Then and Now : A Collection of SF by Raymond Z. Gallun

Author:Raymond Z. Gallun [Gallun, Raymond Z.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci-Fi Collection
Published: 2021-08-17T23:00:00+00:00

“THUS the Hexagon Lights were brought face to face with the promise of doom. For to them, with the fine balance of etheric forces that is theirs, the radiations of the manufacture of rocket fuel are far more dangerous than they are to humans. Gradually, gradually, they are being destroyed. And if there were to be an explosion at the plant—producing a wave of fearful etheric power, and throwing a thin shell of radioactive gases all around the Moon—they would all be wiped out in a few hours!

“Oh, don’t you see, boy? I am a student of all the miracles of the universe! And now, when I find the greatest, the most thrilling miracle of all—it is about to be snuffed out of existence, even before I am given a chance to complete my study of it. This must not happen! I will not let it happen! Never! Never! Never! These rocket fuel people must be driven from the Moon! They can establish another plant on one of the larger asteroids just as well. To drive them away is my first objective. With your help, Jack Vickers, I can accomplish it quite easily!”

Jack was a little dazed at this stunningly direct statement. With wonder and doubt and half belief growing in his mind, he had listened to all that Athelstane had said, not without a certain sympathy. But he was sure, now, that his host’s motives were backed up by reasoning faculties that were a bit blurred, making him the monomaniac champion of a beautiful, outre, and perhaps dangerous, unknown.

“You’re being rather drastic, aren’t you, Doctor?” he fenced. “After all, the plant at Imbrium City represents an enormous investment, in which hundreds of thousands of people are involved to supply the financial backing. Our first loyalty is theirs, since they are our own kind—”

“Finance! Loyalty!” Athelstane almost shouted. “How do you know that you do not match those stupid words against the very existence of living souls? Yes, I have reason to suspect it! The Hexagon Lights may have intellects even as we! Wait!”

The scientist pushed a heavy curtain away from a window, revealing the expanse of Dream Valley, and the forms of its strange inhabitants.

“Look!” he commanded. “Those geometric patterns, shifting and changing every second, are not the magnified images of microscopic ice crystals, I assure you. What, then, are they? What could they be? The idea signs of a language, perhaps? Or are they more than that? Maybe they constitute a kind of music—a music of light and design! Watch, and you will feel the beat of that music in your thoughts! You will forget the horror—which is only your human response to a wonder out of your experience! Then you will understand the universe more clearly, my friend! Perhaps you will sense, even as I do, the presence of a life and of a wisdom—call it science, if you will—that is beyond our ken! It may be that you think me a gibbering idiot; but if you

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