The Sound Of A Tumult
: When The Sleeper WakesGraham's last impression before he fainted was of a clamorous ringing of
bells. He learnt afterwards that he was insensible, hanging between life
and death, for the better part of an hour. When he recovered his senses,
he was back on his translucent couch, and there was a stirring warmth
at heart and throat. The dark apparatus, he perceived, had been removed
from his arm, which was bandaged. The white framework was still about
him, but the greenish transparent substance that had filled it was
altogether gone. A man in a deep violet robe, one of those who had been
on the balcony, was looking keenly into his face.
Remote but insistent was a clamour of bells and confused sounds, that
suggested to his mind the picture of a great number of people shouting
together. Something seemed to fall across this tumult, a door suddenly
closed.
Graham moved his head. "What does this all mean?" he said slowly. "Where
am I?"
He saw the red-haired man who had been first to discover him. A voice
seemed to be asking what he had said, and was abruptly stilled.
The man in violet answered in a soft voice, speaking English with a
slightly foreign accent, or so at least it seemed to the Sleeper's ears,
"You are quite safe. You were brought hither from where you fell asleep.
It is quite safe. You have been here some time--sleeping. In a trance."
He said something further that Graham could not hear, and a little phial
was handed across to him. Graham felt a cooling spray, a fragrant mist
played over his forehead for a moment, and his sense of refreshment
increased. He closed his eyes in satisfaction.
"Better?" asked the man in violet, as Graham's eyes reopened. He was a
pleasant-faced man of thirty, perhaps, with a pointed flaxen beard, and
a clasp of gold at the neck of his violet robe.
"Yes," said Graham.
"You have been asleep some time. In a cataleptic trance. You have heard?
Catalepsy? It may seem strange to you at first, but I can assure you
everything is well."
Graham did not answer, but these words served their reassuring purpose.
His eyes went from face to face of the three people about him. They were
regarding him strangely. He knew he ought to be somewhere in Cornwall,
but he could not square these things with that impression.
A matter that had been in his mind during his last waking moments at
Boscastle recurred, a thing resolved upon and somehow neglected. He
cleared his throat.
"Have you wired my cousin?" he asked. "E. Warming, 27, Chancery Lane?"
They were all assiduous to hear. But he had to repeat it. "What an odd
blurr in his accent!" whispered the red-haired man. "Wire, sir?" said
the young man with the flaxen beard, evidently puzzled.
"He means send an electric telegram," volunteered the third, a
pleasant-faced youth of nineteen or twenty. The flaxen-bearded man gave
a cry of comprehension. "How stupid of me! You may be sure everything
shall be done, sir," he said to Graham. "I am afraid it would be
difficult to--wire to your cousin. He is not in London now. But don't
trouble about arrangements yet; you have been asleep a very long time
and the important thing is to get over that, sir." (Graham concluded the
word was sir, but this man pronounced it "Sire.")
"Oh!" said Graham, and became quiet.
It was all very puzzling, but apparently these people in unfamiliar
dress knew what they were about. Yet they were odd and the room was odd.
It seemed he was in some newly established place. He had a sudden flash
of suspicion. Surely this wasn't some hall of public exhibition! If it
was he would give Warming a piece of his mind. But it scarcely had
that character. And in a place of public exhibition he would not have
discovered himself naked.
Then suddenly, quite abruptly, he realised what had happened. There was
no perceptible interval of suspicion, no dawn to his knowledge. Abruptly
he knew that his trance had lasted for a vast interval; as if by some
processes of thought reading he interpreted the awe in the faces that
peered into his. He looked at them strangely, full of intense emotion.
It seemed they read his eyes. He framed his lips to speak and could not.
A queer impulse to hide his knowledge came into his mind almost at the
moment of his discovery. He looked at his bare feet, regarding then
silently. His impulse to speak passed. He was trembling exceedingly.
They gave him some pink fluid with a greenish fluorescence and a meaty
taste, and the assurance of returning strength grew.
"That--that makes me feel better," he said hoarsely, and there were
murmurs of respectful approval. He knew now quite clearly. He made to
speak again, and again he could not.
He pressed his throat and tried a third time.
"How long?" he asked in a level voice. "How long have I been asleep?"
"Some considerable time," said the flaxen-bearded man, glancing quickly
at the others.
"How long?"
"A very long time."
"Yes--yes," said Graham, suddenly testy. "But I want--Is it--it is--some
years? Many years? There was something--I forget what. I feel--confused.
But you--" He sobbed. "You need not fence with me. How long--?"
He stopped, breathing irregularly. He squeezed his eyes with his
knuckles and sat waiting for an answer.
They spoke in undertones.
"Five or six?" he asked faintly. "More?"
"Very much more than that."
"Morel"
"More."
He looked at them and it seemed as though imps were twitching the
muscles of his face. He looked his question.
"Many years," said the man with the red beard.
Graham struggled into a sitting position. He wiped a rheumy tear from
his face with a lean hand. "Many years!" he repeated. He shut his eyes
tight, opened them, and sat looking about him, from one unfamiliar thing
to another.
"How many years?" he asked.
"You must be prepared to be surprised."
"Well?"
"More than a gross of years."
He was irritated at the strange word. "More than a what?"
Two of them spoke together. Some quick remarks that were made about
"decimal" he did not catch.
"How long did you say?" asked Graham. "How long? Don't look like that.
Tell me."
Among the remarks in an undertone, his ear caught six words: "More than
a couple of centuries."
"What?" he cried, turning on the youth who he thought had spoken. "Who
says--? What was that? A couple of centuries!"
"Yes," said the man with the red beard. "Two hundred years."
Graham repeated the words. He had been prepared to hear of a vast
repose, and yet these concrete centuries defeated him.
"Two hundred years," he said again, with the figure of a great gulf
opening very slowly in his mind; and then, "Oh, but--!"
They said nothing.
"You--did you say--?"
"Two hundred years. Two centuries of years," said the man with the red
beard.
There was a pause. Graham looked at their faces and saw that what he had
heard was indeed true.
"But it can't be," he said querulously. "I am dreaming. Trances. Trances
don't last. That is not right--this is a joke you have played upon
me! Tell me--some days ago, perhaps, I was walking along the coast of
Cornwall--?"
His voice failed him.
The man with the flaxen beard hesitated. "I'm not very strong in
history, sir," he said weakly, and glanced at the others.
"That was it, sir," said the youngster. "Boscastle, in the old Duchy of
Cornwall--it's in the southwest country beyond the dairy meadows. There
is a house there still. I have been there."
"Boscastle!" Graham turned his eyes to the youngster. "That was
it--Boscastle. Little Boscastle. I fell asleep--somewhere there. I don't
exactly remember. I don't exactly remember."
He pressed his brows and whispered, "More than two hundred years!"
He began to speak quickly with a twitching face, but his heart was cold
within him. "But if it is two hundred years, every soul I know, every
human being that ever I saw or spoke to before I went to sleep, must be
dead."
They did not answer him.
"The Queen and the Royal Family, her Ministers, of Church and State.
High and low, rich and poor, one with another--"
"Is there England still?"
"That's a comfort! Is there London?" E "This is London, eh? And you
are my assistant--custodian; assistant-custodian. And these--? Eh?
Assistant-custodians to?"
He sat with a gaunt stare on his face. "But why am I here? No! Don't
talk. Be quiet. Let me--"
He sat silent, rubbed his eyes, and, uncovering them, found another
little glass of pinkish fluid held towards him. He took the dose. It was
almost immediately sustaining. Directly he had taken it he began to weep
naturally and refreshingly.
Presently he looked at their faces, suddenly laughed through his tears,
a little foolishly. "But--two--hun--dred--years!" he said. He grimaced
hysterically and covered up his face again.
After a space he grew calm. He sat up, his hands hanging over his knees
in almost precisely the same attitude in which Isbister had found him
on the cliff at Pentargen. His attention was attracted by a thick
domineering voice, the footsteps of an advancing personage. "What are
you doing? Why was I not warned? Surely you could tell? Someone will
suffer for this. The man must be kept quiet. Are the doorways closed?
All the doorways? He must be kept perfectly quiet. He must not be told.
Has he been told anything?"
The man with the fair beard made some inaudible remark, and Graham
looking over his shoulder saw approaching a very short, fat, and
thickset beardless man, with aquiline nose and heavy neck and chin. Very
thick black and slightly sloping eyebrows that almost met over his
nose and overhung deep grey eyes, gave his face an oddly formidable
expression. He scowled momentarily at Graham and then his regard
returned to the man with the flaxen beard. "These others," he said in a
voice of extreme irritation. "You had better go."
"Go?" said the red-bearded man.
"Certainly--go now. But see the doorways are closed as you go."
The two men addressed turned obediently, after one reluctant glance at
Graham, and instead of going through the archway as he expected, walked
straight to the dead wall of the apartment opposite the archway. And
then came a strange thing; a long strip of this apparently solid wall
rolled up with a snap, hung over the two retreating men and fell again,
and immediately Graham was alone with the new comer and the purple-robed
man with the flaxen beard.
For a space the thickset man took not the slightest notice of Graham,
but proceeded to interrogate the other--obviously his subordinate--upon
the treatment of their charge. He spoke clearly, but in phrases only
partially intelligible to Graham. The awakening seemed not only a matter
of surprise but of consternation and annoyance to him. He was evidently
profoundly excited.
"You must not confuse his mind by telling him things," he repeated again
and again. "You must not confuse his mind."
His questions answered, he turned quickly and eyed the awakened sleeper
with an ambiguous expression.
"Feel queer?" he asked.
"Very."
"The world, what you see of it, seems strange to you?"
"I suppose I have to live in it, strange as it seems."
"I suppose so, now."
"In the first place, hadn't I better have some clothes?"
"They--" said the thickset man and stopped, and the flaxen-bearded man
met his eye and went away. "You will very speedily have clothes," said
the thickset man.
"Is it true indeed, that I have been asleep two hundred--?" asked
Graham.
"They have told you that, have they? Two hundred and three, as a matter
of fact."
Graham accepted the indisputable now with raised eyebrows and depressed
mouth. He sat silent for a moment, and then asked a question, "Is there
a mill or dynamo near here?" He did not wait for an answer. "Things have
changed tremendously, I suppose?" he said.
"What is that shouting?" he asked abruptly.
"Nothing," said the thickset man impatiently. "It's people. You'll
understand better later--perhaps. As you say, things have changed." He
spoke shortly, his brows were knit, and he glanced about him like a man
trying to decide in an emergency. "We must get you clothes and so forth,
at any rate. Better wait here until some can come. No one will come near
you. You want shaving."
Graham rubbed his chin.
The man with the flaxen beard came back towards them, turned suddenly,
listened for a moment, lifted his eyebrows at the older man, and hurried
off through the archway towards the balcony. The tumult of shouting
grew louder, and the thickset man turned and listened also. He cursed
suddenly under his breath, and turned his eyes upon Graham with an
unfriendly expression. It was a surge of many voices, rising and
falling, shouting and screaming, and once came a sound like blows and
sharp cries, and then a snapping like the crackling of dry sticks.
Graham strained his ears to draw some single thread of sound from the
woven tumult.
Then he perceived, repeated again and again, a certain formula. For a
time he doubted his ears. But surely these were the words: "Show us the
Sleeper! Show us the Sleeper!"
The thickset man rushed suddenly to the archway.
"Wild!" he cried, "How do they know? Do they know? Or is it guessing?"
There was perhaps an answer.
"I can't come," said the thickset man; "I have him to see to. But
shout from the balcony."
There was an inaudible reply.
"Say he is not awake. Anything! I leave it to you."
He came hurrying back to Graham. "You must have clothes at once," he
said. "You cannot stop here--and it will be impossible to--"
He rushed away, Graham shouting unanswered questions after him. In a
moment he was back.
"I can't tell you what is happening. It is too complex to explain. In
a moment you shall have your clothes made. Yes--in a moment. And then
I can take you away from here. You will find out our troubles soon
enough."
"But those voices. They were shouting--?"
"Something about the Sleeper--that's you. They have some twisted idea. I
don't know what it is. I know nothing."
A shrill bell jetted acutely across the indistinct mingling of remote
noises, and this brusque person sprang to a little group of appliances
in the corner of the room. He listened for a moment, regarding a ball of
crystal, nodded, and said a few indistinct words; then he walked to the
wall through which the two men had vanished. It rolled up again like a
curtain, and he stood waiting.
Graham lifted his arm and was astonished to find what strength the
restoratives had given him. He thrust one leg over the side of the couch
and then the other. His head no longer swam. He could scarcely credit
his rapid recovery. He sat feeling his limbs.
The man with the flaxen beard re-entered from the archway, and as he did
so the cage of a lift came sliding down in front of the thickset
man, and a lean, grey-bearded man, carrying a roll, and wearing a
tightly-fitting costume of dark green, appeared therein.
"This is the tailor," said the thickset man with an introductory
gesture. "It will never do for you to wear that black. I cannot
understand how it got here. But I shall. I shall. You will be as rapid
as possible?" he said to the tailor.
The man in green bowed, and, advancing, seated himself by Graham on the
bed. His manner was calm, but his eyes were full of curiosity. "You will
find the fashions altered, Sire," he said. He glanced from under his
brows at the thickset man.
He opened the roller with a quick movement, and a confusion of brilliant
fabrics poured out over his knees. "You lived, Sire, in a period
essentially cylindrical--the Victorian. With a tendency to the
hemisphere in hats. Circular curves always. Now--" He flicked out a
little appliance the size and appearance of a keyless watch, whirled the
knob, and behold--a little figure in white appeared kinetoscope fashion
on the dial, walking and turning. The tailor caught up a pattern of
bluish white satin. "That is my conception of your immediate treatment,"
he said.
The thickset man came and stood by the shoulder of Graham.
"We have very little time," he said.
"Trust me," said the tailor. "My machine follows. What do you think of
this?"
"What is that?" asked the man from the nineteenth century.
"In your days they showed you a fashion-plate," said the tailor, "but
this is our modern development See here." The little figure repeated
its evolutions, but in a different costume. "Or this," and with a click
another small figure in a more voluminous type of robe marched on to
the dial. The tailor was very quick in his movements, and glanced twice
towards the lift as he did these things.
It rumbled again, and a crop-haired anaemic lad with features of the
Chinese type, clad in coarse pale blue canvas, appeared together with a
complicated machine, which he pushed noiselessly on little castors into
the room. Incontinently the little kinetoscope was dropped, Graham was
invited to stand in front of the machine and the tailor muttered some
instructions to the crop-haired lad, who answered in guttural tones and
with words Graham did not recognise. The boy then went to conduct an
incomprehensible monologue in the corner, and the tailor pulled out a
number of slotted arms terminating in little discs, pulling them out
until the discs were flat against the body of Graham, one at each
shoulder blade, one at the elbows, one at the neck and so forth, so that
at last there were, perhaps, two score of them upon his body and limbs.
At the same time, some other person entered the room by the lift,
behind Graham. The tailor set moving a mechanism that initiated a
faint-sounding rhythmic movement of parts in the machine, and in another
moment he was knocking up the levers and Graham was released. The tailor
replaced his cloak of black, and the man with the flaxen beard proffered
him a little glass of some refreshing fluid. Graham saw over the rim of
the glass a pale-faced young man regarding him with a singular fixity.
The thickset man had been pacing the room fretfully, and now turned and
went through the archway towards the balcony, from which the noise of
a distant crowd still came in gusts and cadences. The cropheaded lad
handed the tailor a roll of the bluish satin and the two began fixing
this in the mechanism in a manner reminiscent of a roll of paper in a
nineteenth century printing machine. Then they ran the entire thing on
its easy, noiseless bearings across the room to a remote corner where
a twisted cable looped rather gracefully from the wall. They made some
connexion and the machine became energetic and swift.
"What is that doing?" asked Graham, pointing with the empty glass to
the busy figures and trying to ignore the scrutiny of the new comer. "Is
that--some sort of force--laid on?"
"Yes," said the man with the flaxen beard.
"Who is that?" He indicated the archway behind him.
The man in purple stroked his little beard, hesitated, and answered in
an undertone, "He is Howard, your chief guardian. You see, Sire,--it's
a little difficult to explain. The Council appoints a guardian and
assistants. This hall has under certain restrictions been public. In
order that people might satisfy themselves. We have barred the doorways
for the first time. But I think--if you don't mind, I will leave him to
explain."
"Odd" said Graham. "Guardian? Council?" Then turning his back on the new
comer, he asked in an undertone, "Why is this man glaring at me? Is he a
mesmerist?"
"Mesmerist! He is a capillotomist."
"Capillotomist!"
"Yes--one of the chief. His yearly fee is sixdoz lions."
It sounded sheer nonsense. Graham snatched at the last phrase with an
unsteady mind. "Sixdoz lions?" he said.
"Didn't you have lions? I suppose not. You had the old pounds? They are
our monetary units."
"But what was that you said--sixdoz?"
"Yes. Six dozen, Sire. Of course things, even these little things,
have altered. You lived in the days of the decimal system, the Arab
system--tens, and little hundreds and thousands. We have eleven numerals
now. We have single figures for both ten and eleven, two figures for
a dozen, and a dozen dozen makes a gross, a great hundred, you know, a
dozen gross a dozand, and a dozand dozand a myriad. Very simple?"
"I suppose so," said Graham. "But about this cap--what was it?"
The man with the flaxen beard glanced over his shoulder.
"Here are your clothes!" he said. Graham turned round sharply and saw
the tailor standing at his elbow smiling, and holding some palpably new
garments over his arm. The crop-headed boy, by means of one finger,
was impelling the complicated machine towards the lift by which he had
arrived. Graham stared at the completed suit. "You don't mean to say--!"
"Just made," said the tailor. He dropped the garments at the feet of
Graham, walked to the bed on which Graham had so recently been lying,
flung out the translucent mattress, and turned up the looking glass. As
he did so a furious bell summoned the thickset man to the corner. The
man with the flaxen beard rushed across to him and then hurried out by
the archway.
The tailor was assisting Graham into a dark purple combination garment,
stockings, vest, and pants in one, as the thickset man came back from
the corner to meet the man with the flaxen beard returning from the
balcony. They began speaking quickly in an undertone, their bearing had
an unmistakable quality of anxiety. Over the purple under-garment came a
I complex but graceful garment of bluish white, and I Graham was clothed
in the fashion once more and saw himself, sallow-faced, unshaven and
shaggy still, but at least naked no longer, and in some indefinable
unprecedented way graceful.
"I must shave," he said regarding himself in the glass.
"In a moment," said Howard.
The persistent stare ceased. The young man closed his eyes, reopened
them, and with a lean hand extended, advanced on Graham. Then he
stopped, with his hand slowly gesticulating, and looked about him.
"A seat," said Howard impatiently, and in a moment the flaxen-bearded
man had a chair behind Graham. "Sit down, please," said Howard.
Graham hesitated, and in the other hand of the wildeyed man he saw the
glint of steel.
"Don't you understand, Sire?" cried the flaxen-bearded man with hurried
politeness. "He is going to cut your hair."
"Oh!" cried Graham enlightened. "But you called him--
"A capillotomist--precisely! He is one of the finest artists in the
world."
Graham sat down abruptly. The flaxen-bearded man disappeared. The
capillotomist came forward with graceful gestures, examined Graham's
ears and surveyed him, felt the back of his head, and would have sat
down again to regard him but for Howard's audible impatience. Forthwith
with rapid movements and a succession of deftly handled implements he
shaved Graham's chin, clipped his moustache, and cut and arranged his
hair. All this he did without a word, with something of the rapt air of
a poet inspired. And as soon as he had finished Graham was handed a pair
of shoes.
Suddenly a loud voice shouted--it seemed from a piece of machinery in
the corner--"At once--at once. The people know all over the city. Work
is being stopped. Work is being stopped. Wait for nothing, but come."
This shout appeared to perturb Howard exceedingly. By his gestures it
seemed to Graham that he hesitated between two directions. Abruptly
he went towards the corner where the apparatus stood about the little
crystal ball. As he did so the undertone of tumultuous shouting from the
archway that had continued during all these occurrences rose to a mighty
sound, roared as if it were sweeping past, and fell again as if receding
swiftly. It drew Graham after it with an irresistible attraction. He
glanced at the thickset man, and then obeyed his impulse. In two strides
he was down the steps and in the passage, and, in a score he was out
upon the balcony upon which the three men had been standing.
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Kemp read a strange missive, written in pencil on a greasy sheet of paper. "You have been amazingly energetic and clever," this letter ran, "though what you stand to gain by it I cannot imagine. You are against me. For a whole day you have chas... The Siege Of The Lone City
Our losses totaled nearly a hundred and fifty girls. We brought back with us on the platforms but six wounded. I shall never forget that hour we spent searching among the wreckage--those blackened, twisted forms of what had once been men and women... The Silver Whistle Blows
Constans remained motionless at the window. Every instinct of self-preservation urged him onward, but yet he stopped and listened to a girl's laughter. It ceased, and he sprang forward--too late! for already the blood-hounds were upon him. Fang... The Sinister Bonanza
They were taken to a small, drab internment room. A half hour passed and still no word from the Major. From the moment the Patrol crew had boarded them, everything had seemed like a bad dream. The shock of the arrest, the realization that the Capt... The Sisters
A young girl sat before a magnificent fireplace of cut stone gazing into the fire of drift-wood that burned diffidently upon a hearth whose spaciousness would have been more fittingly adorned by Vergil's "no small part of a tree." Out-of-doors the... The Six Tubes
One night, just as I entered my house, the telephone bell in the hall rang sharply. I picked up the receiver impatiently, for I was tired with the long day's work. "Is that Dr. Harden?" "Yes." "Can you come down to Charing Cross Station at... The Sky Trap
Lawton enjoyed a good fight. He stood happily trading blows with Slashaway Tommy, his lean-fleshed torso gleaming with sweat. He preferred to work the pugnacity out of himself slowly, to savor it as it ebbed. "Better luc... The Slowing Rotation
It might have been a million years later, that I perceived, beyond possibility of doubt, that the fiery sheet that lit the world, was indeed darkening. Another vast space went by, and the whole enormous flame had sunk to a deep, copper color. Gra... The Sly One
THE SAGOTHS WERE GAINING ON US RAPIDLY, FOR once they had sighted us they had greatly increased their speed. On and on we stumbled up the narrow canyon that Ghak had chosen to approach the heights of Sari. On either side rose precipitous cliffs ... The Song Of The Sword
It did not take long for Constans to arouse and collect his men; tired of inaction, they were only too glad to respond to the summons. And at the last, Constans, unable to withstand the entreaty in Red Oxenford's eyes, ordered his release. "But... The Soul Of Number 13
Scarcely had the Ithaca cleared the reef which lies almost across the mouth of the little harbor where she had been moored for so many months than the tempest broke upon her in all its terrific fury. Bududreen was no mean sailor, but he was short... The Sound Of A Tumult
Graham's last impression before he fainted was of a clamorous ringing of bells. He learnt afterwards that he was insensible, hanging between life and death, for the better part of an hour. When he recovered his senses, he was back on his translu... The Soundings Of The Susquehanna
Well, lieutenant, and our soundings?" "I think, sir, that the operation is nearing its completion," replied Lieutenant Bronsfield. "But who would have thought of finding such a depth so near in shore, and only 200 miles from the American coast... The South Pacific Sailing Directory
67. I cannot say the world greeted the end of the North American continent with either rejoicing or regret. Relief, yes. When the news of the last demolition was given and it was clear the Grass was unable to bridge the gap, the imaginative could ... The South Pole
I rushed on to the platform. Yes! the open sea, with but a few scattered pieces of ice and moving icebergs--a long stretch of sea; a world of birds in the air, and myriads of fishes under those waters, which varied from intense blue to olive green,... The Southern Hemisphere
Exceedingly narrow and exceedingly fortunate had been the escape of the Projectile. And from a danger too the most unlikely and the most unexpected. Who would have ever dreamed of even the possibility of such an encounter? And was all danger over?... The Southern Hemisphere
The projectile had just escaped a terrible danger, and a very unforseen one. Who would have thought of such an encounter with meteors? These erring bodies might create serious perils for the travelers. They were to them so many sandbanks upon ... The Specimens Escape
Knowing well that conversation with its fellows is one of the greatest needs of any intelligent being, the Nevians had permitted the Terrestrial specimens to retain possession of their ultra-beam communicators. Thus it was that Costigan had been a... The Star
It was on the first day of the new year that the announcement was made, almost simultaneously from three observatories, that the motion of the planet Neptune, the outermost of all the planets that wheel about the sun, had become very erratic.... The Star
It was on the first day of the New Year that the announcement was made, almost simultaneously from three observatories, that the motion of the planet Neptune, the outermost of all the planets that wheel about the sun, had become very erratic. Ogilv... The Star Hyacinths
On a bleak, distant unchartered world two ships lay wrecked and a lone man stared at a star hyacinth. Its brilliance burned into his retina ... and he knew that men could easily kill and kill for that one beauty alone. The r... The Star In The East
It was in October of the same year that Constans and Esmay stood one day in the court-yard of the Greenwood Keep, now restored and rebuilt. His father's blood friends had helped generously in the rehabilitation of his fortunes, and Constans had ... The Stars My Brothers
He was afraid--not of the present or the future, but of the past. He was afraid of the thing tagged Reed Kieran, that stiff blind voiceless thing wheeling its slow orbit around the Moon, companion to dead worlds and silent space. ... The Stillness
My first act before I went into the pantry was to fasten the door between the kitchen and the scullery. But the pantry was empty; every scrap of food had gone. Apparently, the Martian had taken it all on the previous day. At that discovery... The Stockade
When Oliver and Felix started, they left Philip, the third and youngest of the three brothers, still at breakfast. They turned to the left, on getting out of doors, and again to the left, through the covered passage between the steward's store and... The Stolen Document
The last ordinary train to Antwerp had gone long before Heideck reached the station. But a short interview with the railway commissioner sufficed, and an engine was at once placed at the Major's disposal. When he had mounted to the stoker's place ... The Storm
On the little stern seat of the boat Mercer and Anina sat side by side, the girl steering by a small tiller that lay between them. They were well out in the middle of the river now, speeding silently along with its swift current. They made extraor... The Straits
The passage contracted there to little over half a mile, but these narrows did not continue far; the shores, having approached thus near each other, quickly receded, till presently they were at least two miles apart. The merchant vessel had passed... The Strange Bravery Of Miss Blank
Telescope, rifles, and shields were tumbled into the projectile pell-mell, and without stopping to close the port-hole, we steered towards the city as we mounted rapidly. When the soldiers, weary of running, saw us start, they were stricken with a... The Strange Face
WE left the cabin and found a man at the companion obstructing our way. He was standing on the ladder with his back to us, peering over the combing of the hatchway. He was, I could see, a misshapen man, short, broad, and clumsy, with a crooked b... The Strange Man's Arrival
The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down, walking from Bramblehurst railway station, and carrying a little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved h... The Strategy
General Sebastian MacMaine, sometime Colonel of Earth's Space Force, and presently a General of the Kerothi Fleet, looked at the array of stars that appeared to drift by the main viewplate of his flagship, the blaster-boat Shudos. Behind him, G... The Strife Of Giants
As it happened, it was a fine, cold wintry day that dawned as the two great fleets drew towards each other. As Denis Castellan said, "It was a perfect jewel of a day for a holy fight," and so it was. The French fleet was advancing at twelve knots.... The Stutterer
A man can be killed by a toy gun--he can die of fright, for heart attacks can kill. What, then, is the deadly thing that must be sealed away, forever locked in buried concrete--a thing or an idea? Out of the twenty only one managed to... The Submarine Coal-mines
The next day, the 20th of February, I awoke very late: the fatigues of the previous night had prolonged my sleep until eleven o'clock. I dressed quickly, and hastened to find the course the Nautilus was taking. The instruments showed it to be stil... The Subterranean Pit
Another week came and went, during which I spent a great deal of my time about the Pit mouth. I had come to the conclusion a few days earlier, that the arched hole, in the angle of the great rift, was the place through which the Swine-things had mad... The Success Machine
Mechanical brains are all the rage these days, so General Products just had to have one. But the blamed thing almost put them out of business. Why? It had no tact. It insisted upon telling the truth! The Personnelovac winked, chit... The Super-ship Is Launched
After weeks of ceaseless work, during which was lavished upon her every resource of mind and material afforded by three planets, the Boise was ready for her maiden flight. As nearly ready, that is, as the thought and labor of man could make her. R... The Swine-things
It was evening, a week later. My sister sat in the garden, knitting. I was walking up and down, reading. My gun leant up against the wall of the house; for, since the advent of that strange thing in the gardens, I had deemed it wise to take precauti... The Sword And The Atopen
The conversion of light into electricity by spectrum is an interesting possibility. The idea of using foreign proteins on the human system to repel enemies, is also interesting. Do you get it? We didn't either until we read the story. ... The Telegram
Mrs. Forbes entered Jewel's room after speaking with the doctor. The little girl looked at her eagerly. A plan had formed in her mind which depended for its success largely on the housekeeper's complaisance, and she wished to propitiate her. "I w... The Telescope Of The Rocky Mountains
On the 20th of October in the preceding year, after the close of the subscription, the president of the Gun Club had credited the Observatory of Cambridge with the necessary sums for the construction of a gigantic optical instrument. This instrum... The Temple Of The Sun
There was nothing for it now other than to fight; nor did I have any advantage as I sprang, sword in hand, into the corridor before the two therns, for my untimely sneeze had warned them of my presence and they were ready for me. There were no ... The Tempting Of Larry
We paused before thick curtains, through which came the faint murmur of many voices. They parted; out came two--ushers, I suppose, they were--in cuirasses and kilts that reminded me somewhat of chain-mail--the first armour of any kind here that I ha... The Termite Queen
The slope of the upward-leading tunnels had become less noticeable, from which fact the two men reasoned hopefully that they were near ground level. And now they began to see termite workers bearing a new sort of burden: termite eggs, sickly looki... The Terrible Fear
On coming down to breakfast, I found Sarakoff already seated at the table devouring the morning papers. I picked up a discarded one and stood by the fire, glancing over its contents. There was only one subject of news, and that was the spread of t... The Terror Birds
"They must have thought the projectile was another chunk fallen from Phobos!" I exclaimed; "and now they can't make out why it should fly back to the satellite again." "The more we mystify them, the more they will fear us," said the doctor. "I ...