Moray swallowed two more pellets of the drug. He had to wait for its effect upon him, now, but he dared not take a larger dose.
He strode from the room, putting the formula in his pocket.
Wandering aimlessly through the building, he was suddenly assailed by the hot, wet aura of his Master. He paused, then nudged the door open a trifle and peered longingly within.
The Master was engaged in solitary clairvoyance, his head sagging down on his scrawny chest, veins and muscles visibly pulsing. Even in the utter darkness of his room, he was visible by a thin blue light that exuded from the points and projections of his body to flow about the entire skin.
The Master was utterly unconscious of the presence of his servant. Though Moray was not a child or a fool, he stemmed directly from the beautiful, intelligent creatures that used to hunt and play with men, and he could not stand up to the fierce tide of intellect that flowed in that room. With a smothered sound he turned, about to leave.
Then Moray heard a noise – quiet and almost restful at first, like a swarm of bees passing overhead. And then it rumbled into a mighty crash that made the elastic construction of the Master's house quiver as though stricken.
Suddenly he realized – the Hawkes explosive! It had worked! He looked at his Master, to see the blue glare fade as though it were being reabsorbed into his body. As the last of it vanished, lights glowed on around the room, bringing it to its accustomed shadowy twilight. The Master's head lifted.
`Moray,' he whispered tensely. Was that the explosive?'
A thin little ripple of delight surged along Moray's spine. They could both be blown to splintered atoms in the explosion, and the continent they were trying to save along with them – he didn't care! His Master had spoken to him!
He knew what he had to do. With a little growl that was meant to say, `Pardon!' he raced to the Master's side, picked him up and flung him over a shoulder – gently. They had to get out of the building, for it might yet topple on them.
Moray tottered to the door, bent under the double burden; pushed it open and stepped into the corridor. The Master couldn't walk, so Moray had to walk for him. They made slow progress along the interminable hall, but finally they were in the open. Moray set his burden down, the gangling head swaying, and—Felt unutterably, incontrovertibly idiotic! For the air was still and placid; and the building stood firm as a rock; and the only mark of the Hawkes explosive was a gaping mouth of a pit where the laboratory had been. Idiot! Not to have remembered that the Hawkes would expend its force downward!
Moray peered shamefacedly at his Master. Yet there was some consolation for him, because there was the skeleton of a smile on the Master's face. Clearly he had understood Moray's Motives, and ... perhaps Moray's life need not finally be blighted.
For a long second they stood there looking into each other's eyes. Then the Master said, gently, 'Carry me to the plane.' Not stopping to ask why, Moray picked him up once more and strode buoyantly to the waiting ship. Letting the Master down gently at the plane's door, he helped him in, got in himself, and took his place at the controls.
`Where shall we go?' he ask.
The Master smiled that ghost of a smile again, but Moray could detect a faint apprehension in his expression, too. 'Up, Moray,' he whispered. 'Straight up. You see, Moray, these mountains are volcanic. And they're not quite extinct. We must go away now, up into the air.'
Moray's reflexes were faster than an electron-stream as he whipped around to the knobs and levers that sent the little ship tearing up into the atmosphere. A mile and a half in the sky, he flipped the bar that caused the ship to hover, turned to regard the scene below.
The Master had been right! The explosion had pinked the volcano, and the volcano was erupting in retaliation — a hot curl of lava-was snaking into the atmosphere now, seemingly a pseudo-pod reaching to bring them down. But it was thrown up only a few hundred feet; then the lava flow stopped; cataclysmic thunderings were heard and vast boulders were hurled into the sky. It was lucky they'd got away, thought Moray as he watched the ground beneath quiver and shake; and luckier that no other person had been around, for the ship could carry but two.
And as he stared, fascinated, at the turmoil below, he felt a light, soft touch on his arm. It was the Master! — the first time in all Moray's life when the Master had touched him to draw attention, Moray suddenly knew, and rejoiced — he had found his Master again!
`Let us go on, Moray,' whispered the Master. 'We have found that the explosive will work. Our job, just now, is done.'
And as Moray worked the controls that hurled the ship ahead, toward a new home for his Master and toward Birch for himself, he knew that the wings of the ship were of no value at all. Tear them off! he thought, and throw them away! His heart was light enough to bear a world!
BEFORE THE UNIVERSE
"Before the Universe" was the first story Cyril and I published in collaboration. I published it myself, and watched the reader mail with considerable apprehension when the story hit the stands; we weren't very sure of ourselves. But the response was good. That was all we needed. We sat right down and wrote a sequel, "Nova Midplane," and then a third story in the series, "The Extrapolated Dimwit".
Unfortunately, by the time we came to the third story we discovered we were running out of things to say about our characters, and so we had to have help. In the Fulurian way, we solved the problem by inviting in a Third collaborator, Robert W. Lowndes, better known then as "Doc."
Lowndes had been a fan as long as any of us, but mostly by correspondence. It was the time of the Great Depression. Most of us were young enough to be sheltered by our families from the harsher aspects of that long deep sickness of the thirties, but Lowndes was all by himself in the world. He had to earn a living any way he could, and one of the ways was by working in a hospital in Connecticut (Whence the "Doc.") We knew each other almost entirely by correspondence for several years, during which time I remember that he introduced me to J. K Huysmans and I introduced him to J. B. Cabell (we didn't only read SF, you know), before things healed enough for him to visit, then move to, New York City. He became a resident of The primitive Futurian communes (dull, drugless, all-male pads that they were) pursued his writing, ultimately achieved every fan's dearest dream by getting a Job as a professional editor (Future Fiction, Science Fiction Quarterly and others) and has continued as one ever since. "The Extrapolated Dimwit" was first published in one of his magazines.
I. The Nobel Prize Twins
Jocelyn Earle was listening closely to her employer's instructions. That was one of the things about Jocelyn; she always listened closely, even if she paid no attention to suggestions once she stopped listening and started doing. He was telling her how to get the story he wanted for the Helio; he knew she would get the story her own way, but he told her anyway. The important thing was, she would get the story.
"Do you know anything at all about Clair and Gaynor?" he asked.
"No," she said.
"Well, you're the only one in the world who doesn't. Don't you ever read the papers?" She shook her head. He sighed and went on. "They are the Nobel Prize winners for the last half-dozen years. They're the ones who wiped out cancer, made possible the beam-transmission of power, created about fifty new alloys that have revolutionized industry, and originated the molecular-stress theory which is the cornerstone of the new physics.