The Stone From the Green Star Page 4

  “What is it that is now most necessary for the happiness of man?” Midos Ken replied with another question.

  “I can’t think of anything you lack,” Smith said. “You control the weather. You synthesize food, or almost anything else you want, out of water vapor. You have conquered time and distance, with your television and interplanetary ships. You have eliminated most things that made life dangerous or unpleasant in the old world. There are no harmful insects, no disease germs—I haven’t seen a real weed! Your people all enjoy freedom of a degree that was impossible in the old world, and luxuries that were beyond reach of our emperors. Crime, ignorance, and superstition are gone. I have seen none not strong of mind and body; none without every reason to be perfectly happy.”

  “How about myself?” the old man asked.

  SMITH looked at him, was struck like a blow by the relentless marks of age upon him—the whiteness of his hair—the wrinkles that corrugated his noble face. There was a slight stoop of his shoulders—a thinness of his hands, and a nervousness that kept them always trembling a little.

  “I am old,” said Midos Ken. “All men grow old. There is only a taste of youth, of boundless strength and joy, and then their strength begins to fail. Their bodies stiffen and grow ugly as they weaken. And in a few years they die.

  “Is it not a tragedy? The artist has but time to learn to ply his brush, before his hand is too palsied to hold it. The scientist can but learn to handle his tools, before his mind becomes too dull to understand them. The thinker can only begin to survey the wonders of the universe, before his brain decays.

  “Is it not terrible, for a mind to know that it must die, slowly, and hideously? A swift death, in full strength and vigor, would be better than the slow decay of body and mind, that is age.

  “Death is not so terrible, perhaps, to the lower animals. They do not foresee it. Their bodies are restored, in each new generation, more perfect than before. Death is not dreadful to an animal, to a body, for it is natural.

  “But a mind is a higher thing than a mere physical body, dependent upon one as it is. It is capable of infinite growth and development, until it is killed by the decay of the body. That is why men have dreamed of immortality, and promised themselves another life beyond death. The mind cannot endure the thought of death.”

  “Then your great experiment is a search for the elixir of youth?” Dick asked, amazed.

  “We are seeking to extend the life and the youth of man,” said Midos Ken, “to give the mind full period for its development, so that men can drink the pure joy of life to the full, before they pass it, satisfied, and willing to go. So that the thinker may live in the keen vigor of youth until he has evolved his philosophy. So that the scientist may study deeply, and forge deliberately toward his goal, unhampered by age and the fear of age. So that the poet and the artist may give the world the full measure of his genius, before they leave it. So, too, that great lovers may quaff their bliss untroubled by fear of the end, that great adventurers may roam the far worlds of the universe as long as the call of the unknown leads them!”

  “A wonderful vision!” Dick mused, lost in a reverie of what such a discovery might bring.

  “There isn’t anything impossible about it, either,” Thon Ahrora said practically. “For ages we have known that life is altogether chemical in nature, though the chemistry of it is very complex. All such changes in the body as growth, mature development, and age, are caused by the chemicals secreted by the various glands.

  “Age is just as natural as growth. It is necessary, under the conditions of primeval life, in order that the old may give place to the young, allowing the improvement of the race. But now the human body has reached ultimate perfections. And the human mind needs a longer period of life than an animal body.

  “Natural death does not accompany life universally. Many simple animals do not die—the mature adult merely divides, by the process of binery fission, forming two individuals. That is true, even, of the individual cells in the human body, which are immortal when grown in cultures outside the body.

  “All that is needed to make eternal youth possible is a chemical which will neutralize the glandular secretions causing old age. We have isolated from a certain endocrine gland this substance which causes age. An injection of it made a subject die of old age in a single day!

  “We know the formula of the compound which we must have to neutralize it, to cause immortal youth. A hundred times we have tried to make it by synthetic means. But always our atoms break down before the goal is reached. We must have a catalyst—an agent, you know, which aids a chemical reaction, without being itself affected.

  “A few ounces of this catalyst would be enough to enable us to make enough of the elixir of youth, as you call it, to lengthen the days of all the trillions of the Galaxy! Father has had his agents scouring the planets for it in vain. Today, we are making a last attempt to synthesize it.”

  “Immortality! Endless youth!” Dick said, musingly. The idea was fascinating, wonderful.

  “A great vision,” said Midos Ken. “It might be a disaster to a primitive race, for it would tend to stop development. But now, mankind has reached the ultimate—there has been no upward progress in a hundred thousand years. There can be no advancement until men live longer, and have more time for accomplishment.”

  They reached the end of the trip. With a low, trilling note, Thon Ahrora brought the little flier down in a peaceful mountain valley, the white veil of a cataract flung from one of its wooded walls.

  Below the fall was a huge, solitary building of glistening white metal, vast as a dirigible hangar. Thon drove the little craft through a wide door in its end, and they emerged inside the building.

  An enormous machine filled the whole of the shed-like structure.

  An immense platform of black, glistening, jet-like substance fifty feet wide, and four hundred, at least, in length, was supported on massive pillars, fifty feet above the floor. Underneath it was a maze of machinery—suggesting, to Dick, colossal dynamos, huge vacuum tubes, and enormous tuning coils and variable condensers; that is, it somehow made him think of a radio receiver on a prodigious scale.

  Above the black platform, at the end, was a great disk of green metal. And at the other was a similar disk of sapphire crystal, a foot thick and twenty in diameter, aglow with soft blue fires.

  As they mounted by a stair to a little stage built against the wall of the huge building, overlooking the vast black table, Thon briefly explained the huge mechanism to Dick.

  “All matter is electrical, you know,” she began. “Its atoms are composed of protons, or positive charges of electricity, together with bound electrons, forming a nucleus, with free electrons revolving around it. The kind of atom, be it gold or hydrogen, is determined by the number of protons and electrons that make it up.

  “We know the secret of the electron. We can strip them from the atom, and use their energy to heat our planets, and drive our ships through space. We can take the electrons of one substance apart, and put them together to make another.

  “You know how the atom of radium breaks up, finally forming helium and lead. With such machines as this, we cause such changes to occur as we will. From water drawn from the fall outside, we can make food, clothing, metal, diamond—anything whose chemistry we have mastered. And the El Ray, which turns all substances back to water, rids us of all refuse, and replenishes the precious fluid in our oceans.

  “Today we are trying once more to synthesize the catalyst we need so vitally.”

  She turned to a bench at the end of the stage that bore long banks of keys—thousands of them. Looking curiously at Dick, she began depressing the keys in intricate combinations, strong slender fingers flying over them. A deep rhythmic hum, vibrant and powerful, came from the apparatus beneath the enormous black table. The sapphire disk at its farther end glowed brighter, with intense, living fires. Throbbing energy seemed to pulse across from it to the green disk, like the electronic stream
from the cathode of a vacuum tube.

  “I’m going to show you how it works,” Thon Ahrora said. “I’m going to make something for you.”

  She continued to study his head, his features, as if making a painting of him. Suddenly she made a surprising request.

  “Will you please slip off your garment, for a moment?” she asked Dick.

  He thinks he turned very red; he is glad that the girl was bent over her banks of keys at the moment, and did not see him. He turned from her, and thought swiftly, while pretending to be tugging at the strap. Evidently, ideas of modesty had changed a bit in two million years. “While in Rome, do as the Romans do,” he muttered, fearing that a refusal would hurt her feelings as had his evident surprise when she had kissed him.

  He unfastened the shoulder-strap of his single simple garment, and let it fall to his feet.

  He tried to keep his face impassive as she had him turn from position to position, while she critically eyed his body, and continued to let her swift fingers play over the many rows of keys. But it was with distinct relief that he got back inside the scanty garment, when she signified that she was through.

  Still the blue, radiant current of force seemed to stream across from the sapphire disk to the one of green metal. A dense glowing condensation of azure luminosity had gathered midway between them, on the glistening surface of the black platform. Now she moved a final lever, and the blue gleam vanished. The crystal disk faded and the throbbing sound was hushed.

  “They are finished,” she said.

  With childish eagerness, she moved a handle on the wall. A slender metal walk, a sort of lifting drawbridge, was dropped across from the high stage where they stood to the jet platform. Thon Ahrora led the way across, ran to the center of the vast, glistening surface.

  Standing there, side by side, were three tiny statuettes of Smith, exquisitely finished and colored in all the hues of life. It is one of them that he put in the little black case, with his notes.

  “See!” the girl cried, presenting him with one of them. “Aren’t they lovely?”

  “The rays are focused sharply, to build up the atoms in a predetermined spot,” Midos Ken informed him. “Any object can be formed, directly—no manufacturing processes are necessary. It is even possible to plate a thin film of one metal over an object of another. Thon could build a space flyer on that platform, complete, provisioned and ready to leave the earth, merely by controlling the formation of the electronic energy into atoms, through this keyboard.”

  “Now for the experiment!” Thon cried, when she had ceased admiring the little statuette of Dick. They went back to the stage, and again she manipulated the banks of keys. She had cryptic notes before her, and held long consultations with Midos Ken, in terminology so technical that Dick made nothing of it.

  HOUR after hour she labored, while the great hall rang with the deep, vibrant music of humming generators, and the great disk shimmered with the blue-violet radiance that streamed toward the green plate in a pure stream of force.

  Again and again they returned to the great table of jet, to examine the results of the experiment. Always it had failed. They found only little piles of gray, ashlike substance, sometimes filled with tiny, glistening globules of fused metal.

  It was terrible to Dick to see their slow waning of hope. He had come to feel deep affection for both of them; and he shared their vision of the boon they struggled to grant humanity.

  “I cannot synthesize it,” Thon admitted at length. “It is hopeless,” Midos Ken agreed.

  “No! It isn’t hopeless!” the girl rejoined, with unbroken confidence. “As you have said so often, Nature is infinite. We know the catalyst we seek is possible. Somewhere, Nature must have formed it!”

  “If only we can find it!”

  They returned to Bardon. That evening, they were sitting in the simple living room of Midos Ken’s apartments in the silver tower. The fragrant breath of the night entered through wide windows. Soft, restful radiance streamed from the luminous green walls, over the long couches upon which they reclined.

  Dick, through half-closed eyelids, had been admiring the slender form of Thon Ahrora, as she lay at full length on a rich, yet simple divan, staring dreamily at one of the little statuettes of Dick, which she had placed on a low, massive table of what looked like white-veined green marble, standing at the side of the room. She had been discussing with her father the failure of the experiment.

  “You can have those boxes of diamonds piled in yonder,” Dick was saying, “if you need them to carry on the good work. To the last token!”

  A low, gutteral laugh rang behind him. A harsh, unpleasant voice spoke mockingly, jeeringly.

  “Never mind! I’ll take charge of the diamond tokens!”

  Dick saw Thon whiten with sudden fear. Old Midos Ken had sprung erect beside his couch, holding his head as if trying in vain to see. He had heard the intruders an instant in advance of the others.

  By the time the sneering speech was ended, Dick was on his feet.

  His eyes met black, malignant orbs. A powerful man, clad in a brilliant crimson garment, with a girdle of black, was striding toward the center of the room. His heavy face, with jutting nose, and cruel sensuous mouth, was vaguely familiar to Dick.

  Behind him stood a dozen soldierly figures—men in black, with scarlet belts, and long, glistening, ebony tubes. More were crowding through a broad, open window, stepping, evidently, from the end of d metal gangplank. It led, Dick knew instinctively, to some flying ship moored or floating close against the wall of the building.

  Like Thon Ahrora and her father, he was petrified with surprise and sudden fear. Such a danger he had not dreamed of.

  “A cool welcome!” the taunting voice rang out again. “Do homage, slaves! Do homage to Garo Nark, Lord of the Dark Star!”

  Recollection flashed upon Dick of the amazing television picture he had seen upon the day of his coming, recollection of what Thon Ahrora had told him of this man, with his hatred of her and her father. And here he was in the very room, come across a hundred thousand light-years of space! Come to take the girl?

  At the thought, Dick saw red. The man was striding forward with insolent confidence, only a few feet away. Dick sprang at him with panther-like quickness, swinging a right at that proud, evil face, with all the savage force born of scornful anger.

  Garo Nark made no attempt to guard himself, but it is unlikely that he could have evaded that fierce blow if he had tried. It connected squarely on his jutting chin. The force of it carried him staggering backward, to crash upon the floor.

  “How’s that?” Dick demanded, staring belligerently at the row of black-clad men behind their fallen leader, who, apparently dazed with horror at what he had done, were raising their thick, jet-like tubes in a threatening manner.

  CHAPTER IV

  The Man from the Green Star

  AFTER a moment, a tiny, bony man, with a scraggy yellow beard and glittering, greenish, snake-like eyes, stepped forward importantly. A second in command. He glanced at the still body of Garo Nark, jerked out a word which brought two men up to pick him up.

  Dick held his ground over the fallen figure. He shook his fist in the thin man’s face.

  “Stand back!” he muttered. “Or I’ll smash your face!”

  He was beside himself with anger, filled with a curious intoxication of elation at having felled Garo Nark. Caution was forgotten.

  The little, scrawny man voiced a quick order to the soldiers behind him, who were uncertainly holding their black tubes pointed toward Dick. At the word, they steadied the weapons, which looked like cylinders of jet crystal two inches thick and six feet long. Their fingers sought sliding rings of silver, about the middle of the tubes. Violet fire seemed to glow deep within the crystal bars.

  “Oh, Dick!” Thon cried. “They will kill you! Come back!”

  She ran forward, seized his arm, pulled him back.

  The scraggy man jerked out another order, and the men l
owered the black crystal rods. The violet flames died in them.

  The two men in black lifted Garo Nark to his feet. One of them produced a little brown pellet, which he ground between his fingers, and held under the nostrils of the unconscious man. After a moment, a tremor shook his great body; he groaned and turned his head aside. In an instant more he seemed to have fully recovered his senses.

  Thon Ahrora still stood beside Dick, grasping his arm. Her strong fingers were closed about it almost painfully. Dick looked down at her with what he tried to make a reassuring smile. Her blue eyes flashed back courage.

  Garo Nark seemed to be seething with rage. Glaring evilly at Dick, he bent to whisper something to the scrawny, green-eyed man, whom he called Pelug.

  “So you are the fish that our blind fool caught out of the past, eh?” he sneered at Dick. “A savage who fights with his hands, eh? Well, we’ll show you the weapons that modern men use!”

  He grunted to a man behind him, who raised a long bar of black crystal. Violet flame pulsed inside it, through its length.

  “The El Ray,” the jeering giant went on. “We will turn your feet to water with that! I dare say we can demonstrate the use of half a dozen weapons upon you, before you are used up!

  “You are the great historian, eh, who wrote the history that earned so much? Ha! I wager our pretty Thon wrote the book for you! Well, I shall take the lady and the diamonds. Yes, and show you how our weapons work!”

  Dick’s blood was boiling under the taunts. He longed for a revolver, a knife, for any sort of a weapon. He burned with a hot desire to send his fist crashing against that swollen jaw once more. But Thon’s firm grasp on his arm restrained his mad anger. He grinned with savage joy when the gigantic Garo Nark had to pause to spit blood.

  The black, evilly blazing eyes of the giant turned to the slight figure of Thon Ahrora.

  “Yes, my darling Thon,” his harsh jeering tones continued mockingly, “you are coming with me to the Dark Star! To be one of my queens! No, your father will not grieve for you! He will never think of you again! For now you are going to see him melt into water, beneath the El Ray!”