Scourge of the Atom

by John Russell Fearn, Volsted Gridban

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

Synopsis

Martin Bond had an intriguing theory of Cosmic Descent, believing that the first intelligent life in the solar system evolved on the Moon, with the Selenites later migrating to Mars, after they had destroyed their civilization and the Moon following the discovery of atomic power. The Martians had subsequently fallen victim to the same cycle of events, and their survivors had fled to Earth. There is something inherent in the atom which is released along with nuclear energy that stirs the baser passions of living beings. And now, humanity stands on the brink of atomic warfare...

Release date: March 31, 2015

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 128

Sample

It was towards the close of 1980 when it became forced upon even the most optimistic scientific minds that space travel was destined to be delayed for many years, until the unexpected difficulties in the way of its accomplishment had been overcome.

One man in the international circle of astro-physicists who did not seem particularly disturbed by the setback was Dr. Martin Bond, forty-five-year-old scientist who had contributed more to the field of physics and—surprisingly—to psychiatry than any other man of his generation. When he spoke, science listened—or so said the newspapers of the day.

So when Martin Bond asked the leading astro-physicists of every country to attend a convention at which he proposed to put forth a new, revolutionary technique in regard to space conquest there were no absentees. On the appointed day in one of London’s great meeting halls, the men and women directly and indirectly connected with interplanetary matters were fully represented, packing the great building to the ceiling.

Martin Bond himself, below medium height and already becoming grey haired, stood before the battery of microphones, movie and television cameras, and seemed completely unaware of the panoply of publicity trained upon him. Not far away from him a slender, blonde woman, many years his junior, kept a check on duplicate notes. Not that this surprised anybody else on the rostrum. Martin Bond was rarely seen without his wife, Ada, herself a brilliant radiologist.

“Thank you, my friends, for sparing the time to come and listen to me——” Martin Bond surveyed the packed array and gave his friendly smile. “Since your time is as valuable as mine I’ll come straight to the point. Right now I’ll say that I fully expect your criticism when I say that the failure of space travel is perhaps a blessing in disguise. Actually, you know, it may have saved us from walking into something about which we know nothing. Many brave lives have been sacrificed in the endeavour to cross space. We shall always revere the names of Heatherfield, Bell, Lomax, Grindley, and a host of others, but their lives are only a few compared to what might have been many. I put it to you: what do we know of the worlds we contemplate visiting? Nothing!”

Martin Bond waited until the murmur of voices had subsided once more: then——

“I have a good idea what you are thinking and saying, my friends—that we have the fruits of telescopic and spectrographic analysis. That is true, but we have nothing more. Mars, for instance, the first world we intend to visit, is still basically a mystery in spite of all the data we have about it. As to Venus, we have no details at all. The moon? Well, that satellite is obviously dead. We are all agreed, and have been for some time, that our first ‘long-distance’ goal shall be Mars, leaving Venus and her mystic cloudbelts until such time as space travel makes it reasonably safe to explore beneath them——”

There came a murmur of assent from the gathering.

“I believe,” Bond continued, “that we should know more about Mars before we venture to its surface. What civilisations there were upon it have vanished, and if there were any on the Moon they have vanished, too. As far as Mars is concerned, we do not know whether or not the Martians might have left behind on their world some dangerous legacy which might destroy us when we get there. Perhaps scientific booby-traps, poisoned atmosphere, maybe many things.

“Call me a fantastic pessimist if you wish, but these possibilities must be taken into consideration. We don’t want to make a forty-million-mile journey and find death at the end of it. If, as is possible, the mighty scientists of Mars were forced to leave behind valuable secrets, is it not possible also that they would take the precaution of safeguarding them against visitors who might one day come from other worlds? I submit it purely as a possibility. So, then, I believe we should know all about Mars before visiting it.”

“But that’s impossible!” somebody objected. “We have already done all we can.”

Bond shook his head. “On the contrary. It is because it is possible that I asked all of you to come here. We have a theory which infers that we of Earth are descended from the original Martians, they in turn being descended from Selenites. Is that not correct?”

Fierce argument broke out, as it always did whenever the extraordinary theory of Earth heritage was mentioned.

“I am quite aware,” Bond went on, “that a lot of you have no faith in Manhafer’s Theory of Cosmic Descent, but for my own part I believe he is entirely correct, chiefly because it is the only theory which explains why Earth, of all the planets, has intelligent life. Manhafer believed that life originated on the Moon, a small, hot body, that it then migrated to Mars, the next hottest body, and finally to Earth—and he backed up his idea with a wealth of inference. In a word, we of Earth are Selenite-Martian Earthlings. And that is the vital point. I believe, speaking now from the angle of psychiatry, that it should be possible to recapture the past to know what happened to Mars’ civilisation, and the Moon’s, too, if it comes to that.”

“Trying to probe the Time-continuum is a major sport of us scientists,” remarked a front-bencher. “So far it has achieved precisely nothing. I for one don’t believe that the past can be recaptured.”

“That depends on the method used.” Bond had suddenly become didactic. “The greatest governing factor in restoring memory is environment. You have evidence of that in the treatment of an amnesia victim. Such a person is placed amongst surroundings which were once very familiar, and more often than not the dormant memory cells are stimulated into action and a return of memory ensues. As another aspect of the power of environment and the effect it has on mind and body, may I quote the importance which social welfare experts place upon it? It is well known that in nine cases out of ten crime is begotten by environment in the first instance.

“Let us step further and consider how environment operated in the case of Kasper Hauser. After his eighteen years in solitary confinement he was able to see the stars in the daytime, and what we call ‘normal’ life was so repugnant to him that he asked to be taken back to his cell, where he could be happy! The same case was true of Baptiste Mourton of Toulon, who became a galley slave for a hundred years. He lived through it and then asked to go back because he had enjoyed it! Thus does environment mould the mind, and the mind the body——”

“Yes, yes,” one of the assembly interrupted impatiently, “but what bearing have such cases on our problem?”

“Just this, my friend. I believe that from the data we have—telescopic and spectrographic—we should reconstruct a small part of Mars’ surface as we know it today, exact in every detail with the same aridity of sand, complete with ferrous oxide deposits, an identical tenuity of atmosphere. A make-believe world in fact; a section of Mars isolated from the rest of Earth. If we can do that I am prepared to live in this ‘re-created’ fragment of Mars for a period of two years, my wife being my only voluntary companion. I think that by the art of mental sublimation, of which I have studied a great deal, I ought to be able to make myself so en rapport with my surroundings that deep memories will be revived. I hope I may be able to recall again incidents which happened on another world, memories which I and all of us have carried over the gulf of a thousand deaths and long since forgotten.”

There was a long silence, to be broken at last by a question.

“Just as familiar surroundings awaken the memory of the amnesia victim?”

“Exactly so,” Bond assented. “Such a return of memory can only take place if, as most of us believe, we are descended from the original Martians. If that be really true then some memory must still remain in the mind of each one of us, and that memory can only be stimulated by the subjection of normal will, familiar surroundings from a past time, and the power to ‘think of nothing,’ an art perfected by the Tibetan mystics. As a psychiatrist, I believe I can achieve that condition. The gain would be obvious: knowing what happened in the past we could prepare our own future in view of that knowledge. We would know what sort of a world we are trying to reach, whether it is safe or otherwise, and we would also acquire many explanations for at present obscure problems regarding our racial ancestry.”

Head inclined towards head as the project was discussed. Bond waited, knowing full well what the decision would be. He had never yet made a proposition but what he had won his point, though this was certainly the first time he had wedded psychiatry to the field of astronomical science.

Finally Dr. Hawthore, Chairman of the World Science Council, rose to his feet, acting in his usual capacity as spokesman for the gathering.

“I think, Dr. Bond, that we all owe you a profound debt of gratitude for your offer to place yourself in voluntary confinement amidst alien conditions for two years in an effort to wrest the secrets of Mars from the realms of memory. To your wife also we are no less grateful. My colleagues and I are quite prepared to follow out and finance whatever scheme you have for re-creating a portion of Mars where you can allow your memory full sway.”

Bond smiled, hardly listening to the remainder of the carefully chosen words. Back of his mind was a sense of elation that his long-cherished idea that memory and environment could solve the riddles of the cosmos was at last to receive acclaim.

And, given complete financial backing by the World Science Council, Martin Bond wasted no time in choosing the site for the “Hermitage.” In fact, he had known for some time where it was to be—an abandoned film and television studio fifty miles outside London and situated in the heart of wooded countryside. The nearest village was ten miles away, and for five years the studio had been a white elephant. Once the Council bought the place it was surrounded by a high electrified fence and then, under Bond’s directions, the huge interior of the place was cleared of every encumbrance and the re-creation of Martian conditions began.

Gradually, as though in preparation for a movie set, bare boards were covered to a two-foot depth in sand, in which was exactly the right admixture of ferrous oxide. Next, the place was completely sealed off from the outer atmosphere and the air pressure lowered to a density approximating that at the summit of Mount Everest. The temperature was also thermostatically fixed at about 50 degrees F., approximating that of the Martian noon.

The most complicated problem—or so it seemed to the various scientists who came to view the proceedings at intervals—was that of reducing the gravity to correspond to Mars’ mass of 0.11, meaning a gravity two-fifths that of Earth. . .