Eando Binder: Anton York, Immortal

The villagers cried aloud in fear and wonder, and their faces plainly said, “Witchcraft!” York wondered what they would say if they knew he had once, in his own Universe, moved the planet Mercury. Yet York himself was stirred by the simple blasting of the tree. It marked the first step in his conquest of the new universe’s laws of science and power. Back in his ship’s lab, if he could get there, he would be in a position to wield powerful forces—defy the dome builders!

But first, the hypno-beasts…

M-DAY reigned in the village. Every able-bodied male flocked to the banner. This was not to be a war, but a crusade against the hated Beasts. Once and for all under this dome, they would be exterminated. As York led his two thousand grim, determined men, he had the curious thought that in any earthly war they would be worth ten thousand other fighters. For in their breasts beat the tidal wave of hate nurtured for twenty centuries.

They crossed the river, most of them swimming, holding their rifles high. York’s machine was pulled across on a raft. On the opposite shore, in enemy territory, sentry-line retreated till reinforcement came. In a matched battle, York’s yelling men smashed through. They took prisoners wherever possible. For when the Beasts were gone, these poor mental slaves would again be free, normal humans.

The army marched on the Beast village. It was a sprawling, filthy mass of hovels, but suitably protected by a high wooden wall manned by riflemen. His approach was an open field. York’s men could employ no strategy except to scatter and crawl forward from clump to clump of grass. Bullets whined, picking them off.

York gave his instructions to Darrill, Leela’s young man, who was commander.

“Get your men as close to the wall as you can, without too much loss of life. Give me time to set up my machine and aim. Then rush in and mop up. Kill all the Beasts you can.”

Darrill nodded and his men crawled forward, like the plainsmen of old stalking the wily Indian. York went over his machine’s parts carefully, then aimed it for the nearest part of the city wall. He pressed the contact switch. His first blast went high, thundering harmlessly against the dome wall beyond.

His second struck. A ten-foot portion of the stockade burst into flying splinters. Two men, slaves of the Beasts, went with it as mere splinters of flesh. Again and again York knifed his switch, hurling detonations of neutrons, raking the village wall. It became a saw-edged ruin.

The village beyond was exposed to attack!

Now Robar’s forces arose and charged. The Beasts, in their quasi-human cunning, rallied their slave-men to the breaches. They poured a withering-fire at the attackers. York hated to do it, but he swept his super machine-gun across the defenders’ ranks. Slave-men and Beasts fell in bloody tangles.

Robar’s forces reached the village, stormed in, and began mopping up. Since most of them were at least partially immune to the hypnosis, by heredity, they promised to make it short work.

York stood tensely. Why hadn’t the dome builders interfered? He had half expected it. He was prepared to swing the snout of his super-gun up, if they appeared, and blast venomously at them. If they, had some weapon ready at the dome’s peak, and fired down, York would blast down the dome even if that meant a choking death.

It was a grim moment, for that was York’s first challenge to the dome builders. But not a sign came from the mysterious watchers.

The Beasts in the village did not accept extermination so easily, however. York had not noticed what went on at the back of the village, where a stretch, of concealing forest grew to the wall edge. He was suddenly aware of danger to himself. A force of hypno-beasts and about fifty slave-men were creeping up at his side.

Alone with his machine, York was surrounded. The men, at their masters’ commands, raised their rifles. A fusillade of bullets would riddle York and shatter his machine. Whatever the outcome of the village battle, York would meet his end.

Death and Anton York stood face to face.

Was this the way in which the dome-scientists were retaliating? Were they controlling the Beasts as they controlled the Slave-men, giving them the mental command to kill York?

York first darted his hand for the switch. At least he would take with him some of the enemy. A second thought clutched him. He had easily snapped, at first try, the hypnotic-power of the hypno-beasts he had once met. Suppose he hurled the full power of his mentality at them now?

In his two thousand years of life, York had come to learn something of the limitless depths of power within the mind. He had at times used hypnosis himself, and telekinesis. He rang out a call now to the cosmic fed radiogens of his brain. A field of force radiated from him. His mental force met and challenged the combined mental force of the five hypno-beasts.

A strange, silent battle was being fought there…

One lone man stood rigid, surrounded by five repulsive, rigid Beasts. No physical movement betrayed the fact that between them had sprung mental forces of tremendous magnitude. The slave-men cowered, mere brawling pawns in this psychic war. Whichever won, York or the Beasts, would command the slave-men to kill the other.

Perhaps a second passed, perhaps ten minutes. York felt the growing strain. Sweat ran down his face. His brain seemed to be burning alive as his immortality radiogens poured their energy into the field of mental force. He could not stand it much longer. His brain would burn out like an overloaded generator.

The ending was curiously undramatic. One of the Beasts seemed to sigh suddenly. It toppled over, head drooping on its serpentine neck, Medusa eyes closing. It was through, burned out! Another followed, then two more.

The last held out. Its eyes locked with York’s. York, reeling, called forth one more surge of mind energy.

The last beast toppled. With a snap, the spell broke. “Shoot the Beasts,” York commanded mentally.

Obediently the slave-men poured bullets into the fallen bodies. They jerked convulsively and died. York slipped to the ground, drained of energy, and fell into a state that was more of a coma than sleep.

When he came to, young Darrill was splashing water in his face.

“Anton York!” he cried joyfully. “The village is ours! We killed many of the Beasts. But about half escaped, running to the woods.”

York pulled himself together.

“No time to lose,” he said. “Organize a Beast-hunt. String your immune ones in a wide line and drive the Beasts into the open, past my machine. Every last one must be exterminated.”

It took a week. The immune men, like beaters driving wild game past hunters, herded the panic-stricken hypno-beasts at will. Whenever they were in the open, York’s neutron gun blasted into their numbers, ripping them to quiver bag shreds. It was not till Robar’s men had roamed for twenty-four hours without finding a Beast that York nodded in satisfaction.

“There is not a single Beast left in this ten-mile patch of Earth,” he announced.

But at the same moment, a lumbering form charged from a patch of bushes. It was the last of the Beasts. It seemed berserk, coming forward against a thousand rifles and the blasting-gun.

“Wait!” York yelled, as the men took aim with their guns. “Surround him. Bring him here alive.”

A dozen men dragged the struggling, bleating creature before York. Hiding his loathing at its blubbery, oily body and snakelike head, York addressed it by telepathy.

“Can you understand me?” he queried. “Will you answer my questions?’

“I understand you,” came back clearly from the hypno-beasts, confirming York’s belief in their semi-intelligence. “I will answer questions only if you promise me speedy death. I do not wish to live here, the last of my kind.”