Laughter in Space

by John Russell Fearn, Vargo Statten

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

Dr. Cranley is sentenced to exile in space for murdering a rival scientist, and swears revenge... Later, across the world people suddenly start behaving like lunatics, culminating in their being gripped by hysterical laughter until they collapse-dead. It becomes known as the Laughing Plague. Eventually it is learned that the Earth has crossed the path of a spatial cloud of gas that was the result of an ancient cataclysm that blew the one-time moon of Venus to pieces, leaving its poison atmosphere free in space. Then, radio messages are received from Dr. Cranley, now domiciled and living on Venus. He offers to send a Venusian antidote to save humanity. But can he be trusted?

Release date: March 31, 2015

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 83

Sample

The Central Criminal Court of the Council of Science was in session. The great room which housed the august assembly was only one of hundreds in the huge building in Central London from which was dispensed all the law and order of the planet. In the year 2000 A.D. the myriad and one ideologies of past eras had been wiped out by wars and by the progress of scientific thought and practice, and now there ruled over the world the Council of Science, with the Central Criminal Court to deal with infractions against its rulings.

Here in this assembly of judges were the best judicial brains of the day, men and women, whose decision was absolutely final. There was no jury as such, but machines of infinite complexity were able to read a man or woman prisoner through and through and upon their findings rested judgment. There were no halfway penalties, no imprisonments. Freedom or death—these alone were the alternatives.

Into this solemn court on the morning of March 3rd, 2000, there was ushered a slender man of middle age, grey-haired, but with dignity in his bearing. There was about him a certain aloof air as though he had nothing but contempt for the guards holding him and the men and women waiting to pass judgment. Finally he shook free the restraint of the men pinioning him and, at a nod from the President of the Court, he was permitted to move to the raised dais with the frontal rail where all prisoners stood for examination.

For a long time there was silence even though, high in the arched ceiling behind soundproof viltex glass, cameras were whirring and recorders were all set to go. Every trial was recorded in detail and filed, though not necessarily for public dissemination.

The man on the dais waited, hands clasped behind him, a cold arrogance in his sharply chiselled features, obstinacy in his jutting lips. He had the face and head of a thinker and a man of action, and an obvious intolerance towards all those whom he did not consider reached his own peak of intellect. A peak that would have been difficult to attain for Dr. Boyd Cranley, First Physicist of the Bureau of Intermolecular Physics, was one of the ablest scientists in the country—or, for that matter, the world.

“Dr. Cranley——” The President started speaking at last, magnificently gowned in silver and gold chainwork as became his high office. “Dr. Boyd Cranley, you have been summoned before your fellow scientists to answer charges which have been laid against you by your professional colleagues and the Council of Science itself. You are accused of the basest crime in our records—murder! The evidence reveals that on the night of February 23rd you wittingly brought about the death of Conrad Histel, the famous mathematician. The records say that you deliberately engineered a plot by which he was killed. You made him perform a dangerous scientific experiment without obtaining the usual written consent of the person concerned.”

“I did not consider there was any need for a written consent,” Cranley retorted. “The experiment, as far as I could see, had not a single element of danger in it. It was sheer mischance which brought about Histel’s death.”

“This Court finds that hard to believe. Apparently you had devised a machine for the penetration of future Time, and Histel had done a good deal to help in its creation. You, as the physicist, knew far more about the machine than Histel and you must have known that the radiations it transmitted were inimical to life. Yet, on the pretext of permitting Histel to take a glimpse of the future, you allowed him to step into the area of these radiations, and in consequence he was instantly killed.”

“The radiations which killed him were ZG-Nine,” Cranley replied curtly. “All of you here know that they develop without warning, that they have been catalogued as the Unknown Factor in scientific theses. They developed amongst the radiations of the Time-machine, with disastrous consequences. I have since worked out why they developed. Apparently there is a mathematical barrier to the penetration of future time, and any infraction of that law creates ZG-Nine, which destroys. We have discovered that in other experiments where, evidently, Nature does not intend us to probe.”

“Is it not odd,” the President asked deliberately, “that you only discovered the presence of ZG-Nine radiations after Histel had been slain by them?”

Cranley clenched his fists, looking angrily on the faces directed downward towards him. “How could I be expected to detect what was not there? There was no infraction of the law of Time until somebody tried to penetrate its mathematical variants—in this case Conrad Histel. Then, and then only, ZG-Nine developed. That you should dare to suggest I deliberately murdered him is fantastic! Why should I? He was one of the best mathematicians in the world.”

“And your greatest rival, Dr. Cranley! It is common knowledge that you did not get the award of the World Diploma of Scientific Honour because Conrad Histel had higher claims. Nor did you succeed in winning from him the coveted Physics Award of Merit. He stood in your way, Dr. Cranley—and he would aways have stood in your way because he was ten years your junior and, by the natural order of things, liable to outlive you.”

“For which reason,” Cranley asked acidly, “I killed him?”

“That is what we believe, and the machines which have studied you reveal no extenuating circumstances. Your mind had been read and your actions on the day in question thoroughly studied. Your emotions at that period have been analysed: they were high in the percentage curve and your heartbeats showed a definite acceleration——”

“Of course they did!” Cranley cried. “Wouldn’t yours if you thought the secrets of future Time were going to be read?”

“The quotient curve shows a rise of emotion of guilt! The anticipation of murder! The thrilling expectation of——”

“Curse the quotient!” Cranley roared, beating his fist on the rail. “You forget I helped to create these very machines which are now condemning me! Do you dare to think they are utterly infallible? That their quotient readings cannot vary slightly above and below normal? This is no case for machine-reading, my friends. I am not a common criminal and a murderer: I am one of the most distinguished scientists in the world and, as such, I appeal to you to use your own reason and ignore all the instrumental claptrap which the Scientific Council says you must employ.”

“We cannot ignore them. All our law is based upon them. and we are compelled to accept their findings.” The President hesitated for a moment then asked a question. “Why did you ask Histel to step into the machine’s vibrations to explore future time? Why did you not do it yourself?”

“I couldn’t. I had to control the machine.”

“The machines do not say that. The machines infer that you know what would happen and deliberately side-stepped that possibility and sent Histel to his doom.”

“Machines! Machines! Machines!” Cranley shouted. “Was there ever a world so hag-ridden with instruments and equipment that it cannot think for itself any more! Where is the law that relied on commonsense and the reasoned judgment of sane men and women? Chaos and blind prejudice! That is the mechanical, merciless law of this day and age.”

His protest, though it was listened to in silent respect because of his eminence in public life, had, none the less, no effect. The President asked further questions and received further stinging answers. Back and forth the argument raged, Cranley doing his utmost to establish by normal standards his innocence, the President and his colleagues adhering to the mechanical findings of the law they were compelled to administer.

At last there was silence. Dr. Cranley had tried every device he knew to defend himself and could do nothing but await the verdict. He looked up at the President, then at the gigantic, mysterious machines whose impartial calculations had sold his life. In his heart of hearts he knew it.

“Dr. Cranley,” the President said at last, his voice completely without emotion, “we of the Criminal Court have nothing but the highest respect for your intellectual attainments, but we are compelled in view of the forensic infallibility of the machines to accept their decision—which is that you deliberately led Conrad Histel to his death because he represented a barrier to your own progress. Normally the punishment for such a crime would be death, but in your case we are prepared to make an exception.”

“Why?” Cranley asked coldly. “In the law of this planet there are only two edicts—freedom or death. I demand one or the other.”

“There is also Rule Eighty-Five,” the President explained. “Namely—if in the belief of the Council there is some doubt as to the accuracy of the equipment used they may be at liberty to alleviate the sentence accordingly. We believe that you sent Histel to his death, because the cumulative findings of the machines could not all be so wrong, but we also believe that you perhaps did not do it with cold-blooded deliberation but from sudden impulse. Whatever the reason, instant death is not to be your penalty. Instead you will be fired into space in a one-man projectile, its controls mathematically locked so th. . .