The year 1928 was a great year
of discovery for amazing stories. They
were uncovering new talent at such a great rate, (Harl
Vincent, David H. Keller, E. E. Smith, Philip Francis
Nowlan, Fletcher Pratt and Miles J. Breuer), that
Jack Williamson barely managed to become one of a
distinguished group of discoveries by stealing the
cover of the December issue for his first story
The Metal Man.
A disciple of A. Merritt, he attempted
to imitate in style, mood and subject the magic of
that late lamented master of fantasy. The imitation
found great favor from the readership and almost instantly
Jack Williamson became an important name on the contents
page of amazing stories. He followed
his initial success with two short novels, The
Green Girl in amazing stories and
The Alien Intelligence in SCIENCE WONDER STORIES,
another Gernsback publication. Both of these
stories were close copies of A. Merritt, whose style
and method Jack Williamson parlayed into popularity
for eight years.
Yet the strange thing about it
was that Jack Williamson was one of the most versatile
science fiction authors ever to sit down at the typewriter.
When the vogue for science-fantasy altered to super
science, he created the memorable super lock-picker
Giles Habilula as the major attraction in a rousing
trio of space operas, The Legion of Space, The
Cometeers and One Against the Legion. When
grim realism was the order of the day, he produced
Crucible of Power and when they wanted extrapolated
theory in present tense, he assumed the disguise of
Will Stewart and popularized the concept of contra
terrene matter in science fiction with Seetee
Ship and Seetee Shock. Finally, when only
psychological studies of the future would do, he produced
“With Folded Hands ...” “...
And Searching Mind.”
The Cosmic Express is of special
interest because it was written during Williamson’s
A. Merritt “kick,” when he was writing
little else but, and it gave the earliest indication
of a more general capability. The lightness of
the handling is especially modern, barely avoiding
the farcical by the validity of the notion that wireless
transmission of matter is the next big transportation
frontier to be conquered. It is especially important
because it stylistically forecast a later trend to
accept the background for granted, regardless of the
quantity of wonders, and proceed with the story.
With only a few thousand scanning-disk television
sets in existence at the time of the writing, the
surmise that this media would be a natural for westerns
was particularly astute.
Jack Williamson was born in 1908
in the Arizona territory when covered wagons were
the primary form of transportation and apaches still
raided the settlers. His father was a cattle
man, but for young Jack, the ranch was anything but
glamorous. “My days were filled,”
he remembers, “with monotonous rounds of what
seemed an endless, heart-breaking war with drought
and frost and dust-storms, poison-weeds and hail, for
the sake of survival on the Llano Estacado.”
The discovery of AMAZING STORIES was the
escape he sought and his goal was to be a science fiction
writer. He labored to this end and the first he
knew that a story of his had been accepted was when
he bought the December, 1929 issue of AMAZING
STORIES. Since then, he has written millions of
words of science fiction and has gone on record as
follows: “I feel that science-fiction is
the folklore of the new world of science, and the
expression of man’s reaction to a technological
environment. By which I mean that it is the most
interesting and stimulating form of literature today."
Mr. Eric Stokes-Harding tumbled out
of the rumpled bed-clothing, a striking slender figure
in purple-striped pajamas. He smiled fondly across
to the other of the twin beds, where Nada, his pretty
bride, lay quiet beneath light silk covers. With
a groan, he stood up and began a series of fantastic
bending exercises. But after a few half-hearted
movements, he gave it up, and walked through an open
door into a small bright room, its walls covered with
bookcases and also with scientific appliances that
would have been strange to the man of four or five
centuries before, when the Age of Aviation was beginning.
Yawning, Mr. Eric Stokes-Harding stood
before the great open window, staring out. Below
him was a wide, park-like space, green with emerald
lawns, and bright with flowering plants. Two hundred
yards across it rose an immense pyramidal building-an
artistic structure, gleaming with white marble and
bright metal, striped with the verdure of terraced
roof-gardens, its slender peak rising to help support
the gray, steel-ribbed glass roof above. Beyond,
the park stretched away in illimitable vistas, broken
with the graceful columned buildings that held up
the great glass roof.
Above the glass, over this New York
of 2432 A. D., a freezing blizzard was sweeping.
But small concern was that to the lightly clad man
at the window, who was inhaling deeply the fragrant
air from the plants below-air kept, winter
and summer, exactly at 20 deg. C.
With another yawn, Mr. Eric Stokes-Harding
turned back to the room, which was bright with the
rich golden light that poured in from the suspended
globes of the cold ato-light that illuminated the snow-covered
city. With a distasteful grimace, he seated himself
before a broad, paper-littered desk, sat a few minutes
leaning back, with his hands clasped behind his head.
At last he straightened reluctantly, slid a small
typewriter out of its drawer, and began pecking at
it impatiently.
For Mr. Eric Stokes-Harding was an
author. There was a whole shelf of his books
on the wall, in bright jackets, red and blue and green,
that brought a thrill of pleasure to the young novelist’s
heart when he looked up from his clattering machine.
He wrote “thrilling action romances,”
as his enthusiastic publishers and television directors
said, “of ages past, when men were men.
Red-blooded heroes responding vigorously to the stirring
passions of primordial life!”
He was impartial as to the source
of his thrills-provided they were distant
enough from modern civilization. His hero was
likely to be an ape-man roaring through the jungle,
with a bloody rock in one hand and a beautiful girl
in the other. Or a cowboy, “hard-riding,
hard-shooting,” the vanishing hero of the ancient
ranches. Or a man marooned with a lovely woman
on a desert South Sea island. His heroes were
invariably strong, fearless, resourceful fellows,
who could handle a club on equal terms with a cave-man,
or call science to aid them in defending a beautiful
mate from the terrors of a desolate wilderness.
And a hundred million read Eric’s
novels, and watched the dramatization of them on the
television screens. They thrilled at the simple,
romantic lives his heroes led, paid him handsome royalties,
and subconsciously shared his opinion that civilization
had taken all the best from the life of man.
Eric had settled down to the artistic
satisfaction of describing the sensuous delight of
his hero in the roasted marrow-bones of a dead mammoth,
when the pretty woman in the other room stirred, and
presently came tripping into the study, gay and vivacious,
and-as her husband of a few months most
justly thought-altogether beautiful in a
bright silk dressing gown.
Recklessly, he slammed the machine
back into its place, and resolved to forget that his
next “red-blooded action thriller” was
due in the publisher’s office at the end of
the month. He sprang up to kiss his wife, held
her embraced for a long happy moment. And then
they went hand in hand, to the side of the room and
punched a series of buttons on a panel-a
simple way of ordering breakfast sent up the automatic
shaft from the kitchens below.
Nada Stokes-Harding was also an author.
She wrote poems-“back to nature stuff”-simple
lyrics of the sea, of sunsets, of bird songs, of bright
flowers and warm winds, of thrilling communion with
Nature, and growing things. Men read her poems
and called her a genius. Even though the whole
world had grown up into a city, the birds were extinct,
there were no wild flowers, and no one had time to
bother about sunsets.
“Eric, darling,” she said,
“isn’t it terrible to be cooped up here
in this little flat, away from the things we both
love?”
“Yes, dear. Civilization
has ruined the world. If we could only have lived
a thousand years ago, when life was simple and natural,
when men hunted and killed their meat, instead of
drinking synthetic stuff, when men still had the joys
of conflict, instead of living under glass, like hot-house
flowers.”
“If we could only go somewhere-”
“There isn’t anywhere
to go. I write about the West, Africa, South Sea
Islands. But they were all filled up two hundred
years ago. Pleasure resorts, sanatoriums,
cities, factories.”
“If only we lived on Venus!
I was listening to a lecture on the television, last
night. The speaker said that the Planet Venus
is younger than the Earth, that it has not cooled
so much. It has a thick, cloudy atmosphere, and
low, rainy forests. There’s simple, elemental
life there-like Earth had before civilization
ruined it.”
“Yes, Kinsley, with his new
infra-red ray telescope, that penetrates the cloud
layers of the planet, proved that Venus rotates in
about the same period as Earth; and it must be much
like Earth was a million years ago.”
“Eric, I wonder if we could
go there! It would be so thrilling to begin life
like the characters in your stories, to get away from
this hateful civilization, and live natural lives.
Maybe a rocket-”
The young author’s eyes were
glowing. He skipped across the floor, seized
Nada, kissed her ecstatically. “Splendid!
Think of hunting in the virgin forest, and bringing
the game home to you! But I’m afraid there
is no way.-Wait! The Cosmic Express.”
“The Cosmic Express?”
“A new invention. Just
perfected a few weeks ago, I understand. By Ludwig
Von der Valls, the German physicist.”
“I’ve quit bothering about
science. It has ruined nature, filled the world
with silly, artificial people, doing silly, artificial
things.”
“But this is quite remarkable,
dear. A new way to travel-by ether!”
“By ether!”
“Yes. You know of course
that energy and matter are interchangeable terms;
both are simply etheric vibration, of different sorts.”
“Of course. That’s
elementary.” She smiled proudly. “I
can give you examples, even of the change. The
disintegration of the radium atom, making helium and
lead and energy. And Millikan’s old
proof that his Cosmic Ray is generated when particles
of electricity are united to form an atom.”
“Fine! I thought you said
you weren’t a scientist.” He glowed
with pride. “But the method, in the new
Cosmic Express, is simply to convert the matter to
be carried into power, send it out as a radiant beam
and focus the beam to convert it back into atoms at
the destination.”
“But the amount of energy must be terrific-”
“It is. You know short
waves carry more energy than long ones. The Express
Ray is an electromagnetic vibration of frequency far
higher than that of even the Cosmic Ray, and correspondingly
more powerful and more penetrating.”
The girl frowned, running slim fingers
through golden-brown hair. “But I don’t
see how they get any recognizable object, not even
how they get the radiation turned back into matter.”
“The beam is focused, just like
the light that passes through a camera lens.
The photographic lens, using light rays, picks up a
picture and reproduces it again on the plate-just
the same as the Express Ray picks up an object and
sets it down on the other side of the world.
“An analogy from television
might help. You know that by means of the scanning
disc, the picture is transformed into mere rapid fluctuations
in the brightness of a beam of light. In a parallel
manner, the focal plane of the Express Ray moves slowly
through the object, progressively, dissolving layers
of the thickness of a single atom, which are accurately
reproduced at the other focus of the instrument-which
might be in Venus!
“But the analogy of the lens
is the better of the two. For no receiving instrument
is required, as in television. The object is built
up of an infinite series of plane layers, at the focus
of the ray, no matter where that may be. Such
a thing would be impossible with radio apparatus because
even with the best beam transmission, all but a tiny
fraction of the power is lost, and power is required
to rebuild the atoms. Do you understand, dear?”
“Not altogether. But I
should worry! Here comes breakfast. Let me
butter your toast.”
A bell had rung at the shaft.
She ran to it, and returned with a great silver tray,
laden with dainty dishes, which she set on a little
side table. They sat down opposite each other,
and ate, getting as much satisfaction from contemplation
of each other’s faces as from the excellent
food. When they had finished, she carried the
tray to the shaft, slid it in a slot, and touched
a button-thus disposing of the culinary
cares of the morning.
She ran back to Eric, who was once
more staring distastefully at his typewriter.
“Oh, darling! I’m
thrilled to death about the Cosmic Express! If
we could go to Venus, to a new life on a new world,
and get away from all this hateful conventional society-”
“We can go to their office-it’s
only five minutes. The chap that operates the
machine for the company is a pal of mine. He’s
not supposed to take passengers except between the
offices they have scattered about the world.
But I know his weak point-”
Eric laughed, fumbled with a hidden
spring under his desk. A small polished object,
gleaming silvery, slid down into his hand.
“Old friendship, plus
this, would make him-like spinach.”
Five minutes later Mr. Eric Stokes-Harding
and his pretty wife were in street clothes, light
silk tunics of loose, flowing lines-little
clothing being required in the artificially warmed
city. They entered an elevator and dropped thirty
stories to the ground floor of the great building.
There they entered a cylindrical car,
with rows of seats down the sides. Not greatly
different from an ancient subway car, except that it
was air-tight, and was hurled by magnetic attraction
and repulsion through a tube exhausted of air, at
a speed that would have made an old subway rider gasp
with amazement.
In five more minutes their car had
whipped up to the base of another building, in the
business section, where there was no room for parks
between the mighty structures that held the unbroken
glass roofs two hundred stories above the concrete
pavement.
An elevator brought them up a hundred
and fifty stories. Eric led Nada down a long,
carpeted corridor to a wide glass door, which bore
the words:
COSMIC
EXPRESS
stenciled in gold capitals across it.
As they approached, a lean man, carrying
a black bag, darted out of an elevator shaft opposite
the door, ran across the corridor, and entered.
They pushed in after him.
They were in a little room, cut in
two by a high brass grill. In front of it was
a long bench against the wall, that reminded one of
the waiting room in an old railroad depot. In
the grill was a little window, with a lazy, brown-eyed
youth leaning on the shelf behind it. Beyond him
was a great, glittering piece of mechanism, half hidden
by the brass. A little door gave access to the
machine from the space before the grill.
The thin man in black, whom Eric now
recognized as a prominent French heart-specialist,
was dancing before the window, waving his bag frantically,
raving at the sleepy boy.
“Queek! I have tell you
zee truth! I have zee most urgent necessity to
go queekly. A patient I have in Paree, zat ees
in zee most creetical condition!”
“Hold your horses just a minute,
Mister. We got a client in the machine now.
Russian diplomat from Moscow to Rio de Janeiro....
Two hundred seventy dollars and eighty cents, please....
Your turn next. Remember this is just an experimental
service. Regular installations all over the world
in a year.... Ready now. Come on in.”
The youth took the money, pressed
a button. The door sprang open in the grill,
and the frantic physician leaped through it.
“Lie down on the crystal, face
up,” the young man ordered. “Hands
at your sides, don’t breathe. Ready!”
He manipulated his dials and switches,
and pressed another button.
“Why, hello, Eric, old man!”
he cried. “That’s the lady you were
telling me about? Congratulations!” A bell
jangled before him on the panel. “Just
a minute. I’ve got a call.”
He punched the board again. Little
bulbs lit and glowed for a second. The youth
turned toward the half-hidden machine, spoke courteously.
“All right, madam. Walk
out. Hope you found the transit pleasant.”
“But my Violet! My precious
Violet!” a shrill female voice came from the
machine. “Sir, what have you done with my
darling Violet?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, madam.
You lost it off your hat?”
“None of your impertinence, sir! I want
my dog.”
“Ah, a dog. Must have jumped
off the crystal. You can have him sent on for
three hundred and-”
“Young man, if any harm comes
to my Violet-I’ll-I’ll-I’ll
appeal to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Animals!”
“Very good, madam. We appreciate your patronage.”
The door flew open again. A very
fat woman, puffing angrily, face highly colored, clothing
shimmering with artificial gems, waddled pompously
out of the door through which the frantic French doctor
had so recently vanished. She rolled heavily
across the room, and out into the corridor. Shrill
words floated back:
“I’m going to see my lawyer! My precious
Violet-”
The sallow youth winked. “And now what
can I do for you, Eric?”
“We want to go to Venus, if that ray of yours
can put us there.”
“To Venus? Impossible.
My orders are to use the Express merely between the
sixteen designated stations, at New York, San Francisco,
Tokyo, London, Paris-”
“See here, Charley,” with
a cautious glance toward the door, Eric held up the
silver flask. “For old time’s sake,
and for this-”
The boy seemed dazed at sight of the
bright flask. Then, with a single swift motion,
he snatched it out of Eric’s hand, and bent to
conceal it below his instrument panel.
“Sure, old boy. I’d
send you to heaven for that, if you’d give me
the micrometer readings to set the ray with.
But I tell you, this is dangerous. I’ve
got a sort of television attachment, for focusing the
ray. I can turn that on Venus-I’ve
been amusing myself, watching the life there, already.
Terrible place. Savage. I can pick a place
on high land to set you down. But I can’t
be responsible for what happens afterward.”
“Simple, primitive life is what
we’re looking for. And now what do I owe
you-”
“Oh, that’s all right.
Between friends. Provided that stuff’s genuine!
Walk in and lie down on the crystal block. Hands
at your sides. Don’t move.”
The little door had swung open again,
and Eric led Nada through. They stepped into
a little cell, completely surrounded with mirrors and
vast prisms and lenses and electron tubes. In
the center was a slab of transparent crystal, eight
feet square and two inches thick, with an intricate
mass of machinery below it.
Eric helped Nada to a place on the
crystal, lay down at her side.
“I think the Express Ray is
focused just at the surface of the crystal, from below,”
he said. “It dissolves our substance, to
be transmitted by the beam. It would look as
if we were melting into the crystal.”
“Ready,” called the youth.
“Think I’ve got it for you. Sort of
a high island in the jungle. Nothing bad in sight
now. But, I say-how’re you coming
back? I haven’t got time to watch you.”
“Go ahead. We aren’t coming back.”
“Gee! What is it?
Elopement? I thought you were married already.
Or is it business difficulties? The Bears did
make an awful raid last night. But you better
let me set you down in Hong Kong.”
A bell jangled. “So long,” the youth
called.
Nada and Eric felt themselves enveloped
in fire. Sheets of white flame seemed to lap
up about them from the crystal block. Suddenly
there was a sharp tingling sensation where they touched
the polished surface. Then blackness, blankness.
The next thing they knew, the fires
were gone from about them. They were lying in
something extremely soft and fluid; and warm rain was
beating in their faces. Eric sat up, found himself
in a mud-puddle. Beside him was Nada, opening
her eyes and struggling up, her bright garments stained
with black mud.
All about rose a thick jungle, dark
and gloomy-and very wet. Palm-like,
the gigantic trees were, or fern-like, flinging clouds
of feathery green foliage high against a somber sky
of unbroken gloom.
They stood up, triumphant.
“At last!” Nada cried.
“We’re free! Free of that hateful
old civilization! We’re back to Nature!”
“Yes, we’re on our feet
now, not parasites on the machines.”
“It’s wonderful to have
a fine, strong man like you to trust in, Eric.
You’re just like one of the heroes in your books!”
“You’re the perfect companion,
Nada.... But now we must be practical. We
must build a fire, find weapons, set up a shelter of
some kind. I guess it will be night, pretty soon.
And Charley said something about savage animals he
had seen in the television.
“We’ll find a nice dry
cave, and have a fire in front of the door. And
skins of animals to sleep on. And pottery vessels
to cook in. And you will find seeds and grown
grain.”
“But first we must find a flint-bed.
We need flint for tools, and to strike sparks to make
a fire with. We will probably come across a chunk
of virgin copper, too-it’s found native.”
Presently they set off through the
jungle. The mud seemed to be very abundant, and
of a most sticky consistence. They sank into it
ankle deep at every step, and vast masses of it clung
to their feet. A mile they struggled on, without
finding where a provident nature had left them even
a single fragment of quartz, to say nothing of a mass
of pure copper.
“A darned shame,” Eric
grumbled, “to come forty million miles, and meet
such a reception as this!”
Nada stopped. “Eric,”
she said, “I’m tired. And I don’t
believe there’s any rock here, anyway.
You’ll have to use wooden tools, sharpened in
the fire.”
“Probably you’re right.
This soil seemed to be of alluvial origin. Shouldn’t
be surprised if the native rock is some hundreds of
feet underground. Your idea is better.”
“You can make a fire by rubbing
sticks together, can’t you?”
“It can be done, I’m sure.
I’ve never tried it, myself. We need some
dry sticks, first.”
They resumed the weary march, with
a good fraction of the new planet adhering to their
feet. Rain was still falling from the dark heavens
in a steady, warm downpour. Dry wood seemed scarce
as the proverbial hen’s teeth.
“You didn’t bring any matches, dear?”
“Matches! Of course not! We’re
going back to Nature.”
“I hope we get a fire pretty soon.”
“If dry wood were gold dust, we couldn’t
buy a hot dog.”
“Eric, that reminds me that I’m hungry.”
He confessed to a few pangs of his
own. They turned their attention to looking for
banana trees, and coconut palms, but they did not seem
to abound in the Venerian jungle. Even small
animals that might have been slain with a broken branch
had contrary ideas about the matter.
At last, from sheer weariness, they
stopped, and gathered branches to make a sloping shelter
by a vast fallen tree-trunk.
“This will keep out the rain-maybe-”
Eric said hopefully. “And tomorrow, when
it has quit raining-I’m sure we’ll
do better.”
They crept in, as gloomy night fell
without. They lay in each other’s arms,
the body warmth oddly comforting. Nada cried a
little.
“Buck up,” Eric advised
her. “We’re back to nature-where
we’ve always wanted to be.”
With the darkness, the temperature
fell somewhat, and a high wind rose, whipping cold
rain into the little shelter, and threatening to demolish
it. Swarms of mosquito-like insects, seemingly
not inconvenienced in the least by the inclement elements,
swarmed about them in clouds.
Then came a sound from the dismal
stormy night, a hoarse, bellowing roar, raucous, terrifying.
Nada clung against Eric. “What
is it, dear?” she chattered.
“Must be a reptile. Dinosaur,
or something of the sort. This world seems to
be in about the same state as the Earth when they flourished
there.... But maybe it won’t find us.”
The roar was repeated, nearer.
The earth trembled beneath a mighty tread.
“Eric,” a thin voice trembled.
“Don’t you think-it might have
been better- You know the old life was
not so bad, after all.”
“I was just thinking of our
rooms, nice and warm and bright, with hot foods coming
up the shaft whenever we pushed the button, and the
gay crowds in the park, and my old typewriter.”
“Eric?” she called softly.
“Yes, dear.”
“Don’t you wish-we had known
better?”
“I do.” If he winced at the “we”
the girl did not notice.
The roaring outside was closer.
And suddenly it was answered by another raucous bellow,
at considerable distance, that echoed strangely through
the forest. The fearful sounds were repeated,
alternately. And always the more distant seemed
nearer, until the two sounds were together.
And then an infernal din broke out
in the darkness. Bellows. Screams.
Deafening shrieks. Mighty splashes, as if struggling
Titans had upset oceans. Thunderous crashes,
as if they were demolishing forests.
Eric and Nada clung to each other,
in doubt whether to stay or to fly through the storm.
Gradually the sound of the conflict came nearer, until
the earth shook beneath them, and they were afraid
to move.
Suddenly the great fallen tree against
which they had erected the flimsy shelter was rolled
back, evidently by a chance blow from the invisible
monsters. The pitiful roof collapsed on the bedraggled
humans. Nada burst into tears.
“Oh, if only-if only-”
Suddenly flame lapped up about them,
the same white fire they had seen as they lay on the
crystal block. Dizziness, insensibility overcame
them. A few moments later, they were lying on
the transparent table in the Cosmic Express office,
with all those great mirrors and prisms and lenses
about them.
A bustling, red-faced official appeared
through the door in the grill, fairly bubbling apologies.
“So sorry-an accident-inconceivable.
I can’t see how he got it! We got you back
as soon as we could find a focus. I sincerely
hope you haven’t been injured.”
“Why-what-what-”
“Why I happened in, found our
operator drunk. I’ve no idea where he got
the stuff. He muttered something about Venus.
I consulted the auto-register, and found two more
passengers registered here than had been recorded
at our other stations. I looked up the duplicate
beam coordinates, and found that it had been set on
Venus. I got men on the television at once, and
we happened to find you.
“I can’t imagine how it
happened. I’ve had the fellow locked up,
and the ‘dry-laws’ are on the job.
I hope you won’t hold us for excessive damages.”
“No, I ask nothing except that
you don’t press charges against the boy.
I don’t want him to suffer for it in any way.
My wife and I will be perfectly satisfied to get back
to our apartment.”
“I don’t wonder.
You look like you’ve been through-I
don’t know what. But I’ll have you
there in five minutes. My private car-”
Mr. Eric Stokes-Harding, noted author
of primitive life and love, ate a hearty meal with
his pretty spouse, after they had washed off the grime
of another planet. He spent the next twelve hours
in bed.
At the end of the month he delivered
his promised story to his publishers, a thrilling
tale of a man marooned on Venus, with a beautiful
girl. The hero made stone tools, erected a dwelling
for himself and his mate, hunted food for her, defended
her from the mammoth saurian monsters of the Venerian
jungles.
The book was a huge success.