Is there a Destiny? Does Fate impose a limit? What Barrier stands between man and the creation of life?
Since the legendary failure of the ill-fated Frankenstein, man has tried time and time again to pass those limits. He has created androids, clumsy robots of flesh and blood. He has made men of metal and servants of plastic, with wheels for limbs and magnetic tapes for voices. Man has made things by cross breeding the animal kingdom and destroying Nature's intentions...but man has never yet made man. Or has he?
Forbisher thought that he had the answer. It wasn't a clumsy Synthetic. It wasn't an Android, or a Robot, it was a real flesh and blood human being.
The beautiful woman in his arms was the product of a laboratory experiment, not the result of a natural biological process. But how could he prove it?
Release date:
August 28, 2014
Publisher:
Orion Publishing Group
Print pages:
320
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THE sea was as smooth as glass, a great salt mill pond that lapped darkly against the islands which crossed its deep confines like stepping stones across a river. The swell was so gentle as to be almost imperceptible; mighty deeps were in a mood of gentleness and calm.
Marina lay on her back, shivering slightly and staring out through the glass. She wondered now whether the whole business had been a rank and dangerous mistake, but it was too late to go back—or was it?
It was difficult to move with the rolling and swaying of her vessel, and the glass was so thick that all she could see was light and water. She looked up at the bewildering brightness of a great golden something that hung high, high above her head, that gleamed like a million candles. She closed her eyes against it. Now that she was lying perfectly still she was acting as ballast in her strange craft. Some of the water ran from the edges of the glass, so that it was no longer so besmeared as it had been. She was able to see that there was something above her, rather like a gigantic, overturned blue bowl, across which fleecy white shapes hurried as though on urgent business. She wondered if they could possibly be alive. She had never seen anything like them before. The shapes were fascinating, and they appeared to have the ability to change their outlines at will. Marina ran a hand through her long, silky, black hair, and wondered anew whether the whole thing had been worth while. It hadn’t been like this when they had talked about it, she thought it would have been all so different … then, she thought, things seldom turn out as you expect them to. There had been that dreadful acceleration, that rushing sensation, then the loop; the impact; the falling back; and then, when she had recovered consciousness, a very unpleasant headache, and a feeling of sickness. She had simply lain here looking up at the bright disc in the blueness, and the strange grey and white things that flew past. It was not going to be like this at all. Everything was so strange and so odd. None of the old familiar landmarks were there at all. It was a completely different environment. In some ways strangely beautiful, in others terrifying.
How long she had lain there she didn’t know, her time counter had been smashed in the fall, which had followed the great leap. The radio, however was still working … perhaps she could contact her people. She didn’t know whether the radio would still work at that distance. She didn’t know how far she had come, there was no means of telling, it had been a wild, rash, impulsive, yet irresistibly attractive experiment. For Marina of the silky black hair and the bewitching black eyes possessed an insatiable curiosity. She fiddled with the radio for what seemed an age, and finally she heard a familiar voice.
“This is Hela calling, this is Hela calling, Marina is that you? Marina? Marina, this is Hela, are you receiving us?”
She turned over to transmit.
“Yes, I am receiving you loud and clear.” There was an audible sigh of relief from the other end, and then a long silence ensued, for neither Hela nor Marina could think of anything to say.
“What’s it like?”
“Strange.”
“Well, we knew it would be,” said Hela after a thoughtful pause, “but strange in what way? Are there lights or colours?”
“There’s a great blue thing over the top, like a huge bowl turned upside down,” said Marina, “and as I lie on my back I can see most of it. I am still in the water, yet I seem to have got to the limit of it. When I came up, I rose out of the water for some way and then fell back.”
“Oh!” The voice at the other end was bewildered. “Didn’t it——?”
“I know,” said Marina, “it should have done, but the theory was wrong! Hela, I think that there is air all around.”
“Why not undo the vessel and find out?”
“I can’t yet, it’s not safe, I’ve got enough oxygen for several hours yet, but I’m hoping I shall be found pretty soon.”
“I wonder what they’re like?”
“So do I,” said Marina.
“Do you wish you hadn’t gone?” asked Hela.
“There are some strange things above me, I can’t understand them at all. They’re white and grey and their outlines are indefinite and they’re flying slowly.”
“Do you think they have flying machines?”
“I don’t think these are machines. They change their shape.”
“They change their shape?” echoed Hela in amazement.
“Yes, as they fly they seem to change shape,” repeated Marina. “And the strangest of all is a great golden thing; a huge, round, golden thing that blazes with light, and, although it was cold when I first opened my eyes after the fall the outside of the ship is warmer now.”
She put her hand to the glass. “I can feel the warmth. I think it’s the golden thing that warms everywhere. It almost hurts your eyes to look at it. It does, honestly. Its brighter than anything I’ve ever seen in our world.”
“How strange, how exciting,” said Hela. “I do wish you had let me come with you.”
“It was far better for one to come, than for two,” said Marina firmly. “There was enough difficulty in persuading the scientists to let one of us come. They didn’t think our idea would work. It would have taken them ages to have built a ship the way they wanted to.”
“Your father is very worried about you,” said Hela. “He thinks now you shouldn’t have gone, he says what if we’ve miscalculated and the others either can’t or won’t help you back?”
“Well, that’s just too bad, I suppose,” replied Marina, but there was an undercurrent of fear in her voice. “Hela, there’s something coming now, Hela—I can see it. It’s all blurred and vague and funny, but it’s moving towards me. It’s very, very big. I think it’s a—yes! I think it’s one of the things that we sometimes find—as they’re meant to be! Not as we see them.”
“One of the weapons?”
“I don’t think they are weapons. I never did think they were weapons,” replied Marina. “I think that when they come to us something must have gone wrong. But there’s nothing wrong with this one, its moving very fast, faster than the white things up ahead. It’s coming quite close. I’m sure it’s one of the things we find.”
“Keep in touch,” said Hela anxiously. “I hope everything will be all right.”
“ ’Course it will,” said Marina. If the great legends are true they cannot be very different from us.”
“But what if the legends are not true?” said Hela. “Many of the young men down here do not believe them. I scarcely know whether to believe them myself. They seem so fantastically incredible! It is difficult to believe even half of the great legends.”
“I know,” said Marina, “——I can hear a noise coming from that thing now. It’s very close indeed.”
Tom Hazell was watching the sea through binoculars. Something flashed on the sun, flashed and went on flashing, almost as though it was a signal, but he knew that the order of the flashes indicated nothing—no code—no comprehensible signal, nothing coherent at all. But Hazell was blessed with an innate and inordinate curiosity. He wanted to find out. He called across the the second officer.
“What do you make of this, Jack?”
Jack Steele put his own binoculars to his eyes.
“Ruddy queer, Skipper,” he said, “don’t know what to make of that at all. It’s too low in the water to see much yet.”
“I think we’ll alter course a couple of points,” said Hazell.
“Aye, aye, sir,” said Jack, and bellowed the order across to the steersman. The big cargo steamer, clean and trim and new, responded superbly and immediately. Her razor sharp prow dissected the sea as cleanly as a printer’s guillotine cuts paper.
“Steady it down, steady it down,” said Hazell. “Don’t want to ram the thing.”
Jack Steele rang for half astern, the cargo-liner lost way almost at once. The two men went silently to the rail, looking down at the object now floating not more than a hundred yards away.
“Flying cows, what the devil is it?” Jack Steele asked.
“If I knew that I’d be the great Oompah of Og itself,” replied his Captain with a twinkle in his grey eyes, “but not being the great Oompah of Og, nor the great Wogga-wogga from the plains of Astrakhan—I just don’t know. Short of those two mythical creatures or a first rate Oracle, me boy, I don’t think we’re going to have an answer to that question till we get alongside.” Very slowly and carefully they nosed the great liner closer to the round, glittering, flask-shaped object.
“It’s a glass cylinder,” he said at last. They were not more than fifty yards away now. “I’ll swear it’s a glass cylinder. There’s something or someone inside it! I’ve seen messages in bottles before, but I’ve never seen this,” said Jack Steele, with an attempt at humour that was foiled by the amazement in his voice. “This is uncanny, Skipper!” There was a strange whirring sound in the air above him. Steele looked up, and recoiled from the rail as though he had received a powerful electric shock. “Skipper! Skipper!” he shouted, “Look up there! Look above us!”
Tom Hazel had his attention riveted on the glass cylinder on the sea below them.
“What’s the matter?” he called over his shoulder without looking round. Jack Steele was speechless. There was a thing, a huge, disc-like thing that had suddenly appeared as though from nowhere, travelling at fantastic speed, until now, when it hung directly over the ship, it was motionless.
“What the devil——” Tom Hazell had finally recoiled from the rail and was staring up at the spinning circle in the sky. It appeared to be defying all the laws of gravity all the forces of science. The speed with which it had travelled, the way in which it had laughed at the law of momentum, of mass, and of impetus. The two men stood staring. It was Tom Hazell who recovered his wits first.
“All we want now is a sea serpent, to complete the trio,” he said with a grin.
“It’s fantastic,” agreed Steele. The steersman was gaping open-mouthed at the thing spinning above them.
“It’s a flying saucer,” he gasped. “Its a flying saucer, sir!”
“I never ruddy well believed in them,” said Steele.
“Nor did I,” said Tom Hazell. “I never believed in bottles that big in the sea, neither. Look at the size of that thing, that glass cylinder down there. Do you think there’s some connection between the two?”
“I reckon there must be, sir.”
“Half astern,” ordered Hazell. “I think we ought to pull back. They may or may not be friendly, and this old tub isn’t armed.”
“I don’t think it would do us much good if it was sir,” said Steele. “Not against that thing! The speed of the thing, we’d never hit it with a gun.”
“I dunno,” said the Captain. “Nothing’s invulnerable, but let’s not make any trouble if we can help it. Just standby . . .
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