Уильям Макгиверн: Collected Fiction: 1940-1963

What Colegrave, for all his cleverness, didn’t realize, was that his own subconscious mind would be shattered in the electric chair. When he accomplished the physical cleavage between his dual personality, his own subconscious intellect activated the body of his secondary nature. Thus when the electric current shot through the body of the mayor and the district attorney’s assassin, it was the mind of Colegrave that was destroyed by the bolt.

The presence of Nazi paratroop panzer units, even in South American jungle territory, might be closer to actuality than mere possibility. Certain it is that the Axis powers interested in South American control would stop at nothing to gain that objective. And equally certain, in the terms of practical military feasability, is the fact that plane carriers, operating along the vast coastal sectors of South America, could approach close enough to jungle shores to send troops with equipment over the jungle, dropping them at locations prearranged with fifth columnists.

Scarcely a day passes in Washington military and state department circles, that there are not clouded rumors of actual filtrations in various similarly situated sectors in many of the neutral nations. One military expert recently hinted that Jap divisions were thus landed in some of the Luzon sectors as early as five days before December 7th.

Stories have also come out of the deeper Mexican regions, hinting that entire paratroop units have been discovered lurking in desolate jungle and mountain areas, waiting for striking orders. These rumors, fortunately, have added that alert Mexican scout patrols have swiftly “mopped up” such units, adding to the fantastic status of the modem hidden lightning warfare developed by the European Mad Dog.

Legend of Sacha, the snake god, and his daughter.

Buried deep in the fragmentary records of ancient Inca legends, is the often referred to story of the once splendid city of Sacha. Ruled by Queen Remura, who professed to be the daughter of an incredibly huge snake — after which the city was named — the ancient Inca metropolis was devastated by Spanish Conquistadors in a sudden and savage raid. Most of the citizenry were supposed to have been slain; all of the city was left in smoking ruin. The snake god Sacha, and his daughter, Queen Remura, however, were supposed to have escaped into the jungle. And it was while the Spaniards were still terrifying the smaller villages outside the city that Queen Remura returned, astride the great snake Sacha, rallying the remaining Incans, and slaying the despoilers to the last man.

C.H. Barrington, in his two volume treatise, “Ancient Inca, Its Legends and Civilisations,” said of this particular story around the snake god legend, “True it is that the Spaniards ravaged these particular coastal regions. And also true, is the fact that the crumbling wreck of a Spanish galleon was found shattered on the shores of this region some seventy-five years after the incident is supposed to have transpired. There were no bleached bones of the Spanish crew, as is generally the case, in the waters near the beached and rotting hulk to indicate that Conquistadors had been aboard when it was washed ashore. It’s crew, whatever happened to it, undoubtedly perished somewhere in the jungle during a raiding foray. It is not beyond reason to suppose that the crew fell victims of the surviving members of the devastated city of Sacha.”

And about the legend itself, Barrington adds, “There is evidence that some primeval monsters, tremendous snakes of the size attributed to Sacha, were in existence in the Peruvian jungles at the time this ancient Inca city was in its glory. And even as late as 1931, rumors have come from the little explored sectors of the jungle to the effect that a giant snake prowled the ruins of the little known city, always accompanied by a strangely beautiful girl.”

As to the native attitude toward the legend, Barrington concludes, “Among the more superstitious, it is still the belief that Sacha guards the fate of Peru with his daughter, always ready to thwart another despoiling of the proud nation.”

An unfavorable electrical condition existed about Mars. Scientists were unable to devise shields that would resist its heat, and no pilot had ever been able to approach within more than a few hundred thousand miles of the planet.

The electrical manifestations were attributed to mighty, raging space storms that, for some reason, were attracted magnetically to the atmosphere of Mare. Whatever the reason, the fact stood, that Mars was as alien, as mysterious, and as grimly foreboding in the days of space travel, as it had been in the time when rocket ships were but an impractical dream.

In the winter of nineteen forty-one Japan attacked America at Pearl Harbor and, some time later, Germany turned from the east and threw its might in an all-out onslaught on the British Isles. The United States entered the war and the conflict settled down to a long, costly war of attrition. Finally after four years Hitler was defeated, the enslaved peoples of Europe were liberated, and an International Tribunal was established to bring peace and security and democracy to the Nations of the World.

The invention of the devastating weapon which the newspapers dubbed the “Death Ray” was the turning point of the war. Developed in America, it was capable of completely shattering all types of life, whether of vegetable or animal origin. Based on Lite principle that had made possible the discovery of U-25, it destroyed life by splitting the atomic structure of the cell into myriad organisms. It is somewhat consoling to realize that this deadly instrument of death was never actually utilized against humans. Once the knowledge of its existence reached the Third Reich the soldiers of Hitler’s armies lost much of their fanatical desire to tight. Thus, when England and America invaded the continent of Europe they were able to smash the apathetic armies of Germany with comparative ease.

After the war settlement the International Tribunal decreed that all armaments and planes and ship? would be destroyed to eliminate for all time the possibility of another costly, futile war.

For some time it was debated whether or not the “Death Ray” should be included in this general destruction of armaments. At least it was decided that its potential destructive power was too dangerous to leave in existence. Along with all other implements of war it was ordered destroyed. It was sealed in a leaden casket, along with the formula for its discovery and operation and towed out to sea on a black barge, to be sunk by radio-controlled planes with the rest of the world’s war weapons.

It is a possibility that Dirk Masters was stunned into a state of suspended animation by the bolt from the invading space ship. This plus the fact that he was obviously buried under tremendous pressure in an aperture created by the blasts from the ship might logically account for his remaining alive during the one hundred and fifty years. Many instances have been recorded of smaller animals living in a semi-suspended state for incredible lengths of time. Hermetically sealed under great external pressure, Dirk Masters’ life functions slowed to an imperceptible rate and, for one hundred and fifty years, he remained in that apparently lifeless state. Then, when the blasts from the blue rocket ships shattered the ground and caused a disturbance directly over the crypt in which he had been sealed, he was liberated in the shallow water off the coast of Florida. The water and air revived him almost at once and, after a few weeks rest, the recuperative powers of the human system restored his strength and health.