Wanderer of Space

by John Russell Fearn, Vargo Statten

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

Synopsis

John Russell Fearn writing as Vargo Statten. An SF variant of Alexandre Dumas's The Man in the Iron Mask.

Release date: September 30, 2015

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 110

Sample

Between the orbits of little Mars and gigantic Jupiter, dead on the demarcation line so that the gravity-fields of each planet pulled with equal power, reposed the royal space cruiser, Starwind.

It was a gigantic vessel, polished as glass, the most replete engineering job the science of A.D. 2150 could produce. From the exterior it looked like a silver shuttle, motionless in the void against the backdrop of eternally glittering stars. Within, it was a small city with every conceivable necessity, its power rooms in the exact centre whence was generated the atomic power necessary for the rockets, the vessel’s mode of propulsion.

A matter of profound significance was the reason for the cruiser’s inactivity. Here, out in the void, not far from the asteroids, a child was about to be born. It might be boy or girl—science still had not mastered this uncertainty; which meant it would either be a future king or a future queen.

The mother, guarded by the finest Earth physicians, all of them exclusive to the royal retinue, was Queen Maylion of Earth, wife of Fabus the First. Back on Earth Fabus and his Royalists were fighting a scientific revolution, hence the reason for the space cruiser being far from strife and battle.

In the gleaming corridors of the cruiser, servants and messengers fled back and forth. There was anxiety from the control rooms to the private chambers of Colvin, the kindly Secretary of World State. In yet another suite, waiting for information, sat Dalvo, First Advisor to the King—calm, inscrutable, always giving the impression he was watching for an opportunity to wrest power unto himself.

Perhaps the least disturbed by the taut atmosphere was Hexler, the State’s master-scientist. He was busy in the cruiser’s enormous laboratory, working as usual on synthetic cultures. Hexler had one dream—synthetic life. Synthetic armies, perhaps, which would protect the World State under the rule of Fabus I, if he won the present revolution. But between the realisation of Hexler’s dream of synthetic life and its fulfilment lay one barrier … creation. The solution to the problem had evaded him in his fifty years of scientific study. He could model any creature, male or female, and make it indistinguishable from the living being, but the breath of life was something that defeated him.

Now he had a new angle. Small, embryonic cultures, duplicating exactly the make-up of an unborn human embryo. Perhaps, starting at the beginning of life, he might be able to find the correct reagent to bring activity to the lifeless clay.

Regardless of time and the drama being played out in the Queen’s bedroom, he set in action the various instruments grouped around the solitary culture upon which he was concentrating. But though he tried every combination and sequence of radiations and vibrations, he achieved no result.

At last he relaxed and sighed. He was a tall man, erect as a military leader, his laboratory smock not detracting in the least from his majestic bearing. His eyes were grey under tufted sandy brows. His nose was sharply hooked, his lips firm. He looked—and was—a man of far-reaching decisions, with the power to carry them out.

“Just this one thing, and it continues to elude me,” he muttered, considering the empty laboratory—for he was working alone on this particular experiment. “Is it that I am completely unintelligent, or is it that life is the sole prerogative of the Creator?”

It was just as he finished speaking that something happened. A slight sound made him turn, and his gaze went instantly to the transparent bath in which lay the culture upon which he had been working … Magically, incredibly, it was moving!

Now it had happened he could not believe it for the moment. He watched the undoubted quiverings and shiftings of the embryo, then he quickly snapped on the radiations which would replace the energy lost by the creature’s activity.

A bell rang sharply. Hexler ignored it—until it became insistent. He picked up the receiver.

“Hexler speaking,” he said.

“A son, sir,” announced a voice. “Her Majesty has given birth to a son—at five hours precisely.”

“Convey my congratulations,” Hexler said absently, and switched off. Then his gaze wandered to the clock over the instrument bench. It was 5.5, Earth Standard Time.

“A son,” he mused. “And this embryonic culture, unformed into either sex as I made it, has taken on the male characteristics. It too was born, or became alive, at … exactly five hours.”

His thoughts trailed off into deep speculation, then after a while he returned to his instruments and subjected the slowly growing embryo to every known test. Even as he did so, so swiftly does life move in its earliest stages, the embryo grew from the indistinguishable into the recognisable outlines of a male baby.

It was close on 6.0 when Hexler looked up at the sound of the laboratory door opening. Colvin, the World State Secretary, was coming towards him—quietly, without hurry, his kindly face smiling.

“You seem to be so preoccupied down here, Hexler, I thought I would bring you the news personally,” he said.

“Her Majesty has a son. A son for Earth, Hexler! Fabus the Second, as he will be one day.”

“I heard,” the master scientist answered mechanically. “I was informed of the birth. It took place at five hours.”

“Precisely.”

“This birth took place at five hours also.”

For a moment the Secretary did not understand, then as his gaze followed Hexler’s to the culture-bath he gave a start.

“Hexler, you have done it!” he cried. “You have created life!”

“I am not so sure of that, Colvin.”

“But it is here before you!” The Secretary strode forward and watched the tiny creature intently. “It lives. It …”

His voice stopped and he frowned a little. Hexler eyed him for a while and then said:

“I do not think I brought life to this embryo, Colvin. At the time it was born not a single radiation was trained on it. I had just ceased experimenting, worn out with failure.”

“This—this minute baby is—” Colvin stopped, finding it difficult to speak. “It resembles the son which has been born to the Queen!” he finished, looking up sharply.

“That,” Hexler said, “is no surprise to me. I believe the most incredible thing has happened—scientifically possible, of course, but most unexpected. In a while I shall be sure. What I must do is examine her Highness’s child without delay.”

“That will be a matter of some hours,” Colvin said. “The infant will not be removed to the artificial mother for three more hours yet.”

Hexler looked annoyed for a moment and then shrugged.

“Very well, I must wait,” he said, and his eyes returned to the slowly growing male infant, expanding and developing under the influence of the radiations he was training upon it.

Meanwhile, in the further reaches of the vessel, Dalvo the Advisor was reclining on a silken couch, listening to the instrument on his desk. It had been giving forth every word spoken by Hexler and Colvin in the laboratory. Dalvo, though not a scientist in the accepted sense, was a highly intelligent man—and he knew that to gain power he must know everything about everybody, and use them as circumstances demanded. Hence, unknown to the royal retinue, he had—at various times—wired each chamber with concealed microphones, most of them disguised as wall decorations. Back on Earth the royal palace was similarly “eavesdropped.” There was nothing ever escaped Dalvo: he took good care of that.

Now he lay musing over what he had heard. He was the youngest of the royal retinue, which accounted for his overriding ambitions. Born of a long line of Earth aristocrats he was a being of impeccable manners, usually expressionless, hiding everything under his cloak of suave culture. And he was handsome too. Black hair lay in thick waves on his well-shaped head. His brown eyes were those of a dreamer and an intellectual. Only the mouth gave away his deadly inner nature. It was little more than a gash in his ivory-skinned face.

“Interesting,” he murmured at length, considering his faultless nails. “So the baby of her Highness resembles that of Hexler’s synthetic embryo. Much indeed could spring from that possibility….”

He relaxed again, secure in the knowledge that he would not be interrupted since all matters of State were suspended during the present drama in the Queen’s bedroom. Reaching out to the instrument he turned the volume control a little higher.

Down in the laboratory Hexler was at the end of his patience.

“Three hours is too long to wait,” he decided abruptly, gathering together portable instruments and packing them into a case. “I am going to seek her Highness’s permission to photograph the infant—both normally and by X-ray.”

Colvin said nothing: it was not his province. He remained watching the tiny baby in the bath whilst Hexler hurried from the laboratory. He was away perhaps half-an-hour, and there was triumph in his craggy face upon his return.

“Her Majesty was most gracious,” he said, sorting out his instruments. “Or at least the doctors were. My request was granted. I have here an excellent series of photographs. I only need to develop them.”

He thrust the photographic spool into a sealed trap projecting from a nearby machine, switched on the power, and waited for a few moments; then as a series of photographs, perfectly developed and dry were released from the side of the instrument he picked them up and examined them intently, Colvin looking over his shoulder.

The photography was brilliantly exact in every detail, both in interior and exterior revelations of the infant.

“I never saw two babies so much alike,” Colvin said at length. “Even to the scar on the left shoulder. This synthetic baby has one as well.”

Hexler nodded slowly and then put down the photographs.

“Colvin, there are two future kings of Earth,” he said. “Fabus the Second has a synthetic twin—”

He turned impatiently as Corliss, chief laboratory attendant, came in.

“I do not need you at the moment, Corliss,” Hexler told him. “I am engaged on a private matter.”

Corliss hesitated, a young keen-faced man. Then he nodded and quietly went out again.

“This is impossible!” Colvin protested. “We know for a fact that only one child was born to her Highness.”

“My friend,” Hexler said, brooding, “we are proving that the source of life is not entirely physical, but mental! The mental power of the mother not only gave birth to the natural child, but also to the synthetic one as well. Dual conception.”

“I am not a very good scientist,” Colvin apologised.

“I’m sorry. I’ll make it plainer. Out here in space, in spite of all we do to prevent it, cosmic radiation seeps in upon us, and cosmic radiation is known to create life, but of itself the miracle does not happen. However, under the stimulus—the catalyst if you will—of thought waves life can occur. Imagine this embryo as it was, developed to almost the same stage as the natural baby of her Highness. It becomes plain that a mental catalyst operated. The conception which produced her son was not limited to that one exact form but to this as well. Her room, only just over this laboratory, is at no great distance. Her thought impulses must have reached this far and reacted on this synthetic material. It reacted because it was exactly in ‘sympathy’ with her thought-waves; just as a radio tuned to a particular station will receive that station.”

“But can thought-waves travel that far?” Colvin asked, puzzled.

“There is no limit to them, my friend. It all depends if the recipient of the waves can react to them…. For instance, on the moon of Io, half of which I own, there is a type of mineral which reflects thought-waves as a mirror reflects light-images. For experiment I once tried the limit of a thought-wave by concentrating on the mineral from a distance of five miles. I received an echo back with the same strength as the wave I sent forth…. That satisfied me that thought has no limit in extent and can pass through any barrier.”

Colvin meditated for a moment.

“The position,” he said, “is delicate. We cannot possibly have two heirs to the throne. Further, this synthetic twin is not entitled to the throne because he is not of blood descent. He can, if he wishes, make himself an intolerable nuisance as he grows older.”

“There are two courses,” Hexler said, musing. “I can either destr. . .