The Human Zero. The Science Fiction Stories of Erle Stanley Gardner
- Автор: Гарднер Эрл Стенли, Greenberg Matin
- Год: 1981
- Язык: английский
- Год: William Morrow
- ISBN: 978-0-688-00122-3
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «The Human Zero. The Science Fiction Stories of Erle Stanley Gardner». Краткое содержание книги:
Published in Argosy magazine in the 1920s and 1930s, these suspenseful tales display Gardner’s grasp of a vast range of unlikely subject matter and the masterful gift for plot and action that made him the best-selling author of all time. Some of the stories are peopled with his classic cops and killers, tough reporters and sleuths of detective fiction, along with the mad professors and strange geniuses of fantastic science. The nature of molecules is the key to a locked-room murder in The Human Zero title story, and A Year in a Day is another crime story. But there is also natural disaster when a shift in the earth’s poles causes a worldwide flood (with a gripping description of the inundation of New York City), and still more eerie events are tied to hypnotism, reincarnation, and exotic ceremonies in a lost temple in India. The author’s imagination and ingenuity seem limitless; the action and entertainment he could pack into a 10,000-word story are remarkable.
The Human Zero: The Science Fiction Stories of Erle Stanley Gardner is a find for all his fans and collectors of his work.
“Where’s the girl?” demanded Click.
Badger’s swollen lips twisted in an effort to speak.
“Find her!”
Click picked up one of the great diamonds, its hard edge fashioned into a razor edge, held it over Badger’s throat.
“If she’s come to harm—”
The man’s face turned livid with fear.
“No, no. In the inner cone, locked in!”
Click gained the inner door, found it barred, flung it open. Dorothy Wagner was stretched on a cot, bound hand and foot. Her eyes rolled toward the door in an agony of hopelessness, found his, then lit until they were as twin stars.
“Click! You escaped! You came! Father, where’s Father?”
Click would have broken it to her gently, but she read correctly the expression on his face. Tears welled into the eyes.
“Cut me loose, Click. There’s a whole box of those diamond knives there on that table. Badger traded me off for them and his liberty. He told the natives I was his wife. Then he killed my guards and brought me here.”
Click saw the box. The diamonds were unpolished, in the rough, but they caught the light and sent it glittering in brilliant reflections. They were large, some being three inches in length.
He grasped one, cut through the cords which held the girl, assisted her to her feet.
“Could we — Father’s body?”
He shook his head.
“It was in the thick of the fighting. And it’s getting light now. The storm’s over.”
“Where are we?”
Click Kendall led the way to the outer room.
He turned to the window in the floor, began a minute study of the ground below.
Little men were rushing about, splashing through the mud. The ground was carpeted with dead and wounded, showing where the brunt of the fight had taken place, and most of the victims were of the dwarf tribe.
Click had an opportunity to study one of the night men who had been taken captive. He was tall, well over six feet, splendidly muscled. The skin was pale, and the forehead seemed to be all eyes. They were astonishingly large and the man continually kept his crocked arm over them, shielding them from the rays of the sun as these rays filtered through the envelope of mist.
“I think,” said Dorothy, “Father would prefer being left here. It’s his planet, you know.”
And her tapering finger firmly slid the control button to negative gravitation.
Like a rocket hissing through the air, the shell darted through the warm moisture of the fog-filled air, shot past towering trees, and suddenly seemed enshrouded with white radiance. For only a fraction of a second did the white radiance grip the atmosphere, and then the shell, gathering speed with every foot of travel, shot out into the clear open air.
The blazing sunlight seemed the promise of a new world. The blue of the sky, intense, brilliant, deep; the piling billows of cloud below, all seemed clean, an augur of a more happy existence than the life of the fog-drenched planet.
Faster and faster they went. Click moved the lever. The car swung into lateral motion, went skimming over the top of the fog.
The dark rim of twilight loomed before them, showed a crescent of eternal darkness.
“The earth should be about above us now,” said the girl.
Click slammed the control over to extreme negative gravitation, and the car shot into accelerated motion. The planet below began to show the motion of its diminishing perspective, and the outer air grew dark with the darkness of interplanetary space.
The girl twisted a valve. Compressed air hissed into the car. She opened another valve.
“Oxygen,” she said, “and there’s a valve control to exhaust the foul air. Let’s go back in the inner room. There are controls there. I don’t like to be out here with Badger.”
Click followed her into the inner shell.
“These controls are arranged in series now,” she said. “We can handle the car from here.”
Click nodded.
“You get some sleep. I’ll keep it moving until we get some-where’s near the earth.”
She nodded, patted his hand.
“Good old Click!”
He got her to lie down on one of the beds, started an alcohol stove, brewed her a hot milk drink, saw her head nod with utter exhaustion even as she drank it. He eased her form back on the pillow, covered her with blankets, then turned his attention to the problem of navigating the car through space.
It was not easy, yet it was not so difficult as he imagined. He could see the disk of a bright star which he knew must be the earth. He moved the control over to a more easy rate of repulsion so that their speed would not be entirely beyond control.
His own head nodded with fatigue, but he grimly fought off the warm drowsiness. The clean sun beat with dazzling splendor upon the metallic sides of the car. The universe showed clean and sparkling, gems set in jet black.
Click improved his time by taking stock of the contents of the inner shell. It touched the outer shell only upon one long seam. There was a window at the top where it joined the top of the other shell. Click could see that this window was made to open inward. The glass was set in live rubber, under terrific pressure. This was to prevent the window blowing outward in space with the pressure of the air in the shell. And there were complicated levers and screws by which that window could be swung into place.
It was out of this window, then, that the life-giving air and the pressure necessary to sustain existence had leaked on that first wild plunge into the upper regions of the atmosphere.
Click inspected the bookshelf with its tables of planetary positions, its gravitational formulae, then turned his attention to the other equipment. There was a telescope, well made, mounted upon a folding tripod. There was a bulky package hanging from the wall. Inspection showed that it contained two parachutes of the type worn by aviators.
Evidently Professor Wagner had placed them there for use during his earlier experiments. They offered him a way back to earth should the shell prove unmanageable.
Click set up the telescope, unfolded the tripod, and swung the objective toward the window in the top.
The glass was crystal-clear, yet gave some distortion to the image, a species of haziness that prevented really clear perception. But Click was able to pick out the earth, almost directly above them. He could see the whirling continents, the seas, the cloud areas, those places where the sun beat down with glittering light upon shimmering deserts. The shadows of a mountain range loomed plainly.
Click saw they were approaching with terrific speed. He had made no effort to calculate speed other than by the unaided estimate of his eye. He felt reasonably sure of coming somewhere within the influence of the earth’s gravitation. He didn’t need to hit it at all close, a hundred thousand miles in either direction would still enable him to fall into the earth.
And then sheer exhaustion levied her toll. Click slumped to his side, pillowed his head on his arm, and slept. Hours later he awoke with a start. He could see that the car was somewhere above the Pacific Ocean. He caught a glimpse of Australia, China, then shifted his gaze to the east. Late afternoon mantled the shores of California, Oregon, Washington, Mexico, South America. He could see the mighty mountain chains casting long shadows to the east. And the car was whizzing its lateral motion with constant acceleration.
The girl was awake, at the controls. She smiled at him. “We’re getting there,” she said.
Click rubbed his eyes, peered through the window.
It was a breath-taking spectacle. The girl prepared a meal while they watched the panorama below. The great black disk of the earth, illuminated by the moon, the flaming stars, the mighty disk of the sun itself, blazing in white-hot splendor.