The Onslaught from Rigel by Fletcher Pratt (the best ebook reader for android TXT) 📕

Along the edge of Sherman's cell a blue light began to blink. He had an uncomfortable sensation of being watched. "Is there any way of getting out of here?" he shouted to his unseen auditor.

"Sssh," answered the other. "Them blue lights mean they want you to shut up. You'll get a paste in the eye with the yaller lights if you don't."

So that was it! They were being held as the servants—slaves—of some unseen and powerful and very watchful intelligence. As for "elephants with pants" they might resemble that and they might not; it was entirely possible that the phrase represented merely a picturesque bit of metaphor on the part of the farmer.

Why it must be an actual invasion of the earth, as in H. G. Wells' "War of the Worlds," a book he had read in his youth. The comet could have been no comet then, and.... Yet the whole thing—this transformation of himself into a metal machine, the crash of the Roamer and his subsequent bath in the painful red light. It was all too fantastic—then he remembered that one does not feel pain in dreams....

They were giving him books, food—if this electrical thing was indeed the food his new body required—little to do; keeping him a prisoner in a kind of poisoned paradise.

... At all events the locks on these bars should offer no great difficulty to a competent mechanic. He set himself to a further examination of the tools in the lectern.

The main difficulty in the way of any plan of escape lay in his complete lack of both information and the means of obtaining it. The mechanical ape-men were hopeless; they merely babbled incoherent syllables and seemed incapable of fixing their attention on any object for as long as five minutes. As for the New York farmer his cage was so far away that the conversation could be carried on only in shouts, and every shout brought a warning flicker of the blue lights. On the second day, out of curiosity, Sherman kept up the conversation after the blue lights went on. A vivid stream of yellow light promptly issued from one corner of the cage, striking him fully in the eyes, and apparently it was accompanied by some kind of a force-ray for he found himself stretched flat on the floor. After that he did not repeat the experiment.

The next question was that of the lock on the cell-bars. The closest inspection he could give did not reveal the joints; they were extraordinarily well fitted. On the other hand, he remembered that the arm of the truck had reached under one of the lower bars. Lying flat on his back, Sherman pulled himself along from bar to bar, inspecting each in turn. About mid-way along the front of the cell, he perceived a tiny orifice in the base of one bar—a mere pin-hole. Marvelling at the delicacy of the adjustment which could use so tiny a hole as a lock he sat down to consider the question.

He was completely naked and had nothing but the objects that had been placed in his cell by his jailers. However—

Among the assortment of tools in his bureau was a curve-bladed knife with the handle set parallel to the blade as though it were meant for chopping, and forming the wall of the same drawer was a strip of a material like emery cloth. After some experimenting he found a finger-hole which, when squeezed, caused this emery-cloth to revolve, giving a satisfactory abrasive.

Thus armed with a tool and a means of keeping an edge on it, he took one of the metal bands from the drawer that contained the duplicate set of hands and set to work on it....

Producing a needle that would penetrate the hole in the bars was all of three days' work, though he had no means of marking the time accurately. The metal band was pliable, light, and for all its pliability and lightness, incredibly hard. His tool would barely scratch it and required constant sharpenings. Moreover, he had little time to himself; his unseen scholar required constant lessons in English. But at last the task was done. Choosing a moment when one of the cages at his side was empty and the occupant of the other was busy over some silly sport of his own—tossing a ball from one hand to another—Sherman lay down on the floor, found the opening and drove his needle home. Nothing happened.

He surveyed the result with disappointment. It was disheartening, after so much labor to attain no result at all. But it occurred to him that perhaps he had not learned the whole secret of the arm, and the next time the car came down the corridor for him, he was lying on the floor, carefully watching the opening.

As he had originally surmised, a needle-like point was driven home. But he noted that on either side of the point the arm gripped the bar tightly, pressing it upward.

This presented another difficulty. He had only two hands; if one of them worked the needle he could grip the bar in only one place. But he remembered, fortunately, that his toes had showed a remarkable power of prehension since the change that had made him into a machine.

He finally succeeded in bracing himself in a curiously twisted attitude and driving the needle home under the proper auspices. To his delight it worked—when the needle went in the bars opened in the proper place, swinging back into position automatically as the pressure was withdrawn.

With a new sense of freedom Sherman turned to the next step. This was obviously to find out more of the place in which he was confined and of the possibilities of escape. It seemed difficult.

But even on this point he was not to be long without enlightenment. His unseen pupil in English was making most amazing progress. The white screen which was their means of communication now bore complicated messages about such subjects as what constituted philosophy. Sherman felt himself in contact with an exceptionally keen and active mind, though one to which the simplest earthly ideas were unfamiliar. There were queer misapprehensions—for instance, no process of explanation he could give seemed to make the unseen scholar understand the use and value of money, and they labored for a whole day over the words "president" and "political."

In technical matters it was otherwise; Sherman had barely to express the idea before the screen made it evident that the auditor had grasped its whole purport. When he wrote the word "atom" for instance, and tried to give a faint picture of the current theory of the atom, it was hardly a second before the screen flashed up with a series of diagrams and mathematical formulae, picturing and explaining atoms of different types.

After four weeks or more (as nearly as Sherman could estimate it in that nightless, sleepless place where time was an expression rather than a reality) the car that came for him one day discharged him into a room entirely different from the school-room. Like the school-room it was small, and some twenty feet across. Against the wall opposite the door stood a huge machine, the connections of which seemed to go back through the wall. Its vast complex of pulleys, valves and rods, conveyed no hint of its purpose, even to his mechanically-trained mind.

Across the front of it was a long, black board, four feet or more across and somewhat like the instrument board of an airplane in general character. At the top of this board was a band of ground glass, set off in divisions. Beneath this band a series of holes, each just large enough to admit a finger, and each marked off by a character of some kind though in no language Sherman had ever seen.

To complete the picture, one of the mechanical ape-men stood before the board as though expecting him. On the ape-man's head was a tight-fitting helmet, connecting with some part of the machine by a flexible tube. As Sherman entered the room the ape-man motioned him over to the board, pointed to the holes and in thick, but intelligible English, said "Watsch!" A flash of purple light appeared behind the first of the ground-glass screens. The ape-man promptly thrust his finger into the first of the holes. The light went out, and the ape-man turned to Sherman. "Do," he said. The light flashed on again, and Sherman, not unwilling to learn the purpose of the maneuver, did as his instructor had done.

He was rewarded by a tearing pain in the finger-tip and withdrew the member at once. Right at the end it had become slightly grey. The ape-man smiled. Behind the second ground-glass a red light now appeared and the ape-man thrust his finger into another of the apertures, indicating that Sherman should imitate him. This time the aviator was more cautious, but as he delayed the light winked angrily. Again he received the jerk of pain in the finger-tip and withdrew it to find that the grey spot had spread.