Futuria Fantasia, Winter 1940 by Ray Bradbury (7 ebook reader txt) 📗

and velocity were wave formations, and therefore, one should be able to tune into them! (Anyone should be able to think up a simple theory like that.) Not a bad WAY TO GET AROUND—in a science fiction story.

Back in 1930, or some such year, Charles R. Tanner wrote THE FLIGHT OF THE MERCURY, in the old WONDER STORIES. In that story he told you just how to go ahead and make an ETHERPROPELLER, provided there is such a thing as ether, and Osmium B. The theory is: you use water screws, air propellers, and so why not an ether propeller? Put a cork in motionless water. Start a wave motion in the water with your hand. If the length of the wave is greater than the diameter of the cork, the cork just bobs up and down and stays where it is. If the lengths of the waves are shorter than the diameter of the cork, the waves go around it, and the cork still stays right where it is. If the length of the wave is exactly the diameter of the cork, tho cork rides right off, in the trough of the wave, at the same speed as that of the wave formation. Now invent an electro-magnetic vibration—by useing the metal Osmium B—exactly the length of a Copper atom. Make your ship of copper, putting the ether propeller, that which causes vibration in the ether, at the end of the ship, and presto! all the copper atoms move along in the trough of the ether waves, at the same speed as the other waves, which is the speed of light. And, Mr. Tanner is off for Mars, in a super-plausibly scientifictional way.

HELL SHIP, in last year's ASTOUNDING, Arthur J. Burks put forth an idea which had been discussed by engineers before he had ever used It. They just didn't know how to do it. Mr. Burks did—didn't he write the story. At least, the idea gave him more earthly benifit than it gave the engineers. Maybe he thinks he invented it—I don't know, nor does it matter: He used it, the idea of gravatic lines of force, forming a spider web throughout the solar system. With the proper machinery, which he ascribed with good attention to detail, you could crawl up those lines of force like a spider. This idea is so plausable that it might be placed in the same catagory as rocket propulsion, which is fact.

THE MOTH, in this year's ASTOUNDING, contains another of those ideas of interplanatary locomotion which I call one of THE BEST WAYS TO GET AROUND. Don't worry, I'm not pointing to myself with pride. I just wrote the story, Charles R. Tanner conceived the idea. He tossed it off paranthetically one night, and promptly forgot about it. The idea——If all objects are in motion, according to the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction theory, lose length in the direction of motion, why couldn't an artificialy produced cause instantaneous motion, why couldn't an artificialy produced contraction cause instantaneous motion, proportional to length-loss? Not a thing in the world against it, my friends, all you have to do is to find a way to cause the artificial contraction of the ship in question. Of course, in my story, I invented a force-field——very handy when you're in a tight spot!—--which caused tho electrons to flatten out. This force acted on the ship and everything within. Therefore, any speed up to a little below that of light could be obtained, and that bogey man so often ignored in scientifiction, acceleration, was disposed of at the start, since there was nothing that had a tendancy to stay behind. There is the real inertialess drive, which E.E. Smith talked of, but never used.

(Paranthetically: When Charles R. Tanner saw the story containing his idea in print, he became enthused, and promptly invented and named all machines used in the process, discovered a new and ultimate particle called the "graviton", that which makes the proton 1846 times heavier than the electron, and practically drew plans for the force field which caused the contraction. When he finished we knew exactly how to obtain speeds far exceding both those of Smith and Campbell. Our inventions were plausable, and they'd work, provided——)

I've just about reached the end of the list, though there are one or two others that might be mentioned right here at the tail end of the article. Jules Verne, I suppose, has to be credited with the first ship fired from a canon, in ONCE AROUND THE MOON. Wells takes the bow for gravity plates, which Willy Ley so neatly disposed of, only he called it "cavorite" in THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON., and Roy Cummings used it effectivly in AROUND THE UNIVERSE (and a hundred others). In a story in the old WONDER Donald Wolheim put his rocket ship on a huge wheel, rotated the wheel and flung it off into space. Fair, except that the acceleration would be killing.

AND THAT'S ABSOLUTLY ALL THE BEST WAYS TO GET AROUND. Unless there are some of those which I haven't heard of. If you know of some, I would like to be enlightened.

—ROSS ROCKYLYN

—THE SYMPHONIC ABDUCTION—

"I suppose you've heard about what happened to my brother Jerry?" Ray Spencer asked me; I shook my head. "The whole family was worried about him for a while: couldn't tell whether he had sleeping-sickness, or what. All we knew was that he'd gone coma listening to some phonograph records when he was alone in the house. Perhaps the intense emotional effect of the music, plus its stentor, was the cause.

"When I returned home, he lay cold on the floor in front of the radio-phonograph. The automatic release had shut off the record, but the current was still on, and the volume dial was turned full strength. Nothing I could do would rouse my brother, so—scared—I put him to bed and called a doctor, who had him taken to a hospital for observation. No one could determine what was the trouble, and since we couldn't afford to keep him at the hospital indefinitely, we brought Jerry back home. And although it wasn't exactly appropriate, I couldn't help remembering the story of the Sleeping Beauty whenever I looked into his room and saw him, apparently only napping.

"Then one day I heard him—still in his trance—whisperingly singing. The indistinct notes were reminiscent of one of Chaikovsky's ballet pieces. I tried vainly to wake him. He sighed on and on until the faint breath of a voice softened into silence....

"When at last he did awake, I had been listening to some continental communiques in the adjoining room, with the door open so that I could look in on him in case of emergency. The program ended and was followed by concert music. I don't care much for symphony, so I arose and went to the radio to switch it off. At the same time, Jerry stirred: I heard his bed creak. Turning to look his way, I twisted the wrong dial, and the music thundered: my brother began to toss on his bed. Disregarding the racket for a moment in excitement at seeing him move, I ran in to him, shouting, shaking him a little. His hands groped, found mine, and clung to them. Painfully he endeavored to raise himself, dropped back perspiring and panting. Then he screamed—horribly!—as if all Hell's devils were shovelling all Hell's coals on him, and opened his eyes, his face taut with dread. He recognized me. In a moment I had soothed him back to normalcy. He was perfectly all right from then on.

"Or at least we thought so. But since you're so interested in metaphysics, get him to tell you about the vision he had during his catalepsy. He won't feel embarrassed; he's told it to others. Just say that I mentioned it to you." Ray had finished. Later, when I chanced upon Jerry Spencer, I brot him up to my apartment for dinner. The meal over, he smiled at my query concerning his comatose dream, and related:

"None in my family are as interested in music as I: my belief is that to realize its full magic you must leave off talking—better still, listen to it alone—and, closing your eyes, open your mind to it. Relax—forget yourself. All of my folks poke fun at me when I sit on the floor by the radio during the concert broadcasts, my ears close to the speaker. But that is the only way by which I can really enjoy music. The very loudness, blasting at my hearing, emphasizes the tone-magic, overwhelming everything else. And sometimes, if my eyes are shut, I can see fantastic dream worlds, fiery pageants inspired by thundrous harmonies.

"I had never dared to turn on the amplifier as loud as I'd have wished. My family said that it would annoy the neighbors. So that day when I was alone at home, I thot that then was my chance, if ever, and proceeded to play my favorite record; the first scene of Chaikovsky's SWAN LAKE ballet, as loudly as possible. The sound was not so deafening as—maddening, or better still, intoxicating. How I Loved it! I sat cross-legged, eyes shut, dreaming, at last absolutely happy. More: ecstatic.

"The first notes were like an invitation emanating from a lost dimension, calling me, wheedling. Promising haven, peace. The call of the unknown: not the lure of dashing adventure but of mystery, mournful sorcery, epic splendors....

"Deep in my heart there's a sort of innate Slavic sadness which responded to the music's plaint, and my thought traveled with the melody effortlessly on and on. The warm darkness of my closed eyes lightened to infinities of cold, deep-blue emptiness, through which I felt myself gliding as the theme progressed.

"Each harmonic burst, every wailing echo, dominated me. My thought was borne farther and farther like a leaf in a tempest.... There were base chords which made my throat quiver, and tears burned under my lowered eyelids. I felt a tingling at my shoulders, and with eyes still closed but discerning by a sort of dream-vision, I half-consciously turned, beheld luminous yellow—draperies?—fluttering behind me, bouying me: like scarf-wings, whipping comet-tails.

"An instinctive transient fright gripped me, admonishing me to withdraw from this blue region into the calid darkness from which I had come—but the melody's urge was stronger than my feeble urge to retreat. The azure became flecked with diamond points of light which augmented into great white moons, and from one to another in a vast network rayed pulsing filaments, vascular channels of fluid light.

"A stupendous chorus of clear unhuman voices, as from diamond throats, emanated from these linked moons, of which the music which had conveyed me was only a distorted, ghostly echo.... In tangible waves this greater music rippled around the webbed moons, beating against me as though to force me away on its tides I know not whither.

"Beneath me was a limitless tract of grey slime which rose and fell torpidly as with the breathing of a somnolent subterranean thing. The moonlight burned brightly on it, and crawling across it from some remote place came—trees?—snaky-rooted things whose prehensile branches bore, instead of leaves, flexible lenses.... They left behind them red trails on the slime, and excrementory ribbons of thin blue vapor streamed from their topmost appendages. Occasionally they paused to feed, focussing their lenses upon the gelatinous ground, which became luminously white under the concentrated light. The sucking mouths of the serpentine roots absorbed this matter, and red viscosity seeped into the eaten places, greying rapidly under the moon's effulgence, chemically affected by it.

"And the trees mated. Gynandrous, they converged in pairs or groups, pressing close together, thrusting their limbs into one enormous cluster, aggregating their lenses into a series of complex, compact forms ... shuddering with a violent ardor.... From erectile protuberances rimming the lenses ruby liquid spurted, bursting with incandescence under the condensed moonlight.

"Spent, drooping, the trees separated, and the radiant orgasmic matter drifted lightly down to the slime, burning fitfully as the trees moved away indifferently.

"Apparently these flickering radiances fed, for gradually they grew, dulling, becoming opaque, substantial——thrusting out probing roots, developing limbs, wandering like their parents. They snailed onward out of sight, all of them.

"Silently, a phosphorescent green river raced like a bolt of furcate lightning over the green wastes. It was composed not of water but of myriad tiny luminous crawling insects. A conscious river, altering its tortuous course at will, small streams deviating from the main body and meandering erratically, then rejoining the general current. This river's end drew into sight, flashed under me and into the distance, leaving fast-greying red paths on the slime.

"The moon's music assailed me; simultaneously I felt those man-measures, which had carried me so long, cease, leaving me without a link to my own world—helpless against the inexorable tide of the lunar melody, which, bursting more loudly, swept me higher, through an interstice of the circulatory web, into blue infinity. And there it left me; fading ripples