“I’m afraid not,” returned York gently. “The Three Eternals will seek their vengeance. They are powerful beyond measure, as we know. It would do little good to try to hide, in space. Their long-range instruments would search us out, even light years away. Kaligor made his sacrifice. We must make ours, as we agreed.” He raised his head. “But Earth is saved. Earth gave us life. Kaligor too. We must think of it that way, my darling of the ages!”
Vera dashed the tears from her eyes, bravely.
“We have lived a full life, Tony dearest. Love, understanding and wisdom beyond the lot of ordinary humans have been ours. We have touched the stars for a brief moment, revelled for a bit of eternity. Dreamed a beautiful dream of immortality, like Kaligor. But we could not escape the laws of Fate, as we did the laws of life. It is over and I am content!”
They kissed, and dung to one another tightly, in their last embrace. Like—gods they had lived, but unlike gods, they must die. The finger of a greater destiny had so decreed.
Not long after, the powerful telepathic voice of the Three Eternals beat in upon their minds. Their ship appeared, dropping from the sky vulturously. Bluntly, seeing, the key-island destroyed, they promised swift death. York spun his ship away, as though trying to escape the inevitable. The large ovoid ship of the Three followed inexorably.
Pursued and pursuing, they shot far into space, out among the emptiness they both knew so well. When they had gone so far that York knew Earth could not be harmed by what was to come, he stopped. Grimly, he set his giant gravity coils, loaded to capacity with world-moving power. Then he smiled as he took Vera in his arms to await the end calmly.
Unknowing of his voluntary sacrifice, the Three Eternals rammed toward his ship enough power to grind it to subatomic shreds. It was like the lighting of a bomb. York’s ship released its groaning load of energy in one colossal charge. The ether itself writhed.
Both ships vanished! Back on Earth, every electrical instrument burned out entirely from the mighty reaction waves that had resulted.
They were gone, the gods that Earth knew. Greek mythology and the mythology of Anton York would carry on the legends of their exploits, in distorted form. But the gods themselves were one with infinity. But there would be no mythology of Kaligor, the Eternal Dreamer. Indestructible, falling perhaps eventually into the hot core of some sun, his dream would go on… on…
THE SECRET OF ANTON YORK
PROLOGUE
At the top of Mount Everest’ stand two gigantic statues of enduring diamond, a hundred feet tall. Gleaming in the stratosphere, they rear higher than any other man-made object on Earth’s surface, as the two after whom they had been modelled rear higher than any others in human history.
Those were the statues modelled after the immortal Anton York and his mate.
In the year of their commemoration, 4050 A.D., the President of the Solar System Council spoke to—a gathered crowd of ten million, and to a television audience of ten billion on nine planets. His voice was emotion-filled and awed, as though he spoke of gods.
“Anton York and his wife are dead. But Anton York’s name will live, alongside those of Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon and other empire builders. And Confucius, Christ, Mohammed and other spiritual leaders. And Adam, Jove, Robin Hood and other mythological names. For Anton York was like all these in one respect or more.
“He was born—in the twentieth century. Preserved by his father’s life-elixir, he lived on, immortally. These great exploits will ring down the hall of history: His defeat of the fifty Immortals who wished to subjugate Earth, in the twenty-first century. His legacy of space-travel to mankind, soon after. His defeat of Mason Chard, the last of the ruthless Immortals, in the thirty-first century. His astro-engineering in the Solar System, giving Jupiter rings, moons to Mercury and Venus, and ridding all the planets of harsh obstacles to colonization.
“But the greatest of all was his return from the deeps of space, in our present time, to wage some titanic battle against the mysterious Three. Eternals, who wished to destroy contemporary civilization. We do not, even know the true story of it, save in snatches. We know only that the Three Eternals, survivors from some forgotten time—perhaps Atlantis—pursued Anton York’s space ship out beyond Pluto, a year ago.
“An astronomer’s plates, on that dark outpost, caught something of the event. The space ship of the Three Eternals hurled some destructive force at York’s ship. The latter seemed loaded with mighty energies. Both ships vanished in an explosion that must have rocked the Universe from one end to another. Pluto was shoved a million miles out of its orbit by etheric concussion!”
He paused to let the worlds imagine the incredible fury of that scene.
“We can only surmise at what mighty, unknown forces were released. And we can only wonder why York, to destroy the Three Eternals, sacrificed himself. Evidently he could defeat the Eternal& only in that way, in a battle of gods.
“Of one thing we are sure. The incredible career of Anton York is over. We are gathered here to commemorate his memory, in the most lasting material we know, on this highest peak of Earth’s entire surface.”
The speaker looked over the solemn, hushed multitude packed at the base of the towering mountain. He delivered his funereal text.
“Anton York, benefactor of humanity, is dead!”
1
Those words, if they could have rolled by some magic throughout the greater cosmos, would eventually have impinged on the ears of the person in question, and made him smile.
For Anton York was alive.
Yet he had not been sure of that himself, at first. With a shock his brain had awakened. His staring eyes focused on the cabin wall of his ship. It looked as it had always been. But queerly, he saw two walls. It was a doubling effect, as if two superimposed images lay on one another. And he could not move. He was in the grip of some paralysis that locked every muscle in his body, including his lungs and heart. He was not breathing and his blood, chilled and viscous, lay stagnant in his veins.
Yet he was alive, for his thoughts were free. Or was this death?
His thoughts probed out in mental telepathy, which he had used so often with his wife. He could not turn to look. “Vera!” his mind called. “Vera, are you near?”
Her mental voice came back, confused, dim.
“Yes, Tony. I hear you. You must be near. I feel as though we are mental wraiths. Is this the life-after-death? How wonderful, Tony, not to be separated after all—” Her psychic tone became startled. “But look! This is the cabin of our ship, even if it appears double somehow. It was destroyed in that frightful explosion caused by the Three Eternals. How can a material ship pass into the life-after-death?”
It was a grimly ridiculous thought.
“No, Vera.” York’s thoughts were reflective. “The ship wasn’t destroyed. Nor were we. It’s sheer speculation, but perhaps the explosion acted so suddenly and so powerfully that it blew the ship away intact. Like tornado winds that blow straws right through oak boards without knocking off one grain. Vera, we’re alive!”
“But this paralysis—”
“Suspension of life, through the shock of super-fast motion. Germs, in centrifuges whirled at high speed, pass into a dormant state, as Earth scientists know. All our cells have gone as a unit into suspended animation.”
“You mean that we’ll stay helpless like this? For ages, thinking, thinking…” Vera’s psychic voice was alarmed, half hysterical.
“No,” York answered quickly. “Don’t forget we have twice the normal number of life-giving radiogens in our cells. Cosmic rays are constantly pouring into them. The energy stored will sooner or later break the deadlock. We just have to wait.”