Eando Binder: Anton York, Immortal

“Good luck,” said Vuldane again.

His sympathetic smile, as he left, told of no hope for the outcome.

Precious time slipped by.

York worked entirely from the biological angle. With a super X-ray, he went minutely over the brain of one of the captive hypno-beasts, studying its cells, analysing it completely. When at last he had the answer, he had withdrawn a precious hormone from it. But would it work?

Vera volunteered to be the guinea pig. Anton looked at her for a long moment. “It might mean death,” he said grimly.

Vera was adamant, and Anton relented. He injected a few drops of the new hormone into the base of Vera’s neck, and watched for the results with eyes that burned with hope and dread. Vera went into a coma. Her skin became cold. Her heart stopped. York stood quietly, fighting for control.

An hour later, death drew back. Vera’s super-vitality rallied and life returned. She sat up, smiling. York said nothing. Words meant nothing now. Silently he led her to the test chamber, before a group of starved hypno-beasts. He locked her in. They surrounded her, eyeing her and closing in. Vera went rigid. Their eager tentacles stretched for her soft white neck.

York turned away, shuddering. Failure, after all!

Suddenly, within the chamber, the situation changed. As though an invisible blast had blown them back, the hypno-beasts fell away from Vera.

She stood up, her eyes blazing. One by one the Beasts rolled over and went rigid, in complete hypnosis.

Vuldane, when they faced him, was sceptical.

“I can’t do anything about it, York. I can’t recall the ships sent to bring the first of your people. We have little time as it is to start our grand plan. I can’t take a chance on your hypothetical anti-hypnosis hormone.”

“Make this test,” York demanded. “Send a shipful of your men to the Beast system, after they have been given my hormone injection. Command them to land among the thickest of the Beast communities and stay for ten hours. If they don’t come back, I won’t be able to fight your plan.”

Vuldane agreed. York injected the men, rescuing them from the deathlike effects by, heroic doses of drugs. The ship left.

Waiting for its return was a refinement of torture that ground York’s nerves to shreds. The hours stumbled by like his entire lifetime.

“Tony—look!”

The ship appeared. The Korians leaped out, eagerly telling their story of withstanding mass hypnotism for ten hours, and hypnotizing a ring of Beasts in turn.

Vuldane turned to York.

“You have saved your people, Anton York. It is a monumental achievement I will recall the first fleet immediately. All the culture races will be returned to their worlds. I cannot express my joy and relief that we are not forced to sacrifice your race. You may go back to your people now, and tell them they are saved.”

York shook his head. A strange look rested in his eyes, for this was the strangest thing of all the past episode.

“No. It is a story they would hardly believe. The only evidence for it would be the banishment of a thousand-people from Fort Mojave in eighteen-eighty-eight. That trifling event has long been forgotten and most likely unrecorded. Humanity was saved without knowing it was doomed. That will have to remain my secret.”

Vera nodded. It was a chapter of the mythology of Anton York that would never be written for the eyes of the Earth. It was the secret of Anton York.

Back on Earth, before the two colossi of diamond on Mount Everest, the yearly commemoration ceremony paeaned to its sad denouement.

“Anton York, benefactor of humanity, is dead!”