Science Wonder Stories Sampler by Hugo Gernsback & Laurence Manning & Fletcher Pratt

Author:Hugo Gernsback & Laurence Manning & Fletcher Pratt
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: pulpgen.com
Published: 2012-02-07T05:00:00+00:00

“FOR a long time I waited, watching the man with the metal face. He said no more—nor did I. But after a time he arose and, motioning that I should follow him, led me through the other end of the room. There he showed me a bed; it was narrow and low, and covered not with blankets but with a single web of a weave marvellously fine and softer to the fingers than anything I had ever touched. The room was filled with a pleasant fragrance like that of the woods in spring, though there was no window and we were far from the trees.

“He signed that I should lay myself on the bed, and when I had done so he brought forth from some corner a Machine like a cap, fitting close to the head, with special parts to cover the ears, and this he placed on my head. I started back in fright at it, for I thought it some new device to trap me deeper into the lures of the Demon Power. But the man with the metal face spoke kindly, and placed the cap on his own head to show that no harm was intended.

“With that I lay down on the bed and slept, and knew no more, though my sleep was shot with dreams in which the living dead rose and spoke to me in the tongue of the Anglesk, and told me of frightful things. . . . To you, my friends, it will seem strange that men should speak in another tongue than ours. Yet so it was in the days of the Anglesk, that different men in different dales had different words for the same thing and could no more understand one another than we could understand the babbling of a child or the bark of a fox.

“In the morning I awoke fresh and rested after my sleep. The man with the metal face was bending over me, and as I sat up in the first wild surprise at finding myself in this so unfamiliar place, he bent over and detached the Machine I had been wearing through the night.

“‘Do you play chess?’ he asked; not in our own words, but in the tongue of the Anglesk of old; and, wonder of all wonders, I understood him.

“‘What?’ I cried in astonishment. ‘How is it that I now understand what you say, though it is in a different way from our own speech?’

“‘Oh, that is the radio helmet,’ he replied, treating the matter as one of no import. ‘But tell me, do you play chess?’ His speech was thick and slow, as though passed through lips unable to properly form the words.

“‘Chess?’ I answered. ‘I don’t know the name. Is it a game of the Anglesk?’

“The man with the metal face sighed deeply and half to himself said: ‘And for twenty years I have been bringing my Sayers gambit to absolute perfection—my legacy to the world.’ Of this I understood nothing, but he said aloud: ‘Yes, I am one of the Anglesk, as you call them, though our name is the English.

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