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ARMAGEDDON--2419 A.D.
_By Philip Francis Nowlan_
_Here, once more, is a real scientifiction story plus. It is a story
which will make the heart of many readers leap with joy._
_We have rarely printed a story in this magazine that for scientific
interest, as well as suspense, could hold its own with this
particular story. We prophesy that this story will become more
valuable as the years go by. It certainly holds a number of
interesting prophecies, of which no doubt, many will come true. For
wealth of science, it will be hard to beat for some time to come. It
is one of those rare stories that will bear reading and re-reading
many times._
_This story has impressed us so favorably, that we hope the author
may be induced to write a sequel to it soon._
Foreword
Elsewhere I have set down, for whatever interest they have in this, the
25th Century, my personal recollections of the 20th Century.
Now it occurs to me that my memoirs of the 25th Century may have an
equal interest 500 years from now--particularly in view of that unique
perspective from which I have seen the 25th Century, entering it as I
did, in one leap across a gap of 492 years.
This statement requires elucidation. There are still many in the world
who are not familiar with my unique experience. Five centuries from now
there may be many more, especially if civilization is fated to endure
any worse convulsions than those which have occurred between 1975 A.D.
and the present time.
I should state therefore, that I, Anthony Rogers, am, so far as I know,
the only man alive whose normal span of eighty-one years of life has
been spread over a period of 573 years. To be precise, I lived the first
twenty-nine years of my life between 1898 and 1927; the other fifty-two
since 2419. The gap between these two, a period of nearly five hundred
years, I spent in a state of suspended animation, free from the ravages
of katabolic processes, and without any apparent effect on my physical
or mental faculties.
When I began my long sleep, man had just begun his real conquest of the
air in a sudden series of transoceanic flights in airplanes driven by
internal combustion motors. He had barely begun to speculate on the
possibilities of harnessing sub-atomic forces, and had made no further
practical penetration into the field of ethereal pulsations than the
primitive radio and television of that day. The United States of America
was the most powerful nation in the world, its political, financial,
industrial and scientific influence being supreme; and in the arts also
it was rapidly climbing into leadership.
I awoke to find the America I knew a total wreck--to find Americans a
hunted race in their own land, hiding in the dense forests that covered
the shattered and leveled ruins of their once magnificent cities,
desperately preserving, and struggling to develop in their secret
retreats, the remnants of their culture and science--and the undying
flame of their sturdy independence.
World domination was in the hands of Mongolians and the center of world
power lay in inland China, with Americans one of the few races of
mankind unsubdued--and it must be admitted in fairness to the truth, not
worth the trouble of subduing in the eyes of the Han Airlords who ruled
North America as titular tributaries of the Most Magnificent.
For they needed not the forests in which the Americans lived, nor the
resources of the vast territories these forests covered. With the
perfection to which they had reduced the synthetic production of
necessities and luxuries, their remarkable development of scientific
processes and mechanical accomplishment of work, they had no economic
need for the forests, and no economic desire for the enslaved labor of
an unruly race.
They had all they needed for their magnificently luxurious and degraded
scheme of civilization, within the walls of the fifteen cities of
sparkling glass they had flung skyward on the sites of ancient American
centers, into the bowels of the earth underneath them, and with
relatively small surrounding areas of agriculture.
Complete domination of the air rendered communication between these
centers a matter of ease and safety. Occasional destructive raids on the
waste lands were considered all that was necessary to keep the "wild"
Americans on the run within the shelter of their forests, and prevent
their becoming a menace to the Han civilization.
But nearly three hundred years of easily maintained security, the last
century of which had been nearly sterile in scientific, social and
economic progress, had softened and devitalized the Hans.
It had likewise developed, beneath the protecting foliage of the forest,
the growth of a vigorous new American civilization, remarkable in the
mobility and flexibility of its organization, in its conquest of almost
insuperable obstacles, in the development and guarding of its industrial
and scientific resources, all in anticipation of that "Day of Hope" to
which it had been looking forward for generations, when it would be
strong enough to burst from the green chrysalis of the forests, soar
into the upper air lanes and destroy the yellow incubus.
At the time I awoke, the "Day of Hope" was almost at hand. I shall not
attempt to set forth a detailed history of the Second War of
Independence, for that has been recorded already by better historians
than I am. Instead I shall confine myself largely to the part I was
fortunate enough to play in this struggle and in the events leading up
to it.
[Illustration: Seen upon the ultroscope viewplate, the battle looked as
though it were being fought in daylight, perhaps on a cloudy day, while
the explosions of the rockets appeared as flashes of extra brilliance.]
It all resulted from my interest in radioactive gases. During the latter
part of 1927 my company, the American Radioactive Gas Corporation, had
been keeping me busy investigating reports of unusual phenomena observed
in certain abandoned coal mines near the Wyoming Valley, in
Pennsylvania.
With two assistants and a complete equipment of scientific instruments,
I began the exploration of a deserted working in a mountainous district,
where several weeks before, a number of mining engineers had reported
traces of carnotite[1] and what they believed to be radioactive gases.
Their report was not without foundation, it was apparent from the
outset, for in our examination of the upper levels of the mine, our
instruments indicated a vigorous radioactivity.
[1] A hydrovanadate of uranium, and other metals; used as a source
of radium compounds.
On the morning of December 15th, we descended to one of the lowest
levels. To our surprise, we found no water there. Obviously it had
drained off through some break in the strata. We noticed too that the
rock in the side walls of the shaft was soft, evidently due to the
radioactivity, and pieces crumbled under foot rather easily. We made our
way cautiously down the shaft, when suddenly the rotted timbers above us
gave way.
I jumped ahead, barely escaping the avalanche of coal and soft rock, but
my companions, who were several paces behind me, were buried under it,
and undoubtedly met instant death.
I was trapped. Return was impossible. With my electric torch I explored
the shaft to its end, but could find no other way out. The air became
increasingly difficult to breathe, probably from the rapid accumulation
of the radioactive gas. In a little while my senses reeled and I lost
consciousness.
When I awoke, there was a cool and refreshing circulation of air in the
shaft. I had no thought that I had been unconscious more than a few
hours, although it seems that the radioactive gas had kept me in a state
of suspended animation for something like 500 years. My awakening, I
figured out later, had been due to some shifting of the strata which
reopened the shaft and cleared the atmosphere in the working. This must
have been the case, for I was able to struggle back up the shaft over a
pile of debris, and stagger up the long incline to the mouth of the
mine, where an entirely different world, overgrown with a vast forest
and no visible sign of human habitation, met my eyes.
I shall pass over the days of mental agony that followed in my attempt
to grasp the meaning of it all. There were times when I felt that I was
on the verge of insanity. I roamed the unfamiliar forest like a lost
soul. Had it not been for the necessity of improvising traps and crude
clubs with which to slay my food, I believe I should have gone mad.
Suffice it to say, however, that I survived this psychic crisis. I shall
begin my narrative proper with my first contact with Americans of the
year 2419 A.D.
CHAPTER I
Floating Men
My first glimpse of a human being of the 25th Century was obtained
through a portion of woodland where the trees were thinly scattered,
with a dense forest beyond.
I had been wandering along aimlessly, and hopelessly, musing over my
strange fate, when I noticed a figure that cautiously backed out of the
dense growth across the glade. I was about to call out joyfully, but
there was something furtive about the figure that prevented me. The
boy's attention (for it seemed to be a lad of fifteen or sixteen) was
centered tensely on the heavy growth of trees from which he had just
emerged.
He was clad in rather tight-fitting garments entirely of green, and wore
a helmet-like cap of the same color. High around his waist he wore a
broad, thick belt, which bulked up in the back across the shoulders,
into something of the proportions of a knapsack.
As I was taking in these details, there came a vivid flash and heavy
detonation, like that of a hand grenade, not far to the left of him. He
threw up an arm and staggered a bit in a queer, gliding way; then he
recovered himself and slipped cautiously away from the place of the
explosion, crouching slightly, and still facing the denser part of the
forest. Every few steps he would raise his arm, and point into the
forest with something he held in his hand. Wherever he pointed there was
a terrific explosion, deeper in among the trees. It came to me then that
he was shooting with some form of pistol, though there was neither flash
nor detonation from the muzzle of the weapon itself.
After firing several times, he seemed to come to a sudden resolution,
and turning in my general direction, leaped--to my amazement sailing
through the air between the sparsely scattered trees in such a jump as I
had never in my life seen before. That leap must have carried him a full
fifty feet, although at the height of his arc, he was not more than ten
or twelve feet from the ground.
When he alighted, his foot caught in a projecting root, and he sprawled
gently forward. I say "gently" for he did not crash down as I expected
him to do. The only thing I could compare it with was a slow-motion
cinema, although I had never seen one in which horizontal motions were
registered at normal speed and only the vertical movements were slowed
down.
Due to my surprise, I suppose my brain did not function with its normal
quickness, for I gazed at the prone figure for several seconds before I
saw the blood that oozed out from under the tight green cap. Regaining
my power of action, I dragged him out of sight back of the big tree. For
a few moments I busied myself in an attempt to staunch the flow of
blood. The wound was not a deep one. My companion was more dazed than
hurt. But what of the pursuers?
I took the weapon from his grasp and examined it hurriedly. It was not
unlike the automatic pistol to which I was accustomed, except that it
apparently fired with a button instead of a trigger. I inserted several
fresh rounds of ammunition into its magazine from my companion's belt,
as rapidly as I could, for I soon heard, near us, the suppressed
conversation of his pursuers.
There followed a series of explosions round about us, but none very
close. They evidently had not spotted our hiding place, and were firing
at random.
I waited tensely, balancing the gun in my hand, to accustom myself to
its weight and probable throw.
Then I saw a movement in the green foliage of a tree not far away, and
the head and face of a man appeared. Like my companion, he was clad
entirely in green, which made his figure difficult to distinguish. But
his face could be seen clearly. It was an evil face, and had murder in
it.
That decided me. I raised the gun and fired. My aim was bad, for there
was no kick in the gun, as I had expected, and I hit the trunk of the
tree several feet below him. It blew him from his perch like a crumpled
bit of paper, and he _floated_ down to the ground, like some limp, dead
thing, gently lowered by an invisible hand. The tree, its trunk blown
apart by the explosion, crashed down.
There followed another series of explosions around us. These guns we
were using made no sound in the firing, and my opponents were evidently
as much at sea as to my position as I was to theirs. So I made no
attempt to reply to their fire, contenting myself with keeping a sharp
lookout in their general direction. And patience had its reward.
Very soon I saw a cautious movement in the top of another tree. Exposing
myself as little as possible, I aimed carefully at the tree trunk and
fired again. A shriek followed the explosion. I heard the tree crash
down; then a groan.
There was silence for a while. Then I heard a faint sound of boughs
swishing. I shot three times in its direction, pressing the button as
rapidly as I could. Branches crashed down where my shells had exploded,
but there was no body.
Then I saw one of them. He was starting one of those amazing leaps from
the bough of one tree to another, about forty feet away.
I threw up my gun impulsively and fired. By now I had gotten the feel of
the weapon, and my aim was good. I hit him. The "bullet" must have
penetrated his body and exploded. For one moment I saw him flying
through the air. Then the explosion, and he had vanished. He never
finished his leap. It was annihilation.
How many more of them there were I don't know. But this must have been
too much for them. They used a final round of shells on us, all of which
exploded harmlessly, and shortly after I heard them swishing and
crashing away from us through the tree tops. Not one of them descended
to earth.
Now I had time to give some attention to my companion. She was, I found,
a girl, and not a boy. Despite her bulky appearance, due to the peculiar
belt strapped around her body high up under the arms, she was very
slender, and very pretty.
There was a stream not far away, from which I brought water and bathed
her face and wound.
Apparently the mystery of these long leaps, the monkey-like ability to
jump from bough to bough, and of the bodies that floated gently down
instead of falling, lay in the belt. The thing was some sort of
anti-gravity belt that almost balanced the weight of the wearer, thereby
tremendously multiplying the propulsive power of the leg muscles, and
the lifting power of the arms.
When the girl came to, she regarded me as curiously as I did her, and
promptly began to quiz me. Her accent and intonation puzzled me a lot,
but nevertheless we were able to understand each other fairly well,
except for certain words and phrases. I explained what had happened
while she lay unconscious, and she thanked me simply for saving her
life.
"You are a strange exchange," she said, eying my clothing quizzically.
Evidently she found it mirth provoking by contrast with her own neatly
efficient garb. "Don't you understand what I mean by 'exchange?' I mean
ah--let me see--a stranger, somebody from some other gang. What gang do
you belong to?" (She pronounced it "gan," with only a suspicion of a
nasal sound.)
I laughed. "I'm not a gangster," I said. But she evidently did not
understand this word. "I don't belong to any gang," I explained, "and
never did. Does everybody belong to a gang nowadays?"
"Naturally," she said, frowning. "If you don't belong to a gang, where
and how do you live? Why have you not found and joined a gang? How do
you eat? Where do you get your clothing?"
"I've been eating wild game for the past two weeks," I explained, "and
this clothing I--er--ah--." I paused, wondering how I could explain that
it must be many hundred years old.
In the end I saw I would have to tell my story as well as I could,
piecing it together with my assumptions as to what had happened. She
listened patiently; incredulously at first, but with more confidence as
I went on. When I had finished, she sat thinking for a long time.
"That's hard to believe," she said, "but I believe it." She looked me
over with frank interest.
"Were you married when you slipped into unconsciousness down in that
mine?" she asked me suddenly. I assured her I had never married. "Well,
that simplifies matters," she continued. "You see, if you were
technically classed as a family man, I could take you back only as an
invited exchange and I, being unmarried, and no relation of yours,
couldn't do the inviting."