I
Nothing was further from my mind, when I discovered the "Release Drug"
Relin, than the realization that it would lead me through as strange and
ghastly and revealing a series of adventures as any man has ever
experienced. I encountered it, in a way, as a mere by-product of my
experiments; I am a chemist by profession, and as one of the staff of
the Morganstern Foundation have access to some of the best equipped
laboratories in America. The startling new invention--I must call it
that, though I did not create it deliberately--came to me in the course
of my investigations into the obscure depths of the human personality.
It has long been my theory that there is in man a psychic entity which
can exist for at least brief periods apart from the body, and have
perceptions which are not those of the physical senses. In accordance
with these views, I had been developing various drugs, compounded of
morphine and adrenalin, whose object was to shock the psychic entity
loose for limited periods and so to widen the range and powers of the
personality. I shall not go into the details of my researches, nor tell
by what accident I succeeded better than I had hoped; the all-important
fact--a fact so overwhelming that I shudder and gasp and marvel even as
I tell of it--is that I did obtain a minute quantity of a drug which, by
putting the body virtually in a state of suspended animation, could
release the mind to travel almost at will across time and space.
Yes, across time and space!--for the drag of the physical having been
stricken off, I could enter literally into infinity and eternity. But
let me tell precisely what happened that night when at precisely 10:08
in the solitude of my apartment room, I swallowed half an ounce of Relin
and stretched myself out on the bed, well knowing that I was taking
incalculable risks, and that insanity and even death were by no means
remote possibilities of the road ahead. But let that be as it may! In my
opinion, there is no coward more despicable than he who will not face
danger for the sake of knowledge.
My head reeled, and something seemed to buzz inside it as soon as the
bitter half ounce of fluid slipped down my throat. I was barely able to
reach the bed and throw myself upon it when there came a snapping as of
something inside my brain ... then, for a period, blankness ... then a
gradual awakening with that feeling of exhilaration one experiences only
after the most blissful sleep. I opened my eyes, feeling strong and
light of limb and charged with a marvelous vital energy--but, as I
peered about me, my lips drew far apart in astonishment, and I am sure
that I gaped like one who has seen a ghost.
Where were the familiar walls of my two-by-four room, the bureau, the
book-rack, the ancient portrait of Pasteur that hung in its glass frame
just above the foot of the bed? Gone! vanished as utterly as though they
had never been! I was standing on a wide and windy plain, with the gale
beating in my ears, and with rapid sunset-colored clouds scudding
across the blood-stained west. Mingled with the wailing of the blast,
there was a deep sobbing sound that struck me in successive waves, like
the ululations of great multitudes of far-off mourners. And while I was
wondering what this might mean and felt a prickling of horror along my
spine, the first of the portents swept across the sky. I say "portents,"
for I do not know by what other term to describe the apparitions; high
in the heavens, certainly at an altitude of many miles, the flaming
thing swept across my view, comet-shaped and stretching over at least
ten degrees of arc, swift as a meteor, brilliantly flesh-red, sputtering
sparks like an anvil, and leaving behind it a long ruddy trail that only
slowly faded out amid the darkening skies.
It must have been a full minute after its disappearance before the
hissing of its flight came to my ears--a hissing so sharp, so nastily
insistent that it reached me even above the noise of the wind. And more
than another minute had passed before the earth beneath me was wrenched
and jarred as if by an earthquake and the most thunderous detonations I
had ever heard burst over me in a prolonged series.
Let me emphasize that none of this had the quality of a dream; it was
clear-cut, as vivid as anything I had ever experienced; my mind worked
with an unusual precision and clarity, and not even a fleeting doubt
came to me of the reality of my observations. "This is some sort of
bombing attack," I remember reflecting, "some assault of super-monsters
of the skies, perfected by a super science." And I did not have to be
told the fact; I knew, as by an all-illuminating inner knowledge, that I
had voyaged into the future.
Even as this realization came to me, I made another flight--and one that
was in space more than in time. It did not surprise me, but I took it as
the most natural thing in the world when I seemed to rise and go
floating away through the air. It was still sunset-time, but I could see
clearly enough as I went drifting at a height of several hundred yards
above a vast desolated space near the junction of two rivers. Perhaps,
however, "desolated" is not the word I should use; I should say, rather,
"shattered, pulverized, obliterated," for a scene of more utter and
hopeless ruin I have never seen nor imagined. Over an area of many
square miles, there was nothing but heaps and mounds of broken stone,
charred and crumbling brick, fire-scarred timbers, and huge contorted
masses of rusting steel like the decaying bones of superhuman monsters.
From the great height and extent of the piles of debris, and from the
occasional sight of the splintered cornice of a roof or of some battered
window-frame or door, I knew that this had once been a city, one of the
world's greatest; but no other recognizable feature remained amid the
gray masses of ruins, and the very streets and avenues had been erased.
But here and there a tremendous crater, three hundred feet across and a
hundred to a hundred and fifty feet deep, indicated the source of the
destruction.
As if to reinforce the dread idea that had taken possession of my
brain, one of the comet-like red prodigies went streaking across the sky
even as I gazed down at the dead city; and I knew--as clearly as if I
had seen the whole spectacle with my own eyes--that the missile had
sprung from a source hundreds or thousands of miles away, possibly
across the ocean; and that, laden with scores of tons of explosives, it
had been hurled with unerring mechanical accuracy upon its mission of
annihilation.
Then I seemed to float over vast distances of that sunset-tinted land,
and saw great craters in the fields, and villages shot to ribbons, and
farms abandoned; and the wild dogs fought for the wild cattle; and
thistles grew deep on acres where wheat had been planted, and weeds
sprouted thickly in the orchards, and blight and mildew competed for the
crops. But though here and there I could see a dugout, with traces of
fire and abandoned tools flung about at random, nowhere in all that
dismal world did I observe a living man.
After a time I returned to a place near the ruined city by the two
rivers; and in the rocky palisades above one of the streams, I made out
some small circular holes barely large enough to admit a man. And, borne
onward by some impulse of curiosity and despair, I entered one of these
holes, and went downward, far downward into the dim recesses. And now
for the first time, at a depth of hundreds of yards, I did at last
encounter living men. My first thought was that I had gone back to the
day of the cave-man, for a cave-like hollow had been scooped out in the
solid rock. It was true that the few hundreds of people huddled together
there had the dress and looks of moderns; it was true, also, that the
gloom was lighted for them by electric bulbs, and that electric
radiators kept them warm; yet Dante himself, in painting the ninth
circle of his Inferno, could not have imagined a drearier and more
despondent group than these that slouched and drooped and muttered in
that cavernous recess, seated with their heads fallen low upon their
knees, or moodily pacing back and forth like captives who can hope for
no escape. "Here at least we will be safe from the sky marauders," I
heard one of them muttering. Yet I could not help wondering what the
mere safety of the body could mean when all the glories of man's
civilization were annihilated.