The Green Girl
(A Serial in Two Parts) Part I
By Jack Williamson
Illustrated by WESSO
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Amazing Stories March and April 1930.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
_In a very recent issue of_ SCIENCE AND INVENTION _Dr. Hartman
tells of the amazing discoveries he has made in the Mediterranean,
off the coast of Sicily, when he went below the sea in his newly
constructed steel diving bell, which was designed to withstand a
pressure of 2,500 pounds per square inch or a sub-sea depth of about
5,000 feet. During his latest venture below the sea level, Dr. Hartman
discovered a prehistoric city--perhaps the Lost Atlantis. Why, then,
should it be impossible to assume that there might be cities--even
vast cities--submerged miles below the Pacific, for instance, and
made habitable? But whatever else might be said, "The Green Girl" is
a scientifiction classic that will rank with the best that have ever
been published. Though it is a wild, exciting, fantastic tale, it is
exceedingly plausible withal. Be sure to read the first instalment in
this issue._
CHAPTER I
MAY 4, 1999
_At high noon on May 4, 1999, the sun went out!_ It had risen bright
and clear. The summer sky had had an unwonted liquid brilliance. The
climbing day-star had shone all the morning with unusual intensity.
But just at ten o'clock, an intangible mist obscured the sky! A pale
and deepening film stole over the crystal infinity of the heavens! The
sky assumed a dull, almost copper tinge, that developed into a ghastly
scarlet pall! In five minutes the sky changed from a soft and limpid
blue to an intense, darkling scarlet! In the appalling suggestion of
blood in the dusky crimson depths, there was a grim omen of the fate of
earth!
I had got up at dawn for a plunge in the surf, and all the morning
I had been wandering about the bit of beach and the strip of virgin
woodland behind it, content in the restful, soothing peace of that
untouched bit of Nature, rejoicing lazily in the vivid greenness of it,
in the fresh odors of earth and plant, in the whisper of the wind in
the palms. I lounged on the crisp grass in the cooling shade, living
in my sympathy with the life about me, watching the long soft rollers
of the green-blue Atlantic surging deliberately toward the crystal
whiteness of the sunlit sandy beach. The soft cerulean skies were
clear, save for the white wings of occasional airships that glanced in
the bright sunshine. The morning had a singularly quiet and soothing
beauty. My sleepy soul was in harmony with the distant mellow chime of
a church bell. I lay back in the peaceful rest of a man ready to sink
lazily into the evening of life.
Though I am still an able man of somewhat less than thirty years, I
felt that morning none of the energetic exuberance of youth. I felt
something of the age and the agelessness of Nature herself. I felt no
fires of ambition; I was oddly devoid of feeling or emotion; I felt
content to steep my soul for eternities in Nature's simple wonders. But
I have always been a dreamer.
I was a worshipper come unknowingly for the last time to the shrine
of life. For even then the doom was gathering! But I was spared all
knowledge of the alien menace that was blotting out the sun! I had
no premonition that within a few short hours the balmy Florida coast
would be a frozen wilderness, whipped with bitter winds and lashed with
freezing seas!
I had risen at last, and was sauntering down the hard white sand in
the direction of our cottage, listening idly to the birds--singing on
the eve of their doom. I came in sight of the house, a low building,
covered with climbing vines and half hidden in the trees. I strolled
toward it upon the narrow, curving gravel walk, lost in the peace of
the rustic setting.
The Doctor was sitting on the small veranda, gazing sleepily out over
the sea, with his pipe in his mouth and his hands on the arms of his
chair. Dr. Samuel Walden was the sole person in the world, outside
the vivid creations of my dreams, for whom I had affection. He was
an unusual character. Born in 1929, he was now seventy years of age.
His earlier life had been devoted to science, and he had won fame
and fortune for himself by the invention of the hydrodyne sub-atomic
engine. But in the last twenty years he had done no scientific
work--or so I thought, for I had never been behind the little door that
he kept always locked.
A close friend of my parents, he had been more than a father to me
since they were lost in the turmoil of the last outbreak against the
Council of Nations, when I was three years old. We had always lived in
the old cottage on the hill, in this natural park on the Florida coast.
He loved Nature deeply. For many years his chief interests in life had
been plants and animals, for which he cared more than for society. A
flower, a dog, the sound of the surf--such things were the joys of his
life.
Though his hair had been white for many years, his lean, tanned face
was unwrinkled, and he was among the strongest men of my acquaintance.
In fact, two years before, he had won second place at the Olympic
wrestling contests. He loved the simple things of life. He had a
passion for cooking, and he made it a science as well as an art. He was
an inveterate smoker, and clung to the habit, even when he had to have
the tobacco smuggled in from Asia at vast expense. He had an old music
box, of a type that went out of date half a century ago, to which he
used to listen for hours on end.
There was little enough about Sam Walden's daily life to show that he
was the greatest scientist of the earth, and the sole hope for the
world in the amazing battle that was brewing. His simple philosophy had
changed him far from the energetic young inventor of the hydrodyne.
No one would have suspected the qualities of supreme heroism that he
revealed.
During the days of my youth we had restlessly wandered over the globe.
We had lived rather aimlessly--for the simple joy of living. The
mountains, the desert, and the sea have always had a fascinating call
for both of us, and we wandered in answer to that call--and during some
of those years, I traveled on a strange quest of my own.
But it was a whole decade since we had left our rustic home. And as our
latter years had been quiet and tranquil, so the world had lost the
fierce energy and struggle for advancement, that had driven it during
Sam's younger days. It had settled down to the enjoyment of peaceful
content. Science had turned from the invention of new machines to the
improvement of those in existence, and had died with their perfection,
until, when the crisis came, Sam was the only man on earth able to
understand and to cope with it!
The industrial organization had been perfected. Work was done by
machines. Men attended them for short hours and played through long
ones. There were no rich, and no poor. The products of industry were
fairly divided. All men received their shares in content and enjoyed
them to the full, without troubling themselves about the question of
science or religion or of life that had received the attention of the
past generation.
And upon the peaceful tranquillity of that happy, prosperous age,
there fell with no warning the lurid doom that no man could explain,
throwing it into frenzied confusion. In the past era, there would have
been a thousand men to attack the problem, with all the power of clear,
dynamic minds. Now, there was just _one man_ who could understand!
It was not so much that scientific knowledge was lacking. Men still
studied and talked the language of science. The machines demanded
it. But there were none of trained and penetrating minds, used to
departing boldly from the world of the known to bring forth the new.
Science was no longer living. It was mechanical.