Eando Binder: Anton York, Immortal

“Dr. Vinson disappeared in the fire,” York told his wife, “and I’m worried about him. I can’t rest until I know where he is. He alone has my father’s secret—the original notes were destroyed together with all copies. What is he doing with the Elixir? I can’t help feeling concerned, because he is not the man to use such a thing wisely.”

A year later, he said resignedly: “I guess there’s no use to hunt him further. I’ve employed the most expert detectives, but they’ve found no trace. Wherever Vinson has gone, he’s covered his trail completely. And that’s ominous. Again, he may have tried the serum and died from it. I wish I could hope that.”

Two years later, York proudly surveyed his new laboratories, located in a remote part of the mountains. It was made possible by one of his inventions. A large industrial concern had patented his super-magnet, a by-product of his previous researches in gravitational phenomena.

“Here,” he predicted, “I shall solve the secret of gravitation.”

Five years later he had come to the conclusion that gravitation exhibited lines of force, much like a magnet. “What is wrong with the analogy of converting kinetic motion into electricity by cutting the lines of magnetic force?” he asked himself. “If the field of gravitational force is similarly cut—yes, but with what?”

Ten years later, he frowned at a new snag in his researches.

Ten years after that, with careful planning, he and Vera changed their names, to circumvent explaining their permanent youth.

A decade later they had achieved a harmony of continued existence, and mortality seemed a dream in their past.

Time swept by. Its rolling pace did not change the couple in their mountain laboratory-home. They were still thirty-five in appearance and vigor. They lived in a state of detachment from the rest of the world. From the sidelines, they watched the kaleidoscopic march of events, the unfurling of history. Strikes, famines, elections, social changes, shifting national boundaries, new inventions—their tele-visor kept them informed.

York’s experiments took him into a field wholly untouched—the phenomena of the gravitational lines of force. A field as untouched as the electromagnetic scale before Newton and his successors explored, it. It had taken over two centuries, and a host of diligent savants, to understand radio waves and cosmic radiation, the limits of that field. York laboured to explore his field alone, and in less than two centuries.

In a way, York was equal to a line of scientists following one goal. Each time he reached some hiatus and had to branch away. He was like a new worker taking up the work another had left in death. And he had the advantage of always being in perfect condition, physically and mentally. Thus it was, that a task that normally would have required all of a thousand years of science fell before his irresistible onslaught. He called his wife in excitedly one day.

“I’ve cut the force-lines of gravitation,” he said triumphantly. “I use light-beams, curved ones, for the energy source. I feed them into the quartz coils, like electricity in a helix of copper wire, to create a magnetic field. A magnetic field is used in opposition to another magnetic field to produce kinetic motion. My quartz field produces a gravitational field, in opposition to Earth’s gravity, to produce kinetic motion. Unlimited kinetic motion—direct from Earth’s gravitational field!”

York’s voice became a paean of enthusiasm.

“It is the answer to space travel, if I can refine my apparatus to the point where a single beam of direct sunlight will actuate my quartz rotors. I must also make a sun-charging battery to spin the rotors, so that a ship in space will need only the perpetual sunlight to motivate it. Vera, I am close!”

Close, yet it took another quarter century to achieve it. It was almost a hundred after the inoculation of Vera that York gave his ship its first tryout. It was a ten-foot globe of light metal, set with several thick quartz port-windows. Two large convex mirrors at the top were arranged to feed sunlight to knobs of sensitive selenium. Some miracle of York’s science compelled the sun’s radiant energy to pour into the ship like water into a funnel.

It handled awkwardly at first, until York got the feel of changing his artificial gravity fields. Then he was able to whisk the heavy globular ship about with flashing speed. It looked like a bright steel bomb from some giant cannon.

He leaped out of its hatchway, panting, after landing.

“I can’t tell you how excited I am over this,” he told his wife. “Think of it. We can stock the ship with necessities and go out into space, explore the other planets!”

They made a trip to the moon and back that same year. From this experience, York was able to refine his apparatus still more. They made a trip to Mars and to Venus. He began planning a trip to another star. This would require a larger ship for supplies and motors to be run by starlight and tenuous mid-void gravitational forces, and he began its construction. If his gift of immortality had made him feel like a god, this ability to explore the ether was still more of a God-given attribute.

He opened his eyes one day to realize he had been drunk with these things. as he had been with the first realization of immortality. Earnestly, then, he sat down to write out the complete plans for his anti-gravity unit. He would send this to every scientific institution of the world.

It was just before he had finished the long and complicated paper, that Vera called his attention to startling news over the radio. All during the past year there had been mysterious, invasions in outlying sections of the world. Mysterious, but unimportant in that they involved obscure regions. The invaders had always come in small, swift ships, equipped with incredibly destructive weapons. Many garbled reports had been received from places invaded, but no one seemed to know just who or what was responsible.

But this night, the news was alarming.

“Rome has just undergone a terrific bombing by a mysterious fleet of small, fast aircraft,” an excited announcer told the world. “They may be the same ones that have been terrorizing Earth in the past year. All the world is aroused. What nation has done this cowardly thing, attacking without warning?”

York’s eyes reflected again the emotions that had haunted him in the World War.

War! That most senseless of human atrocities.

“Haven’t they had enough of it?” he cried. “They fought like beasts for a decade just thirty years ago. I was tempted then to reveal my super-weapon and let them butcher one another to nothingness. I am tempted now.”

The next day Berlin was bombed. And in the following days, Paris, London, and Moscow. The world gasped. What mad nation was challenging all Europe? Tokyo was bombed, and then Washington. What power was challenging the whole world? A new note of terror arose when a gigantic fleet, composed of mixed Italian and German aircraft, was annihilated by fifty small ships of the invaders. The enemy seemed to have some long-range weapon that made victory ridiculously easy.

York waited for the unknown power to declare itself. Then he would act. After the succession of bombings, which had not been very destructive and had evidently been an exhibition of power, there was a lull of a day, then news that set the world on fire.

“The enemy had finally announced itself,” blared the tele-visor. “This afternoon a powerful radio message was picked up at many official stations. The invaders that have bombed the world’s most important cities call themselves The Immortals. They demand a parley of all important nations, at which The Immortals are to be accepted as the sole government on earth. In plain words, The Immortals, whoever they are, demand world dominion. This, or the threat of continuous bombing and destruction by their invincible fleet of fifty ships!”