Title: From beyond the stars
Author: Jenkins, Will F.
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "From beyond the stars" ***


                         FROM BEYOND THE STARS

                          By WILL F. JENKINS

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                 Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1947.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


Tommy Driscoll lay on his stomach in the grass outside his father's
laboratory and read his comic books. He was ten years old and wholly
innocent of any idea that Fate or Chance or Destiny might make use of
him to make the comic books come true.

He was clad in grubby shorts, with sandals, and no socks or blouse.
Ants crawled on his legs as he lay on the ground, and he absently
scratched them off. To the adult eye he was merely the son of that
Professor Driscoll who taught advanced physics at Harwell College, and
in summer vacation puttered around with research.

As such, Tommy was inconsiderable from any standpoint except that of
Fate or Chance or Destiny. They had use for him.

He was, however, wholly and triumphantly a normal small boy. As he
scratched thoughtfully and absorbed the pictures in his comic book, he
was Space Captain McGee of the rocket-cruiser _Omadhoum_, gloriously
defeating--for the fifteenth time since he had acquired the book--the
dastardly scheme of the Dictator of Pluto to enslave the human race to
the green-skinned stalk-eyed denizens of that dark planet.

A little while since he had been the Star Rover, crimson-cloaked and
crimson-masked and mysteriously endowed with the power to survive
unharmed the frigidity and airlessness of interstellar space. As the
Star Rover, he had triumphantly smashed the attempt of some very
unpleasant Mercurians to wipe out the human race so that they could
emigrate to Earth.

As both splendid figures, at satisfyingly frequent intervals, Tommy had
swung mighty blows at the jaws or midriffs of Mercurians, green-skinned
Plutonians, renegade Earthmen, and others.

But he had just finished reading both comics three times in succession.
He heaved a sigh of comfortable mental repletion and rolled over,
imagining further splendid if formless adventures with space-ships and
ray-guns.

Locusts whirred monotonously in the maple trees of Harwell College
campus. His father's laboratory was a small stone structure off the
Physics Building, and Tommy waited for his father and Professor Wardle
to come out. When they did, he would walk home with them and possibly
acquire an ice-cream cone on the way. With luck he might wangle another
comic.

       *       *       *       *       *

He heard his father's voice. Talking to Professor Wardle, who was
spending the week-end with them.

"There's the set-up," said his father inside the laboratory. "Absurd,
perhaps, but this Jansky radiation bothers me. I've found out one
rather startling thing about it."

"My dear fellow," Professor Wardle said drily, "if you publish
anything about the Jansky radiation the newspapers will accuse you of
communicating with Mars!"

Tommy knew by his father's tone that he was grinning.

"I've not thought of anything so conservative. Everybody knows that
the Jansky Radiation comes from the direction of the Milky Way and
from beyond the Solar System. It makes a hissing noise in a sensitive
short-wave receiver. No modulation has ever been detected. But no
explanation's been offered either."[1]

[Footnote 1: Note: The Jansky Radiation as described, is an actual
and so-far-unexplained phenomenon. It does come from beyond the Solar
System from the general direction of the Milky Way. It does affect
sensitive short-wave receivers. It's cause is as obscure as its reality
is certain. K. G. Jansky, of the Bell Telephone research laboratories,
has described his discovery in the Institute of Radio Engineers
Proceedings (I.R.E. Proc.) Vol. 20, No. 12, 1932, and Vol. 23, No. 10,
1935. It has further been discussed by G. C. Southworth in Jour. of
F.I., Vol. 23, No. 4, April, 1945.]

Professor Wardle moved, inside the laboratory.

"What's the startling fact you've discovered?" he asked.

"It's got a point source," Tommy Driscoll's father said, and Tommy
could tell he was still grinning. "It comes from one spot. There's a
second-order effect in our atmosphere which has masked it up to now. I
can prove it."

Tommy chewed on a grass stem. As the son of a professor of physics, he
was disillusioned about scientists. They were not like the scientists
of the comic books, who were mostly mad geniuses with plans to make
themselves Emperors of Earth and had to be foiled by Captain McGee or
the Star Rover. Tommy knew pessimistically that scientists just talk
long words. Like his father, now. But Professor Wardle seemed startled.

"A point source! But confound it, man! That would mean it's artificial!
Not natural! That it was a signal from beyond the stars! What else
could it mean?"

"I'd like to know myself," said Tommy's father ruefully. "I've checked
for interruptions like dots and dashes, and for modulations like our
radio. I've made sure it isn't frequency modulated. The only thing left
is television."

"Therefore the television screen," said Professor Wardle. "I see.
You're trying to analyze it with a scanning system. Hm.... Possible.
But if it is a signal from another Solar System--"

Tommy Driscoll sat up straight, his eyes wide and astonished. His
mouth formed itself into a particularly round O. This, of course, was
the natural occurrence if Fate or Chance or Destiny was to use him
to make the comic books come true. He had been listening with only a
fraction of his ears. To a ten-year-old boy, adults do not often seem
intelligent. Few of them have any interest in Space Captain McGee or
the Star Rover.

But Tommy's father was talking about interplanetary communication!
Of signals from the planets of another sun! From creatures who might
be super-intelligent vegetables like the Wangos the Star Rover had
to fight, or immaterial entities like those misty things that almost
defeated Captain McGee on the Ghost Planet because when he swung his
mighty fist there wasn't anything solid for him to hit. Tommy's father
was talking about things like that!

He got up and gazed in the open door of the small laboratory. He
regarded the rather messy assemblage of equipment on the workbench with
bright-eyed, respectful awe. His father nodded.

"H'llo, Captain," he said to his son. "No hot wires around. Come in.
What's on your mind?"

Tommy's eyes shone.

"Uh--you were talkin' about signals from another planet."

"I see," said his father. "Right up your alley, eh? I hadn't realized
the popular appeal. But if you'd like to listen--"

Tommy fairly quivered with eagerness. His father threw a switch. There
was a tiny hum from a loud-speaker, then silence. Then, presently,
there was a tiny hissing noise. Just a hissing sound. Nothing else.

"That's it, Captain," his father told Tommy. "That's the noise the
Jansky radiation makes. When we turn this dial we tune it out this
way"--he demonstrated--"and also when we turn the dial that way. Then
we tune it back in." He proved it. "Nobody has ever explained it, but
it comes from outer space. I think it comes from just one spot."

       *       *       *       *       *

Professor Wardle, smoking a pipe and sprawled in a chair, nodded
amiably at Tommy.

"Yes, sir," Tommy said, thrilled.

His throat went dry from excitement. His father threw a second switch.
A television screen glowed faintly.

"Now it's transferred to the screen," he told Tommy, "but it's still
all scrambled. Nothing happens. It's quite a job to unscramble a
television signal even when you know all about the transmitter. If
there's a transmitter sending this, I don't know any of its constants."
Over Tommy's head he said to Professor Wardle, "The possible
combinations run ten to the ninth."

Professor Wardle nodded.

"Lines per inch, size of screen, images per second, possible colors."
He grunted. "Then the scanning pattern and possible three dimensions
and so on. You've got several billion possible variations, all right!"

"Unscramble it, Dad!" said Tommy eagerly. "Please! I want to see what
the people look like who're sending it! Do you think we can lick them
if they get tough?"

"I'm telling you," his father explained, "that I can try several
billion ways to unscramble this supposed signal. Even if it can be
done, only one of them will be right. It's going to take time."

"But, Dad, _please_ try!"

Tommy was filled with infinite excitement. Which, of course, was not
only necessary if the comic books were to be made to come true, but was
wholly normal small boy.

Here was an interstellar signal! He had heard it! Tune the set right
and he would see--maybe something like the giraffe-men who almost
killed Captain McGee on the Planet of Sand! Or the frog men the Star
Rover had to fight when a crippled space liner was forced to descend on
the watery planet Alith!

"I've got to figure out a way to unscramble it, Tommy," his father
said. "I've got to calculate the settings that are most likely to show
some change on the screen. It's rather like breaking a code. It will
take a couple of weeks to compute a series of settings to try one after
the other."

Tommy was unconvinced. He argued. Space Captain McGee's friend Doc
Blandy would simply have whipped out his trusty slide rule and made
the computations in seconds. He would push the slide back and forth,
set the television controls according to his computations, and
say, "On the beam, McGee!" And Space Captain McGee would gaze into
the television screen and see the worm monsters of Blathok about
to chloroform Jenny--Captain McGee's girl friend--to transfer the
brain of a worm-monster into her skull. Her body would thereafter
house an inveterate enemy to the human race, with specific plans for
annihilating it.

Tommy argued. Impassionedly. In the end his father had to resort to
authority to stop his arguing. And then Tommy was tempted to revert to
his former disillusionment about scientists.

But continued belief offered high reward in excitement. So he believed.
Still it was a rebellious small boy who accompanied his father and
Professor Wardle home. Even the expected ice-cream cone did not
console him. He consumed it in an avid gloom. His father tried to
comfort him.

"After all, we're not sure," he told Tommy. "It might not be a signal
at all. Or it might be a signal of a type that would seem simple enough
to the creature who sent it, but hopelessly complicated to us. They
might be so much farther advanced in science. In any case, it's not a
thing to be solved off-hand."

"But you're going to try, aren't you, Dad?" asked Tommy desperately.
"You said it wouldn't do any harm! You said we could lick them! They
couldn't harm Earth!"

"I'll try," his father assured him. "It's simply useless to go it
blind. That's all. I'll have my calculations done in a couple of weeks,
and you can watch while I try the whole business. All right?"

Tommy gulped. He was unable to speak for disappointment. When one is
ten years old, odds of billions to one are negligible, but two weeks of
waiting is eternity. It is exactly the same as never. And this, too,
was not only in the necessary pattern of things if the comic books were
to come true, but it was perfectly natural small boy.

       *       *       *       *       *

That night Tommy went rebelliously to bed the third time he was told.
He had hung around his father and Professor Wardle, listening hungrily
to every incomprehensible word they said. He was keyed up to enormous
excitement.

He slept only fitfully. The comics had been a make-believe world in
which he believed only with a book in his hand. Now they promised
to become real, and he was filled with a monstrous hunger for the
adventure they promised.

He woke at dawn and his lurid, fitful dreams had made him ripe for
desperate and daring deeds. He slipped into his shorts and sandals and
went downstairs. He gulped a huge glass of milk and stuffed down an
ample slice of cake.

Then he came to a grand and desperate resolution. He slipped out
the back door and trudged across the dew-wet campus to his father's
laboratory.

He wormed unseen into the small building. His heart beat fast. He was
scared, but he was Space Captain McGee and the Star Rover all rolled
into one--in his own mind--and definitely he was ten-year-old Tommy
Driscoll. He remembered, of course, how his father had turned on the
short-wave set and the television screen. No small boy could forget
those items!

He sat down before the controls and threw the two switches with a
grandly negligent gesture that Captain McGee himself could not have
bettered. And then he started, blindly but with infinite confidence, to
unscramble the Jansky Radiation.

He was one-half making believe, and one-half deadly earnest, and all
absolute faith. Naturally. The odds against any one setting of the
controls being the right one to unscramble the Jansky radiation were
several billion to one. But the heroes of comic books always win
against odds like that.

So did Tommy Driscoll. The comic books were fated to come true.

The faintly glowing television screen quite impossibly flickered as he
turned the controls. His heart pounded. He worked on, his eyes shining
and his head far above the clouds out in interstellar space with
Captain McGee and the Star Rover.

Presently, quite impossibly, the screen became a steadily pulsating
rectangle which at its brightest was very bright indeed. He found a
maximum brightness on which he could not improve. He worked other
controls at random.

One made odd streaks appear on the screen. At the peak of streakiness,
Tommy's heart was thumping in his throat. He, Tommy Driscoll, was about
to make contact with the people of another planet, circling another,
distant sun!

Another knob suddenly gathered together the streakings and the
pulsations. They made the vaguest of patterns, and then the fuzziest of
images. His hand shaking uncontrollably, Tommy Driscoll continued to
turn that knob with the slowest possible movements.

He had a flash of clearness, and his heart leaped. Then everything was
fuzzy again. He turned the knob back, his breath coming in excited
pantings.

And then, in total defiance of the laws of Chance, but in strict
obedience to Fate and Destiny, there was abruptly a perfectly clear
picture on the screen. It was not a picture of any place on Earth, but
of somewhere else--a place so alien in every respect that Tommy would
never be able to describe it. And there was a Thing looking out of the
screen at Tommy Driscoll!

His heart did multiple flip-flops and he shook all over. But it shocked
him much less than it would have shocked an adult, because he was
wholly familiar with such apparitions from the comic books.

This Thing looked rather like the people on the planet Zmyg, who had
tried to wall up Captain McGee in a glass pyramid so he would roast to
death when their purple sun rose above the horizon. But also It looked
rather like Mr. Schneider, who mowed the lawns on Faculty Row. And It
grinned at Tommy.

"Hello!" he said in a clear treble, which shook uncontrollably with
his excitement. "I'm Tommy Driscoll of Earth. We're friendly if you're
friendly. We're tough if you're tough. How about it?"

That was an exact quotation from the comic book in which Captain
McGee had made contact with the people of the System of the Twenty
Suns--and later had to fight against swarms of space-ships which
wanted to capture his star maps so they could find Earth and attack it
treacherously, without warning.

The Thing answered Tommy.

       *       *       *       *       *

It didn't use words, of course. But in the comic books mind-to-mind
communication of alien peoples is common enough. Captain McGee had done
it more than once, and the Star Rover frequently, wandering more widely
than McGee, as he did.

Tommy knew what the Thing was saying, and his piping small-boy voice
answered in his father's laboratory, and he knew that the Thing
understood him, too. The comic books were specifically coming true.

The Thing spoke respectfully and cordially, though of course it did not
really speak at all. Its people wanted to be friends with Earth. Of
course! They had been watching Earth with radar for centuries, so It
told Tommy jovially. They knew that sooner or later Earthmen would roam
the stars and benevolently rule all the planets of all the suns of the
Galaxy in which Earth is placed. Because, of course, Earth has uranium
and other heavy metals supplying atomic energy, while other planets are
not so fortunate.

Tommy's eyes glowed. But he was extraordinarily composed, in the heroic
calm of children in exciting make-believe.

"Oh, sure!" said Tommy largely, to the Thing of outer space. "We're
going to have a Space Patrol that will make all the people on all the
planets behave. I'm going to be a captain in it. Maybe we'll come and
visit you first of all. How far away are you?"

The Thing could not tell Tommy in mind-to-mind converse. The thought it
had could not be translated into words by Tommy Driscoll's brain. But
the distance was very great, and It explained quickly that they were
able to talk over so vast a chasm as if face to face because of--

Again Tommy's brain was not able to translate the mental impressions he
received. He could recognize the meanings the Thing wanted to convey,
if the meanings were stored away in his memory. But naturally, complex
technical concepts were simply not in his vocabulary. The Thing seemed
satisfied to fail.

"Have you got space-ships and ray-guns and gravity nullifiers and
mysterious rays?" asked Tommy eagerly. "Our scientists haven't even
made ray-guns yet!"

The Thing said that of course Its race had such things. It added
encouragingly that men would have them soon, of course. With heavy
elements--even copper and iron--it would be easy.

Then an overtone came into the thoughts that crowded into Tommy's brain
from somewhere beyond the stars. Tommy did not notice the overtone at
first. It was a feeling of eagerness and triumph and of a sneering
superiority.

Tommy got just a momentary impression of Its thought of a Space Patrol
subjugating all the Galaxy to Earth. And the barest, instantaneous
flash of hatred because of that thought. But he was too much excited to
notice. He was absorbed in his question about ray-guns.

It said that they were simple. In fact, It would tell him how to make
one. And It began, simply, to explain--a bit of copper wire, twisted
just so, and a bit of carbon and a morsel of iron.

It urged Tommy to make one immediately. It would guide his hands. The
adjustment of the iron and carbon was delicate.

Tommy was a small boy, and he sturdily controlled his own hands. In the
end the Thing simply told him what to do. He made the contrivance It
suggested, putting the wire and iron and carbon together on a bit of
board, having salvaged them from his father's supplies.

The result did not look too impressive, to be sure. It did not even
look like a ray pistol, and that may account for what ultimately
happened. Because when it was finished and Tommy regarded it with a
faint and illogical disappointment because it didn't look like Captain
McGee's ray pistol, he suddenly felt the eager triumph in the Thing
which had instructed him.

He glanced at the screen, and the Thing was looking out of it with a
ravening, unguarded hatred in Its expression. To Tommy it abruptly
looked like the leader of those Mercurians who had wanted to wipe
out the human race so they could emigrate to Earth. And suddenly he
realized that It hated him and all of humanity with a terrible, burning
fury.

"Say!" said Tommy Driscoll, his small-boy's hands clenching and his
brows contracting in the best possible imitation of Space Captain
McGee. "This don't look so good!" His voice wabbled suddenly, and he
swallowed. "I'm going to ask my father about this!"

       *       *       *       *       *

The Thing argued. Plausibly. Flatteringly. But Tommy felt corrosive
hatred behind the ingratiating thoughts. Somehow It reminded him of the
Dictator of Pluto in one of the comic books he had read only the day
before. It asked almost sneeringly if he was afraid.

"Scared, no!" said Tommy in his clear treble, but with the portentious
grimness of McGee. "I'm just cagey! I'll have my father look this over
to see if it's what you say it is!"

Then the Thing raged. Into Tommy's brain there came such menaces, such
threats, that his mind reeled. There was authority there, too, and at
ten years one is accustomed to obey authority.

But there was sudden deep suspicion in Tommy's mind, too, and he was
fortified by all his knowledge of how the Star Rover and Captain McGee
behaved when defying worm monsters and giraffe-men and immaterial
entities and other non-human races.

As the Thing raged at him, trying to overwhelm his will with iterated
and reiterated commands and threats and sneers and mockery and derision
and everything else which should have made Tommy try out his gadget--as
the Thing raged at him, Tommy fought sturdily, but under a strain which
manifested itself as terror, and then panic, and then as hysterical
defiance.

Which, of course, was essential if the comic books were ordained by
Fate and Destiny to come true.

Tommy was white and shaking and terrified when he got home. His
family was at breakfast. He went into the dining room on leaden feet
and with a whipped, scared look on his chalky-white face. It was nine
o'clock. Tommy had slipped away at sunrise. Now he returned, carrying
a seemingly crude and seemingly purposeless object in his hand. It was
made of copper wire with a bit of carbon and a morsel of iron.

"Where've you been?" demanded his father sternly. He didn't call Tommy
"Captain," which meant that Tommy was in disgrace.

Tommy looked at his father numbly. He shook all over.

"I said, where have you been?" his father repeated. "Your mother and I
have been worried!"

Tommy swallowed. Then, suddenly, he went all to pieces. He burst into
raging tears and flung the contrivance the Thing had described into the
midst of the breakfast table dishes.

"That old Thing!" he sobbed in hysterical fury. "It was in the
television screen and it told me how to make this ray gun! And it--it
told me to turn it on and I was going to when I remembered that octopus
scientist from Centauri who left a note for Captain McGee to make
something, and signed it Doc Blandy, and if he'd made it it would have
blown up the whole Earth!"

His father and mother stared. To have one's small son arrive at the
breakfast table in a state of frenzy is upsetting. It is worse when
he flings odd objects on the table and shatters a flower vase, while
sobbing of impossibilities.

"What--what's this?" asked his father, at once startled and uneasy.
"What are you talking about, son?"

Tommy beat on the table with his fists. He blubbered, but he babbled
with the starkly precise articulation of hysteria. His face was utterly
white. He was beside himself.

"I--tuned in the set in the laboratory!" he cried, in little sobbing
bursts of speech. "I--unscrambled it! And the--Thing looked at
me.... It was a Thing that hated humans! It told me how to make this
and--and--"

Tommy's father went pale, himself. He got up quickly and his chair fell
over backward. He tried to touch Tommy comfortingly, but Tommy thrust
him away.

"Too many comic books," said Tommy's father, frightened. "I'll get him
to the doctor."

[Illustration: "You old Plutonian, you want to blow up Earth!" Tommy
said, and smashed the television screen.]

"I--guessed what It wanted!" panted Tommy, sobbing. "And It knew what
I was thinking and It got mad! I knew It got mad! It laughed at me and
asked me if I was a coward and scared to try the thing I'd made! And
I said, 'You old Mercurian! You old Plutonian! You want to blow up
Earth!' And I went _bang_. I sma-smashed that t-television screen and I
sm-smashed--"

Then Tommy buried his head in his mother's lap and howled. And his
father and mother looked at each other, white-faced, because they
thought his mind had cracked. Even temporarily it was awful to think
about.

But then Professor Wardle, breakfasting with them, said very softly:

"Great heavens!"

       *       *       *       *       *

He was looking at the contrivance Tommy had made under the Thing's
instruction. It wasn't quite like anything that anybody on Earth had
ever made before, but a scientist looking at it would see more than
Tommy could have imagined. Professor Wardle saw aspects that made
sense. Then he saw things that he could understand but could not
possibly have devised. And then he saw the implications.

"L-look!" said Professor Wardle, dry-throated. "It's true! L-look what
he made! Wh-what this thing would do--"

With shaking hands he disconnected a wire so it could not possibly be
turned on by accident. Then he trembled.

Tommy wept himself back to something like composure in his mother's
arms. The antics of his father and Professor Wardle helped, of
course. They babbled at each other over his contrivance. They looked
incredulously at each other. Then they drew diagrams at each other,
talking feverishly.

Then Tommy's father remembered him.

"Captain," said Tommy's father, and there was sweat on his face, "you
did a good day's work, all right, but please don't do it again without
warning me! This--this contrivance of yours isn't a ray pistol. It's
a thing that will start a chain reaction in carbon and iron. If you'd
turned it on, all the carbon and iron within its range would have
started to act like an atomic pile, and it would have spread, and we
couldn't have stopped it. There--wouldn't have been any more Earth."

Tommy blinked at him, catching his breath from time to time as a small
boy will do after desperate weeping. Then his eyes began to shine.

"Gee!" said Tommy. "That--that Thing was trying to destroy Earth,
wasn't he? And I stopped him!"

"He was," said Tommy's father in a very queer voice indeed, "and you
did. If a grown-up had been in your place, the trick would have been
different, and it probably would have worked."

Tommy ceased to catch his breath. He glowed.

"I was like Captain McGee!" he said breathlessly.

Tommy's father swallowed. He needed to hold tightly to his
self-control. He, like Professor Wardle, had all the sensations now
of a man who has just realized that his life, and that of his family,
and that of every other human being on Earth, had hung by a hair for
seconds.

But he saw, too, that the deadly small contrivance which had _not_
annihilated humanity made use of and so revealed exactly the new
principles Earth's scientists needed most urgently to know. It would
mean atomic engines and power and space-ships and ray-guns. They would
mean a Space Patrol to protect Earth against just such creatures as had
been foiled by Tommy Driscoll. And that meant--

"Yes," said Tommy's father gently. "Just like Captain McGee, Tommy. It
appears that the comic books are coming true."



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "From beyond the stars" ***

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