Lords of Creation Page 16

  They clung to each other for a timeless moment.

  Then the girl, with a little sob, stepped to the wall and moved a lever. A flush-fitting door opened outward, letting in a flurry of snow.

  Their eyes met. Then Ellory turned swiftly away; he carried the picture of her tear-wet face with him as he strode to the hissing rocket craft that waited. A taciturn Antarkan inside merely nodded and motioned to a seat beside him.

  The little ship glided into the polar night. Ellory looked back, till the tiny white figure and Antarka faded into gloom.

  Chapter 24

  HUMRELLY’S RETURN

  Ten hours later the swift little rocket ship drummed down from the stratosphere in northern latitudes. It was night. Silvery moonlight gleamed from the waters of the broad Hudson. Ellory looked down and missed immediately the twinkling candle lights of the Norak capital.

  Then he remembered—burned down!

  On impulse, Ellory had the pilot skim north. They landed at the crest of the valley that held the crypt. With only a silent nod at Ellory’s waved thanks, the Antarkan left again. Ellory watched the flame-clothed ship vanish to the south, and then the vast hush of the Outland world settled down like a cloak.

  Already Antarka, with its hum and bustle, seemed like a dream from which he had awakened.

  Ellory strode into the valley, his footfalls loud in his own ears. He entered the crypt. Tomb-like, it allowed his thoughts to run their course.

  Antarka a dream? How could he ever forget it? ErMalne’s lovely, tear-wet face, as he had seen it, hung before his mind’s eye. It would reMaln there, he knew, even if by some magic another three thousand years rolled by. He groaned a little. Destiny had decreed that they must reMaln apart, and Ellory found this the bitterest draught of all since his awakening, after an age.

  Hours passed, while these thoughts trampled his soul, but gradually peace came. The crypt, dark and empty, curiously soothed him. The crowded events of the past days assumed a remoter perspective. He could look back now and rationalize.

  He summed up the situation briefly.

  His sojourn in Antarka had impressed Ellory with the power of their civilization, and the futility of any plan to break that power. They intended to be the oligarchy of Earth for ages to come, using the Outland people as servants and workmen to run their cities. So much for that.

  Now, what reMalned for Ellory. His thoughts went back to the half-preserved laboratory he and old Sem Onger had unearthed. The glowing-wax! It was still there, hiding its secret. He began again to visualize the upspringing of science.

  “You are a dreamer, Humrelly!”

  He started as these words echoed in his mind. ErMalne seemed to stand before him again, half loving, half mocking him for his visionary ideas. Unconsciously he drew himself up.

  “It’s worth a try!” he answered her image.

  He strode from the crypt at dawn, in a February world that knew no winter. He was starting all over again, as though first emerging from the crypt, with all the promise of untried things lightening his heart.

  He walked through the farm-dotted valley, and exchanged his silken Antarkan clothing with a marveling farmer for old clothes and a scrawny horse.

  A few hours later he strode into the presence of Jon Darm. The tall, gray-haired chief stood watching workmen who were erecting the wooden scaffold for a new Royal House. All around, among the ashes of the city-site, the Noraks were busy rebuilding their city with mortar, stone and wood. Tents and crude shacks dotting the open spaces had served as temporary living quarters since the people had returned from the hills.

  Jon Darm turned and stared, as if seeing a ghost. The look of amazed joy that spread over his face brought a sting to Ellory’s eyes.

  “Humrelly!” he gasped. “Is it you? But I thought—Sharina said—” He raised his voice in a sudden, wild shout, forgetting his dignity as chief. “Sharina! Mal Radnor! Humrelly is back!”

  A white figure came flying from the largest tent nearby. Sharina stood stock-still before him, disbelieving her eyes, then threw her arms around him and kissed him.

  A moment later Mal Radnor came limping up, on a wooden crutch, one leg bandaged and stiff. He gripped Ellory’s hand with a silent fervor. Old Sem Onger’s cracked tones sounded from the side, as he hobbled up as fast as his years would allow.

  “Humrelly back? Then he can tell me why my iron plows break when they strike stone.” But behind his phlegmatic words, Ellory caught the quiver of eager welcome.

  Ellory choked.

  It was good to see them all, these simple, sincere people who loved him for himself, even though their city had been burned down because of him.

  Sharina looked around, and then at his Norak clothing, astonished. “You have come alone, Humrelly? Lady ErMalne—”

  Ellory shook his head and explained briefly. They all listened, dumfounded.

  “You renounced Lordship in Antarka!” breathed Jon Darm. “Renounced a life and civilization closer to your own—”

  Ellory interrupted, shaking his head. “Closer in outward things. But farther removed, beneath its veneer, than the moon. I will never go back to Antarka.”

  “You renounced your heart, too!” Sharina said in a low voice of sympathy.

  Ellory heard but made no sign.

  “I prefer to live among you,” he continued. “If you will have me,” he added, looking around at the burned city. They were all reminded of the holocaust on the Hudson.

  “We do,” Jon Darm said quickly. “Things past are things past. You are not to blame. Your intentions shine clear. But, Humrelly,” he went on slowly, “the federation broke up completely. I think it must reMaln so, lest the all-powerful Antarkans scourge us more thoroughly next time, as they threatened.”

  His tone was slightly guarded, as though he feared Ellory had come back to lead another revolt.

  Ellory nodded, his shoulders sagging. “It must reMaln so,” he agreed. “More than any of you, I realize now the hold of Antarka. I brought you sorrow and death and pain.”

  Mal Radnor had gripped his arm, his young, strong face glowing.

  “It was still a grand thing, Humrelly!” he said earnestly. “I will never forget that great campaign. I would follow you again—” He broke off. “No, it can’t be. The Antarkans will watch closely now against federation. And it could not be achieved as easily again, barring even that. Our neighboring tribes mutter against us for bringing down on them Antarkan wrath. Already the Jendra and Quoise are preparing to war over their border.”

  Back to that, Ellory reflected. His flimsy empire had fallen apart like a house of cards. It had been a strange, unnatural interlude in the broad sweep of fiftieth century history, no more permanent than a gust of wind.

  Ellory straightened up, brushing the past out of his thoughts.

  “But I have other plans,” he told them. “They may mean much more in the future, fate willing, than what I first tried. I will go again to the ruins, with your permission, Jon Darm, to experiment further.” A depressing thought struck him. “Were all the crypt records destroyed in the fire?”

  “No.” Old Sem Onger made a horrified gesture at the mere thought. “All those are saved. I saw to that. I had them taken in a wagon to the ruins. When are we going, Humrelly?”

  Ellory grasped the old scholar’s shoulder gratefully.

  “It may be years and years of work, old man. God knows how long, or what will come of it. But there is no one I would rather have than you.”

  “I have many years ahead of me,” asserted the old seer, but at the same time he gave a gasp of pain. Two of his grandchildren, young boys, leaped from the surrounding crowd, supporting him as though it had become their regular duty.

  “Just a twinge of the heart,” Sem Onger said stoutly. “I’ll be ready tomorrow m
orning.”

  “We will send whatever supplies you need regularly,” promised Jon Darm.

  “I’ll come down to visit you,” said Mal Radnor. He slapped his bandaged leg. “It’ll be as good as new soon. And when it is, Sharina and I will be married!”

  Ellory smiled at them. But their happiness inevitably brought him pain—the pain of remembering his own love. Perhaps down there in the ruins, striving for almost hopeless goals, he could forget.

  Ellory found the buried laboratory in the ruins, much as he had left it. But against one wall reposed all the things of the crypt. Twentieth century things, in a laboratory of the thirtieth century. What would they combine to produce, for the science-less fiftieth century? Ellory ached to know, in his present role of scientist. His previous roles as conqueror and champion against tyranny faded in his eager mind.

  Holding the lead-wrapped lump of wax in his hand, Ellory reviewed what he had learned of it. It represented radioactivity, but a marvelous new kind that released more energy with more light thrown on it. It was slow, controlled atomic energy. That was really the sum total of what he had found out. Then Mal Radnor had come with his news of the border war, and events had shifted. Now he was back again, as though all the intervening adventure had been a night’s dream.

  “What science will we do first, Humrelly?” inquired old Sem Onger impatiently.

  “The science of cleaning up!” Ellory said grinning.

  He set to with a will, in the general debris, unearthing coils, metal plates, glass prisms and a variety of articles that might be useful. He set these on the large wooden table he had brought along. Among them he placed the whitened, leering skull of Dr. Unknown, who had made the glowing wax. It seemed to stare at them mockingly, belittling their efforts to solve his great secret.

  In the evening, and for many evenings after, they had a hot meal up above, under open sky. Sam Onger was cook, an art he boastfully acknowledged one of his best. Ellory drank in the beauty of sunset through the saw-edged ruins of vanished New York.

  “You smile sadly, Humrelly,” mumbled the old seer. “You dream of things that might have been, if man had not lost science?”

  “Yes, I dream of things that might have been,” murmured Ellory, with the vision of ErMalne before him.

  He was a little startled, the next moment, to hear the powerful drone of an Antarkan rocket ship. It soared over the ruins in a wide circle three times, then headed west.

  “A patrol ship,” said Sem Onger. “After a revolt, they patrol the world somewhat watchfully, especially this region, the center of the last rebellion.”

  Chapter 25

  MESSAGE OF DR. UNKNOWN

  In the following days, Ellory began to smelt down some of his metal supply, using one of the deserted clay pans and bellows left from the metal-weapon industry. He fashioned a tube. With prisms from the vault, he constructed a spectroscope. Its eyepiece was taken from binoculars among the crypt’s relics. It was laughably primitive, but would serve to identify the glowing wax.

  Ellory made the first test in the darkest corner of his laboratory. It was a flash test, with the substance giving its own incandescence. Ellory had to guess at his angstrom scale in the prisms. Finally he had sketched a pattern of lines which he searched for in the physics handbook of the crypt’s scientific books.

  “Silicon!” he cried triumphantly, matching patterns. “A radioactive isotope of silicon! Sem Onger, step number one has been completed.”

  “Now you will make more of it?”

  “Not so fast!” laughed Ellory. “First I have to determine some of its properties. What type of radioactivity is it? I know it’s set off somehow by light-photons, but what radiation does it give off?”

  In the next few days, they were busy for long, exciting hours. Ellory beat a bit of gold to extreme thinness between smooth calfskins and suspended two leaves of it from a copper wire. He held this simple electroscope before a bit of the glowing wax. The leaves did not fly apart.

  “Hm—no beta rays. No electrons given off,” he mused. There was a watch among the crypt’s relics. Ellory held its radium-dial close to the wax. There was no slightest increase of its ghostly phosphorescence.

  “No alpha-rays!” he stated, astounded. “No electrons. No helium-ions. There’s only one thing left—gamma radiation.” He dropped a speck of the wax in a cup of water. It continued to glow at the bottom. Ellory stuck his finger in the liquid after a moment to find it already warm. When he tried again, only a few seconds later, he yelled in scalded pain. Thirty seconds later the water boiled violently. Soon the cup was disgorging live steam like a boiler. The water was gone in a minute, completely boiled away. The speck of wax in the bottom continued to glow.

  Gamma-radiation, composed of vibrations shorter than those of the X-ray, should not do that. They were too penetrative to display such tremendous effects, which showed they were stopped.

  Sem Onger was mumbling to himself. “All that heat from such a little speck, and it isn’t even burning wood—”

  “Heat!” exclaimed Ellory. Understanding dawned. “It gives off pure infra-red radiation! This is the queerest bit of radioactivity I’ve heard of. No beta-rays, no alpha-rays, no gamma-rays—just a stupendous amount of heat radiation.”

  “Humrelly, this is a wonderful thing!” Old Sem Onger warmed his hands over the glowing speck. The day had been chill.

  “Is it!” Ellory sat down to think.

  Disappointment welled in him. What good was it, except to smelt down ores, of which there weren’t any to speak of? A vicious circle again. But why had the unknown discoverer of this new type of radioactivity placed such stock in it? Called it a belated means of saving a metal-starved civilization? Preserved an account and sample? Why—why?

  “Look!” Sem Onger was fumbling with the lead-foil that had enwrapped the wax lump. He thrust a sheet forward. “Look, Humrelly, there are scratchings on this sheet. Perhaps this is the record—”

  Ellory snatched it eagerly. Some form of writing and various diagrams had been scratched in the soft metal.

  “Bless you, old man, it is!” Ellory cried. “Here, get to work—translate what it says.”

  “There are many strange symbols,” said the old seer dubiously.

  “Never mind those. Put them down as they are. They are mathematical symbols, and those, thank the gods, have survived intact through time!”

  Ellory’s blood was afire with scientific zeal.

  A few hours later Sem Onger read what he had translated. He spoke the words that the staring skull on the table had once formulated in its brain.

  “I have withheld my discovery because it can be such a terrible weapon—a heat ray to scorch out human life. Perhaps this record will be discovered and utilized in some future time, when these warlike pages of history are over. The radioactive silicon I’ve created gives off its mass as infra-red radiation. It can boil away water almost instantaneously, if it is pumped under the radiation at a uniform rate. Thereby it becomes a source of metal salts, from seawater.”

  Ellory did not have to hear any more.

  His brain almost exploded with enlightenment. The great oceans of Earth were the most illimitable source of metals known. Untold billions of tons of every metallic salt were in that titanic reservoir, untapped by man because of the mechanical difficulties of removing surplus water.

  But the glowing, radioactive wax was the answer to that problem!

  Ellory made a little bow of deep respect toward the grinning skull.

  “Dr. Unknown,” he whispered earnestly, “you’ve contributed a great thing to posterity. I can picture the agony of your death, not knowing whether your discovery would ever again be unearthed, to serve its great purpose. But it has, and will. I swear it!”

  The science of power-and-metal lay ready for the fiftieth cen
tury, given time!

  Ellory awoke from a sort of daze two weeks later to find Mal Radnor and Sharina before him, announcing their wedding in two months, when the Royal House would be completed.

  “I’ll be there,” promised Ellory. “And my wedding present to you two will be the first bit of metal extracted from the ocean!”

  They did not know quite what he meant. He watched the happy couple go, and realized, with a stab of pain, that his heart was still in Antarka.

  But despite that, his mind soared aloft.

  “Tomorrow,” he said eagerly, “Tomorrow we test our machine.”

  The “machine” was a hybrid outfit. Ellory had scouted around in the ruins and found a section of tile water-pipe. Into this led a wooden trough, from a huge stone pot of water. Cut into the upper surface of the tile pipe was an aperture fitted with a simple hand-operated shutter to let light in. Under the shutter was a cradle of wires holding the entire lump of radioactive wax.

  Through the night Ellory checked over the machine in his mind, recalling every detail, feverishly anticipating the work to be done on the morrow. He scarcely slept.

  Would it work?

  All was ready, the next day. Ellory nodded and Sem Onger twisted the bung-valve of the stone pot, allowing a steady stream of water to run down the trough and through the tile pipe. When the stream poured from the other end, Ellory snapped his shutter open.

  Tensely, he watched.

  Light streamed in on the silicon-wax, energizing it. Its powerful heat-radiation poured down on the water. In an instant, the trickle changed to live steam. When Ellory shouted for Sem Onger to increase the flow, steam shot out for a hundred feet with a hissing roar.

  Ellory’s sweated face became exultant.

  Untold energy was doing this—radioactive energy akin to the atomic power of the twentieth century. That steam could be harnessed, made to work. The metal deposits dropped by the evaporated sea-water were a vast treasure-house of metals. They could be extracted one by one, through a regulated process of boiling off the water in stages—fractional crystallization.