* * * * *
A few minutes later a gasoline chariot panted up to the curb. A
burly monster dressed in uniform stepped out, followed by a slender,
keen-faced male--the most scholarly-appearing individual I saw during
my brief sojourn among Henry Sanborn's kind. The monster who drove the
chariot remained at the guiding-wheel. He was a huge creature evidently
of great physical power.
Henry thrust forth his hand. "I know you!" he cried, addressing the
slender leader. "Your name is Bender. You are an interne at the insane
hospital. I am Henry Sanborn. I----"
"He's the head doctor!" the proprietor interrupted, edging forward
importantly.
The keen-faced physician cut him off. "I have heard of Henry Sanborn."
He studied Henry's countenance. "Your face is faintly familiar."
"I've been at the asylum a lot of times," Henry declared. "I used to go
out there to see Anna Allison. She----"
"She is my wife," Bender stated with dignity. "Her father, my
predecessor, is dead. I recall you now. You spent much of your time
with an insane patient--Menkowitz."
"Yes!" Henry was quivering with eagerness. "Menkowitz taught me the
secret of the anti-gravity field."
"Anti-gravity field?"
"Yes. His plans were imperfect, but I found the flaw. I flew beyond the
stars."
He was interrupted by a sudden commotion. The waiter uttered choking
sounds as he clapped his hand to his mouth to smother a guffaw,
while the proprietor snorted loudly and blinked an eye at no one in
particular. The uniformed attendant moved in, his big hand hovering
close to Henry's arm. But Bender frowned him back, taking time to study
Henry with professional interest.
"Go on, Mr. Sanborn," he prompted.
Now that at last someone was listening to him, Henry ceased thinking
entirely and began to erupt the words of what he called "his speech".
He had practised it assiduously during our journey.
"Suppose you played a phonograph record backward. All phonetic laws
would be broken, wouldn't they? Now if you had one large enough----"
"Ah, I see," Bender said indulgently. "You flew beyond the stars by
playing a large phonograph record backward." He nodded. The uniformed
attendant laid his hand on Henry's arm.
"I am not talking nonsense," Henry said, abandoning his "speech" and
speaking with a convincing seriousness I had to admire. "Menkowitz was
insane, but he had found out how to reverse the magnetic field. It
worked in a small way, but when he increased the size, it failed. I
found out the cause and remedied it. I built a ship propelled by that
principle. I meant to use it against the Germans. It would have ended
that war in a month. I finished it the day before I was to leave for
the officers' training-camp. I wanted to try it out--to be sure before
I told about it. That night I wheeled it out of the barn. I got in. I
sealed the doors and windows. I turned the magnetic field inside out."
Henry was convincing now, compelling Bender's mind to yield. At a
glance from the physician the attendant dropped his hand from Henry's
arm.
"Go on, Mr. Sanborn," the physician said again, eagerness creeping into
his tone.
"I was thrown so hard against the side of the ship that I was knocked
senseless. When I came to I could see nothing through the fused quartz
windows but stars. The currents that had seized the ship were too
strong. I could do nothing against them. There was another crash. I
awoke on a wooded hill. A strange being was working over me. I had
landed on another planet in another solar system. The people are very
advanced but frightful-looking. Its name, as nearly as I can pronounce
it, is Urcanus."
"How'd you get back here?" The burly attendant grinned and made an
eye-gesture at the driver behind Henry's back.
"The Urcanians built a ship for me. They've known the principle of
the reversed magnetic field for ages. Why, they've perfected it in
the fourth dimension and even gone on and experimented with it in the
fifth. Usru, one of their greatest minds, came with me. I'll introduce
you to him after we've seen the ship--if he's willing."
"Can he speak English?" Bender asked.
"Yes. And I can speak Urcanian. But they don't use their spoken
language much now. They have instruments by which they tune in on
each other's minds. I couldn't use them. They require a different
brain structure--nerves more sensitive, more perfectly controlled. Oh,
they've got wonderful machines. Why, they have a little memory-prober
that can read a man's life history from his mind!"
"Urcanus must be a very moral planet," Bender smiled.
"It is. But wait until you see that anti-gravity ship! Let's go out
there right now! It's only about two miles up the road through the gap,
then you walk about half a mile."
Bender turned to the uniformed attendant.
"Edgar," he said, his voice vibrant, "we're going to take a look."
* * * * *
Earthlings, as we have found from our studies of the planet since Henry
came among us, have a faith in science that is pathetic. Their wisest
believe that to science nothing is impossible. We, who, in so many
fields have carried science to its utmost limits, know its sad futility.
Scientific curiosity dominated Bender. He and Henry climbed into the
chariot. I shut out of my consciousness the discord and stench of
its departure by concentrating upon the minds of the waiter and his
employer.
What I read there made clear that my conclusions, which I reached long
before I launched upon this expedition, were correct. These two were
typical earthlings. Their kind, and even lower types, make up the
bulk of the population of the planet, so Henry himself admits. Almost
incapable of thought, they surrendered themselves now to the rush of
feeling welling upward from their flesh.
"Suppose he's right!" the waiter quavered. He was ready to worship
Henry as a demigod. Yet alongside this half-conscious impulse quivered
urgings to hound my associate to the asylum, to the jail, to the rack
and faggot, were they still available in that mad world.
"Bosh!" Doubt underlay the tone of certainty the proprietor felt he
owed it to his superior position to assume. Then he voiced openly the
inherent cruelty of emotion--benevolent only when protective of what
the individual esteems in some way a part of himself.
"Bender's a fool to let that loony take him off on that wild-goose
chase. He ought to be kicked out of his job."