Eando Binder - Anton York, Immortal

“Thanks.” York snapped off the radio abruptly. He stared unseeingly out of a port.

“If this keeps up,” he murmured, “dykes won’t help a bit. Coasts sinking! Is it a natural event—or otherwise!”

Vera looked at him queerly.

“Of course it’s a natural event, Tony,” she commented. “The gods of Fate play strange tricks. Perhaps Jove, dissatisfied with the present civilization, is trying to destroy it with Neptune’s weapons. That’s just the way myths grow, Tony, trying to explain—”

She stopped and gasped as her husband suddenly whirled, snapped his fingers, and dived for the pilot board as though their lives depended on it. “Tony, have you gone crazy?”

“No, but I could kick myself!”

York sent the ship scuttling at the highest rate of speed safe in an atmosphere. His direction was east.

“I bow again to feminine intuition,” he resumed. “We’re going to Mount Olympus, Vera, to visit the gods! There’s just, a chance that those two lost souls were not mad. They did predict a geological upheaval. And then that man’s dying words—”

“About the Three Eternals, Mount Olympus? Vera cried.

“Then Tony, maybe there’s danger!”

But York did not answer. His face was set with a glowing anticipation as he drove for what he hoped would be the solution to a mystery as great as any he had ever encountered.

The globular ship raced over the southern coasts of Europe, over the Mediterranean, past what had, formerly been Spain, France, Italy and Albania. It turned south a little into the mountainous interior of Greece. Finally the misty summit of Mount Olympus loomed ahead.

“Do you really expect to find something here?” asked Vera as they approached. “After all, it’s just a Greek myth, dating from five thousand years ago, about Jove and the other gods.”

York smiled peculiarly.

“Vera, we are myths too, a few centuries after each visit to Earth!”

Presently they were floating over the peak of Mount Olympus. They gazed down searchingly. As with other mountain tops, it was a scene of jagged rocks, scraggly growths, and dark hollows here and there tufted with snow.

“I hardly know what to look for, but nothing is there out of the ordinary,” said Vera, almost in relief. “Besides, the president of the council said they had searched and found nothing.”

“Look!” York pointed. “That large hollow to the left. Notice the shimmer over it?” He trained his periscope screen. “Can’t clarify it. It looks almost as though—something is behind that shimmering mist!”

Vera grasped his arm. “Please, Tony, be careful!”

He lowered the ship cautiously until it was no more than a hundred yards over the strange, quiescent mist that did not stir in the wind. Still nothing could be distinguished beyond it save vague shadows and lights. Switching on his electroprotective screen, out of caution, York descended slowly till he had almost touched the layer of concealment.

A few more feet the ship sank then stopped abruptly.

York and Vera looked at each other. No tangible barrier opposed them; only the queer, glittering, impenetrable mist. Experimentally, York put more power into his engine. His ship pressed against the weird obstruction until the hull creaked, but not one more inch was gained.

York eased up, muttering.

Then, with a suddenness that made them start, a powerful telepathic voice beat into their brains.

“Who is it seeks the presence of the Eternal Three?”

Glancing significantly at Vera, York answered, by the telepathy he had developed and used so many times before in space.

“Anton York, the Immortal!”

“Descend!”

Coincident with the word, the shimmering mist beneath their ship’s keel vanished. Below was revealed the full extent of the hollow, desolate save for a huge marble building in its center. It was of ancient Grecian style, and the stone was stained with great age.

“Those two men were here!” gasped Vera. “They told the truth. Tony, do you suppose everything else they said—” York shook his head noncommittally.

ANTON YORK landed the ship before the edifice, leaving his electro-screen on, when the telepathic voice invited him to step into the building, York politely declined. Instead he snapped on his televisor requesting them to do the same, if they had such an instrument.

A moment later it proved they had and his screen became spangled with whirling lights that finally crystalized into the image of an ornately furnished room in which sat three men.

York and Vera looked at them closely.

Their rich, velvety togas were of a strange, unknown style. Their features, though strictly human, were a strange blend of Oriental and Nordic qualities. In age, they all seemed at the prime of life. But most of all it was noticeable that their eyes glowed with that same strange light that was in York’s and Vera’s—the sign of immortality!

“We have been expecting you, Anton York,” said one of the three, still using the universal language of telepathy. “Ever since your arrival in the Solar System, we knew you would hear of us. How did it happen?”

York told of meeting the derelict ship, and the resurrected man’s words.

“He said you had threatened destruction of civilization!” he concluded challengingly.

The spokesman smiled frostily.

“Yes, I believe we did tell them the story. Briefly, some months ago, they were flying over Mount Olympus in an airplane. Its motors failed and they smashed up on our roof of protective mist. As a whim, we nursed their lives. As a further whim, we told him the story you heard. We wanted to see if it would drive them mad. But we lost interest in them quickly, sent them away. We have lived a long, long time. Nothing in the world of mortals interests us anymore.”

Something of rage arose in York at the calm, cold way the man spoke of other humans.

“You had no right to toy with two human lives!” he cried hotly.

The Eternal shrugged.

“We have lived a long, long time,” he repeated: “Conceptions of right and wrong melt into one another through the centuries.”

York was about to reply angrily again when Vera touched his arm.

“Don’t argue with them, Tony—no use!” she whispered rapidly, consciously willing her broadcast thoughts blank. “Find out all you can about them instead.”

York pressed her hand, spoke to the trio of cold-faced men.

“Just how long have you lived?”

Again the icy, disdainful smiles from all three of them.

“You have lived how long, Anton York—some two thousand years since you were inoculated with the radiogen-renewing serum? We, too, were given such an elixir of youth to keep up eternally at our prime, but that was—twenty thousand years ago!”

The incredible statement left both York and Vera, numb for a moment. These three had lived for almost an astronomical age!

“It can’t be true!” stammered Vera. “It can’t.”

“It is true, however,” assured the Eternals. “For twenty thousand years we three have lived and breathed: You wonder how we could have filled in our time. Most of it has been spent in space,—as you two have spent your time. We have roamed endless distances, seen uncounted other worlds of other suns.

“However, at first it intrigued us to do certain things in the Solar System. We laughed to ourselves, Anton York, when we saw you moving asteroids and giving Jupiter rings. For you were simply carrying on what we had dropped in boredom. We were the ones who made Saturn’s rings! And we had blown up the planet revolving between Mars and Jupiter, testing our powers, to make the present day asteroids.

“Venus originally had a moon which we moved to a new orbit. It is called Mercury now. Mercury, in mythology, is the wandering god—or the wandering planet. We named all the planets.