Ultra Spectrum

by John Russell Fearn, Vargo Statten

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

Synopsis

Under the cover of darkness and a violent storm, electrical engineer Sidney Cassell thought he'd committed the perfect murder. But immediately after pushing his rival to his death from atop a pylon, he himself is struck by a live high-voltage cable. Cassell survives the accident, only to discover that the electrical shock has affected his body, causing him to glow with a strange inner light. Soon he becomes sucked into a vortex of murders and treachery, hunted by the police and unscrupulous scientists seeking the secret of his weird affliction.

Release date: March 31, 2015

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 128

Sample

The din of the storm was so overwhelming the two men could hardly hear each other’s shouts as they worked with determined energy atop the three-hundred-foot high electric pylon. They were engaged on a service job—purely routine as far as they were concerned—but it demanded far more than just a sense of duty to grapple with the pylon in their efforts to repair the insulator which threatened to break and so drop the 100,000-volt feeder line.

“Higher up, Jim! Higher up!” Sidney Cassell bawled the words fiercely to the man above him—and Jim Prescott struggled further upwards, oilskins gleaming in the brief whiplash of lightning which seared the raging dark.

Sidney Cassell was the chief maintenance engineer of the line—tough, hard-working, never been known to shirk the most dangerous assignment, and this one was quite the deadliest yet. A slip or miscalculation and contact with the power line would be the prospect. After that, a short-circuit down the pylon to earth, and that would be that.

It did seem to Jim Prescott, who could do naught else but obey orders, that Sid Cassell was miscalculating somewhere. Going higher up would not help things: it would simply make it more difficult to get down again. Just the same, Prescott continued to climb, glancing below now and again at the oil-skinned men watching the proceedings in searchlight beams from the ground.

“Okay!” Sid Cassell bawled at length, and Prescott held on tightly to the pylon crossbars, not a foot away from where the damaged insulator was creaking and rattling in the hurricane.

“What do I do?” he yelled. “Do I fix it, or are you going to do it?”

“I’ll do it,” Sid Cassell’s voice floated up as he too began the ascent. Within a few seconds he had drawn himself level with Prescott.

A sense of uneasiness went through Jim Prescott. There was a curious expression on Sid’s face as the lightning transiently revealed it. What could be seen of it between high-buttoned oilskin collar and sou’-wester was hard and merciless.

“You may not believe me,” Sid said bitterly, drawing himself up so that his face was close enough to Jim Prescott’s for him to hear the words, “but I’ve been waiting for a chance like this for months! We’re up here alone, Jim—undisturbed! An accident would be considered the most natural thing in the world!”

Jim Prescott felt instinctively for the wrench in his belt.

“What the hell are you talking about, man?”

“I’m talking about Mary.”

A clap of thunder made the world vibrate for a moment and the faulty insulator rattled.

“Mary?” Prescott repeated. “What the devil has she got to do with it? We’re here to fix this insulator, not discuss our private lives—”

“We’ll discuss as I see fit!” Sid’s voice was hard and flat. “That we both happen to be in love with her is hard luck for one of us. You’re not content to let her make her own choice. You’ve pushed yourself in every possible way—taken advantage of my every absence. But it’s not going to go on that way, Jim! I’m going to settle the issue for myself, here and now!”

“Oh, stop talking like an idiot—!”

Jim Prescott pulled frantically at the wrench in his belt, but he was not quick enough. Sid’s heavy boot came up, the point of the steel-shod toe catching Prescott under the chin. It jolted him clean away from his grip on the cross-piece. He made one frantic lurch to save himself and then went reeling outwards into the dark. From below came shouts as the body hurtled into the midst of the assembled men.

Sid smiled crookedly to himself, and then shouted in apparent alarm, “What happened? He lost his grip! How much hurt is he?”

“Looks like he’s done for, Sid!” a cry floated back.

“Broken neck!”

Sid turned to the faulty insulator, braced himself, then tugged out his wrench. With the methodical movements born of experience he set to work to make the repair, tightening up the massive bolts, engaging the clamps—then a sudden hurricane blast of the gale dislodged his grasp. It happened at the precise moment he was reaching towards the slack power wire.

He saw its long, dependent length come swinging straight at him, blown by the wind. Desperately he tried to dodge but it struck him full on and the universe seemed to explode into a fiery wilderness of pain and sparks.

After an interval of darkness, which could have been seconds or years, Sid Cassell became aware of visions. There seemed to be white-garbed figures, long vistas of darkness, mystic clinking sounds. Sometimes he glimpsed the familiar faces of Mary Carter and Fred Ashworth, the burly boss of the maintenance department.

Then, one day, all the strange little pieces in the jigsaw fitted into place and Sid realised that he was lying in bed in a hospital ward with Fred Ashworth regarding him. Further away stood Mary Carter. Hovering, watching with professional interest, was a doctor.

“Hello—boss,” Sid whispered.

“Take it easy, Sid,” Ashworth murmured, leaning forward. “You’re all right now. Nothing to get excited about. In case you don’t know it—as of course you don’t!—you’re the world’s miracle man! Everybody’s talking about you.”

“About me?” Sid’s voice was low from both exhaustion and surprise. “Why, what did I do?”

“You absorbed a hundred thousand volts and lived to tell the tale! And nothing but a few trivial burns and two days’ unconsciousness to show for it.”

Sid thought it out drowsily and then he frowned. “Did you say a hundred thousand volts? Couldn’t be! You’ve got your wires crossed somewhere, boss.”

“No, I haven’t.” Ashworth shook his bullet head. “I’ve had time to get all the facts. For some reason—and electricity is pretty funny stuff anyhow—you survived even after taking up the load when the power-feeder hit you. Ordinarily you ought to have become a crisp. That was just what the boys expected to find when they climbed up the pylon to get you. Instead you were just stunned and hanging by your safety belt. The doc says you’ll make good recovery—and you repaired that insulator. Good work, Sid! The Company won’t forget you for it, believe me.”

“And Jim Prescott?” Sid asked, without opening his eyes.

The boss hesitated. “Afraid it was just one of those things. He broke his neck when he fell from the pylon. Missed his hold, I gather?”

“’Fraid so. I tried to grab him.”

Silence. Then at length Fred Ashworth stirred.

“Well, I’ll be on my way. Just take it easy and report back for work when you get your discharge. ’Bye for now—and goodbye to you, Miss Carter,” Ashworth added pleasantly.

Sid opened his eyes again to find the girl looking at him. She looked just as pretty as ever—auburn hair peeping from under her saucy hat, a serious smile on her rose-tinted lips.

“Sid, dear….” Her hand took his gently and her blue eyes searched his face. “Please don’t take it too hard about Jim. I know he was your best friend and— Well, the doctors said he must have died instantly. He didn’t feel any pain or anything.”

“He didn’t? That’s fine.” Long pause. “Just how do you feel about the accident?”

“I’ve accepted it by now. He was buried yesterday following the inquest. They recorded ‘Death from Misadventure’. The shock is beginning to abate.”

“You liked him a lot, Mary—”

“We were good friends,” she admitted, sighing. “But I like you a lot, too. I want to help you to get well again quickly.”

“Thanks, Mary. With you at the back of me I’m sure it won’t take long.”

Nor did it. In three weeks Sid Cassell was back at work feeling none the worse for his experience—though at times he did wonder how he had absorbed 100,000 high-tension volts and escaped instant death. So much did the problem worry him he finally searched the reference library for some parallel case to his own, and ultimately landed on an instance which made him realise he was not entirely unique. There was, for instance, the case of Elizabeth Drew, who in 1932 was struck by a flash of lightning estimated at eight million volts. She survived with nothing worse than a momentary dizziness and a two-day loss of memory. So perhaps his own experience had not been so fantastic after all.

Being an electrician, though, it did seem to him that that huge voltage must have gone somewhere. He had been told that when the power wire had struck him lights had dipped over a wide area, so there had certainly been some kind of short circuit.

As week succeeded week and no plausible solution occurred to him, he gradually forgot all about the incident, continuing his work as chief maintenance engineer and spending his spare time with Mary. They were both agreed that they should become engaged in the late spring and marry in the summer.

“There’s a chance I may get promotion,” Sid told her, as they sat together in the park late one warm spring evening. “The boss has already hinted at it. If it does come of we’ll be on velvet.”

The girl nodded, gazing absently into the twilight. The air was as warm as early summer—deceptively so. Winter might yet return in all its fury and Sid might once again find himself wrestling with death atop some swaying pylon.

“I’ve been thinking,” Mary said presently, turning. “If we get engaged in—”

Then she stopped. Abruptly, completely, like a radio switched off. Sid glanced at her in wonder.

“If we get engaged?” he repeated. “No doubt. . .