Goddess of the Volcano by Browning Craig

Author:Browning, Craig [Browning, Craig]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: NewBook, Science Fiction, Short Stories
Publisher: Amazing Stories
Published: 1950-06-07T05:00:00+00:00

PAUL HAD returned his attention to the telescope when Fred left to waken the sleepers, feeling a little disturbed by Fred’s suspicions, but realizing that he did present a disturbing sight with his unkempt figure, and that the robots had told Fred of his being out of his head. If he were in Fred’s place he would have felt the same way.

As his eyes focused on the telescope image he forgot Fred and the others completely at what he saw. The pin-point of light that had been far away moments before was now close enough to resolve with the terrific magnification.. It was not starlight as he and Fred had presumed!

The source of the image was still over a thousand miles distant, but it was clear and sharp. It was an enlargement of the bore, showing a surface of granite in which another opening continued the straight line through the huge world.

In itself the scene was unspectacular. But it indicated a tremendous inner space hollowed out of the very heart of the planet. A space at least a thousand miles across.

In such a space there could be a veritable world within a world of life and civilization. No matter how great the strength of gravity at the surface, here in the center it would be nothing at all. No gravity. If the ship came to a stop it would be as free from gravity as though it were in outer space!

Slowly the angle of view of this inner world increased. As it increased, its rate of increase lessened. The ship was slowing down rapidly enough so that it would probably not shoot through to the other bore.

Their capture, their entrance into the hole running to the center of this mysterious giant world far out between suns, and now their slowing down as they neared this central hollow space, all were irrefutable evidence of intelligent beings guiding the ship by unknown powers.

The madness he had suffered—perhaps that had been an offshoot of the force that had taken them under tow. Certainly he wasn’t insane now!

What kind of creatures would these beings be? Would they be human—of the same root stock as the human race? Some theoreticians believed that the only possible vehicle of intelligence was the human. They postulated that life in any other part of the universe, even though it might have had a separate origin from that of the life on earth, could not attain intelligence unless it reproduced the human form.

They backed their logic with rather strong evidence, too. They pointed out that the human developed from a gene pattern that was in reality a highly complex molecule. They argued that the atoms on other bodies conducive to life of the hydrocarbon variety were the same as those on earth, and that life on earth had evolved every possible type of nuclear pattern. Therefore life on other worlds must repeat the evolution on earth, and the end product would be human beings—perhaps slightly different in some superficial characteristics, but nevertheless human.

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