed them. He flopped onto the ground for this composition, and labored mightily. Long strings of weird mathematical symbols followed, traced in sloppy, jerky lines, staggering across one page onto another. Throg turned a page, and other straggling symbols followed.

Then he stopped, and the queer little frown of terribly labored thought wrinkled his placid, shaggy brows. A straggling line of poorly formed, but recognizable symbols followed, then another and another, till finally Throg grunted in annoyance, handed both notebook and pencil to Grayson, and grinned amiably. He walked off with a clacking grunt, leaving the party where they were.

Old Nelson shifted his wooden leg out of the hole it had sunk into. "He got disgusted, I guess."

Polto looked after him in resignation. "He simply said, 'I'm tired. Good night,' as usual. He worked unusually long that time."

Grayson looked after him, then at the book. There were fully a dozen lines of formulas in unknown characters, and perhaps three and a half in familiar form. But the formulas weren't familiar. "If these are translations, we can finish the translation. If they aren't -- well, he may be willing to try in the 'morning.' I suppose there is no night here?"

"Once in about forty-five hours Venus revolves. It gets a twilight dullness, but the refractive atmosphere prevents real dark. They all sleep when the light gets reddish," Polto explained. "Nothing will make them give up their sleep."

Grayson and Matthews noticed for the first time that a duller, redder tinge had crept into the gray mist layer. "I suppose we may as well go back to the ship and work on this for a while. do you and Theresa want to come?"

Polto smiled and shook his head. "Theresa wouldn't like the ship, and I will stay with my little one. She is used to Venus."

* * *

Grayson labored over the mathematical formulas stubbornly. The symbols were exceedingly hard to translate, even after Matthews, a competent draftsman, had turned them into more or less regularly formed characters. But gradually, he was pinning down a long series of formulas, laboriously translating. Some, he found, didn't translate, so he had to use original characters.

Old Nelson made coffee, and fried some eggs and potatoes, and they ate. "You know," he said in disgust as he saw Grayson's labors, "I'd be damned before I'd put in that much work on a crazy man's scratchings."

Grayson sighed. "I wouldn't. Not when he's this crazy. That equation there, is, I've at last determined, a variant of Hartman's seventh-power field. That, they're beginning to think, may have something to do with the stability of the atom. And this equation arbitrarily introduces a function -- this one I've called F(π) -- which, from the action of the equation, is arbitrarily designated as the function which disrupts the equation."

"And," said Matthews softly, "the atom. That is a beautiful idea. Find the equation of the atom -- arbitrarily define F(π) such that it disrupts the equation -- solve for F(π) -- and you have the atom disruptor. If you can do it."

"Throg is a moron. He couldn't possibly think of that!" Grayson wailed. "He can't concentrate, he hasn't the knowledge."

"What's the next equation?"

"Solution for F(π)," groaned Grayson. "It checks, but I can't see how it's solved."

"And what," asked Matthews, "would the rest be?"

"That's what I'm trying to find out. The first one looks like an explanation of what the atom breaks into."

Two hours later Grayson knew. The next one was a solution for a different F(π), with other conditions defined. Somehow, impossibly, Throg had given him twelve different solutions for F(π) such that F(π) was a function capable of disrupting the atom. Each was, apparently, a sound solution. Each defined a different method. Each method defined different products. There was another half-completed solution for yet another type of disruptive fuction.

"Hartman," said Grayson in weary disgust, "would be interested. A moron on Venus not only knows his prize accomplishment -- he got the Nobel prize this year -- but knows at least thirteen different ways of breaking it down. Polto is quite right. They're crazy. I'm going to bed."

Matthews looked at the formulas. As a space pilot, he knew mathematics fairly well. He recognized, by a few simple checks, that each of the different solutions was classic, sound, and beautiful. But he couldn't derive the solutions, because the mathematical steps had been left out, and he didn't think that brand of mathematics existed. He went to bed.

There was a dull, angry gray mist curtain hanging over them when they awoke. A little exploration revealed all of the natives and Polto and Theresa as well, sleeping soundly. Grayson irritably went back to his mathematics.

He had an advantage. Working both ends against the middle, the solution and the original against the unknown steps, using the power of all Earth's highest mathematics and three calculators installed in the pilot room of the ship, he broke it down. Then, because Throg and his source of information remained asleep, he and Matthews readjusted the calculator machines with some new drive systems that took advantage of perfectly magnificent and unheard-of mathematical methods he had found. Two more he developed himself from hints in the others.

He fed the incomplete solution into the machine, started it, and waited. It clittered and snapped and chuckled to itself for ten minutes, then thunked heavily as it printed a solution. Matthews darted forward, but Grayson stopped him.

"Wait," said the scientist. "That isn't the machine it used to be. It now has a brain as capable as our moronic friends; no longer handicapped like yours or mine," he explained bitterly.

The machine continued to chitter and clink. In half an hour it thudded heavily eleven times, then finally stopped. The final solution was F(π)=0. "That," explained Grayson, "means that that's all the solutions it can find. That makes a total of twenty-three different solutions that moron friend of ours could have written out if he'd taken the trouble. Incidentally, any one of the twenty-three would have made us billionaires on Earth."

"I wonder if we can't harness one of them?" remarked Matthews.

"No," said Grayson. "We haven't the needed material. Eighteen of these things are explosive, and the other five produce electric potentials so high we couldn't insulate them in this little ship."

"With good insulation --" began Matthews, perplexedly.

"You still need thirty feet of air gap to stop a fifty-million-volt potential," snapped Grayson. "But that's all right. Wait till that damned moron wakes up and we'll find out how."

(part 3) (part 5)

"The Morons" by Harl Vincent, part 3

(part 2) (part 4)

This is the third installment of "The Morons", an early science fiction story by pioneering writer Harl Vincent. This is the first appearance of "The Morons" since its original publication in the June 1939 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.

The story so far:
Grayson, Matthews, and Nelson are the crew of the Dragon, a spaceship that has crash-landed on Venus. When they encounter Throg, one of the simple-minded natives, he surprises them by speaking Italian. They soon learn why when they meet Signor Polto, the sole survivor of an earlier expedition to Venus launched by Italy. Grayson is astonished when Throg takes a pen and paper and draws an improved version of his ship's engine. Theresa, the queen of the Venusians arrives, and the three Earthmen are equally astonished to discover that she is an Earth woman . . .

* * *

Then, so suddenly it startled Grayson, the regal Theresa changed. A sudden wave of joy seemed to sweep her, the regal anger evaporated, the stiff carriage was gone and in an instant she was flying to him, clutching his arm passionately, speaking to him in breathless Italian so swift he could scarce catch her meaning.

"Oh, father was right -- Polto told truth. You are from Earth, you are from the home-beyond-the-mist! Always, papa said that when men did not bow at my command, then those men were of Earth! You are of Earth, you will take Theresa back . . . you will, please --"

Polto came up suddenly, an apologetic little smile crinkling his unkempt beard. "So, my little one, so. They are from Earth, and now you will understand." He turned to the Terrestrians as the girl now clung to him, looking with wide, curious eyes at the lean, quiet little Grayson and the erect, commanding stance of Matthews, strange to her eyes used only to the shambling, stupid, but amiable morons.

"I taught her thus," Polto explained with a little shrug, "for several reasons. She must command the morons -- and God alone knew when I must die. And she would not know quickly the men of Earth; she could not understand what is meant by intelligence in the eye, the face. I . . . I am not what I was, and offered poor comparison to her." He shrugged. "This was the only way to serve her thus in both ways. And -- I knew men would never cease their attempts."

"I thought you said you alone reached the planet alive," Matthews questioned suddenly.

Polto's face was suddenly haggard and haunted. He gulped and held the girl tighter. "I . . . I was. The ship crumpled -- the men screamed and died. I . . . I fell on the three others in the control room and lived. My wife, my other Theresa, was in her berth, pillowed and protected in every way, for I was mad and she was mad, and she had accompanied us.

"I was the ship's doctor, and when we had landed and the ship split like a rotten fruit, I went to her. She -- was dead, and I was alone, so I had to perform very quickly the operation that saved little Theresa. My arm was broken, but it was done. The natives came then, and they were friendly and witless, but one of the women took Theresa. Somehow, one of them set my arm, for I was unconscious for many days -- nearly a season, here.

"I taught them then, and raised Theresa to know that she was the Queen from the Skies." The queerly pompous little gray-bearded Italian seemed more majestic and strangely representative of Man, then, as he held his daughter. She looked at the strange, erect and confident men of Earth. Grayson felt a new respect for this marooned scientist of two decades ago. "We lived," the little man shrugged. "I knew men would not cease to try."

A terrific roar from the fern jungle brought everyone to their feet, Earthman and native alike. Native spears were poised.

"It's the biggest xyll in the wilds!" screeched Polto. "He heard that other!"

There was a crashing of jungle fronds, soft and clinging and wet as they were, as they gave way to the plungings of the enormous beast. Theresa whimpered with a little purring whine. Grayson drew his Bronson gun, as did the other two Earthmen.

The monster which broke into the marshy clearing was maddened by insects of a sort that could evidently pierce its thick hide and scales. Its snouted head weaved madly; its small eyes were bloodshot.

Nelson was the first to break on sight of the thing. His Bronson spat forth its message of death. White flame split the gloom of Venus and there was a kicking, screaming monster wallowing in the bog.

"Good work!" shouted Grayson.

"Pooh!" said the queen. "Theresa has a better weapon than that."

* * *

The scientist rubbed his fingers through what remained of his hair. Here were things to think about; things, not to worry about, but most puzzling to the mind. These primals: what could they know of science or mathematics? Yet they did -- or they remembered fragments of knowledge from an ancient source. That was it -- yes -- words and figures came to them unbidden, unsearched-for -- or maybe there was a search that Grayson couldn't figure out. As beings with life and movement, they didn't know what it was all about. Still the intelligence was there, somehow unavailably within themselves.

"Matt!" he called.

Matthews was absorbed in Theresa.

"You come with me!" Grayson insisted. "I want to talk with you seriously."

The spaceman came, and Theresa was borne away, pouting. A strange, but likable, almost wild, creature. What had she meant when she spoke of a better weapon? An old one of Polto's from Earth, Grayson concluded.

Matthews grinned sheepishly. "What's so serious?" he asked.

No one could long remain impatient with Matt. Grayson grinned back at him. "Everything, Matt," he said. "Have you thought much of what we've seen here? Have you realized what has happened to Polto and his daughter here? Any idea what it's all about?"

The younger man sobered. "I sure have -- more than you think. I even did a lot of before we got here that I didn't tell you about."

"So you knew the fuel was low before we landed? How'll you get us away?" asked Grayson.

Matthews looked away. "Frankly I'm stumped. Sorry. But the Dragon is no use without the radite engine, and that could be brought only by a rescue ship -- if we could radio for one. Even then, I doubt whether they would come either from Mars or Earth -- you know what the space lords think of this planet. We're stuck . . . unless" -- Matthews hesitated -- "unless a miracle occurs. And I don't believe in miracles."

Well enough for the younger man to take it so calmly. Grayson did not want to be marooned here forever like Polto. But he shrugged resignedly, then brightened: "At least we can learn what power it is that brings such intelligence to Throg's poor mind. We'll have something to occupy us."

"Maybe he'll be able to help us," Matthews suggested jokingly.

Grayson wondered. Might be something in this, at that. He decided to do a great deal of investigating. He was suddenly hungry. The odor of xyll steaks broiling over the open fire was strong in his nostrils.

"Suppose we could eat a chunk off that beast?" he asked Matt.

"Why not? Polto and Theresa eat it and are healthy. Let's go."

Forgetting their problems for the time, they set forth to where the natives were massed about the glowing coals of the fire. Nelson and Polto already were gorging themselves.

"Move over," said Grayson.

Nelson and the Italian obligatingly made room, and he and Matt squatted near them. Nelson poked into the coals and drew out a large chunk of the meat of the xyll, handing it to Grayson on the stick he had speared it with. It was wrapped in wide, charred fronds and gave forth a most appetizing aroma.

"Have a bite," grinned Nelson.

Grayson bit; he ate ravenously of the sweetest meat he had ever in his life tasted. Who could dream, even wildly, that a monster like the xyll could produce so succulent a mouthful? The scientist relaxed with his satiation. Venus wasn't so bad after all.

He looked over at Polto, who was leaning back on his elbows, fully and sleepily stuffed with food. The terror of that long-gone landing had slipped from him again. And the daughter, poor kid -- all these years of bringing up on this planet of morons.

Grayson's eyes wandered around the circle of reposing Venusians. They were laughing, happy, obviously bantering one another in their own gutteral speech. Occasional loud burst of laughter would greet a sally from one of their number. Grayson reflected that morons are frequently possessed of an unusual amount of with and good humor. He wished he was able to understand their jargon. Why, some of the most famous court jesters of ancient Earth history had been morons. Perhaps it was not so bad a state of mind to be in. At least they seemed to have no worries.

His eyes again lighted on Polto. He moved over to talk with him.

"You want to speak to me?" the Italian asked drowsily.

"What do you know about these ideas the natives get? How can they make these drawings and put down figures they do not know?"

The Italian shrugged helplessly. "In twenty years I have not thought it out."

"I have an idea they have memories, racial memories perhaps. Inherited scraps of knowledge from a higher civilization they've lost. Are there any more intelligent races on Venus? You must have explored it some," said Grayson.

Polto shook his head. "Not much. The natives will not go -- and I cannot go alone. They say there are no cities; that it is everywhere the same."

Grayson was more than ever puzzled. Polto couldn't help him any, he could see that. Scraps of knowledge . . . from where?

* * *

His cogitations were interrupted by a wild scream which rang out through the swampy fern jungle.

"Theresa!" yelped Polto. "She is in danger." He leaped to his feet.

"Easy," counseled Matthews. "It's her voice, but I don't think she's in any real danger." But Polto was already on the run.

Alarmed, Grayson, Matthews, Nelson, and most of the natives streaked after him. There were other screams, now close at hand.

They crashed through the tall tree-like fronds, and then were in a large clearing in which was a sizable but primitively-constructed house which obviously was the "palace" of the queen. A xyll-like beast with carnivorous fangs of such tremendous size that Grayson could hardly believe his eyes had the girl Theresa cornered. The beast had trampled her courtiers under its massive feet and was bellowing in rage. A dozen heavy spears hung from it. The girl was silent now, desperately edging her way toward the door of her palace.

The Bronsons spat forth flame, but it spattered almost harmlessly against the scaly hide of this super-xyll, burning him deeply but with insufficient energy to reach a vital spot. Polto had an ancient Barratini that shot its stinging charges with no more effect than a popgun. But the stings of the Bronson charges were merely further maddening the monster with pain. It wheeled to face its new enemies.

Grayson's two guns had almost exhausted their loads when Theresa had gotten inside the hut and was out again with one of the native crystal-studded weapons, a futile thing against that hide. She raised it quickly, sighted along the rough crystals, and there was a screaming hiss. No flame, no singing dart or other missile, nothing that could be seen came from the bit of crystal at the front end of the queer arm. The mountainous xyll collapsed into a smouldering, twitching mass. The great beast was dead.

Theresa, beyond doubt, had a superior weapon. But what was it?

Polto had his daughter in his arms and was assuring himself of her safety. "You all right, bambina?" he asked anxiously. "Sure you're all right?"

"Yes," she laughed tremulously. "But I had a bad scare."

The Earthmen crowded to the flagged porchlike entrance. Matthews, of course, managed to be nearest to the girl. Grayson, seeing that she was unhurt, turned his attention to the weapon she had used. It appeared to be made in the crudest manner possible, from a piece of a tree limb, a large jagged bit of crystal, a metal endpiece that might once have been a portion of a tin can, and a few odd-colored bits of rock and crystal, roughly shaped.

Theresa saw him eyeing it and smiled past Matthews. "You see?" she exulted. "Did not Theresa tell you she had a better weapon?"

"You win," chuckled the scientist. "But what is it and where did you get it?"

"It's a -- what do you say -- heat ray. Throg made it."

"Throg!" Dazedly he reached for the crude thing as the girl gave it into his hands. "Throg! It isn't possible."

"Careful," warned Theresa. "This catch releases the ray." She indicated a small strip of crudely hammered metal attached to the rough unfinished stock.

Grayson turned the thing over in his hands, unbelieving. From the weight of it, he judged that the largest bit of crystal had in some way been hollowed, and that it contained the generating force of the heat ray. The tin object he had noticed at the forward end was just what he had judged to to be; a cylinder rolled up from a piece of tin can. Evidently these, the only visible metal parts, had come from the wreckage of Polto's ship many years before.

"Want to try it?" Theresa asked him, seeing his great interest.

"Try it? On what?"

"That tree." The girl indicated an enormous, fronded trunk at the edge of the clearing. "Try it," she repeated, seeing his hesitation.

Matthews and Nelson watched with great interest as he raised the weapon to his shoulder and aimed at the base of the huge trunk.

He pressed the catch. There was only the screaming hiss, no recoil, no visible ray. But the great tree trunk was neatly and soundlessly cut down, the stump and the severed end of the already crashing trunk smouldering with little tongues of flame licking here and there. At the moment of impact there had been a blinding flash over there where the ray contacted -- nothing more. The heat generated must be terrific.

And yet the stone power bowl of this weapon was not even warm.

"I'll be damned!" was all Grayson could say, returning the weapon to the girl. "Thanks."

He stared at Matthews, who was agape. "You heard her, Matt," he said. "A heat ray. You saw it. And Throg made it -- from nothing. We're going to have a talk with him."

(part 2) (part 4)