«Since Sniveley was not a great scientist, I imagine that his discovery was empiric rather than logical — an accidental find. It is quite possible that even the discovery of his projector will not enable present-day scientists to understand its secret, any more than an aboriginal savage could understand the operation of a simple radio receiver by taking one apart.
«My principal reason for this assertion is the fact that the refraction obviously is a fourth-dimensional phenomenon or its effect would be purely local to one portion of the globe. Only in the fourth dimension could light be so refracted …»
There was more, but it is better to skip to his final paragraph:
«This effect cannot possibly be permanent — more permanent, that is, than the wave-projector which causes it. Sooner or later, Sniveley’s machine will be found and shut off, or it will break down or wear out of its own volition. Undoubtedly it includes vacuum tubes, which will some day blow out, as do the tubes in our radios …»
The excellence of Mr. Mehan’s analysis was shown, two months and eight days later, when the Boston Electric Co. shut off, for non-payment of bills, service to a house situated at 901 West Rogers Street, ten blocks from the mansion. At the instant of the shut-off, excited reports from the night side of Earth brought the news that the stars had flashed back into their former positions instantaneously.
Investigation brought out that the description of one Elmer Smith, who had purchased that house six months before, corresponded with the description of Rutherford R. Sniveley, and undoubtedly Elmer Smith and Rutherford R. Sniveley were one and the same person.
In the attic was found a complicated network of four hundred and sixty-eight radio-type antennae, each antenna of different length and running in a different direction. The machine to which they were connected was not larger, strangely, than the average ham’s radio projector, nor did it draw appreciably more current, according to the electric company’s record.
By special order of the President of the United States, the projector was destroyed without examination of its internal arrangement. Clamorous protests against this high-handed executive order arose from many sides. But inasmuch as the projector had already been broken up, the protests were of no avail.
Serious repercussions were, on the whole, amazingly few.
Persons in general appreciated the stars more, but trusted them less.
Roger Phlutter got out of jail and married Elsie. Dr. Milton Hale found he liked Seattle, and stayed there. Two thousand miles from his sister Agatha, he found it possible for the first time to defy her openly. He enjoys life more but, it is feared, will write fewer books.
There is one fact remaining which is painful to consider, since it casts a deep reflection upon the basic intelligence of the human race. It is proof, though, that the President’s executive order was justified, despite scientific protests.
That fact is as humiliating as it is enlightening. During the two months and eight days during which the Sniveley machine was in operation, sales of Sniveley Soap increased 915%!
KNOCK
THERE is a sweet little horror story that is only two sentences long.
«The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door …»
Two sentences and an ellipsis of three dots. The horror, of course, isn’t in the two sentences at all; it’s in the ellipsis, the implication: what knocked at the door? Faced with the unknown, the human mind supplies something vaguely horrible.
But it wasn’t horrible, really.
The last man on Earth — or in the universe, for that matter — sat alone in a room. It was a rather peculiar room. He’d just noticed how peculiar it was and had been studying out the reason for its peculiarity. His conclusion didn’t horrify him, but it annoyed him.
Walter Phelan, who had been associate professor of anthropology at Nathan University up until the time two days ago when Nathan University had ceased to exist, was not a man who horrified easily. Not that Walter Phelan was a heroic figure, by any wild stretch of the imagination. He was slight of stature and mild of disposition. He wasn’t much to look at, and he knew it.
Not that his appearance worried him now. Right now, in fact, there wasn’t much feeling in him. Abstractly, he knew that two days ago, within the space of an hour, the human race had been destroyed, except for him and, somewhere, a woman — one woman. And that was a fact which didn’t concern Walter Phelan in the slightest degree. He’d probably never see her and didn’t care too much if he didn’t.
Women just hadn’t been a factor in Walter’s life since Martha had died a year and a half ago. Not that Martha hadn’t been a good wife — albeit a bit on the bossy side. Yes, he’d loved Martha, in a deep, quiet way. He was only forty now, and he’d been only thirty-eight when Martha had died, but — well — he just hadn’t thought about women since then. His life had been his books, the ones he read and the ones he wrote. Now there wasn’t any point in writing books, but he had the rest of his life to spend in reading them.
True, company would be nice, but he’d get along without it. Maybe after a while, he’d get so he’d enjoy the occasional company of one of the Zan, although that was a bit difficult to imagine. Their thinking was so alien to his that there seemed no common ground for discussion, intelligent though they were, in a way.
An ant is intelligent, in a way, but no man ever established communication with an ant. He thought of the Zan, somehow, as super-ants, although they didn’t look like ants, and he had a hunch that the Zan regarded the human race as the human race had regarded ordinary ants. Certainly what they’d done to Earth had been what men did to ant hills — and it had been done much more efficiently.
But they had given him plenty of books. They’d been nice about that, as soon as he had told them what he wanted, and he had told them that the moment he had learned that he was destined to spend the rest of his life alone in this room. The rest of his life, or as the Zan had quaintly expressed it, for-ev-er. Even a brilliant mind — and the Zan obviously had brilliant minds — had its idiosyncrasies. The Zan had learned to speak Terrestrial English in a matter of hours but they persisted in separating syllables. But we digress.
There was a knock on the door.
You’ve got it all now, except the three dots, the ellipsis, and I’m going to fill that in and show you that it wasn’t horrible at all.
Walter Phelan called out, «Come in,» and the door opened. It was, of course, only a Zan. It looked exactly like the other Zan; if there was any way of telling one of them from another, Walter hadn’t found it. It was about four feet tall and it looked like nothing on Earth — nothing, that is, that had been on Earth until the Zan came there.
Walter said, «Hello, George.» When he’d learned that none of them had names he decided to call them all George, and the Zan didn’t seem to mind.
This one said, «Hel-lo, Wal-ter.» That was ritual; the knock on the door and the greetings. Walter waited.
«Point one,» said the Zan. «You will please hence-forth sit with your chair turned the oth-er way.»
Walter said, «I thought so, George. That plain wall is transparent from the other side, isn’t it?»
«It is trans-par-ent.»
«Just what I thought. I’m in a zoo. Right?»
«That is right.»
Walter sighed. «I knew it. That plain, blank wall, without a single piece of furniture against it. And made of something different from the other walls. If I persist in sitting with my back to it, what then? You will kill me? — I asked hopefully.»
«We will take a-way your books.»