Synthetic Men Read online

  After a while he said quietly, “They call you ‘Queen’, do they not? Just what does that mean? Is the title passed on through a family line?”

  “Many hundreds of years past it was,” Thala told him. “Now the governing class is trained from birth. The children of all important persons in our world are instructed in all the things a ruler must know—science, psychology, economics, history, and so forth. At the age of twenty they undergo a rigid examination designed to weed out the less desirable.

  “Ten are chosen from the entire group of thousands. The ten are graded, and upon the death of the present Emperor or Queen, the highest takes his or her place. I have been ruler for less than two years, myself.”

  “And this Jaro—who and what is he?”

  “Jaro is the Workmaster. He is next in line should I die or be removed. It is my place to make decisions, his to see that they are executed. But sometimes I wonder—” Thala broke off, her face troubled.

  * * *

  While they had been talking, the little red Thorian sun had been slipping fast toward the horizon. Lights flicked on now in many windows of the buildings below. All over the city tiny pinpoints sprang up as night dropped like a dark cloak over the strange little world. And suddenly, while they watched, it was dark.

  Gary Horne, thinking thoughts that were far from scientific, blushed as the girl turned toward him. Her eyes were faintly luminous with the reflected light of the city, and they seemed to be smiling at him. He saw her teeth flash in a smile. Without knowing why, he took her hands in his. His pulse gave one wild beat at the soft touch of her skin.

  Instantly he was confused and regretted his action. He withdrew his hand and said hastily:

  “Getting—rather dark, isn’t it? How do you turn on the lights in this room?”

  Thala laughed softly, a low, tremulous laugh. It was the first actual sound Horne had ever heard her make.

  She said: “You are a model prisoner, Gary Horne, one who remembers his place—even when a Queen is in danger of forgetting hers!”

  Quickly she moved away. Through the darkness she glided to the elevator shaft. Her hand felt of its black, polished surface. After a moment of silence, the room blazed into light. The illumination came from the top of the shaft, shining upward to be reflected down from the ceiling.

  Thala pressed another button of the four that were set in a square by the door, and part of the floor slid back, to reveal a bed set flush with the floor level in a space about ten feet square. Another button was pressed, to reveal a lavatory and shower below the floor level, with a short flight of stairs leading to it.

  “Your food will be brought to you shortly,” she said, “and after that you must sleep and rest. Tomorrow the Council of Five meets to decide what is to be done with you. I believe your story, and I may be able to persuade them to try to send you back to Earth, with your word not to repeat your crime. But I can promise you nothing. Jaro is powerful and he is against you. Nothing but extreme good fortune and my word over his will be of any avail.”

  Thala stepped into the car then and the sliding door slipped between them. The rush of air told the physicist he was alone once more.

  Chapter III

  The Canyon’s Floor

  Tense expectancy charged the atmosphere of the council chamber when Gary Horne was brought there early the next morning. Hardly had he finished the rather tasty breakfast they brought him when he was escorted down the building to the first level, along a high-vaulted hall, and into the chamber where the highest officials of Thoria sat in conference.

  His two guards left him standing at the foot of a long center table and went out, leaving him face to face with the Council of Five. Horne catalogued the faces before him automatically.

  The thin-faced, dark-eyed Jaro sat at Queen Thala’s right. Open hostility burned in Jaro’s gaze. The three other council members looked somewhat less hostile, but far from friendly. At Jaro’s right hand sat a bald-headed, weak-chinned man whom Horne later learned was Harnak, Master of Shops. Over a loose, collarless shirt Harnak wore a deep purple vest. Across the table were the two other members, from whose very appearance the scientist could almost have guessed their occupations.

  One of them was Vulkor, Master of Finance. His face was thin and shrewd, his eyes bright, small and pinched. The tightness of his pale lips denoted a careful, if not pessimistic, nature. He held a thin sliver of metal in his fingers and twisted it precisely, as though counting the revolutions it made.

  His colleague was Od-ro, Master of Means. From his studious, analytical face, Horne half expected him to reel off yards of percentages, figures, and possibly the number of potatoes that could be grown in a cubic yard of soil.

  After formal preliminaries, Gary Horne was instructed to give his defense. He told his story simply and lucidly, from the time he had commenced the study of matter until his final attempt to shatter the thorium atom. The faces before him were expressionless, but each Councilman was busy with the slender stylus in his hand. Horne’s judges were making long, jerky lines on the black cylinders before them. Undoubtedly they were taking notes.

  Horne concluded earnestly, “You must realize that we of Earth are far behind the civilization of Thoria in scientific progress. We have no such concepts of the form of matter as you have reached. My sole motive, in splitting the atom, was to bring new wonders of science to my people.

  “I never dreamt of the havoc created by my experiments, and those of other physicists. I can only pledge you my word that should you enable me to return to Earth, scientists will never again seek to smash the atom in order to obtain its secrets!”

  * * *

  With that he stepped back, with a tired little gesture.

  Jaro turned to face Thala. The girl looked deeply moved and troubled by his words. Apparently she said something, for the Workmaster’s face darkened. He turned quickly to face Harnak, beside him. The Master of Shops nodded in agreement. In turn the Workmaster fixed Vulkor and Od-ro with his piercing glance and communicated some thought-message to them. Both of them nodded confirmation.

  Suddenly Thala leaped to her feet. She threw her stylus on the table in exasperation. One after another she faced the Councilmen, her eyes blazing, her cheeks glowing with anger. At last she leaned forward, her hands resting on the table, and seemed to be telling them off scathingly. Then she stopped, stood up straight and waited with queenly assurance for their replies.

  Vulkor, wizened little atomic financier, laid his stylus down and faced the girl. Hurriedly Jaro struck the table with his fist and nodded positively. He took up the argument and drove home his points with blows of the fist on the tabletop. For a full minute he harangued this girl who stood out against four hostile men.

  There was a taut silence after he concluded. Od-ro, Vulkor, Harnak and Jaro glared at her angrily, a challenge in their eyes. After a long time she shrugged and stood up. Gary Horne felt the mental barrier drop as she spoke.

  “The Council has decided, Earthman,” she informed him. “Your crime has been deemed one atonable only by extermination of your entire world. You yourself will not be harmed. You are to be made to help us develop a machine powerful enough to achieve our purpose. After that you will be returned—to live alone among the ruins of Earth!”

  * * *

  Gary Horne went rigid. The awful import of the sentence was something that no man could realise. He licked his lips and stared mutely at those accusing faces, at the eyes that glared coldly at him.

  “The ruins of Earth!” his mind echoed. It was inconceivable to him—his entire world to be blasted into destruction as he had unwittingly exterminated other worlds. But that had been unintentional. This was mass murder!

  All of a sudden Horne stalked to the council table, white with rage.

  “Are you barbarians or super-intelligent human beings? My mistake was one anyone could have made. Yet you treat me like a criminal and insist the entire Earth must suffer for my crime. Is that Thorian justice?” His inte
nt, angry face was fixed on Jaro’s acid visage.

  “Well, you can go plumb to hell!” Gary Horne stormed, with natural Earthly emphasis. “You won’t get any help from me. You can torture me or kill me—but it won’t do you a damned bit of good!”

  “Torture will be quite unnecessary,” Jaro smiled. “You see—we are going to make use of your knowledge right now! You will be shown our apparatus, which is somehow inferior to the one you yourself developed. When you find the flaw in our work, your mind will immediately register it. And in that instant we, too, will know where we have been wrong!”

  Despair clutched Horne’s heart. Jaro’s words were true. They would read his deductions in exactly the same way they had read his mind—

  Jaro stood up and with mock politeness bowed to Thala.

  “Perhaps Her Majesty would like to lead the way. I can think of no more gracious guide for our prisoner.”

  The girl’s face was stormy, but she controlled herself. Ignoring the Councilmen, she joined Horne and led him through the door.

  “In some ways,” she said, as they passed down the long hall, followed by the Masters, “I wonder just how superior our civilization is!”

  At the far end of the corridor they emerged into a broad balcony which formed the runway for one of the slender bridges that spanned the canyon. On all sides rose the towering city. At the other side of the canyon Thala led the way to one of the elevators. When all were inside it, Jaro depressed a button with his foot, and the car shot downward with rushing speed. Roads and bridges flashed by them as they hurtled thousands of feet down from the surface of the canyon. Suddenly Jaro let his foot up and the car came to a gradual stop.

  They emerged into the bottom of the canyon. The section they were in had appeared, from above, to be open, but now the young physicist realized it had a great glass dome above it. To left and right were masses of machinery, operated by workmen in their colorful costumes. Each man seemed to be turning out some one article. Beyond the machines was a small circular space closed off by semitransparent green glass. It was roofless, like the rest of the place, but Horne knew from a glance that it must be the point where all this activity was centered.

  Now Jaro turned to the left and motioned them into a doorway. The room Horne entered was small. It consisted of nothing but shelf after shelf of small black cylinders, like the ones he had seen in the council room. In the center was a table with a metal box on it, a silver sphere atop the box.

  Harnak, Master of Shops, informed him with a leer,

  “It is here your work will be done, Earthman. On these disks is recorded every phase of the work we are doing. Here—put this on and sit in that chair.” He took a metal circlet from a shelf.

  The young scientist frowned. The metal ring seemed to be the same as those the others wore about their foreheads. He had thought before that they were simply ornaments. The little collar slipped on smoothly, pressing rather sharply into the temples.

  Harnak selected a disk and placed it inside the box. He pressed a button. In the next moment the shining sphere was seen to vibrate. Gary Horne found that a stream of ideas was forming in his mind. A look of amazement overspread his features as the device commenced to explain, in simple thought-impulses, the entire story of the invention.

  * * *

  It was like speech without sound. It seemed to Horne more that he was thinking these things out than that they were being told to him. For several minutes he sat there in silent wonder. Around him the four Masters hung tensely, reading his every thought.

  Suddenly something seemed to jar on him. The impulse-disk had said clearly,

  “A temperature of nearly seventeen hundred degrees is created by the arc which condenses these electrical impulses. Therefore we must use copper, as our most heat-resisting metal.”

  In spite of himself Gary Horne started. Through his mind, before he could stop the flow of outraged scientific impulses, ran the objection:

  “Copper! Why, that will melt far below that point! You’ll get one good flash of juice and then it’ll be over. The only metal you can use is platinum!”

  A glad cry broke from Jaro’s lips. He turned to Harnak.

  “You hear!” he exulted. “There is a metal which will resist such heat! And fortunately,” he said more intensely, turning to Thala, “Her Majesty is able to help us.”

  Horne was suddenly amazed to find himself interpreting all these thought-impulses passing between the Masters and Thala. The mystery of the metal bands they wore was solved! Without them these rulers were probably as unreceptive as their Earth prisoner. Only their unusual powers of concentration had been able to make him “hear” without one.

  Impulsively Queen Thala’s hand went to her forehead, touched the slender metal ribbon which encircled it.

  “But this time it is in my power to refuse!” she said triumphantly. “The circlet I wear belongs solely to the Queen. In that circlet is contained all the platinum Thoria holds. The Council of Five has no power to take it from me!”

  Consternation flushed the Masters’ faces. Od-ro, shrewd Master of Means, stepped closer to the girl.

  “But you cannot refuse!” he argued hotly. “Our electroscopes have proved no other source of platinum exists on this planet, save the one that yielded the metal you wear. Thala—you are commanded to sacrifice your circlet!”

  Chapter IV

  The Way Back

  Abruptly, hatred seared Gary Horne’s brain. Hatred for these overbearing tyrants who were not fit to rule became in him a live thing. With the speed of thought he sprang forward and flung his arm into Jaro’s chest, knocking him out of the way.

  In a flash Horne was at the girl’s side. As though she knew what he wanted, she slipped the little band of metal out of her lustrous dark hair and handed it to him. Gripping it tightly in his hand, he turned and charged into Vulkor and Od-ro, who were blocking his path to the rear door. They were tugging inside their loose shirts, trying to free the weapons they had stopped him with before.

  But Horne was not to be frustrated so easily this time. His strength was greater than theirs and he was burning to use it. With a growl of anger he seized Od-ro by the neck and flung him against the wall. A cascade of disks shattered from the shelves. Horne picked the wizened Vulkor up bodily and flung him out the main door into the laboratory. A bulbous pistol-like affair clattered on the floor from the ruler’s limp hand.

  Horne turned to the table and raised the boxlike amplifier, whirled to heave it into the onrushing Harnak’s face. He saw his first glimpse of Thorian blood as the atomic scientist went down. Blood gushed from smashed nose and lips in a scarlet flood that stained the white shirt.

  In the next moment Horne upended the table in Jaro’s path and darted out the rear door into the corridor. Side entrances flashed past him as he ran swiftly into the less populated sections of the workshops. He sped straight down the hall for a hundred yards or so, then cut briskly to the right and up another hall. Sounds of pursuit echoed faintly. He reached a fork in the corridor, hesitated. Then he shot on to the right until he came to a flight of stairs.

  Gary Horne sprang up them swiftly. Suddenly, as he reached a landing, an elevator door loomed up before him. Hurriedly he pressed the button and waited impatiently. There was a rushing sound after a moment, and the elevator door slid aside. Horne entered and closed it. He was on the point of pressing the button that would take him up, when he reflected that would carry him directly into the heart of the city. His forefinger touched the “down” button, which he recognized by its inverted arrow.

  With a surge the car dropped. Five seconds passed, ten. Gary Horne held his breath and hoped the mechanism had an automatic stopping device. But perhaps this one was different! After a full minute, he decided he must be far enough down to be safe at least for a few hours. He found a red, unmarked button and pressed it. The car stopped rather suddenly, and the pressure on his stomach made him gag a bit.

  It was almost dark when Gary Horne emerged i
nto a hall. What little light there was, came from a dusty illuminator-globe. He went down the hall as far as he could see anything. In the shadows he discovered a door. He found a match and struck it. By its feeble, flickering flame Horne saw that the room beyond was small, dusty and unused. Gratefully he passed inside and prepared for a long wait.

  He made himself fairly comfortable in a corner where it was pitch dark and fell into a troubled sleep.

  * * *

  Hours later Horne awoke with a start. But not a sound was to be heard. Rubbing his eyes, he got to his feet and stretched cramped muscles. Then he made his way cautiously back to the elevator and reascended. A plan was taking definite form in his mind.

  In the inner auditorium in which he had first stepped into this strange atomic universe, there must still remain the devilish apparatus with which Jaro had hoped to destroy Earth; the apparatus which had been partially wrecked when the force of its atomic potential fused with that of his own atom-smashing machine in the University lecture hall. It had been this fusion which had projected Gary Horne into this other world.

  Now, Horne thought, if he could steal the parts necessary to repair the device, he might be able to transport himself back to Earth—and take with him that precious bit of platinum which alone stood between this bizarre atomic Plane and the people of his own world!

  Heart pounding with excitement, the young scientist returned to the dome-ceilinged auditorium by way of the elevator and the bridge. Eagerly he shoved the wide door to the chamber ajar and slid inside. It was quite dark, and Horne decide to risk a match. His fingers found one in his pocket—

  And at that moment, a voice froze him in his tracks.

  “You are most indiscreet, Earthman!”