Sleepers Of Mars

‘They told me,’ she said later; ‘they told me that—that you-

‘That I was mad?’

She nodded. ‘That’s what they meant me to think. They said that you had collapsed—had a breakdown through overwork. One of your assistants had found you smashing up your workshop with a sledge-hammer, and they’d had to—send you here.’

‘Yes, that’s true—but it wasn’t madness, my dear. It was a blinding flash of sanity. Another minute, and I’d have finished it.’

‘Finished what?’

‘Smashing that vibrator. Crushing it into little bits beyond all hope of reconstruction. Alan was too quick, though I don’t blame him for stopping me. He didn’t know; it must have looked like madness.’

‘But, David, why? Why, after all those years of work, should you want to smash it?’

‘Because I suddenly knew that if I didn’t smash it, it would smash us.’

‘Explain, David. I don’t understand. I know the vibrator was a weapon, but——’

‘Weapon, my dear? Would you call a volcano, an earthquake or a hurricane, a weapon? The vibrator is more than all of these. Its power is unthinkable. It may mean the end of everything, and I—I have let it loose upon the Earth for the third time.’

A worried, doubtful look crept into Diana’s eyes. She rested a hand on his sleeve, and gazed closely at him.

‘Darling, you must explain; I think you owe it to me. Why did you suddenly want to break up the work of years—an invention which put you at the head of your profession. And what do you mean by “the third time”?’

He looked at her for some moments without speaking. At last he came to a decision.

‘I’ll tell you. I haven’t told anyone else yet—they’d take it as part of my “madness”.’

It was a week ago today, he began. Old Fossdyke was making a speech of thanks on behalf of the War Department. It was not an official affair; there were only seven of us round the table, but still it was not entirely informal.

Fossdyke was rolling out phrases, in that admirable way of his, when the feeling suddenly came over me that I had heard it all before. You know that sensation of unplaceable familiarity; everybody knows it. You come suddenly upon a situation, or even a view, which you seem to have seen somewhere, somehow, in the past. The psychologists have an explanation, of course—they always have. But this time the sensation I felt was stronger than ever before.

‘This is more than a mere weapon,’ Fossdyke was saying. ‘It is no adaptation, no improvement of existing methods. It is a breakaway. It is the dream of the scientists come true—it is the death-ray! ’ He paused.

‘And yet,’ he added, ‘even as the aeroplane when it came was unlike the early dreams of flying machines, so Mr. Hixton’s vibrator is unlike what we expected. In our more fanciful moments we pictured, if we gave it any thought at all, something akin to an enormous searchlight sweeping, like a vast scythe, in a destructive arc. Mr. Hixton’s invention is, it is true, a directable force, but it is an invisible stream of vibrations which disrupts the ordered vibrations of matter and produces complete disorganisation.

‘Without doubt, the potentialities of the discovery are greater than we can now conceive. But I tell you now that Mr. Hixton had achieved what no man in the history of the world has accomplished before. He has ended war. With a weapon such as this, war will be impossible. Its colossal power will make a mockery of all our present arms. From this day, no nation will dare to make use of force….’

I heard Fossdyke’s voice booming on, but it seemed to be coming from farther away. My eyelids became unaccountably heavy; not with normal sleepiness, but rather as though a weight were pressing them down. I struggled against the sensation as one does against an anaesthetic—and to as little purpose.

Fossdyke’s booming receded farther and farther as my lids dropped lower. By the time they were shut, I seemed to be alone. All external sounds had ceased. I felt that there was nothing about me but a dark, silent void through which I was falling, falling….

How long that sensation continued, I cannot say. There was no means of measuring. I only know that it ended as inexplicably as it had begun. I was aware again of a voice:

‘And thus the supremacy of our country was made absolute. While we have this weapon, no race on Earth can face us.’

I opened my eyes in bewilderment. The voice was not Fossdyke’s; the language it spoke was not English, yet I understood it. I saw a large hall. I was seated on the foremost of a series of semi-circular benches, all of which were crowded with men and women dressed in gleaming material not unlike silk. Before us, on a throne-like, high-backed chair, sat the speaker.

I was bemused for no more than a few seconds. The memory of Fossdyke began to fade away. I was no longer David Hixton of the twentieth century. I was Kis-Tan, citizen of the mighty Empire of Lemuria. The tall, serious-faced speaker, whom I knew now for Alhui, Chief Councillor of the Empire, continued:

‘But it is a two-edged weapon as it exists at present. Therefore I must lay before you a two-fold proposal. First, that all vibrators at present in existence shall be destroyed forthwith. And second, that Kis-Tan shall be granted funds to begin experiments with a view to finding a new type of vibrator, far less drastic in its operation. If, and when, this is accomplished, the new machines shall be retained within Lemuria, where they shall be used only in the event of a dire crisis, and then with the utmost circumspection.’