The Mind Magnet by Paul Ernst Read online

  Thrilling Wonder Stories, December, 1937

  The Mind Magnet

  by Paul Ernst

  CHAPTER I

  descent. Only one man stepped out. That The Trial of Professor Stillwell one was Stillwell. Farman would never step anywhere again. He lay inside the duralumin ball.

  WO men stepped into that

  Dead, they pronounced him at first, stratosphere balloon. One was T

  for his heart was not beating and no film Professor Stillwell, the other was showed on any polished surface held before Commander James Farman.

  his lips. Then came the great mystery, Thirty-eight hours later the balloon brought on by the embalmer who thought settled to earth in North Carolina in the the corpse wasn’t quite nor a m l and insisted

  midst of a crowd drawn by the sight of its upon more exhaustive tests.

  Thrilling Wonder Stories 2

  Commander James Farman’s body tremendous, straining bag of the balloon—

  was lifeless. And yet it was not dead! Not Commander Farman and I, dressed in according to the ultimate tests of the heavily padded suits. We must have been physiologists.

  quite a contrasting pair. Farman is, or was, a Cold and stark that body lay. Yet its powerful man of thirty-four, over six tall and blood was not coagulating; the muscles were solidly built. I am nearly sixty, small, and not stiffening, and never did stiffen, in rigor not strong.

  mortis; and there was no least sign of Farman shut the curved door, there decomposition over the months in which the was a great cry from outside, and we began lifeless flesh was observed.

  to rise. The mountainous bag bore us up Dead, but not dead! An

  smoothly as I valved sand from the space impossibility. You may have read in the between the floor and the curved bottom of papers of the exhaustive questioning of the ball. From the bottom of the bag our Professor Stillwell. Here was a man who had metal sphere hung like a pea depending been cooped in a ten-foot metal shell with from the stem of a pear.

  Farman during the whole ascent of the The ball was checkered, with

  balloon. If any one should be able to explain alternate squares black and alternate squares Farman’s horrible, undead state, it should be white. The black squares were to absorb heat Stillwell.

  from the sun in high altitudes so that the But Stillwell’s explanations only interior of the ball would not be too cold.

  replaced impossibility with sheer lunacy.

  You didn’t read his account in any of the (Interjection from jury foreman: “Please newspapers.

  keep to the matter in hand, Professor They don’t print such stuff.

  Stillwell.” A

  ll, gentlemen, I

  nswer: “Very we

  However, he is dead now; and his statement, sta

  will

  rt with our peak altitude, which was for what it may be worth, can be reproduced eighty-four thousand feet.”) in this scientific journal.

  All our apparatus, for the

  (June 12th, 1939, Asheville, North measurement of intensity of cosmic rays and Carolina, written and sworn to before so forth, was functioning perfectly, But we coroner’s jury investigating the apparent were unable to observe the heavens. The sky death of Commander James E. Farman.

  at that high altitude, as you know, is like Shorthand transcription of testimony of deep black velvet, with the sun a big white Professor Walter Stillwell by clerk, Abel ball. But we were unable to see it because Whitehouse.)

  the glass traps in the top of the ball had become frosted over. We had electrical WE started at dawn of June 10th (Professor defrosters, but when we had beaten all Stillwell begins) from New York City. The altitude records at

  nty-eight thousand

  seve

  ascent was made from the New York feet, we discarded our heavy batteries in World’s Fair Grounds. There was a great order to rise still higher.

  crowd around in spite of the early hour. This Commander Farman suggested that was most annoying, but as our ascent was he open one of the traps and wipe the glass financed by the Fair, we had to submit to clear. This was done, quickly, because in being a side-show attraction.

  that rarefied atmosphere we swiftly lost air At ten minutes of five in the morning from our tanks. Farman resumed his seat on we stepped into the metal ball beneath the the floor, with neither of us even remotely

  The Mind Magnet 3

  aware of what had happened while that trap to be flying to bits. My head felt as though it was open. . . .

  were noiselessly exploding. I tottered on the floor, panting for breath.

  SUNLIGHT came sharp and clear through The glaring sun, and everything else the square of glass. I watched it idly, and in the shell, faded into blackness. . . .

  saw that in the sharp, clear beam were You know how a smashed finger g specks of dust. Brought up with us, floatin

  feels? How it throbs and quivers to every f cou

  o

  rse. At that height, dust specks are beat of your heart until, if you could, you rare.

  would be almost glad if your heart stopped Some of the flecks stayed steadily in beating? That was the way I felt all over position. Some danced and eddied. Some when consciousness returned to me.

  gleamed momentarily blue or green or My whole body ached and throbbed yellow as infinitesimal prismatic reflections to the thud of my heart as though I had been were struck from them in their turning.

  smashed repeatedly with a hammer. The Some glowed amethyst or gold.

  agony was unendurable. I think I would But one speck, slightly larger than have gone mad if it had lasted long.

  the rest, shone a brilliant, ruby red.

  Fortunately it didn’t. In a short time it My eyes, caught by the red speck, stopped and I was able to sit up, weakly, and focused idly on it. The first thing I noticed try to find out what sort of seizure I’d had.

  was that the red color did not vary. The The first thing I noticed was that I other specks in the beam changed color as was bare. And it was while I was fumbling they turned. This fleck stayed rich red dazedly around for my clothes that I made consistently.

  the second bewildering discovery.

  I have been accused of self-

  I had lost consciousness in the shell hypnotism by the few who have already of the stratosphere balloon. But I had not heard my statement. But this cannot be true.

  regained it in the same place. In horror and For I stared away from the red speck after amazement I stared around.

  only a minute or so, to look up at the velvet All about me was open plain, like a black sky through the glass which Farman prairie, covered with waist-high grass that had been kind enough to wipe clear.

  was reddish in color.

  It was while I was staring up through the glass that I felt, suddenly, a curious OVER my head was a cloudless, glaring breathlessness. I heard Farman exclaim, and arch of sky that was not blue but light, angry then was blinded by a reddish glare. My red. Bathing my body and the bizarre prairie eyes sought the source. The glare came from was a reddish flood of light that came from a ball about as

  as

  big

  an orange which

  all directions at once instead of from a floated in the beam of light where the red central sun.

  dust fleck had been.

  “I’ve gone mad,” I mumbled to A ball the size of an orange? It was myself.

  growing, swelling. It became a thing a yard At that instant an ear-splitting in diameter, then, swiftly, a sun that filled scream penetrated into the confusion of my the metal shell from wall to wall. A gigantic, thoughts. It came from some point over the fiery sun that blinded me.

  horizon and sounded l
ike a factory whistle Then something terrific happened to gone crazy. Incredible that it should come so my body. Every atom of my being seemed piercingly to my ears and yet be far enough

  Thrilling Wonder Stories 4

  away to be out of sight over the bend of the the way down. The bottom of it was split horizon.

  into thick, jointed columns which served as But then I noticed that the horizon legs. A dozen of them, there must have was oddly close to me. On all sides, a ring of been, moving regularly as machinery moves, red sky met red ground, dipping down like a bearing the great structure rapidly nearer. A great cup. Had the world we know been tower a hundred feet high—like a tapered reduced to a ball several hundred miles in lighthouse walking on a dozen jointed legs.

  diameter, the effect would have been the By now I was able to see plainly same. And this queer fact confirme y

  d in m

  enough to verify that the tower was a mind a conviction that I could no longer mechanical, not a living thing. It glittered deny, no matter how mad it seemed.

  with a hard metallic sheen in the angry red I really was in another world.

  light. As the many legs moved I could hear a However in God’s name it could have savage clanking. Metal on metal with the senses in Earth’s

  happened, I had lost my

  moving of sheathed joints.

  stratosphere—to regain them in another and The things on the armored turret weirdly different sphere!

  were waving curiously boneless arms, or Another high-pitched, distant scream tentacles. Excitement seemed to prevail. A cut short the thoughts churning in my mind.

  frenzied, ferocious excitement. It came to Involuntarily I crouched low in the waist-me that these creatures, whatever manner of high red grass to hide myself. As I did so, an life they might be, had built an enormous answering scream ripped out from the destructive engine to ride on—a machine of distance behind me. A high, hissing bellow, war.

  like the cry of some gigantic animal.

  Once more the shrill scream ripped Again the scream sounded ahead of out. It was followed by a puff of greenish me

  rom

  —to be echoed instantly by one f vapor from the metal cap of the big turret.

  ehind.

  b

  The latter cry was pitched in a The answering scream from behind different key, so I knew it was an echo.

  came so near that I could feel the hairs on The solid ground beneath me began my scalp crawl with the vibration. I looked to tremble slightly. Carefully, fearfully, I over my shoulder.

  raised my head until I could see above the There, a second tower had appeared grass tops. I gazed in the direction of the over the sky-rim. It was about the same in first cry.

  construction as the first, but it was built on Up over the rim of the horizon thrust square lines instead of round. It too had a something that at first looked like a moving turret crowded with gesticulating creatures.

  lighthouse. It had a thick central turret, with shed over the ground on m

  It also ru

  any legs,

  a wide, overhanging balcony surrounding it.

  as though eager to meet the other in titanic This balcony, I could see, was thronged with combat.

  moving small figures. People? Human beings? No, even at that distance I could sense that the things on the balcony were not CHAPTER II

  humans as we know them.

  The Red Planet

  The moving lighthouse was rearing colossally as it neared me. Up and up it loomed over the skyline. Now I could see I AM not giving my thoughts, gentlemen, that the shaft of the tower was not solid all because at the time I had no thoughts. I was

  The Mind Magnet 5

  dazed. I had been fantastically hurled into myself out of their sight.

  this mad scene in some manner that defied The round tower rushed around the sanity, and I could only feel.

  prohibited circle and at last was within a few My feeling told me surely that these hundred yards of the square tower. Both two things were hurtling into battle. There towers halted. I saw the tiny creatures in was no mistaking it. Manned by creatures of each fighting turret squat below the two opposing forces, if the varying parapets, and then I saw flashes come from architecture of the towers meant anything, each balcony as if the two crews were armed they housed two armies in moving metal.

  with guns and the flashes were rifle shots.

  Two armies about to clash. This planet, red No sound accompanied these flashe ere

  s. Th

  as Mars, was a planet of perpetual war and were only flame-streaks, deeper red in the death!

  red light from the close-arching heavens.

  Fearfully I watched the round tower, That the discharges were deadly, I as it was nearer to me. On it rushed, straight could see at once. On each turret figures toward me. But suddenly it stopped short.

  threw up coiling arms, and sank out of sight And with that stopping I noticed something behind the parapets. A few fell over the that until now had only vaguely caught my railings to sprawl in space like wounded eye.

  insects and crash sickeningly to the ground Around the spot in the reddish prairie over a hundred feet below.

  in which I had hid, was a line as evenly The battle was too fierce to last long.

  drawn as though traced by a gigantic A bristling halo of red streaks surrounded compass. The circle was about a hundred each turret constantly. Soundless as the yards in diameter, and I seemed to be shots were, an explosion splashed the legs of approximately in its center. T e line, h

  the round tower with fire. Two of the legs running evenly through the grass, glistened dropped off, causing the tower to list badly.

  in the red light like a path of metal.

  It withdrew in crippled haste, with the The round tower had stopped at the square tower after it.

  very edge of this circle. A few seconds it The square monster whistled

  teetered there, then it drew hastily back, as if piercingly, a sort of cry of triumph, and the circle were a charmed or deadly space.

  disappeared over the skyline after the other.

  Its ear-splitting scream shrilled forth, while I uttered a sob of relief that these terrible an answering scream from the square tower things were gone, and started to get to my sounded on a note almost of frustration. As feet.

  the round tow

  though

  er had nearly been

  trapped in some way, and had managed to TURNING, I saw Commander Farman.

  escape.

  Twitching and trembling, afflicted by the For the one instant of its nearness to aftermath of change that I had gone through the circle, I felt again the same nausea and myself, he sat up and looked around. Either terrific tension of body I had experienced he was quicker of intelligence than I, or, just before being transported somehow to being younger and less foolishly skeptical this small, red, warlike globe. But the concerning things usually held to be faintness passed—as if some tension in the incredible, he was more willing to place ground beneath me had been turned off, and credence in the testimony offered him by his I was again concerned only with watching senses.

  e m

  th

  onstrous towers—and with keeping

  “Another world!” he mumbled, with

  Thrilling Wonder Stories 6

  awe in his tone. “We’re on another planet!

  its existence before. Now it was thrown But where—and how—”

  wide, and in the opening it revealed were I took a deep breath and tried to get two creatures that might have stepped at some sort of explanation,

  straight out of a nightmare. I can see them

  “You were with me when I was—

  yet.

  whisked—here, and you seem to have come They were about four feet tall, and after me. Tell me, did I just disappear out of moved on three many-jointed legs like those the shell, or what?”

  of insects. Like insects their legs and

/>   “You were still there when I

  globular bodies were protected by a sort of fainted—or whatever it was happened to chitinous natural armor. Only their legs and me,” Farman said. “I saw you staring at a heads were not sheathed by the stuff. Their red ball floating in the sunlight. At least it arms—three boneless tentacles ending in seemed to be a ball. Then you stiffened, and three coiling “fingers” apiece—weaved fell full length on the floor. I went over to about like the tentacles of devil-fish.

  you and tried to bring you to, but you were Their heads, round as beads, were set deeply unconscious. In fact, I thought you directly on the globes of their bodies; and were dead. I started to valve the balloon to there were no features. The heads were bring us down—and then I keeled over simply round sacks with three eye-tipped myself. Now I’m here.”

  tentacles pronging from them.

  I shook my head.

  “How could I be back there

  FOR a few seconds they remained in the unconscious, and here too—wherever here opening. Then they started toward us. We is?” I mused.

  could see now that in the center tentacle of There was silence for a moment, and each was what appeared to be a short piece then I went on with a queer train of thought.

  of very thick wire. The wires were leveled I don’t know yet whether it was pure theory threateningly at us.

  or fact.

  “These things mean us no good,”

  “But perhaps only my body is back muttered Farman. He drew closer to me.

  in the stratosphere shell. Perhaps it was my Together we braced ourselves to meet the i

  m nd, my thought, that was wrenched to this attack of the nightmare things.

  place, leaving the body a tenantless shell.”

  “Stand a little behind me,” directed Farman doubled his big fist.

  Farman. “I’m bigger than you.”