Anton York, Immortal

1

The latter half of the 19th Century was a period of scientific giants—Ramsay, Bequerel, Roentgen, Einstein and others—but history does not mention Matthew York.

While the chemists outdid nature with synthetic products, while the physicists toyed with the amazing electron and the mathematicians groped into eternal secrets of the cosmos, Matthew York searched for a great scientific arcanum.

A brain highly stimulated by chronic hyperthyroidism, pushed his investigations ahead in leaps and bounds, but it also burned him out before his time. Long years of intensive search and labour eventually crystallized into results.

Like a pilgrim who at last nears his Mecca, Matthew York knew, at the end, that his fingertips were at the door beyond which lay the secret. He knew at the same time, with resigned bitterness, that he would not live to open the door more than a crack.

“Give me ten more years!” he moaned to the Universe at large. “Ten paltry years, and I will give you back a thousand!”

But that was not to be, and Matthew York, like Columbus, was to die unknowing that he had reached the shores of a new land, though he had seen them in the distance.

At twenty-five, Anton York, the son of Matthew York, was tall, physically perfect, mentally alert, with a budding scientific career already launched. At thirty he was healthier, if possible, and deep in the intricacies of electromagnetic waves applied to destruction. He sought a weapon so deadly that its use would teach the utter futility of war.

For Anton York had been in the World War. His grim experiences in that inferno of hate had left festering scars on his sensitive mind. He searched with all the passion of a fanatic for a Jovian weapon that would either end civilization or bring it everlasting peace.

Gradually it became apparent to him that he must be singularly blessed with physical good health. At times he wondered vaguely about it. It was hardly natural. Long hours in the laboratory, weeks of intensive, mind-shattering labour failed to weaken his superb vitality.

At thirty-five he reached his prime, with not a day’s sickness behind him since childhood. It was as though some diligent guardian angel kept him free of the diseases that exacted their toll of all others around him. His researches had resulted in the development of a fused beam of ultrasound and gamma-rays—the long-sought goal.

Yet he did not reveal his discovery. It was too destructive, too likely to bring about chaos. He shelved it in utter secrecy, destroyed all recorded data, kept only the key formula in his mind for future use.

In conjunction with this ultra-weapon, he also developed a super-refractive alloy which he patented for a small fortune. Thereafter he did not have the annoyance of financial insufficiency to hinder his personal researches. He abandoned the academic duties that had previously earned him a livelihood, and settled himself in his own laboratory.

At forty-five he had not aged at all, it seemed. He married a young and beautiful girl of twenty-five, one who instinct told him would not hold him back in his scientific endeavours. They looked like a well matched couple of equal age, for York seemed possessed of that elastic youthfulness with which some people are so fortunately endowed. Yet at times he caught himself wondering whether it was fortune or something else.

Ten years of research on liquid and solid rocket fuels had convinced him space travel would not be achieved by that clumsy, wasteful means. The answer, if answer there was to be, lay in solving the secret of gravitation.

At fifty-five he had made some steps, purely theoretical, toward the solution, but realized it might take several lifetimes to reach the fundamental basis necessary for an enduring analysis. He was like Anaxagoras, who had conceived an atomic theory, two thousand years before mankind had had a science capable of testing it.

“Vera,” he said to his wife one day as she brought sandwiches to him in his experimental laboratory, “gravitation is like a planetary hypnotism, just as amazingly effective, and just as intangible. Just what it is I haven’t yet determined, not even in theory. As far as I’ve gone, it seems to be a directive field of attraction between masses of matter. By directive, I mean radiating from points, rather than just filling space haphazardly, like the cosmic rays. Now there’s a strong clue—”

Vera interrupted him. “Yes, dear, but drink your coffee before it gets cold.”

“Vera, that clue is a will-o’—the-wisp I’ve been chasing down for ten years without success,” he persisted. “It is very likely to take ten more tens of years. If only I had another lifetime ahead of me.

“To look at you, you have.” His wife was not merely flattering him. Her voice was serious, vaguely troubled. “I’m just thirty-five, and that’s the age you look, yet you are fifty-five.”

“I know, I know,” murmured York, without elation.

“If it keeps up,” Vera’s voice wavered, “I’ll be looking older than you in a few more years. Everybody comments on your youth, dear. They even call you a Dorian Grey—only in looks, of course, not character. Why, Tony, what—”

York had dropped his sandwich, fingers nerveless. His face was pale.

“If it keeps up!” he cried, repeating his wife’s phrase. “If it keeps up,”

“Tony, I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I,” York told her earnestly. “Vera, I haven’t spoken much about my childhood, but there’s one thing that has haunted my subconscious mind like a vivid dream—the night when my father inoculated me with a solution that made me very ill for a month. It was a glowing liquid, that solution, as if a diamond had been dissolved in it. He called it an Elixir.”

York’s eyes grew misty with past memories.

“My father was a great scientist, greater than the world ever knew. He set himself a goal—the secret of life. He did strange things with mice and fruit flies, with his serum. Once he dipped some inoculated mice into a bath of deadly germ-laden fluid. The creatures lived on, undiseased.”

He sprang up.

“In the name of God, what did his serum do to me? Why should I alone be free of disease? Why do I look like thirty-five at the age of fifty-five? What does it mean? I must find out!”

“Find out, but how?” ventured his wife. She was always awed by her husband’s immunity to disease and senility, but she had trained herself to ignore the subject.

“From my father’s diary perhaps, or from his research notes. My aunt still has his papers. I’ve neglected to make a careful study of his notes. Now I’m going to make a thorough search for some clue to the mystery!”

2

BUT it was not just a clue that York found as he meticulously examined Matthew York’s voluminous data. It was the keystone of his quest itself. The entry in his father’s diary for the day Anton York remembered so vividly, read in part:

Longevity!

That would burst like a bomb in Anton York’s brain. But he refused to allow his thoughts to carry on a train of speculation. Instead he searched out the “leaf 88A, book G-4” mentioned. Crabbed chemical formulae gave a compound labelled: “Grignard Reaction on the chlorinated union of zymase and pituitrin—in Elixir M-7.”

Though not acquainted with the more technical phases of organic chemistry, being a physicist, York knew that zymase was an enzyme, a substance which could regenerate itself in the proper environment, though not a living material. A short search in his library gave him an idea of the properties of pituitrin. It was a gland product, controlling growth, keeping it even with the constant tearing down of protoplasm.

Growth and regeneration. Matthew York’s formulae seemed to have combined these two biological factors. York puzzled over these for a while, then turned again to his father’s diary. There was only one other entry after the one he had read. A month had been left blank. That was the month Anton York had been so ill from the injection. On the eve before his sudden death from heart failure, Matthew York had written:

Little Tony, thank God, is out of danger now. He is resting well, poor boy. I made a blood test today. Nothing definite. There is some slight increase of the radiogen value, though. I have just had the thought today that the longevity factor may be due to—simply—increased cosmic ray consumption. One of the unproven corollaries of the Radiogen Theory is that those invisible bundles of energy derive their power from the cosmic rays which fill every part of the Universe—every nook and corner of it, even the spaces between atoms. It is so astonishingly logical when one thinks of the countless radiogens which exist in and motivate protoplasm—give it “life”—are known to carry within their nuclei temperatures comparable to those of the stars, up to 6,000 degrees centigrade.

Cosmic rays, in turn, are electromagnetic waves of tremendous power and penetration. It is not fantastic to conceive of these constant rays losing their immense power to the radiogens, which are web-traps, like electromagnets. Now if resistance to disease—and I have almost proved it so—is the electrocution of germs by radiogens which they touch, an increased radiogen-content is a panacea. It has worked with certain of my guinea-pigs, mice and fruit flies, Pray God it works with Tony. Secondly, if old age is the waning capacity to manufacture radiogens, my Elixir is a drop from the Fountain of Youth, because its constituents are able to procreate themselves in protoplasm indefinitely.

And of course, there are my Methuselah fruit flies. A month ago, after inoculating Tony, I segregated those ten insects, gave them the same Elixir M-7, by inhalation, and they are still living, even though I did not feed them.

Normal fruit flies do not live more than fourteen days without food. Still I will not speculate in the case of Tony, except to say that if his radiogen-content is more than twice normal, he may well be—immortal! That is simply adding two and two to make four—I looked long at my boy today, wondering. He doesn’t look any different, nor should he. But he may be—yes, I dare to think it—immortal!

Immortal!

If his radiogen-content was two times normal, he was incapable of dying either from disease or old age, both of which were results of deficiency of radiogens, according to the theory Matthew York had followed. Was this why he failed to grow old?

Examination of various other portions of his father’s notes began to convince him it was. For the elder York had specified several times that an organism rich in radiogens, and capable of keeping up the abnormal supply, would reach its prime of life and stay there.

Gradually it became clear to Anton York as he read on. Living matter was a complete chemical entity in itself. Its “soul,” or “life,” came from the ultra-microscopic radiogens, like tiny batteries, which activated it under control of neuroimpulses from the brain.

The energy of the radiogens came from space, from the stars. When the Universe had been young, there had been more cosmic radiation from the birth-throes of stars. Nature, with such a lavish supply of life-energy, had created a wide variety of life, but each with only enough radiogen-content to animate it properly. With the waning of the Universe, and the decline of cosmic radiation, Nature had increased the radiogen-content in inverse proportion in order to continue its original cycles of life.

But here was Man stepping in. Here was Matthew York defying Nature, outrunning Evolution. Here was Anton York with a twice normal capacity of utilizing the life-giving cosmic radiation.

Here was immortality! Because, not until the Universe had run down to half its present rate of cosmic radiation would Anton York be included in Nature’s immutable laws of the cycles of life.

And that would not be for millions of years!

York grew dizzy with the thought of it.

“Bah!” he said suddenly, to himself. “Here I am talking myself into this thing without proof of any sort. I can’t be sure that I have more radiogens than normal. I can’t know that the Elixir worked on me. I can’t even be sure that he succeeded as he hoped with his serum, for he wasn’t absolutely certain himself.”

This line of thought eventually led him to visit a famous blood specialist for a test. With a throbbing heart he waited to hear the result. The doctor finally reported that his blood was quite normal except in one respect—it had a singularly great germ-killing power. Twice as much as normal. He assured York that he would never be ill if his blood stayed that healthy.

York’s eyes glowed like ingots of molten metal.

“Then, that means my radiogen-content is doubled!” The doctor frowned, then laughed.

“Oh, you mean according to the electromagnetic theory of life? That theory isn’t credited, you know. In the accepted parlance, your blood simply contains twice as many phagocytes, the germ-killers. Radiogens make nice, scientific talk, but don’t exist. If they did, life would be a matter of volts and amperes. We would have electrically rejuvenated people walking around and living forever.” The doctor laughed heartily. “Think of that.”

A sort of paralyzing calm came over York, along with the conviction that the doctor was wrong, and his father right. A voice seemed to beat in his brain, telling him that his suspected immortality was not altogether mythical.

“How old am I?” he questioned him.

The doctor looked him over, though surprised at the question.

“I’d say about thirty-two, not more than thirty-five.”

“I’m fifty-five,” stated York. “And a hundred years from now, I’ll still be looking thirty-five.” He left the gaping doctor, went out into the street. He stared at a tall, sturdy skyscraper. “You’re strong and enduring,” he said to it quietly.

“You’ll last fifty, a hundred years. I’ll outlast you and your successors.” To the river under the steel bridge he murmured: “Someday you will not exist, and I will stand over your dried bed.” To the fields he whispered: “You will nurture many, many crop cycles, but some day you will be barren. On that day—I will be thirty-five.”

Night came and to the bright stars he hurled a challenge: “The eternal stars, eh?”

Hours later, in a rosy dawn, he came to himself. He found himself far out in the country, and realized he had been walking in a daze, drunk with the thought of immortality. Vera was waiting for him when he arrived home, tired and muddy.

“Tony! I’ve been worrying.”

York looked at her strangely. A thought struck him, one that had persisted before.

“Yes, I’ve been worrying too. One little worry stuck with me all during last night, even in the heights of my fancy. That thought is losing you.” He pulled her to him suddenly, fiercely. The love he had for her was deep and vital.

“I love you madly,” he cried, “but I’ll lose you, unless—”

“Tony! What are you saying?” Vera’s eyes became haunted with fear—fear for his sanity.

“No, dear, I’m all right,” York said quietly. “I can’t explain now, but soon I shall.” His eyes shone then. “Soon you and I—together—”

3

“Hm, I don’t know if I can duplicate it. The main part of the serum is not so intricate, but this one ingredient is new to organic chemistry. Look at it. If you know anything at all about my field you’ll realize that combining zymase and pituitrin, a chlorinated enzyme and an acidic gland product, is impossible. I don’t think it can be done.”

The speaker was Dr. Charles Vinson, a skilled technician of the biochemical sciences. He and York had been acquainted academically twenty years before.

“You must duplicate that serum!” York’s voice trembled with desperation. “I can’t be as frank about this as I’d like, Dr. Vinson, but the manufacture of that serum means more to me right now than anything in the world. Try it, anyway. Work here at my laboratory for a month, a year, and name your price.”

“Oh, it is not the money,” protested the biochemist. He did not quite mask the inherent, cupidity of his nature, however. His eyes gleamed with sudden interest. “It would cost much. Your place here is equipped for electrons and volts, not bacteria and guinea-pigs. I would have to buy much—”

“Then it is agreed,” declared York. “At any cost, make me 10 c.c. of this Elixir.”

“Elixir!” Dr. Vinson’s whole manner changed. “Elixir, did you say? Where did you copy these formulae? What do they represent?”

“Bluntly, none of your business.” York could not hide a trace of anger. He had never particularly liked the biochemist. For a moment he was sorry he had picked him. Yet he knew it would be difficult to find a more capable man for the task.

Dr. Vinson shrugged. York went on: “You will be paid for duplication of the serum, nothing more. Look over this chemical annex to my laboratories. Whenever you are ready, come to the library. I’ll discuss terms and procedure with you.”

He wheeled about and left.

Dr. Vinson studied the sheet in his hand. It was a typewritten copy of someone’s research notes. Whose? What did they represent? An Elixir? Further pondering suddenly enlightened him. Matthew York—Anton York: father and son. Many years before Matthew York had published a short treatise on the secret of life. He had claimed that an electrical interpretation of life was the only approach to its mystery. He created a small furore, and his paper became the forerunner of radiogenic theory. Yet nothing more had been heard of Matthew York.

Except perhaps this, Dr. Vinson held up the sheet, wondering.

That same day York spoke to his wife eagerly. For the first time he explained to her fully the secret of his youth—the immortality of his flesh. She was not so surprised as she might have been She caught her breath sharply, though, when he added, “And when Dr. Vinson makes up some of the serum, it will be for you! You and I will have each other forever in perpetual youth, in our prime of life!”

She was suddenly in his arms, sobbing.

“I will love you for all eternity!”

In the next month York’s laboratory became the receiving end of a small caravan of new materials. Varieties of chemicals, crates of apparatus, cages of squealing guinea-pigs. For Dr. Vinson had seen at a glance that the serum was not to be an elementary accomplishment.

In another month he had started to gain results. York came often to watch him work. He seldom spoke. His attitude was one of waiting, and impatiently. Sometimes his wife was with him, and they would watch together, smiling at one another secretly.

Vinson did not give up trying to draw out York in conversation about this mysterious project.

“York,” he complained one day, “there’s something missing in the data I’m working on. I’ll have to have it all. Where are the original notes?”

“Why do you need them?” York countered hesitantly.

“Because something I need may be in them. Some little thing you neglected to copy, but vital to successful duplication. Look at this guinea-pig. The serum killed him, as it has all others, because it is not the right serum.”

York faltered. Some instinct had kept him from showing his father’s notes up until now, for they dealt with a tremendous thing. Yet he wanted the serum. And because the Infinite did not warn him, he yielded. But only the scientific notes, not the diary.

Dr. Vinson’s over-eager hands leaped the yellowed pages. His eyes glittered first, then narrowed. A pattern was piecing itself together in his mind.

Not many weeks later the biochemist’s face was bright with triumph. Together with York he watched the healthy antics of a guinea-pig into whose veins the day before had been injected an overdose of bubonic plague germs.

“That little animal is germ-proof!” announced Vinson excitedly. “It has passed the last test. It is immune to any but violent death. We have the same serum now that your father developed.”

York turned swiftly.

“My father! How did you know? What—”

The biologist smiled thinly.

“Why beat around the bush, York? Your father developed this serum and tried it on you. It was dangerous, because the serum was fatal half the time. Yet he took the chance, knowing that if you survived, you would be immune to disease.” His face changed subtly. “And immortal! ”

“Damn you!” cursed York, stepping forward.

“Wait, York, I haven’t been spying around. The thing stared me in the face. You, who should be as old as I am, fifty-five, look like thirty-five. Then, I can show you a fruit fly that has lived twice its normal span and will continue to live—who knows—through all eternity. It astounded me until I reasoned it out.”

York relaxed. After all, it was too tremendous a secret to conceal from the man who had worked with his father’s notes. He stared at the biochemist uncertainly. What would this mean?

Dr. Vinson laughed shortly.

“You are an immortal, York. And you love your wife. You want her by your side in the long future that beckons. Hence, my work here—to manufacture the Elixir, for her. Well, let me warn you—there is an even chance that your wife will not gain immortality, but death!”

“I’m going to take the chance,” York said “Prepare a suitable dose for injection. In case of death—”

He made a resigned gesture. “Vinson,” he continued, solemnly, “you and I share a great secret. The Fountain of Youth! An age-old dream come true. After my wife has been inoculated, we’ll have to discuss—many things. This Elixir can be a great gift to civilization, to mankind. In my own case it will allow me to finish my researches, to solve the secret of gravitation, which I could not do in one lifetime. But certain problems would arise if the Elixir were given to the world. You can guess them.”

Vinson did not answer. His small eyes blazed with the dawning gleam of some staggering idea. York noticed the sudden stiffening of his body, spoke sharply.

“Well?” It was a challenge.

The biochemist’s dry lips parted but no sound came. Then with an effort he gasped: “Death! If your wife dies, think of the responsibility, the guilt!”

If York had not been so preoccupied with his own problems, he would have demanded the truth. For Vinson had not spoken what was crawling in his mind—something of far greater significance than the mere fate of one woman.

“The responsibility is all mine,” snapped York. “I have her full consent to this. We have also made out a legal document absolving me from all blame in case of her death under the serum. According to law, this is not contestable in court any more, so long as the parties concerned are mentally sound. You are not an accessory to a crime in any sense, for there is no crime. When can you have the stuff ready?”

“In about three days,” answered Vinson voice curiously hushed. His face looked fevered, his hand trembled. “You see, I want to do my best with the serum for your wife. Purify it as much as possible. Increase the odds in our favour.”

York put a hand to the biochemist’s shoulder.

“Come, don’t take it so hard,” he said, vaguely aware that the man was more than normally moved.

Vinson smiled weakly. York left, to tell Vera of the near approach of the great moment when they would look down the interminable hall of the future together. When the door had closed behind him, the biochemist’s face gave way to pent-up emotions he no longer had to hide. A twisted smile came over the thin lips that hissed “Fool!” in the direction of the vanished York.

If there is some repetitious twist to the workings of fate, certainly it became manifest in the events that occurred three nights later. For in broad detail it was the ancient story of eternal love, of Romeo and Juliet, re-enacted.

Tall, handsome, physically perfect, Anton York stood over the body of his wife, his face marked with grief. She lay on a couch, her beautiful face moulded in the peaceful lines of death. Dr. Vinson stood to one side, like a dumfounded Balthazar, breathing hard. He stared mutely from the hypodermic in his hand to the pair before him.

Just a few minutes before, with York holding his wife’s hand, he had injected the serum into her arm. The reaction had been sudden and startling. Her breathing had grown hard, her eyes had flown wide. With a little half sob and half smile to her husband, she had fallen back on the couch.

Then a few racking gasps, after which an ominous stillness had come over her relaxed form.

Vinson dropped the hypodermic and stepped beside the couch. He leaned over to listen for heart beats. Then he looked up.

“Dead!” he whispered huskily, “The odds were not quite even, for her!”

York’s face was a blur of overwhelming, repressed despair. Though Vinson had repeatedly warned him that this could be the result, he had not been prepared for it. He dashed from the room suddenly, without a word.

Alone with the body, Vinson stared at the sweet face somewhat fearfully. It shook his resolve to try the Elixir himself, which was necessary for the furtherance of certain plans he had made. Immortality or death! Was it worth the risk?

York suddenly burst into the room, face pale and desperate.

Ignoring the biochemist, he dropped to his knees beside the couch. For a long moment he gazed at the face so dear to him. Then, with a swift motion he brought one hand up toward his mouth. Vinson caught the glint of glass, uttered a strangled cry.

But it was already done. York gave him a wan smile. “Cyanide,” he whispered. “That is a better Elixir for eternal life.” A minute later he slumped across the body of his wife, pale blue around the lips.

Dr. Vinson gaped at the double tragedy. For a moment he was weak with horror of death. But presently he straightened up, smiled.

“Perhaps it is better this way,” he mused. “York might have resisted my plans. He is—was—the altruistic sort. He would not have approved, I’m sure. And I had determined anyway that nothing was to stand in my way.”

He laughed shortly. “The fool! With the greatest gift mankind ever had in his hand, he thought only of making his wife immortal. I suppose later he would have envisioned centuries of research for himself—to benefit mankind. He could not think of the important thing—power! The power of immortality! But I think of it. Yes. First, I’ll purify the Elixir further—give myself a greater chance to survive it. Then—”

He broke from a trance, whirled about.

“Got to get out,” he told himself. “I must not be connected with this affair. I must be left alone—to think, to plan, to build.” He rolled the phrase on his tongue, eyes gleaming with a fanatic fire. “I’ll change my name. Get all my money together and leave the country perhaps. Build in secret. This marks a new phase in my life, and in the history of the world!”

He turned once more to the still forms on the couch. With the sense of melodrama still upon him, he whispered: “We shall either meet again soon, in eternal death, or never in an eternity!”

4

DR. VINSON left and made his way to the laboratory in which he had duplicated the Elixir. Here he heaped all of Matthew York’s notes on the floor, set fire to them. In his brain was locked the great secret of the serum. On sudden thought he took a gallon jar of alcohol and rolled it toward the burning papers. He watched until the heat cracked the glass and sprayed liquid fire over the floor. The flames licked at the wooden workbenches, grew to a vigorous blaze.

Vinson turned away with a dark smile shadowing his face.

“From these ashes will spring my immortal empire!” he cried aloud. Then he left the place.

The eager flames became a yellow holocaust in the big building that housed the laboratory and home of Anton York. But fate had not played out its re-enactment of history’s Romeo and Juliet. In the room where a double tragedy had seemed to occur, there was a stir of life.

Vera opened her eyes and struggled to sit up on the couch. Her husband’s body slid away, fell to the floor gently. Her horrified eyes saw this and with a scream of terror she fell back again, pale as death.

But it was not the dagger-death of Juliet. She had only fainted. When York opened his eyes a moment later, his mind was an aching blank. A rush of memory brought him to his feet with a groan. He stood there a moment, trying to fathom his escape from death. He could not know that the same super-electrical quality of his flesh which resisted disease and supplied the energy of youth was also able to fight the fatal fire of life-poisons with its own youth-fires.

A thick cry of unbelief escaped him as he saw that his wife was breathing. There were two fevered spots of red on her marble cheeks. Death had passed them both by! Again it was an enigma to him that the powerful serum, producing a temporary coma, like that before death, had finally eased its stricture of the heart and lungs and allowed life to continue in her body.

A curl of smoke under the door warned York of the danger. He swung it open and as quickly closed it as a cloud of smoke swept into the room. He picked up his wife in strong arms and ran from the building. There was a faint dismay in his heart over the loss of the laboratory, but a far greater joy that they were alive. And alive as immortals, both of them!

A month later, in a hospital, York’s tired eyes lit up happily.

“The danger is over, Vera,” he told her. “You went through the same period of illness that I did when my father gave me the serum as a child. It’s like the fevers that follow vaccination. But it’s over now, and you and I together can look down the centuries!”

Three months after this, in a hotel, Vera asked about Vinson.

“Dr. Vinson disappeared in the fire,” York told his wife, “and I’m worried about him. I can’t rest until I know where he is. He alone has my father’s secret—the original notes were destroyed together with all copies. What is he doing with the Elixir? I can’t help feeling concerned, because he is not the man to use such a thing wisely.”

A year later, he said resignedly: “I guess there’s no use to hunt him further. I’ve employed the most expert detectives, but they’ve found no trace. Wherever Vinson has gone, he’s covered his trail completely. And that’s ominous. Again, he may have tried the serum and died from it. I wish I could hope that.”

Two years later, York proudly surveyed his new laboratories, located in a remote part of the mountains. It was made possible by one of his inventions. A large industrial concern had patented his super-magnet, a by-product of his previous researches in gravitational phenomena.

“Here,” he predicted, “I shall solve the secret of gravitation.”

Five years later he had come to the conclusion that gravitation exhibited lines of force, much like a magnet. “What is wrong with the analogy of converting kinetic motion into electricity by cutting the lines of magnetic force?” he asked himself. “If the field of gravitational force is similarly cut—yes, but with what?”

Ten years later, he frowned at a new snag in his researches.

Ten years after that, with careful planning, he and Vera changed their names, to circumvent explaining their permanent youth.

A decade later they had achieved a harmony of continued existence, and mortality seemed a dream in their past.

Time swept by. Its rolling pace did not change the couple in their mountain laboratory-home. They were still thirty-five in appearance and vigor. They lived in a state of detachment from the rest of the world. From the sidelines, they watched the kaleidoscopic march of events, the unfurling of history. Strikes, famines, elections, social changes, shifting national boundaries, new inventions—their tele-visor kept them informed.

York’s experiments took him into a field wholly untouched—the phenomena of the gravitational lines of force. A field as untouched as the electromagnetic scale before Newton and his successors explored, it. It had taken over two centuries, and a host of diligent savants, to understand radio waves and cosmic radiation, the limits of that field. York laboured to explore his field alone, and in less than two centuries.

In a way, York was equal to a line of scientists following one goal. Each time he reached some hiatus and had to branch away. He was like a new worker taking up the work another had left in death. And he had the advantage of always being in perfect condition, physically and mentally. Thus it was, that a task that normally would have required all of a thousand years of science fell before his irresistible onslaught. He called his wife in excitedly one day.

“I’ve cut the force-lines of gravitation,” he said triumphantly. “I use light-beams, curved ones, for the energy source. I feed them into the quartz coils, like electricity in a helix of copper wire, to create a magnetic field. A magnetic field is used in opposition to another magnetic field to produce kinetic motion. My quartz field produces a gravitational field, in opposition to Earth’s gravity, to produce kinetic motion. Unlimited kinetic motion—direct from Earth’s gravitational field!”

York’s voice became a paean of enthusiasm.

“It is the answer to space travel, if I can refine my apparatus to the point where a single beam of direct sunlight will actuate my quartz rotors. I must also make a sun-charging battery to spin the rotors, so that a ship in space will need only the perpetual sunlight to motivate it. Vera, I am close!”

Close, yet it took another quarter century to achieve it. It was almost a hundred after the inoculation of Vera that York gave his ship its first tryout. It was a ten-foot globe of light metal, set with several thick quartz port-windows. Two large convex mirrors at the top were arranged to feed sunlight to knobs of sensitive selenium. Some miracle of York’s science compelled the sun’s radiant energy to pour into the ship like water into a funnel.

It handled awkwardly at first, until York got the feel of changing his artificial gravity fields. Then he was able to whisk the heavy globular ship about with flashing speed. It looked like a bright steel bomb from some giant cannon.

He leaped out of its hatchway, panting, after landing.

“I can’t tell you how excited I am over this,” he told his wife. “Think of it. We can stock the ship with necessities and go out into space, explore the other planets!”

They made a trip to the moon and back that same year. From this experience, York was able to refine his apparatus still more. They made a trip to Mars and to Venus. He began planning a trip to another star. This would require a larger ship for supplies and motors to be run by starlight and tenuous mid-void gravitational forces, and he began its construction. If his gift of immortality had made him feel like a god, this ability to explore the ether was still more of a God-given attribute.

He opened his eyes one day to realize he had been drunk with these things. as he had been with the first realization of immortality. Earnestly, then, he sat down to write out the complete plans for his anti-gravity unit. He would send this to every scientific institution of the world.

It was just before he had finished the long and complicated paper, that Vera called his attention to startling news over the radio. All during the past year there had been mysterious, invasions in outlying sections of the world. Mysterious, but unimportant in that they involved obscure regions. The invaders had always come in small, swift ships, equipped with incredibly destructive weapons. Many garbled reports had been received from places invaded, but no one seemed to know just who or what was responsible.

But this night, the news was alarming.

“Rome has just undergone a terrific bombing by a mysterious fleet of small, fast aircraft,” an excited announcer told the world. “They may be the same ones that have been terrorizing Earth in the past year. All the world is aroused. What nation has done this cowardly thing, attacking without warning?”

York’s eyes reflected again the emotions that had haunted him in the World War.

War! That most senseless of human atrocities.

“Haven’t they had enough of it?” he cried. “They fought like beasts for a decade just thirty years ago. I was tempted then to reveal my super-weapon and let them butcher one another to nothingness. I am tempted now.”

The next day Berlin was bombed. And in the following days, Paris, London, and Moscow. The world gasped. What mad nation was challenging all Europe? Tokyo was bombed, and then Washington. What power was challenging the whole world? A new note of terror arose when a gigantic fleet, composed of mixed Italian and German aircraft, was annihilated by fifty small ships of the invaders. The enemy seemed to have some long-range weapon that made victory ridiculously easy.

York waited for the unknown power to declare itself. Then he would act. After the succession of bombings, which had not been very destructive and had evidently been an exhibition of power, there was a lull of a day, then news that set the world on fire.

“The enemy had finally announced itself,” blared the tele-visor. “This afternoon a powerful radio message was picked up at many official stations. The invaders that have bombed the world’s most important cities call themselves The Immortals. They demand a parley of all important nations, at which The Immortals are to be accepted as the sole government on earth. In plain words, The Immortals, whoever they are, demand world dominion. This, or the threat of continuous bombing and destruction by their invincible fleet of fifty ships!”

Then York knew. He and Vera looked at one another. “Dr. Vinson!” gasped York. “Dr. Vinson and a band of ruthless demons bent on conquering Earth. For a hundred years he planned this. I did not think he would go to such lengths. In some hidden spot he and his crew, all immortals, must have laboured for this day. Undoubtedly they are all scientists and technicians. Men who in a century’s time could do miracles in discovery. Vastly improved ships, super-weapons, carefully laid plans. They played for big stakes and made preparations in a big way.”

He turned his anger on himself.

“Why didn’t I see it before this? It’s all so clear now. In the past year they carried out experimental raids, to gauge their power and readiness. I should have suspected, and prepared. Now they have struck, and the end will be soon. True scientific warfare against the world’s tremendous, but clumsy armament. The wasp against the bear. It can sting again and again, too quick and small to be crushed by might.” Again news came over the tele-visor, indicating the crisis which faced the world. A hastily and secretly formed armada of the world’s best fighting craft—of every large nation—had massed and challenged The Immortals. The challenge had been promptly accepted. The incredible story told by gasping announcers was that by sheer weight of numbers the fleet had succeeded in downing three of the enemy, while they themselves were mowed to one-third their strength. The remnant had fled.

Vera was alarmed by the sickly grey colour of York’s face as he heard this.

“I’m responsible,” he whispered hoarsely. “I let the dangerous secret of immortality fall into Vinson’s hands!” His whisper continued, but with a deadlier note in it, “I must act before it is too late.”

It was the climax of his super-lifetime. Armed with nothing more than a few pages of diagrams and figures, York descended on Washington in his silent gravity ship and said he could fight the alien power. He was derided rather than laughed at, in that the situation was too grim for laughing.

5

HOWEVER, the gravity ship could not be laughed at. And when a group of scientists was hurriedly assembled, they said the thing looked good on paper. At the same time the startling news came that The Immortals had been completely victorious in Europe and were now sweeping Asia. If Japan would fall, as must be, America would be next, as the last remaining power.

Faster than they had ever moved before, the wheels of industry, lashed by a frantic government, turned out the apparatus York wanted. He had them secretly move their headquarters to Pittsburgh. The terrible weapon he had kept locked in his brain for over a century took form here.

In two weeks it was nearly completed, but not before The Immortals, now dominant in the Eastern Hemisphere, swung their tiny, deadly fleet westward. At the first encounter, the pride of America’s aerial defence was annihilated by the sweeping rays of the enemy. These rays had all the potency of a two-ton bomb at close range, yet were invisible and noiseless.

“We must surrender!” This cry echoed in the hall of authority.

“Hold out!” commanded York. “Hold-out, I tell you.”

They obeyed him, almost hypnotized by his blazing eyes. The Immortals, after defiance of their ultimatum, promptly began razing cities to the ground. Their supply of fuel and ammunition seemed inexhaustible. Coming from the west, San Francisco, Denver and St. Louis crumpled before the onslaught.

“Enough is enough. We must give in!” was the horrified clamour among the leaders and statesmen.

“Hold out!” screamed York. “Three more days!”

They did. In those three days Chicago, Cincinnati and Philadelphia became smoking ruins. And the invincible fleet headed for New York City!

But in those three days York became prepared. His weapon was mounted on his ship, a long snout of vitrolite pivoted on a universally jointed base. Wires led inside the ship, through hastily made rips in the hull, to the power source of the ship. By a quick change, York had fitted his anti-gravity unit to utilize Earth’s tremendous gravitational field for power for the vitrolite gun.

Then he contacted the fleet of The Immortals by radio, challenged them, called them back from their course toward New York. They might have taken it as a desperate bluff to save that great city except that York made his challenge a personal one—from himself to Dr. Vinson.

“York?” came back a voice that was recognizable as Dr. Vinson’s. “Anton York? Impossible—he—”

“I did not die, Vinson. I survived the cyanide. I’ve been wondering if you would appear on the scene. I’d almost forgotten you in the century that has gone by. But bad pennies always show up. You’ve done a lot of damage, Vinson, but you’ll do no more. I’ll meet your fleet anywhere you say for a showdown. If you don’t meet me half-way, I’ll hound you to the ends of the earth—to the ends of the Universe if I must!”

Vinson’s voice spluttered over the radio. For the first time his companions around him saw fear on their leader’s face. What man could this York be; that their hitherto confident master feared him?

Then Vinson spoke again: “Wait, York. I don’t know what you have to give you such confidence against my fleet, but listen to reason. You’re an Immortal, as we are. You belong with us, York—as rulers of Earth. I have no grudge against you. Join up with me and that’s the end of it. Why should there be trouble between us?”

York’s voice was a white-hot hiss in the microphone.

“You will rule Earth without me, or not at all. But first you must put me out of the way. Name the place!’

“Over Niagara Falls!” Vinson’s voice, previously uncertain, rang now with arrogance and assurance “What can you do against the fleet that has whipped a world?”

It must have seemed like a battle of the gods to those fortunate eyes that saw it, especially those who had caught the exchange of words between York and Vinson.

York’s ship, a bright ball of metal and glass, dropped from the clouds several miles from the fleet of The Immortals. A group of tiny black figures could be seen around the base of the vitrolite gun, precariously hung in sprung seats. These were the gunners, iron-nerved army men who knew nothing about the weapon, but who knew that when you aimed the long snout and jerked a lever, a something was released that could destroy. Other than that they had only grim determination and courage.

Like the buzzing of angry hornets, Vinson’s fleet dashed for the lone ship. York’s ship, high over Lake Erie, hovered like a poised eagle. The long, slender vitrolite tube swung toward the oncoming ships. Something blue and pulsating sprang from it, projected a streamer of violet across the intervening space of two miles.

What inconceivable force it was, no one was ever to know. York could have described it briefly as a combination of atom-tuned sound vibrations and, electron-tuned gamma vibrations, both together able to rip matter to ultra-shreds, without revealing its secret. For it was a type of wave existing in the audio-ether transition stage between the known and the unknown in catalogued science.

But the effect was not so mysterious. A dozen of the enemy craft sagged strangely, burst into little bubbles of vapour, and changed to clouds of black dust that fell slowly toward the water below. The rest of the fleet, as one, swept up and to one side, away from this frightful weapon. Yet before they had completed the retreat, twelve more of their ships had become puff-balls of black soot.

York smiled grimly. He had purposely made the focus of the gun’s beam very wide. Each time it belched forth its titanic charge, a ransom in power went with it. But Earth, could afford it, with its almost unlimited gravitational stresses that fed the weapon.

The range of The Immortals’ weapons was known to be just as great, but they had not thought to use them on this lone ship three miles away. Now however, the air droned with the concussion of atmospheric rents, made by invisible streamers of their ray-forces. Their rays were amplified cathode radiations, million-watt bundles of electrons at half the speed of light.

York was not caught napping. His ship had already moved upward, at right angles to their position, presenting a target moving at a speed of ten thousand miles an hour. It was cruel for the men exposed to the air around the vitrolite gun, but necessary. York flung his ship above the clouds. The-Immortals seemed nonplussed. They scattered widely and massed their beams upward, on the blind chance of scoring a hit. When York’s ship did appear, far on the other side of his former position, it was heralded by the destruction of eight more of Vinson’s fleet. Most of his ships were already destroyed and the fight had hardly begun!

Under this scene, the waters of Lake Erie boiled and rose in great clouds of steam. Niagara Falls, though York tried to avoid it, took most of one of his gun’s charges, and, became in one minute an unrecognizable jumble of churning waters and puffs of black vapour. Grim reminder for all time of this battle of the gods.

The Immortals fled, ingloriously, scattering wide. The swift, sweeping sword of destruction from York’s ship picked them off one by one. There was no limit to its range. It hounded the last one down after a brief chase. And the menace of the Immortals was over!

The world had to content itself with honouring three of the five men who had handled the vitrolite gun, and burying the other two, dead from their ordeal. York, after landing them, had promptly departed, without a word to anyone. Without waiting for thanks and praises. Like a god he had come and like a god he left.

And like a god he went out into the void not long afterward, with his wife, leaving behind him the legacy of space travel. The secret of the super-weapon went with him. The secret of immortality was no longer his to give away. Earth had had a god, one who had nearly destroyed it, and then saved it. One who had shown the way to other worlds. One who had exhibited an awesome weapon to warn mankind what its warfare could lead to. One about whom many legends were to be woven, true and false.

But now the god was gone—forever. Once given a taste of the supreme freedom of the void, he could not return to the pettiness of Earth. Nor did he care to interfere in any way, altruistic or otherwise, in its normal course of affairs.

On and on he went, he and his immortal companion. Their understanding and wisdom grew to cosmic heights.

They visited many worlds, many suns. Time meant nothing. They discovered the secret of voluntary suspended animation, requiring no food or air. They became truly gods.

Somewhere in the dim future ages he must die, this manmade god. Sometime when the scales of time have sufficiently lowered the amount of cosmic radiation which gives the god life.