CHAPTER XIII. "VOICE FROM THE VOID"
Helplessly we looked at each other. Then called forth perhaps by whatshe saw in Drake's eyes, perhaps by another thought, Ruth's cheekscrimsoned, her head drooped; the web of her hair hid the warm rose ofher face, the frozen pallor of Ventnor's.
Abruptly, she sprang to her feet. "Walter! Dick! Something's happeningto Martin!"
Before she had ceased we were beside her; bending over Ventnor. Hismouth was opening, slowly, slowly--with an effort agonizing to watch.Then his voice came through lips that scarcely moved; faint, faint asthough it floated from infinite distances, a ghost of a voice whisperingwith phantom breath out of a dead throat.
"Hard--hard! So hard!" the whispering complained. "Don't know how long Ican keep connection--with voice.
"Was fool to shoot. Sorry--might have gotten you in worse trouble--butcrazy with fear for Ruth--thought, too, might be worth chance.Sorry--not my usual line--"
The thin thread of sound ceased. I felt my eyes fill with tears; it waslike Ventnor to flay himself like this for what he thought stupidity,like him to make this effort to admit his supposed fault and craveforgiveness--as like him as that mad attack upon the flaming Disk in itsown temple, surrounded by its ministers, had been so bafflingly unlikehis usual cool, collected self.
"Martin," I called, bending closer, "it's nothing, old friend. No oneblames you. Try to rouse yourself."
"Dear," it was Ruth, passionately tender, "it's me. Can you hear me?"
"Only speck of consciousness and motionless in the void," the whisperbegan again. "Terribly alive, terribly alone. Seem outside spaceyet--still in body. Can't see, hear, feel--short-circuited from everysense--but in some strange way realize you--Ruth, Walter, Drake.
"See without seeing--here floating in darkness that is also light--blacklight--indescribable. In touch, too, with these--"
Again the voice trailed into silence; returned, word and phrase pouringforth disconnected, with a curious and turbulent rhythm, like rushingwave crests linked by half-seen threads of the spindrift, vocalfragments of thought swiftly assembled by some subtle faculty of themind as they fell into a coherent, incredible message.
"Group consciousness--gigantic--operating within our sphere--operatingalso in spheres of vibration, energy, force--above, below one to whichhumanity reacts--perception, command forces known to us--but ingreater degree--cognizant, manipulate unknown energies--senses known tous--unknown--can't realize them fully--impossible cover, only impingeon contact points akin to our senses, forces--even these profoundlymodified by additional ones--metallic, crystalline, magnetic,electric--inorganic with every power of organic--consciousness basicallysame as ours--profoundly changed by differences in mechanism throughwhich it finds expression--difference our bodies--theirs.
"Conscious, mobile--inexorable, invulnerable. Getting clearer--see moreclearly--see--" the voice shrilled out in a shuddering, thin lash ofdespair--"No! No--oh, God--no!"
Then clearly and solemnly:
"And God said: let us make men in our image, after our likeness, andlet them have dominion over all the earth, and every creeping thing thatcreepeth upon the earth."
A silence; we bent closer, listening; the still, small voice took upthe thread once more--but clearly further on. Something we had missedbetween that text from Genesis and what we were now hearing; somethingthat even as he had warned us, he had not been able to articulate. Thewhisper broke through clearly in the middle of a sentence.
"Nor is Jehovah the God of myriads of millions who through those samecenturies, and centuries upon centuries before them, found earth agarden and grave--and all these countless gods and goddesses onlyphantom barriers raised by man to stand between him and the eternalforces man's instinct has always warned him are ever in readiness todestroy. That do destroy him as soon as his vigilance relaxes, hisresistance weakens--the eternal, ruthless law that will annihilatehumanity the instant it runs counter to that law and turns its will andstrength against itself--"
A little pause; then came these singular sentences:
"Weaklings praying for miracles to make easy the path their own willsshould clear. Beggars who whine for alms from dreams. Shirkers eachstruggling to place upon his god the burden whose carrying and whosecarrying alone can give him strength to walk free and unafraid, himselfgodlike among the stars."
And now distinctly, unfalteringly, the voice went on:
"Dominion over all the earth? Yes--as long as man is fit to rule; nolonger. Science has warned us. Where was the mammal when the giantreptiles reigned? Slinking hidden and afraid in the dark and secretplaces. Yet man sprang from these skulking beasts.
"For how long a time in the history of earth has man been master of it?For a breath--for a cloud's passing. And will remain master only untilsomething grown stronger wrests mastery from him--even as he wrested itfrom his ravening kind--as they took it from the reptiles--as did thereptiles from the giant saurians--which snatched it from the nightmarerulers of the Triassic--and so down to whatever held sway in the murk ofearth dawn.
"Life! Life! Life! Life everywhere struggling for completion!
"Life crowding other life aside, battling for its moment of supremacy,gaining it, holding it for one rise and fall of the wings of timebeating through eternity--and then--hurled down, trampled under the feetof another straining life whose hour has struck.
"Life crowding outside every barred threshold in a million circlingworlds, yes, in a million rushing universes; pressing against the doors,bursting them down, overwhelming, forcing out those dwellers who hadthought themselves so secure.
"And these--these--" the voice suddenly dropped, became thickly,vibrantly resonant, "over the Threshold, within the House of Man--nordoes he even dream that his doors are down. These--Things of metal whosebrains are thinking crystals--Things that suck their strength from thesun and whose blood is the lightning.
"The sun! The sun!" he cried. "There lies their weakness!"
The voice rose in pitch, grew strident.
"Go back to the city! Go back to the city! Walter--Drake. They are notinvulnerable. No! The sun--strike them through the sun! Go into thecity--not invulnerable--the Keeper of the Cones--strike at the Coneswhen--the Keeper of the Cones--ah-h-h-ah--"
We shrank back appalled, for from the parted, scarcely moving lips inthe unchanging face a gust of laughter, mad, mocking, terrifying, rackedits way.
"Vulnerable--under the law--even as we! The Cones!
"Go!" he gasped. A tremor shook him; slowly the mouth closed.
"Martin! Brother," wept Ruth. I thrust my hand into his breast; feltthe heart beating, with a curious suggestion of stubborn, unshakablestrength, as though every vital force had concentrated there as in abeleaguered citadel.
But Ventnor himself, the consciousness that was Ventnor was gone; hadwithdrawn into that subjective void in which he had said he floated--alonely sentient atom, his one line of communication with us cut; severedfrom us as completely as though he were, as he had described it, outsidespace.
And Drake and I looked at each other's eyes, neither daring to be firstto break the silence of which the muffled sobbing of the girl seemed tobe the sorrowful soul.