Man of Two Worlds

by John Russell Fearn, Vargo Statten

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

Synopsis

What happened to Walter Cardish, epicenter of a freak storm in the Lake District? The source of the strange lightning that struck him was a complete mystery, but only until its curious mental effect on Cardish became apparent.

Release date: September 30, 2015

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 236

Sample

For Walter Cardish, normally a gent’s wear salesman in one of London’s biggest stores, it was a vast relief to be alone for once. In his business life he was perpetually under the orders of the department manager; in his private life he was perpetually under the orders of his wife Bertha—or else Tommy. Tommy was his son, nearing fourteen, with all the necessary qualifications for becoming a juvenile delinquent.

Yes, it was good to be alone. The hill scenery was somewhat dimmed by an approaching thunderstorm, the air was as still as death, and even the scent of grass and wild flower was smothered under a distinct smell of sulphur as the storm neared flashpoint—but it was good to be alone just the same.

Just here, in the Lake District, it was such a long way from London too—far enough away to forget what the grey old busy city looked like. At the moment Walter Cardish was walking across Copper’s Brow—a great desolate stretch sandwiched between Rydal Water and Endor’s Tarn—which meant that the hotel where he had left Bertha and Tommy for the time being was some five miles away. They had seen that a storm was gathering and refused to venture forth. Cardish, not brave in many things, had none the less decided to take his chance if only to enjoy the solitude of his own company and the beauty of the landscape.

Now he was not so sure of himself. The storm showed every prospect of developing into a “stinker” when it did break. To the north and east the sky was violet, the hills mounted in indigo array against it. To the south-west the sun was glimmering like a brass tray seen by firelight. The August day had started well and was apparently going to end badly.

Conscious of a strange, inexplicable sense of danger, Walter Cardish began to increase his pace. In the far distance he had observed a crofter’s hut—it might at least be shelter if he could reach it before the storm broke in earnest. He kept his eye on it, giving only an occasional glance at the ominous sky.

The faster he hurried the harder he breathed. Life in the city, and such an unhealthy one in a basement too, had not moulded him into an athlete. Indeed he was exactly the opposite—small-built, narrow-shouldered, thin-faced, with a perpetual air of expectancy about him. As indeed there was. He was always ready to spring to attention at a command, whether it came from his boss, his wife, or his son. Poor Walter Cardish! How like so many other millions of men, yet like any normal human being he had his secret ambitions, his loves and his hates, even though he never dared to confess to any of them except to himself.

Then the storm blasted forth. No other expression fits it. It did not “break” like any self-respecting thunderstorm with several preliminary distant rumbles and a distant flash or two, to show it was warming up. Instead the overture was a savage flash of brilliant violet streamers which seemed as though they had ripped open earth and hell itself.

Cardish came to a standstill, his heart racing. His limbs were tingling, too. That appalling flash had been dangerously close to him and he was more than sure that it had left behind a distinct crater in the rockery. The air reeked of electrical discharge. From walking rapidly he changed to a run, his ears still singing from the impact of the thunder.

Then came the second flash, and this time Cardish was just in the right place to receive it. He was streaking over bare rockery towards the crofter’s hut and the shimmering electrical blaze enveloped him from head to toe. He was flung a dozen feet and crashed senseless amidst the boulders. Thunder cannonaded, but he did not hear it. Rain descended in a volume reminiscent of the Deluge. Out of the absolute stillness a whistling gale rose to a shrieking hurricane. Over the Lake District there burst the worst storm in living memory and it raged for nearly six hours. What the lightning missed the hurricane destroyed, and where both these elemental forces failed the flood took toll. The storm began at four-thirty in the afternoon and it was ten-thirty before a blazing golden shaft of sunlight deep behind the hills broke through the rolling, exhausted clouds. The storm was on its way elsewhere.

Or was it? That was the peculiar thing. Nobody else had the storm. The rest of the country had perfect summer weather. And it is most unusual for a storm to nearly destroy one place and then evaporate. Usually it moves in a circle and those in the track know when to start hiding the knives and covering the mirrors.

No, in this case it was just the Lake District with the hapless Walter Cardish as the apparent epicentre of the disturbance. His wife and Tommy, marooned by flood waters in the hotel, gave all the necessary details to the rescuers in rowing boats who came to their aid in the flamboyant, angry sunset. Trained guides set off, first in boats and then on foot as they came to higher ground, and so towards one in the morning they found Walter, still alive but unconscious, soaked to the skin and muttering something incoherent to himself.

He was promptly transferred to the Windermere General Hospital and here he lay in something like a coma. His wife, informed of the situation, declared that it was just about the dam’-fool thing he would do and promptly sailed through the night, the yawning Tommy at her side, in the first relief boat heading Windermere way.

The rest of the country, untouched by Nature’s outburst, heard the news in some surprise over the radio.

“The Lake District,” the announcer stated, “has been hit by a storm of unparalleled violence, lasting some six hours. In that time whole villages have been swept away, bridges torn down, buildings shattered by lightning bolts, and hundreds of people rendered homeless or been killed and injured by lightning. The full extent of the damage is not yet known due to the difficulty in getting news from the flooded areas. Elsewhere in Britain it has been a bright, sunny day, and the weather forecast indicates that these conditions will continue. The meteorologists are unable to account for the Lake District disaster. Their charts show the area to be under the influence of the anticyclone which is dominating the rest of the country.”

So said the weather forecasters, and for some days afterwards scientists were also at work examining the problem. They had little data to go upon, however. The records of the Lake District weather station simply showed the amount of rain which had fallen, the peak wind velocity, and the maximum-minimum temperatures. In short, no more than would normally be recorded in any storm. Nor did interviews with the stricken ones offer much information. Lurid tales of savage lightning flashes and hurricane winds were sensational but not scientific … So at length, during which time Walter Cardish still lay in hospital, the business was put down to a freak of Nature, and that was that.

Certain scientists, however, knew that the Lake District affair was not a freak of Nature. Those scientists were some forty million miles away—big-headed, slow-moving beings with superb minds and no consciences whatever. The scientists of Mars in fact, ruling faction of their underground race, who regarded the strange storm on Earth as the final outburst of one of their experiments.

“It would appear,” observed the First Mathematician of Mars, “that our new electronic brain is to some extent quite successful, though unfortunately undisciplined. The equational vibrations we built up got out of hand and travelled outwards into space, destroying part of our major city in the doing, transposing certain parts of the Earth’s satellite, and finally expending itself on Earth itself.”

“And judging from the radio reports reaching us from Earth, the inhabitants are not at all pleased about it,” another of the Martian scientists commented. “They experienced what they think was a violent thunderstorm. Naturally it is beyond their small intelligences to realise that what really took place was a reshuffling of the atmospheric and electrical values of their planet in an area exactly bounded by the outflowing wave from our electronic brain.”

The Martians nodded gravely and came their nearest to smiling at each other. The destruction of lives and property on another world did not matter to them in the least. They were satisfied that their latest scientific pet, a super-electronic brain, had possibilities if further developed.

“What,” asked the chief electronic expert, “do you propose to do next?”

The First Mathematician reflected. “Develop the Brain still further, I fancy, and make it more disciplined. We require it to exert its influence for our benefit, not generate a wave which destroys and introverts matter and elements for no sensible reason—— However, despite the mad behaviour of the Brain on this first occasion, I suppose we should feel compensated by the fact that it has accidentally brought an Earthman to us. It will be interesting to study him.”

“A very low form of life,” commented the First in Biology, with supreme contempt. “At the moment he hardly seems able to speak coherently.”

“Still recovering from shock, I imagine,” said the First in Mentality. “We must remember that he was suddenly transported as a pure equation from his own world to ours—hurled over an interstellar gap of forty million miles before the Brain’s influence left him and he thereby reverted to his original matter formation.”

“Which seems to suggest that he must have been at the exact centre of the outflowing mathematical wave and was caught up in it,” the First in Mathematics observed, thinking. “A most peculiar freak of electronics. We might do worse than see if this Earth creature has recovered his intelligence far enough to converse with us.”

The First in Mathematics pressed a button on the big desk at which he and the ruling faction were seated. He uttered a few words in his own language into a concealed microphone and then sat back to wait.

Presently the bronze-tinted door of the chamber slid aside and two Martians entered, supporting between them an obviously debilitated Earthman dressed in Martian raiment far too big for him. And no wonder, for the Martians were at least seven feet tall—some of them even topping the nine-foot mark. Between the giant guards the small, tottering figure of Walter Cardish looked positively ridiculous.

Walter Cardish? The Earthman looked exactly like him to the smallest detail. The only difference seemed to be that this Walter Cardish had a peculiarly translucent quality as though it were almost possible to see into him. His skin was strangely glasslike in its transparency. But he was Walter Cardish. No doubt of it—even though at this identical moment he was lying in a coma in a hospital in Windermere.

“Seat him,” the First in Mathematics ordered briefly, and the two guards did as instructed. Cardish was heaved to a nearby heavily ornamented chair, placed upon it, and left there. He breathed heavily, his head h. . .