CHAPTER VIII
FROM ACROSS THE VOID
We helped Freddie unload the cylinder from his plane. He arrived about midnight, flying alone with his precious burden. It was a cylindrical metal container, some ten feet long by three feet in diameter—a strange looking, purple-brown metal, smooth and shining like burnished copper. White metal handles were on the cylinder—and down one of its bulging sides was crudely engraved the inscription "Peter Vanderstuyft, Porto Rico. Rush."
The thing weighed perhaps two hundred pounds. It was warm, yet clammy to the touch, as though sweating. And though it appeared smooth, under my finger tips I could feel that it was pitted and scarred—blistered as though by tremendous heat.
We labored up the hill with it, and deposited it on the floor in the Cain's living room, gathering over it, wondering how it might be opened. The message from Xenephrene! It had come at last; and abruptly I seemed to feel that this was not remarkable. We had been waiting for it; and here it was, at our feet here, strangely fashioned—mute, but waiting passively to give up its secret.
We were all trembling. Freddie had discarded his furs and helmet, but his hands were stiff with the cold.
"How do we get into it? They didn't want to open it—I didn't try either. It's the message, Peter."
Dan was on the floor beside the cylinder, running his hands over its surface. His father and mother crowded upon him. Old man Cain's jaw was dropped with his awe; Mrs. Cain chattered, "Land sakes! What next! Dan, what is it? Is it from Professor Vanderstuyft? Is he all right? And dear little Hulda? She's all right, isn't she, Dan? That's what this means, doesn't it? My heavens, these queer times that have come to the world—"
Dan jumped to his feet. "Yes, mother, that's what we hope it means." He kissed her; pushed her away; firm, but very gentle. "You go to bed, mother. Father, you go too. We'll be working here some hours—in the morning we'll tell you all about it."
Freddie, Dan and I were left alone. The double doors and double windows were closed against the cold; a broad coal fire burned in the grate; the room was warm and silent; and blue with the light-tube, which cast its beam down upon the cylinder. Freddie said, with a hush in his voice: "We'd have been afraid to try and open it anyway, in Miami. You—you don't suppose it would explode if we pound at it, do you?"
The sweating thing was strangely sinister, for all its friendly inscription. Dan was again bending over it. Freddie added:
"It was in a meteorite—some strange rock, or metal. Evidently not natural—artificially made. It was burned, fused and shapeless by the heat of its fall through our atmosphere. You can see where the heat has burned into the cylinder—"
"Hush!" said Dan abruptly. "Listen!"
With our ears close to the metal a tiny hum was audible. The thing was humming inside. Alive! Vibrant! Humming with that strange, almost gruesome whine which brought to my memory the crimson sound of the Xenephrene invaders when Robinson and Davis had attacked them.
It was half an hour before, with the utmost caution, we got the cylinder open. Upon one of its sides we found four slightly raised circles and four small depressions, numbered from one to eight. And the words, crudely scratched on the metal, "Peter, press one, three, five and eight."
A lid came off. We had not seen the cracks where it fitted. It stuck, fused by heat; but we carefully forced it, and at length it came away.
The human mind is subject to queer vagaries. There was just an instant, as we lifted the metal panel, that there flashed to me the vague horror that this was a coffin; that we were about to behold a corpse—wrapped and sent to us like a mummy. Hulda! Zetta! A ghastly gibe, sent to mock us from this sinister unknown world!
"Ah!" breathed Dan. My leaping heart quieted; but the cold sweat stood in beads on my forehead from those fleeting, horrible fancies.
The interior of the cylinder was divided into orderly compartments. Metal boxes; cones; cubes of metal; diaphragms; coils of white wire—packed, wrapped and lashed in orderly array; each piece seemingly set in springs to absorb the landing shock. A white lining was inside the cylinder, smooth as mica—insulation against the heat, perhaps. A strange, vague odor arose; and we could hear the humming now more plainly. It seemed to come from several metal globes the size of a man's head. Dead black metal; four or five of them were packed near the center of the cylinder. Around them a dim radiance was hovering.
"Wait!" admonished Dan. "Take it easy!" Freddie, in his excitement, would have begun rummaging. "Wait! There must be some instructions somewhere. Don't touch anything until you know what you're doing."
We found the box of instructions; it was, indeed, the most prominent thing before us, though we had overlooked it—a flat metal case some twelve inches square and half as thick, packed edge-wise. Clipped to its top was a white roll of what seemed paper.
Dan gingerly removed it; unrolled it—a translucent white animal skin, possibly. And with writing on it! Ah! At last the doubts and fears that were within us all were dispelled. Father's handwriting—his firm, smooth unhurried script.
"To my son, Peter Vanderstuyft. In Porto Rico care of Ezra John Cain, or the Amalgamated Broadcasters' Association, United States of America. Please forward at once."
And then the words: "Peter, detailed instructions inside. We are safe—your father, Hulda and Zetta."
Ah! Zetta! The gates to the shining garden were swung wide for me then! Zetta!
We sat around the table under the blue light-tube with father's communication, which we found inside the flat metal case, spread before us. A voluminous manuscript—nearly a hundred hand-written pages. Part of it was an all too brief letter; then there were pages of instructions, scientific data, notes and diagrams. We glanced at them hurriedly, and in a voice which in spite of me I could not hold steady, I read the letter aloud to Dan and Freddie.
Under Gardens, Xenephrene,
Earth-date, January, 1956.
Peter, I trust and pray that this, or one of its duplicates which I am dispatching, may reach you. I am launching five cylinders. Any one of them will answer the purpose, but if you can possess yourself of more than one, so much the better. I suggest, before you read further, that you guard against taking any stranger into the confidence of this communication. I ex-Smith and Dan Cain. I want them with you to read this; I know that I can depend upon them both, as I can upon you, my son.
I glanced up from the page to the solemn, intent faces of Freddie and Dan. Neither spoke. Freddie's face was flushed with excitement; his breath came fast between parted lips. But Dan was pale and grim; his lean brown fingers gripped the table edge with whitened knuckles. There was a brief silence.
"Go on," said Dan tensely.
I went back to the page. "He wants secrecy." Unconsciously I lowered my voice. Freddie swung to the radio table to verify that the lever of the outgoing audiphone was well off.
I went on reading:
If this should fall into other hands than those of my son, I beg that you who read it will read no further than this paragraph. Or, if you do, that loyalty to your nation—to your world—will bid you hold it secret. And if you value your own welfare—the very lives of all those who are most dear to you—at once you will deliver this cylinder and its contents intact to the government of the United States of America, with instructions that my son, Peter Vanderstuyft, of the Amalgamated Broadcasters Association be located, and the cylinder delivered to him. Or to Frederick Smith, Royal Dutch Astronomical Bureau, Anco, Chile; or to Daniel J. Cain, Factor, Porto Rico.
Peter, there is much that I would tell you—but I have no time now. We are safe. Hulda and Zetta are with me, and well. I have been ill, but am better now. The things, Peter, that I have seen and done! To name them, even if I could find the words, would be to no purpose.
I am trying to communicate with you—and Dan and Frederick—to allay your immediate fears for our safety. But more than that, Peter! The threat against our earth—as we saw it thirty-four months ago—is far greater now! For that, I would caution you—or any one loyal to earth who may read this—of the necessity for secrecy.
Enemies of earth—of a character, a plane of being, oh, Peter, you could not guess—may be on earth now. I do not know. I fear they are. Some may have made the trip at the conjunction of seventeen months ago. We suspect they did. Or if not, we fear some may be embarking from here now.
Guard yourself from them with secrecy of your actions and a constant watchfulness. I can suggest no other ways. If I could come to you—if I could bring Hulda back to you—I would make the trip instead of sending this message. But we cannot, or at least I think it would not be advisable.
I am needed here. Needed by this world—by all in it which stands for right and justice and adherence to the laws of the Almighty God who rules all of us of every world. And I think also that the welfare of our beloved earth can best be safeguarded by my remaining here for the present.
I will come to the point, Peter. There is so much for me to set down beyond a mere letter to you with explanations which well may wait until later. I want you here, Peter! And—if they think it advisable to trust their lives to such an adventure—I want Dan and Frederick to come with you. Will you come?
I ask you as though I were inviting you across one of our little oceans at home! Yet I—so much more fully than yourselves—realize what this is that I so casually ask! You are young—all three of you—and the spirit of adventure and recklessness runs high in healthy youth. I am playing upon it. I need not ask. I know you will come, if—as I pray may be the case—I have now provided you with the means—
My hand holding his written page was shaking. Freddie burst out, with a return of his old boyish enthusiasm, "I should say we would come. What a question!" I heard Dan murmur: "At last!"
Within me was a surge of emotion. A thrill of exaltation, mingled perhaps with a thrill of fear at the unknown crowding now so close upon me. And the thought of Zetta, mentioned so briefly in these written words from across the void! Yet from every line her name leaped at me, sang soundlessly in my head.
The image of her was never more clear in my memory—here in this very room where we had clasped hands and stood and swayed and wondered what Nature might be doing to us who, an instant before, had been strangers—an image of her seemed here now hovering in the shadows of the room corner behind the tense, bent figure of Dan. So clear that I almost felt something of her which had come with this letter; some unspoken longing of hers which she had sent to me as, perhaps in silence, she had watched father writing.
I think there was something. I felt it; and within me, my spirit was murmuring a welcome and an answer.
"Go on," said Dan gruffly. "Read it, Peter."
I shuffled the papers. "There isn't much more. He's evidently—"
"He's sent us the materials—the mechanisms out of which to build a vehicle," exclaimed Freddie. "It's evident that—"
Dan murmured. "Too late this time! Seventeen months—seventeen months more to wait—"
I laughed; an intoxication was upon me at the thought of it. "Wait, nothing! We'll be busy, don't worry about that! If we can—Freddie, what the devil?"
Freddie had leaped to his feet; he was standing with his head cocked, listening. There was no sound, save the vague humming from the opened cylinder stretched on the floor at our feet.
"Thought I heard something."
"You didn't," I said.
"Where?" demanded Dan. "The audiphone? It's off—dead."
"Where? Outside!" I suggested. I half rose from my seat and sank back. Freddie looked puzzled; he went to the door, listened and returned. He asked, "You don't hear anything?"
"No," I said. "Where?"
"I don't know. Here—I mean here, right here with us. I—I guess I imagined it."
"I guess you did," said Dan. But his gaze swept the room with a tense expectancy.
My heart was pounding. We all three drew nearer together, as though for instinctive protection against something we could almost but not quite hear.
"We're nervous," said Dan. "Imagining things. It's that damned weird humming. Go on, Peter."
I resumed the letter:
You will find in this cylinder the vital element necessary to the conquering of gravity. Reet, which a bountiful nature provides here, is a very wonderful thing, Peter. With it, and with such materials available on earth which my notes herewith describe fully, I believe you will have no great difficulty in constructing your vehicle. I have sent you the basic mechanisms already fully assembled in each of their integral parts—
Freddie again interrupted me. "Where's that draft coming from? It's cold. You got some window open, Dan?"
I was conscious of cold air in the room. The door to the adjoining bedroom—the room father had once occupied, but which now was unused—stood half open. The draft of chill air seemed coming from there. And then we all three heard a bump in there; it brought us to our feet.
"Shutter banging," said Dan. "Mother must have left the window partly up—shutter banging, there's a wind starting."
We followed him into the room with a precipitous haste. It was in semi-darkness. The window was partly raised from the bottom. Cold air was sweeping in. But the shutter was fastened tightly back against the outside wall; it could not bang. Dan closed the window. We none of us made any comment. Back at the living room table I began the letter again.
There is very little I need say further, Peter. My notes, diagrams and instructions explain everything fully. Attached to several of the mechanisms, you will find individual instruction sheets.
You will need funds. I would like your enterprise conducted with the help and resources of our government behind you, if possible. You will have less difficulty in that event. But, without such aid, you will have to proceed on your own.
No doubt, Peter, by now you will have been able to possess yourself legally of my money. Perhaps you have been able to realize upon the Washington property—though this I doubt, in view of the chaotic world conditions. Use what you have freely, Peter. Take from Dan as little as possible—Heaven knows what financial stress you all must have been laboring under—
The light over my head suddenly dimmed to half its volume. Freddie gave a startled exclamation. Dan cursed.
"Something seems determined to interrupt us," I said. I held the letter up to the light. "I can read it."
"What—" Freddie began.
"Two o'clock," said Dan. "They only give us half strength light after 2 A.M. New ruling in Porto Rico for the night months."
Freddie sank back. I read:
Financial stress you all must have been laboring under. Do your best. You ought to be able to start at the next conjunction. Your start—your navigation—all that you will find in my instruction sheets. Before you arrive here, open the special sealed envelope marked "Landing instructions." Follow them implicitly.
I will meet you. I have had fairly good facilities for scientific work here, Peter. You will find my instructions accurate—all my data fully explicit. You should have no trouble. Hulda sends love. She says, love to Dan especially. Good old Dan! We feel very close to you all in spirit, Peter—in spite, or perhaps even because of the void between us. You will cross it—oh, my son, be very careful! Follow every detail of my instructions. We will be waiting, impatiently. Zetta is here, watching me as I write—
Ah, that I had divined!
Strange, dear little Zetta. So remarkable a friend—
A cry from Dan interrupted me. I had been standing awkwardly holding the letter up to the light. The room was dim, with shadows crowding close upon us. At our feet the opened cylinder lay under the half strength blue light. It was partly in shadow. At Dan's startled cry I looked down. A red radiance hovered across the cylinder in the gloom there! A faint glow of crimson! And there sounded a low guttural whine. The crimson sound! In the room here with us!
Dan leaped. From within the cylinder one of its metal boxes was coming out! It came up with a jerk, as though raised by some invisible hand. A small, dead-white metal cube. Enveloped in a vague red glow, it came up to the level of my waist and moved away through the air.
[Illustration: From within the cylinder one of the metal boxes was coming out! Enveloped in a vague red glow, it began moving through the air.]
Dan went leaping over the cylinder; struck something solid; fell prone on the floor with the metal cube clattering beside him.
There was a confusion of sounds. A sudden unearthly scream. Dan's voice shouting: "I've got it. Freddie! Oh, Peter—"
Dan was struggling on the floor with something. I could see his arms encircling it—something large. He rolled, fought. Freddie jumped for him. I dropped the letter, dashed to where both Freddie and Dan were rolling on the floor, gripping something in a glow of humming red sound.
They both shouted: "Peter, watch out! Keep away! Watch him—grab him if he slips loose—"
I was standing over them. From the red confusion a naked arm emerged for an instant. I seized it—a queerly light but solid arm of bone and flesh and muscle. But it jerked away. There was a crash as the table overturned.
"Peter! Hold him! Peter—Freddie, let go of me—don't be a fool! Let go of me, I tell you!"
Something caught me in the face with a burning blow like a fire-brand. I staggered back; my flailing arms hit nothing. The room was whining with sound. On the floor Dan and Freddie in a fog of red glow, now dissipating, were shouting and struggling to disentangle themselves from each other. I heard a thump; the sound of running, padding footsteps. Before I could recover my balance from the blow in the face the sound was gone. A clatter in the adjoining bedroom, then silence.
Dan and Freddie stood erect. Panting, shaking and confused. In the bedroom, the window was again open. The intruder had gone. On the floor by the cylinder lay the white metal cube which had so nearly been stolen from us. We lifted it up. It seemed uninjured. On it was a tag, with father's inscription: "Reet catalyst concentrated—B Formula. Guard this well, Peter! Without it, your enterprise would be impossible!"