Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930

“Guess I may as well admit it,” he said with a wry smile. “Ever since I came back from my assignment with Kell I have had a hell of a time. Half the time I have been in a daze and have not had the least idea what I was doing. Funny part of it is that I have seemed to keep right on doing things even while I was out of my head.” He told briefly of the visions he had had in which he had seemed to contend with his brother reporter, the horrid sensations as he felt himself overcome, the black oblivion in which he then found himself, and the mysterious manner in which he had left Keegan on that ill-fated assignment.

“What have you done to Handlon?” Jimmie’s voice cut in. He was standing over the form of the maniac, rigid and menacing. “You have exactly two minutes to go.”

“Find out for yourself!” snarled the bruised and battered fiend.

“I will,” was the answer, and on the instant a horrible shriek rent the air. Jimmie had quickly grasped both of the Professor’s arms at the wrists and was slowly twisting them in a grip of iron. Kell’s face went white, the lips writhed back over toothless gums, the eyes closed in the supreme effort to withstand the excruciating pain. Then–

“Enough, enough!” he screamed.

O’Hara eased the pressure slightly but retained his hold upon the clawlike hands. “Talk fast,” he ordered.

The old man struggled futilely in the grasp of the powerful reporter, finally glancing in the direction of the others. Would they show signs of pity? Surely not Hard Boiled Bland. The Chief was watching the struggles of the victim through a cloud of tobacco smoke which he was slowly exhaling through his nose. The plainclothesman displayed no sign of interest at all. The game was up!

“Very well,” he said sullenly. “Handlon and Perry are both occupying the same body.”

“Wh-a-a-t?” roared Bland. “Jimmie, I guess you’ll have to put the screws to him some more. He’s trying to make fools of us at the last minute!”

“No, no!” screamed the Professor. “What I say is true. I have been working for years on my system of de-astralization. This last year I at length perfected my electric de-astralizer, which amplifies and exerts the fifth influence of de-cohesion.”

The whole party began to look uneasy and gazed apprehensively at the huge Crookes tube which still stood in its supporting frame on the table.

“I have been forced to experiment on animals for the most part,” the Professor continued. “I succeeded in de-astralizing a dog and a bull and caused them to exchange bodies. The bodies continued to function. I was enthusiastic. Other experiments took place of which I will not tell you. Finally I began to long for a human subject on which to try my fifth influence.”

“Just get down to cases, if you don’t mind, Kell.” The Chief wanted action. “Suppose you tell us just what you did to Handlon and where we can find him. I may as well mention that your life depends upon it. If we find that you have done for him, something worse than death may happen to you.” The tone was menacing. Although Handlon was a comparatively late acquisition to the old Chief’s staff, still he had been loyal to the paper.

“When your two damned reporters entered my driveway,” Kell resumed. “I saw them coming through a powerful glass which I always have on hand. I had no desire to see them, but they forced themselves upon me. At last I determined that they should furnish material for my experiments.

“If your men had looked into the grove behind the barn they would have found the automobile which furnished two more subjects I was keeping on hand in a room upstairs. Old Manion and his daughter gave me quite a bit of trouble, but I kept them drugged most of the time. He broke out of the room to-night though, and I had to kill him. It was self defense,” he added slyly.

“Anyway, I found it was possible to make two astrals exchange bodies. But I also wanted to see if it were possible to cause two astrals to occupy the same body at the same time, and if so what the result would be. I found out. It was rare sport to watch your star reporter leave my house. He was damned glad to leave, I believe…” Again came the insane cackle.

“Guess we have to believe him whether we want to or not.” The detective came to life. “How about making him release Handlon’s–what d’ye call it?–astral–from Perry’s body?”

“Just a moment.” The voice now was unmistakably Handlon’s, though it was issuing from the throat of Perry. “In the minute I have in consciousness let me suggest that before you do any more de-astralizing you locate my body. Until then, if I am released from this one I am a dead man.”

The words struck the group dumb. Where was Handlon’s body? Could the Professor produce it?

That worthy looked rather haunted at that moment, and they began to see the fear of death coming upon him.

“Mercy, mercy!” he begged as the four men started to advance upon him. “As soon as I had de-astralized Handlon I destroyed his body in my pickling barrel down cellar. But there is another way…” He paused, uncertain as to how his next words would be received. “Go out and get the Manion girl. She can be de-astralized and friend Handlon can have her body.”

At this suggestion, advanced so naïvely, the four men recoiled in horror. It was entirely too much even for Hard Boiled Bland, and he could hardly restrain himself from applying the editorial fist to the leering face before him. Undoubtedly Professor Kell was hopelessly insane, and for that reason he held himself in leash.

“Kell, you are slated to pull off one more stunt,” Jimmie addressed the cringing heap. “You know what it is. Get busy. And just remember that I am standing over here”–he indicated a corner well separated from the rest–“with this cannon aimed in your direction. If things aren’t just according to Hoyle, you get plugged. Get me?”

“What about it, men?” Bland spoke up. “Is it going to be treating Handlon right to de-astralize him now? It will be his last chance to have a body on this earth.”

“Unfortunately that body never belonged to Handlon,” said O’Hara. “Hence I fail to see why Perry should be discommoded for the balance of his life with a companion astral. Perry is clearly entitled to his own body, free and unhampered. Friend Skip is out of luck, unless–Well, I don’t mind telling you, Kell, that you just gave me an idea. Snap into it now!”

The Professor dragged himself to his feet and under the menace of the automatic fumbled under the table until he had located the intricate apparatus before mentioned.

“Now if Mr. Perry–or Handlon–will kindly recline at full length on this table,” he said with an obscene leer, “the experiment will begin.”

“Just remember, Kell, this is no experiment,” advised Bland, fixing the Professor with an ugly eye. “You do as you’re told.”

The other made no reply, but threw a hidden switch. Perry, lying flat on his back on the ancient table, suddenly found himself being bathed by what seemed to be a ray of light, and yet was not a ray of light. What was it? It was surely not visible, yet it was tangible. A terrific force was emanating from that devilish globe above him, drawing him out of himself–or–no–was he expanding? Again his ears became filled with confused, horrible sounds, the outlines of the room faded from sight, he felt a strange sense of inflation … of lightness… Oblivion!

From where the others sat a gasp of wonder went up. At the first contact of the switch there had been a momentary flash of greenish light within the bulb, and then a swift transition to a beautiful orange. It had then faded altogether, leaving the glass apparently inert and inactive.

But it was not so! The form lying beneath the bulb was evidently being racked with untold tortures. The face became a thing of horror. Now it had twisted into a grotesque semblance of Handlon’s–now it again resembled Perry’s. The Professor quietly increased the pressure of the current. From the bulb emanated a steel gray exhalation of what must be termed light, and yet so real it was seemingly material. Assuredly it was not a ray of light as we understand light. It came in great beating throbs, in which the actual vibrations were entirely visible. Under each impact the body of Perry seemed to change, slowly at first, then with increasing speed. The body was now swelled to enormous size. Bland reached forward to touch it.

“This de-cohering influence,” the Professor was murmuring, almost raptly, “causes the atoms that go to make a living body repel one another. When the body is sufficiently nebulized, the soul–Back! Back, you fool!” he suddenly shrieked, grasping Bland by the arm. “Do you want to kill him?”

Bland hurriedly retreated, convinced perforce that Kell’s alarm was genuine. The editorial fingers had penetrated the subject’s garments without resistance and sank into the body as easily as if it were so much soft soap!

The body continued to expand until at length even the hard-headed plainclothesman realized that it had been reduced to a mere vapor. Within this horrid vaporized body, which nearly filled the room and which had now lost all semblance to a man, could be discerned two faint shapes. Swiftly the Professor extinguished the lantern. The shapes, vague though they were, could be recognized as those of Horace Perry and Skip Handlon. And they were at strife!

All eyes were now focused on Professor Kell, who was evidently waiting for something to happen. The two apparitions within the body-cloud were at death grips. One had been overcome and was temporarily helpless. It was that of Handlon. And then again the astral of Perry forcibly ousted that of Handlon from the cloud-cyst. And at that instant Professor Kell shut off the influence-tube.

At once a terrific metamorphosis took place. There came a sharp sound almost like a clap of thunder, with the slight exception that this was occasioned by exactly the reverse effect. Instead of being an explosion it might more properly be termed an inplosion, for the mist-cloud suddenly vanished. The de-cohering influence having been removed, the cloud had condensed into the form of Perry. Apparently none the worse, he was even now beginning to recover consciousness. The astral of Handlon was no longer visible, though hovering in the vicinity.

Perry’s body was again his own.

At this time Jimmie O’Hara elected to start something new by hitting the Professor a workmanlike blow on the back of the head with the butt of his automatic. The next thing Bland or anyone else present knew the unconscious body of the Professor was on the table and Jimmie was groping for the concealed switch. At length he found it, and the green flash of light appeared in the bulb, followed by the brilliant orange manifestation.

“What in hell are you doing?” gasped Bland.

“De-astralizing the Professor,” replied O’Hara cheerfully. “Don’t you get the idea yet? Watch!”

Fascinated, the four men saw the terrific emanation take its baleful effect. As before, the body commenced to expand and gradually took on a misty outline. Larger and larger it grew, until finally it had become a vast cloud of intangible nothingness which filled the room like some evil nebula.

A cry of consternation from the detective aroused Jimmie. Skip Handlon’s astral had appeared within the field of the nebula to fight for possession. There ensued what was perhaps the weirdest encounter ever witnessed. Though he was in poor physical shape, the Professor seemed to have an extremely powerful astral; and for some time the spectators despaired of Handlon’s victory. Once the latter, evidently realizing that the powerful influence tube had rendered him visible, glanced sharply in Jimmie’s direction. O’Hara was considerably puzzled at this, but watched the progress of the struggle tensely. At length the moment seemed to arrive which the reporter’s astral had been awaiting. It turned tail and fled away from the astral of the Professor, disappearing beyond the outer confines of the nebula.

Jimmie suddenly divined the other’s purpose and dived for the hidden switch. As he had anticipated, Handlon had finally given up the attempt to overcome the astral of Kell by force and had made up his mind to accomplish his end by strategy. Almost on the instant that Jimmie’s hand closed on the switch the reporter’s astral again leaped into the field of the nebula. Fiercely it signalled to the former second story man to shut off the current, but the admonition was unnecessary, for Jimmie had already done so.

Swiftly the cloud-cyst faded. Even as the group caught a fleeting sight of Skip Handlon, the last that mortal eyes would ever see of him as he actually was, there came a violent disturbance at the edge of the shrinking nebula. Would the speed of condensation of the atoms which comprised the body of Professor Kell serve to shut out the pursuing astral of Kell?

Even Bland held his breath!

The cloud lost its luminous quality, the action of condensation increasing in speed. It was barely visible in the enshrouding gloom. An astral had long since been enveloped within the rapidly accumulating substance. Came a sudden clap of sound as before, and the final act of resolution had been accomplished. Whether the Professor had succeeded in regaining a position within the cloud-cyst before the crucial second none could say.

Jimmie relighted the lantern. Apparently the effect of the love tap administered by his automatic was more or less of a lasting character, and the men were put to some ado to restore the body of Kell to consciousness. At length their efforts began to bear fruit, however, and it became expedient to remove the patient to the softer couch in the sitting room below. As they moved forward to lay hold of the limp body a figure appeared in the doorway to the hall. It was the plainclothesman, Riley.

“How about getting under way for town,” he wanted to know. “Is the old party croaked yet? Miss Manion has had a fierce time and says she won’t stay near this house another minute. I don’t like this place myself either. Do you know I just got kicked by a poll parrot? Let’s get away from here.”

“Hold on, Riley, what are you talking about?” growled Bland. “Kicked by a poll parrot! You’re–”

“That’s all right, Chief,” broke in the now thoroughly cheerful Perry. “That jackass I shot could probably have told us all about it. I positively know the beast could talk.”

“Humph!” snorted Bland, “Well, if a donkey can talk, and a bull can bite, and a hound can hook, why shouldn’t a parrot–Judas Priest, I’m getting as crazy as the rest of you! Hurry up and get Kell downstairs so we can see who he is. There I go again! Oh, go lie down, Riley.”

“But look, Bland, look!” Riley was pointing a demoralized finger at a cage in the corner. He tugged frantically at Bland’s coat sleeve. “See what’s in there, won’t you? I–well, I did find some liquor in your car, and Miss Manion made me take some. I–I didn’t know it would do this to me. Look in there; please, Mr. Bland!”

Bland gave Riley a dark look, but nevertheless he reached for O’Hara’s flashlight. In the cage two yellow eyes blinked sleepily out at him. Perry began to laugh.

“Why, there’s nothing in there but a cat. Skip and I heard it purring when we first came in here this afternoon. Guess Riley–”

“Great God, Jimmie, give me your gun!” Hard Boiled Bland for the moment failed to merit his sobriquet. The torch in his hand threw a trembling beam full into the cage. “It’s a snake! And–there! It’s doing it again!”

A snake it was, indubitably, a huge black specimen with bright yellow stripes. Bland’s frenzied yell seemed not to have excited it at all, for now the sleek fellow had arched its body neatly and was calmly licking its sides with a long forked tongue. After a moment it halted the operation long enough to rub its jaw against a bar of its cage, and gave vent to a sociable mew!

Even this could not dash the spirits of Horace Perry. He laughed delightedly again as he laid Bland by the arm.

“That creature is perfectly harmless, Chief,” he told the editor. “Somewhere I suppose there’s a mighty dangerous kitty cat at large, but there’s no sense in taking it out on this poor reptile. Let’s live and let live.”

With a show of reluctance Bland returned Jimmie’s automatic, then strode over to where lay the form of Kell. Perry and O’Hara lingered by the cage long enough to arrange a plan to let the snake out doors as soon as opportunity offered, after which they joined their Chief. Riley went out to resume his vigil in Bland’s car, while his fellow sleuth prepared to light the way downstairs. Under his guidance the sick man was carried below without mishap.

Downstairs the now conscious form of the venerable Professor was laid out on the ancient sofa until his senses could clear a bit. Presently the eyelids fluttered open and a feeble voice asked, “Where the deuce am I, and how did all you guys get here?”

A joyous gasp went up. That voice! Although uttered in somewhat the same vocal quality as Kell’s the intonation and accents had strangely altered. O’Hara leaned eagerly over the figure on the couch. The question he asked was startling in its incongruity:

“How are you feeling, Skip!”

“Rotten,” was the reply from the lips of Kell. “What hit me such a crack on the dome? I feel as if I had been dragged through a knot-hole. Lemme up.”

“Stay still,” commanded O’Hara, kindly but firmly. “You aren’t fit to move yet. You are going on a long ride and will need your strength. Don’t talk, either.”

A half-hour later they left the house. In the front yard the editor called a hasty conclave which included the entire party. Hard Boiled Bland has never been known to talk so much at a stretch, before or since.

“Before we start back,” he began, “we had better come to an understanding. In the first place–Skip, come over here a minute.”

Norma Manion uttered an involuntary cry of fear as the aged form of Kell passed by her. Skip’s instant response to his name had, of course, been perfectly natural to him. But it had an odd effect on the others.

“Miss Manion, and gentlemen,” Bland went on, with a bow of mock ceremony, “I want you to meet Mister–er, Mister–oh hell, call him Saunders. This is Mr. Kenneth Saunders, ladies and gentlemen. When he gets a shave and has his new face patched up I believe you will like his appearance much more than you do now.

“Seriously though, folks, I hope that with a little fixing up the gentleman will hardly resemble Professor Anton Kell. Kell is dead. Obviously, however, this gentleman can hardly continue his existence as Skip Handlon. Hence–well, hence Mr. Saunders. And don’t forget the name.

“Now another little matter. This house has proven a curse to humanity. What has transpired here need never be known. Would it not be the wiser to eliminate all traces of to-night’s happenings? There is a way.” He looked significantly at the others.

“You mean–” began Perry.

“That we destroy all traces of Professor Kell’s villainy. Although he is no more, still someone might notice that his body actively remains. And no one wants to do any explaining.”

“It’s the only way we can protect Handlon,” one of the sleuths ruminated, half to himself. “No judge would ever believe a word about this de-astralization business. The chances are we would all go to the booby hatch and Handlon would go to prison for Kell’s crimes.”

“There were four of us that witnessed the fact of the–the soul transfusion, though,” Perry objected. “Wouldn’t that be enough to clear Skip? Besides, wouldn’t it be possible for us to lead a jury out here and duplicate the experiment?”

“Too much undesirable publicity,” growled Bland, who for once in his life had found reason to keep something good out of the headlines. “What do you say, people?”

“I move we move,” from the detective who had had the uncomfortable job of attending to Norma Manion.

“Gentleman, I believe we understand each other,” said Jimmie quietly. “Now I am going into the barn”–significantly–“to see if everything’s all right. While I am there something might happen. You understand?”

The others nodded silent assent.

In the snug seat of Jimmie’s speedster Norma Manion shivered as she followed the direction indicated by her companion’s finger. It was that darkest hour which comes just before the dawn.

To the westward could be perceived a dull, red glow, which, even as they watched with fascinated eyes, developed into an intense glare. Gradually the fading stars became eclipsed in the greater glory.

Three cars, motors throbbing as if eager to be gone, stood a space apart on the main road. The car behind O’Hara’s was the Manion machine, now occupied by Bland and Riley. The remaining one was a touring car and contained the balance of the party. Perry was at the wheel, and beside him sat the Handlon-Kell-Saunders combination.

“Thus passes a den of horror,” whispered Jimmie to his companion.

“It is the funeral pyre of my father,” the girl answered simply. She had long since recovered from her initial outburst of grief at her loss, and now watched the progress of the conflagration dry-eyed. At length Jimmie slipped an arm protectingly about the trembling shoulders.

“You have seen enough,” he said. As the three cars raced from the scene of the holocaust, faint streamers in the east told of the rising orb of day.

“Good-by, Keegan, forever,” murmured Norma.

“Amen,” O’Hara devoutedly agreed.

From the Ocean’s Depths

From somewhere out on the black, heaving Atlantic, the rapid, muffled popping of a speed-boat’s exhaust drifted clearly through the night.

Man came from the sea. Mercer, by his thought-telegraph, learns from the weirdly beautiful ocean-maiden of a branch that returned there.

I dropped my book and stretched, leaning back more comfortably in my chair. There was real romance and adventure! Rum-runners, seeking out their hidden port with their cargo of contraband from Cuba. Heading fearlessly through the darkness, fighting the high seas, still running after the storm of a day or so before, daring a thousand dangers for the sake of the straw-packed bottles they carried. Sea-bronzed men, with hard, flat muscles and fearless eyes; ready guns slapping their thighs as they–

Absorbed in my mental picture of these modern free-booters, the sudden alarm of the telephone startled me like an unexpected shot fired beside my ear. Brushing the cigarette ashes from my smoking-jacket, I crossed the room and snatched up the receiver.

“Hello!” I snapped ungraciously into the mouthpiece. It was after eleven by the ship’s clock on the mantel, and if–

“Taylor?” The voice–Warren Mercer’s familiar voice–rattled on without waiting for a reply. “Get in your car and come down here as fast as possible. Come just as you are, and–”

“What’s the matter?” I managed to interrupt him. “Burglars?” I had never heard Mercer speak in that high-pitched, excited voice before; his usual speech was slow and thoughtful, almost didactic.

“Please, Taylor, don’t waste time questioning me. If it weren’t urgent, I wouldn’t be calling you, you know. Will you come?”

“You bet!” I said quickly, feeling rather a fool for ragging him when he was in such deadly earnest. “Have–”

The receiver snapped and crackled; Mercer had hung up the instant he had my assurance that I would come. Usually the very soul of courtesy and consideration, that act alone would have convinced me that there was an urgent need for my presence at The Monstrosity. That was Mercer’s own name for the impressive pile that was at once his residence and his laboratory.

I threw off the smoking-jacket and pulled on a woolen golfing sweater, for the wind was brisk and sharpish. In two minutes I was backing the car out of the garage; a moment later I was off the gravelled drive and tearing down the concrete with the accelerator all the way down, and the black wind shrieking around the windshield of my little roadster.

My own shack was out of the city limits–a little place I keep to live in when the urge to go fishing seizes me, which is generally about twice a year. Mercer picked the place up for me at a song.

The Monstrosity was some four miles further out from town, and off the highway perhaps a half-mile more.

I made the four miles in just a shade over that many minutes, and clamped on the brakes as I saw the entrance to the little drive that led toward the sea, and Mercer’s estate.