them-wish they had an educator, but I haven’t seen any . . . ” He paused, brow knitted in
concentration. “I’m going to make myself visible to try a stunt. Don’t talk to me; I’ll need
all the brain power I’ve got to pull this off.”
As Seaton’s image thickened into substance its effect upon the strangers was startling
indeed. First they shrank back in consternation, supposing that their enemies had at last
succeeded in working a full materialization through the narrow gravity band. Then, as
they perceived that Seaton’s figure was human, and of a humanity different from their
own, they sprang to surround him, shouting words meaningless to the Terrestrials.
For some time Seaton tried to make his meaning clear by signs, but the thoughts he was
attempting to convey were far too complex for that simple medium. Communication was
impossible and the time was altogether too short to permit of laborious learning of
language. Therefore streamers of visible force shot from Seaton’s imaged eyes, sinking
deeply into the eyes of the figures at the head of the table.
“Look at me!” he commanded, and his fists clenched and drops of sweat stood out on his
forehead as he threw all the power of his brain into that probing, hypnotic beam.
The native resisted with all his strength, but not for nothing had Seaton superimposed
upon his already-powerful mind a large portion of the phenomenal brain of Drasnik, the
First of Psychology of Norlamin. Resistance was useless. The victim soon sat relaxed
and passive, his mind completely subservient to Seaton’s, and as though in a trance he
spoke to his fellows.
“This apparition is the force-image of one of a group of men from a distant Solar
System,” he intoned in his own language. “They are friendly and intend to help us. Their
space ship is approaching us under full power, but it cannot get here for several days.
They can, however, help us materially before they arrive in person. To that end, he
directs that we cause to be brought into this room a full assortment of all our fields of
force, transmitting tubes, controllers, force converters-in short, the equipment of a
laboratory of radiation . . . No, that would take too long. He suggests that one of us
escort him to such a laboratory.”
15 VALERON
As Seaton assumed, the near-collision of suns which had affected so disastrously the
planet Valeron did not come unheralded to overwhelm a world unwarned, since for many
hundreds of years her civilization had been of a high order indeed. Her astronomers were
able, her scientists capable, the governments of her nations strong and just. Years
before its occurrence the astronomers had known that the catastrophe was inevitable
and had calculated dispassionately its every phase-to the gram, the centimeter, and the
second.
With all their resources of knowledge and of power, however, it was pitifully little that the
people of Valeron could do; for of what avail are the puny energies of man compared to
the practically infinite forces of cosmic phenomena? Any attempt of the humanity of the
doomed planet to swerve from their courses the incomprehensible masses of those two
hurtling suns was as surely doomed to failure as would be the attempt of an ant to thrust
from its rails an onrushing locomotive.
But what little could be done was done; done scientifically and logically; done, if not
altogether without fear, at least in as much as was humanly possible without favor. With
mathematical certainty were plotted the areas of least strain, and in those areas were
constructed shelters. Shelters buried deeply enough to be unaffected by the coming
upheavals of the world’s crust; shelters of unbreakable metal, so designed, so latticed
and braced as to withstand the seismic disturbances to which they were inevitably to be
subjected.
Having determined the number of such shelters that could be built, equipped, and
supplied with the necessities of life in the time allowed, the board of selection began its
cold-blooded and heartless task. Scarcely one in a thousand of Valeron’s teeming
millions was to be given a chance for continued life, and they were to be chosen only
from the children who would be in the prime of young adulthood at the time of the
catastrophe.
These children were the pick of the planet: flawless in mind, body, and heredity. They
were assembled in special schools near their assigned refuges, where they were
instructed intensively in everything that they would have to know in order that civilization
should not disappear utterly from the universe.
Such a thing could not be kept a secret long, and it is best to touch as lightly as possible
upon the scenes which ensued after the certainty of doom became public knowledge.
Humanity both scaled the heights of self-sacrificing courage and plumbed the very depths
of cowardice and depravity.
Characters already strong were strengthened, but those already weak went to pieces
entirely in orgies to a normal mind unthinkable. Almost overnight a peaceful and
lawabiding world went mad-became an insane hotbed of crime, rapine, and pillage
unspeakable. Martial law was declared at once, and after a few thousand maniacs had
been ruthlessly shot down, the soberer inhabitants were allowed to choose between two
alternatives. They could either die then and there before a firing squad, or they could wait
and take whatever slight chance there might be of living through what was to come-but
devoting their every effort meanwhile to the end that through those selected few the
civilization of Valeron should endure.
Many chose death and were executed summarily and without formality, without regard to
wealth or station. The rest worked. Some worked devotedly and with high purpose,
some worked hopelessly and with resignation. Some worked stolidly and with thoughts
only of the present, some worked slyly and with thoughts only of getting themselves, by
hook or by crook, into one of those shelters. All, however, from the highest to the lowest,
worked.
Since the human mind cannot be kept indefinitely at high tension, the new condition of
things came in time to be regarded almost as normal, and as months lengthened into
years the routine was scarcely broken. Now and then, of course, one went mad and was
shot; another refused to continue his profitless labor and was shot; still another gave up
the fight and shot himself. And always there were the sly the self-seekers, the bribers,
the corruptionists-willing to go to any lengths whatever to avoid their doom. Not openly
did they carry on their machinations, but like loathsome worms eating at the heart of an
outwardly fair fruit. But the scientists, almost to a man, were loyal. Trained to think, they
thought clearly and logically, and surrounded themselves with soldiers and guards of the
same stripe. Old men or weaklings would have no place in the post-cataclysmic world
and there were accommodations for only the exactly predetermined number; therefore
only those selected children and no others could be saved or would. And as for bribery,
threats, blackmail, or any possible form of racketry or corruption-of what use is wealth or
power to a man under sentence of death? And what threat or force could sway him?
Wherefore most of the sly were discovered, exposed, and shot.
Time went on. The shelters were finished. Into them were taken stores, libraries, tools
and equipment of every sort necessary for the rebuilding of a fully civilized world. Finally
the “children,” now in the full prime of young manhood and young womanhood, were
carefully checked in. Once inside those massive portals they were of a world apart.
They were completely informed and completely educated; they had for long governed
themselves with neither aid nor interference; they knew precisely what they must face;
they knew exactly what to do and exactly how to do it. Behind them the mighty, multiply
seals were welded into place and broken rock by the cubic mile was blasted down upon
their refuges.
Day by day the heat grew more and more intense. Cyclonic storms raged ever fiercer,
accompanied by an incessant blaze of lightning and a deafeningly continuous roar of
thunder. More and ever more violent became the seismic disturbances as Valeron’s very
core shook and trembled under the appalling might of the opposing cosmic forces.
Work was at an end and the masses were utterly beyond control. The devoted were
butchered by their frantic fellows; the hopeless were stung to madness; the stolid were
driven to frenzy by the realization that there was to be no future; the remaining sly ones
deftly turned the unorganized fury of the mob into a purposeful attack upon the shelters,
their only hope of life.
But at each refuge the rabble met an unyielding wall of guards loyal to the last, and of
scientists who, their work now done, were merely waiting for the end. Guards and
scientists fought with rifles, ray-guns, swords, and finally with clubs, stones, fists, feet
and teeth. Outnumbered by thousands they fell and the howling mob surged over their