The 22nd Golden Age of Science Fiction Read online

  Why was he in such a hurry? What was the pressure that necessitated such desperate speed? Were Benson and Vey hiding something in that laboratory? What was the bridge of life they were investigating? If there was an answer to any of these questions, it would be found in their laboratory. I got in my car.

  * * * *

  From the street as I drove slowly past, the laboratory was a large concrete building sitting dark and silent on the back side of the large lot it occupied. The laboratory looked like a modernistic factory building—a small factory at that. There was nothing mysterious about it, or about the neighborhood. Two shabby dilapidated brownstone houses sat across the street. A garage had been built between them. Two blocks away was a small factory that specialized in the manufacture of barn paint. Nothing mysterious here. About 1880, the neighborhood had been a prosperous residential section. The brownstone houses had been built then. Later the city had grown. Year by year the factories had moved into the section, following the pattern set in dozens of American cities.

  There was no mystery in the outside appearance of the laboratory or in the neighborhood. If there was a mystery here, it was in the minds of two men— Samuel Benson and Richard Vey. But, for that matter, what greater mystery exists than the human mind, than that strange, incredibly odd, beautiful and grotesque, world-spanning and ditch-digging chunk of tortuous gray matter, the human mind? It is, I think the greatest mystery on Earth, probably the greatest mystery in the universe. What is mind, this chemical and electronic balance, this gray pulp that each man carried in his skull? Coming out of muck and slime, the product of blind forces locked in cruel battle, it looks beyond the stars, seeking—always seeking—something.

  Just as Vey sought something, keeping the mystery of what he sought to himself. There was mystery in this modernistic laboratory all right, mystery in this prosaic, down-at-the-heels neighborhood, the mystery hidden in Vey’s mind. Possibly the greatest mystery ever explored in all the history of the world, unless the hints of certain mystics indicate they too had partly explored this mystery and know more than they tell.

  The secret of the mystery that motivated Vey—and had motivated Benson—might lie in that dark laboratory. And might not. For probably only God and Richard Vey knew all the secrets hidden in there.

  I parked my car on a dark side street two blocks away and walked back.

  Getting into the lab took some doing. Benson hadn’t intended to make entry easy for amateur burglars. Fortunately the coal supply had recently been replenished and some careless coalman had left the chute open. A great many of my friends would probably have been surprised to see a dignified attorney compounding a possible illegal entry charge by sliding down a coal chute, but both dignity and the law could go to hell for all of me. I wanted to see what was inside that lab.

  As I reached the top step of the basement stairs leading up into the laboratory, the door in front of me was snatched open.

  “Hands up!” a voice barked.

  The beam of the flashlight that covered me revealed the muzzle of a .45 caliber automatic pistol pointed straight at my stomach. I jerked my hands into the air.

  A split second later the muzzle was hastily turned aside and Dick Vey was apologizing.

  “Jim Rush! I didn’t know it was you. When the warning system revealed there was an intruder in the basement, I got a gun. I didn’t know it was you!”

  “Dick, you blasted fool, why in the hell did you break out—” I got that far before stopping. There was no point in giving him hell for adding the very real charge of jail breaking to the charge of abduction the district attorney already had against him. Anyhow he wouldn’t have listened. There was burning excitement in his eyes.

  “You’re just in time,” he whispered.

  “In time for what?”

  “Come on into the lab and I’ll show you.”

  * * * *

  Inside the lab the lights were burning, but they had been carefully shielded so that no beam escaped upwards to shine through the skylight. The shaded lamps revealed the most bewildering collection of mechanical and electrical equipment I have ever seen. There was something of everything in this lab. Gigantic, water-cooled vacuum tubes designed to produce the radio frequency output for a powerful radio transmitter, a chemist’s balance delicate enough to weigh a pencil mark on a piece of paper. A monstrous calculating machine big enough to handle the financial transactions of every bank on Earth and lying beside it on a table a stub pencil and dozens of sheets of scribbled paper. A powerful motor generator set and several large freakish constructions that looked like radio transmitters except that they weren’t quite right for normal transmitters. The antennae were strangely shaped and of no design ever dreamed up by any radio engineer.

  Oddest of all was the impression that the equipment was grouped into units and that each unit represented an experiment that had somehow failed. Kipling wrote a story about a peasant boy, a cowherd in India, who went crazy and started out to make a perfect image of God. His friends found the statues he had made, each a little better than the preceding one but each still falling short of the dream in his mind. “Thus gods are made.” There were no statues in this laboratory and no one had been trying to make a perfect image of God but something about these groups of equipment made me think of Kipling’s story. With this thought, the prickly feet of fear crawled up my spine.

  At the far end of the large room was another experiment, a bulky complicated arrangement of electrical apparatus that looked like a radio transmitter that had succeeded in doing what the other transmitters in the room had tried to do and failed—go crazy. Looking at it, I got the impression that this was an experiment that had not failed.

  * * * *

  “This—this is where I last saw Dr. Benson,” Vey said, pointing to the electrical apparatus.

  “Yes.”

  “He was here tinkering with the controls on this generator,” he continued, pointing to a large black panel covered with meters and switches.

  “Um. What do you think happened?”

  Blazing excitement lighted his face. He didn’t answer my question. Instead he asked me a question. “Do you remember I told you Dr. Benson had sent me out to the supply shack to get an extra walkie-talkie set we had out there?”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “Well, the important thing is that the set I went after was an extra one. We already had one here in the lab.”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “The set we had here in the lab is gone.”

  “Gone—” I thought about that, turning the idea over in my mind, seeking the reason back of it. There was a reason back of it, somewhere. The blazing look on Dick’s face told me this much.

  “Maybe the cops took it,” I suggested.

  “No. When I returned to the lab and found Dr. Benson was gone, I also noticed the walkie-talkie set was gone too.”

  “Hm. Benson disappears. A walkie-talkie also disappears. Do you think he took it with him?”

  “That’s exactly what I think, Jim!” Dick triumphantly answered.

  To me this sounded like it was heavy on the silly side, but Dick seemed to think it was very important. There was a walkie-talkie set lying on the workbench. He picked it up. “And I think I can get in touch with him.”

  “You think you can get in touch with him through the walkie-talkie he took with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you know where he is?”

  “No. That is one thing I don’t know.”

  The preposterousness of this idea filtered slowly into my mind. Dick Vey grinned shyly, yearningly. Still holding the walkie-talkie, he turned to the bulky arrangement of apparatus that had given me the impression it was an experiment that had not failed, snapped switches. The motor generator howled. Heater filaments in two giant transmitting tubes began to glow dull red. A large transform
er hummed as it built up high potential current for the plates of the tubes. The air crackled with electric tension. Strong electric currents were whipping back and forth inside that equipment, reversing themselves millions of times per second and in the process setting up no telling what kind of strains in the surrounding area.

  “This is generating radiations of rather high frequency,” Dick said. “The wave form is something new, something we just worked out within the last few days. That’s the real secret—the wave form.”

  “Um. What’s it for?”

  He didn’t answer. He was busy watching a small screen that was beginning to glow with vague splotches of light. The moving light splotches twisted like the flashes on a television screen that is slightly out of focus, finally tracing out the single symbol—the letter X.

  “We’ll try Condition X first,” Dick grunted. “We’ll probably have to go up to Condition Z to make contact, but we’ll try X and Y first. And let me warn you, Jim, not to approach this equipment while Condition X or Y is showing in the screen. Under no circumstances are you to go near it when Condition Z is on. In fact, I’m not certain it’s even safe to look at it when Condition Z is up. Condition Z represents about the ultimate in warping effect, and looking at the equipment seems to hurt the eyes when the strain is on. If you have to look at it, take little sneaking quick glances out of the corners of your eyes. But don’t look at it straight because it somehow seems to twist hell out of your eyeballs.”

  I didn’t say anything, but again I was aware of fear creeping through my mind.

  Dick snapped the switch on the walkie-talkie. “Calling Dr. Benson,” he spoke into the transmitter. “Calling Dr. Benson. Answer please. Over.”

  Pushing the receiver hard against his ear, he waited for an answer.

  The shadow of fear darkened in my mind. I watched him closely, trying to put out of my thoughts what was happening right here before my eyes. Dick Vey was calling the missing scientist on a walkie-talkie and calling in a way which indicated he expected an answer.

  I thought of madmen then, of the strange disordered fancies that go through the human mind. And I knew I was either witnessing the actions of a madman or I was suddenly on the verge of the biggest discovery ever made in the history of the human race. A bigger discovery than fire, a bigger discovery than the wheel. I thought of the true and the false and how true things fade into false things and false facts sometimes turn out to be true. I thought of how tomorrow is unreal today yet by some miracle just a little beyond the comprehension of the human mind, the unreal tomorrow becomes the real today. What is real and what is unreal? What was in Pilate’s mind when he asked, “What is truth?”

  “Calling Dr. Benson. This is Richard Vey calling Dr. Benson. Come in, please. Over.”

  Matter of fact, nothing to get excited about, commonplace. Only Dick Vey was excited, tremendously so. All his effort to act calm was not good enough to hide the tremendous tension he was feeling.

  “Richard Vey calling Dr. Benson— Over—”

  Damn it, Benson was missing. Maybe dead for all I knew. And Vey was trying to contact him by radio!

  * * * *

  For fifteen minutes Dick Vey continued calling. There was no answer. Little lines crept into his unshaven face. Finally he laid the transmitter on the work bench.

  “We’ll have to step up the power and go into Condition Y,” he muttered, snapping switches.

  The hum of the transformer increased. The “X” on the screen dissolved into a flicker of light. A new letter began to form.

  I had no idea of what he was doing. I could see no connection between the bulky assembly of apparatus that formed Condition X and the walkie-talkie set, but he seemed to think both pieces of equipment had to be in operation at the same time.

  The generator was a bulky assembly of instruments, an eight-foot switch and meter panel flanked on the left by the motor generator and the transformer. The two giant transmitting tubes were behind the panel. Surrounding them was an assembly of strangely shaped coils and condensers.

  Little flickers of movement seemed to flow over the equipment. They looked like distortions caused by rising currents of hot air. My eyes began to hurt. A “Y” slowly formed on the screen.

  “Condition Y is unstable,” Dick said. “It may change into Condition X and once in a while it slips over into Condition Z.” He sounded worried.

  The pain in my eyes moved to the back of my head. The “Y” formed solidly on the screen.

  The feeling of electric tension in the air intensified. I could smell ozone. Dick, glancing at the screen out of the corner of his eyes, picked up the walkie-talkie again.

  “Dick Vey calling Dr. Benson. Come in, please.”

  “Dick— Dick— Is this you? I’ve been trying to contact you,” a whisper floated from the walkie-talkie.

  Dick Vey went crazy.

  “Dr. Benson, is this you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we’ve actually made contact?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you—you’ve—the bridge—what happened?”

  “I found the—”

  Crash!

  Thunder roared in the laboratory. Bang! Crash! Smash!

  Outside in the night a bull voice roared.

  “Knock that door in, boys. Get in there before he makes a getaway.”

  Smash!

  The front door splintered inward. A flood of cops and plainclothes detectives poured into the room. Right behind them was Bockner, the district attorney, urging them onward. Bockner was looking extremely pleased with himself. Behind him were the legmen from the newspapers. Flash bulbs began to pop.

  “Stop it!” Dick Vey screamed, “You fools! Get out of here!”

  “Take him, boys,” Bockner ordered.

  Vey grabbed for his gun. A flood of blue poured over him. The pistol flew from his hand. A blackjack smashed against his jaw. Dazed, he went down. Handcuffs snicked around his wrists.

  He had dropped the walkie-talkie on the floor when the cops burst in. It lay on the floor, sputtering static.

  Bockner looked me over. “You here, Rush?” There was a triumphant gleam on his face. Visions of the mornings papers were already in his mind, with his picture on the front pages, the captions reading, “District Attorney Leads Raid.”

  “What do you have to say for yourself and your client now?”

  He had me. What could I say? All I could do was shrug. “I’ll say it in court. I admit you’ve got a jail-breaking charge against Vey, but it won’t amount to much when I prove conclusively that he was the victim of false arrest.”

  “False arrest, you say?” He chuckled.

  “Certainly, I say it. What else are you going to call it? And you are going to look mighty funny when you accuse Vey of kidnapping Benson and I produce the missing scientist in court.”

  Vey had been talking to Benson on the radio. If he could talk to the missing physicist, we could produce him in court. He couldn’t be far away. Bockner’s case would go out the window and his face would be red clear down to his navel.

  Bockner gave me the full benefit of his expansive smile. “Produce Benson in court, you say?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Ah?”

  “Ah, what?”

  “That’s going to be a little difficult, isn’t it?”

  I shrugged. “Not too difficult.”

  “Hm. That’s your idea, naturally. Personally I think it will be damned difficult in view of— Bring it in, boys,” he yelled to the men at the door.

  Two men, carrying a stretcher, entered. A blanket that concealed some long bulky object was thrown over the stretcher. Bockner lifted the blanket.

  “—In view of this!” he said.

  There was a corpse on the stretcher. The silence that fell was broken only by the throbbing hum o
f the transformer and the increasing rattle of static from the walkie-talkie on the floor.

  I looked at the dead man and didn’t recognize him. The silence held. It was broken by Dick Vey climbing unsteadily to his feet. He took one look at the dead man and began to scream. His voice was a raspy metallic scratch that dug into my heart. He dropped on his knees besides the stretcher.

  “Dr. Benson,” he whispered. “Dr. Benson…oh—”

  “Benson!” I gasped.

  Bockner nodded. “We found his body less than an hour ago. And when the man I had posted watching this joint reported that Vey was here, we brought the body along—to confront Vey with it.”

  Triumph rolled in his voice. He was the law-dog who has trailed the murderer to his lair and this was his moment of triumph. The room was silent. Bending over the dead scientist, Vey was fighting to keep from crying. Disordered sentences, broken words, came from his lips. He sounded whipped, broken, beaten, all life gone out of him. My fingers dug into his shoulder.

  “Vey!”

  He didn’t hear me.

  I shook him and I wasn’t gentle.

  “Vey!”

  He looked up. “Jim,” he whispered. “This—this is Dr. Benson.” Shock was in his voice, shock beyond the telling. The blood had drained away from his skin, leaving it blotched and gray. “This—this is Dr. Benson.”

  “So I understand,” I said.

  The tone of my voice stung him. “You—”

  “This is Dr. Benson,” I pointed to the corpse. “What I want to know is—who were you talking to on the walkie-talkie?”

  “Uh—uh—”

  I turned to Bockner. “How long has this man been dead?”

  “I haven’t had the report of the medical examiner yet, but I should say at least twenty-four hours. The body is already stiff with rigor mortis.”

  Dead twenty-four hours.