Chapter ONE: The Professor's Experiment

Professor Jameson had looked for a means of preserving his body forever--and he had found it. But it was not by the art of embalming, for, after all, the mummies of the Egyptians proved to be only horrible caricatures of their former likeness, and even these in the passing of untold millions of years must have been destroyed by some planetary stress had the picks of archeologists never unearthed them. The logic of the professor was more or less axiomatic. He realized that he could never employ one system of atomic structure, like embalming fluid, to preserve another system of atomic structure, such as the human body, when all atomic structure is universally subject to change, whether it be amazingly swift or infinitely protracted.

The problem absorbed much of his attention, and he considered various ways and means until one day the answer flashed upon him--leaving his mind a chaotic maelstrom of plans and possibilities. He would cast his body into the depths of space where it would remain unaffected and unchanged! Material of organic origin might exist indefinitely between worlds.

He built gradually from this theory, conceiving a space rocket for his cosmic coffin, a rocket propelled from the Earth by powerful thrusts of radium repulsion. Next came his plan to make the rocket another satellite of the Earth somewhere between the Earth and the Moon. The professor decided on sixty-five thousand miles from the earth, or a little more than a quarter of the distance to the moon.

He set about his plans at once, and having experimented with radium all his life, it did not take him long to construct a rocket capable of carrying his dead body into the depths of space. The rocket lay pointed skyward at the foot of a leaning tower on the hill of the Jameson estate, surrounded by four gleaming tracks and balanced by four stabilizer fins. Everything was complete, and the aged professor knew that he had not long to live.

He died on a bleak December morning, swirling snowflakes blanketing the earth which was to be cheated so dramatically of his dead body.

The professor had retained no confidant, and no one knew why the leaning tower projected from the center of the professor's laboratory, nor could they have guessed that the rocket lay inside, ready for its celestial journey.

The professor's nephew, Douglas Jameson, found himself sworn to secrecy in the instructions left him by his dead uncle. An immediate funeral service, according to those instructions, must follow his death. Relatives believed him to be in his dotage. Only nephew Douglas realized the significance of this quick funeral and removal to the vault.

Through the blanket of snow which had fallen that morning, Douglas Jameson stole quietly to the cemetery, unlocked the vault and removed the body of the professor. For a venture so colossal and unprecedented, the professor's corpse was given but small consideration. His nephew carried him from the cemetery to the rocket in a canvas sack--yet such had been the professor's instructions, obeyed to the letter by an astonished and dutiful nephew.

Douglas Jameson entered the leaning tower and found the rocket set firmly on its supports, its bullet nose pointing up the circular center of the shaft. Cylindrical, and tapering at its base, the rocket was fifteen feet long and five feet in diameter.

Opening a doorway in the hull, he peered inside at the luxurious upholstering, his hand sinking to the wrist in the deep, plush lining. The interior was just large enough to accommodate a human body, and he carefully placed his uncle's body inside, fastening a strap beneath his chin and more straps to his wrists and ankles. He closed the door firmly.

His eyes wandered to the lever at the base of the rocket near one of the stabilizer fins. He must pull the lever and leave quickly. A five-minute interval would elapse before the rocket took off. It was dangerous to remain. He hesitated a moment--then pulled the lever. He did not stay to watch its effect but ran up the stairs into the laboratory and out into the winter night.

The laboratory was isolated from the rest of the buildings. Clouds scudded across the face of the moon which lay well away from that quarter of the sky at which the rocket tower was aimed. This had been a part of the professor's instructions. He wanted the moon's attraction left out of his plans.

Five minutes never seemed so long before. Douglas watched the lazy second hand crawl its slow journey around the tiny dial four times, and after that his eyes never left the tower looming darkly against the night sky.

With a low, crackling hiss, the rocket finally made its appearance, breaking forth from the leaning tower, gaining rapid acceleration and leaving in its wake a blue, phosphorescent glow tinged with violet.

For a long time that night, Douglas Jameson stood and watched the starlit heavens turning imperceptibly upon the axis of Polaris. It was near dawn before he went to his bed in the silent and gloomy Jameson mansion.

Late the next day, the village fire volunteers of Grenville were called to the Jameson estate where they found the laboratory a seething mass of flames. The destruction of the tower and laboratory had been a part of the instructions left Douglas Jameson by his eccentric uncle.

As long as he lived, Douglas Jameson kept the secret. It was only after his death that the facts became known, and for a long time, until the discovery by the astronomer, Clement, in 1968, the story was doubted. True, the grave vault was found empty, but even at this late date it was reported as part of the hoax. It was Clement who established the existence of the Jameson satellite. It circled the earth every nine days.

* * * * *

The years passed. Changes moved slowly on the earth, while generation after generation vanished into forgotten obscurity.

Still the rocket satellite pursued its lonely way, a cosmic coffin. Fiery, scintillating stars formed Professor Jameson's funeral cortege. Millions of years went by. Mankind was replaced by other forms of life which in turn knew their day only to disappear. Earth's atmosphere became rare.

Forty million years after the day when his rocket had been hurled off the face of the earth, Professor Jameson's body still lay perfectly preserved.

Passing meteors were the only companions of the rocket satellite, and these the professor had recognized as dangerous. For that reason he had installed radium repulsion rays which were excited into automatic action by the proximity of approaching meteors.

Earth lay closer to the sun--which had cooled. Its rotation had ceased, and one side, like the moon, forever faced the sun. The professor's dream had been realized. He had remained unchanged for millions of years.

His ambitions, however, fell far short of the adventures which fate held in store for him. A strange spaceship, from the planet of a distant star, came exploring among the dead worlds of the solar system. They passed the aging Earth and found the professor's rocket satellite. Strange creatures of metal guided by organic brains, they stopped and examined the professor's rocket.

They were machine men from Zor. Once they had been organic creatures, but they had transposed their brains to the coned, metal heads which surmounted their cubed, mechanical bodies. The bodies were upheld by four metal legs and were equipped with six metal tentacles. They communicated by thought projection.

What the professor had accomplished in death, they had accomplished in life. They were undying just so long as no injury occurred to their metal heads housing the all-important brain. Any metal parts, such as legs, tentacles or body parts, were replaced when worn out. A complete circle of mechanical eyes were fitted into the coned heads, and one eye peered virtually from the apex. These were shuttered and could also be replaced.

The machine men took the professor's body from his rocket satellite and recalled his brain to life in order to learn his story. They placed the brain in one of the mechanical bodies.

The professor's astonishment on his revival can be imagined better than described. When he came to a full realization of what had actually happened, he told them his story and of the past glories of the earth up to the point when he had died.

He found that his revival made him the last living creature of the earth. With the machine men he visited the strangely changed surface of his home planet.

The Zoromes told him of their eternal adventures from world to world and asked him to join them. There was nothing on the now-lifeless Earth to keep him there--so he joined the machine men in their cosmic flight from system to system, exploring new planets and strange creatures of varying degrees of intelligence.

He came to be known among the Zoromes as 21MM392, and after their return to Zor he was given joint command with 744U-21 of a new expedition into space.

Since last leaving Zor, they had explored many curious worlds, and their adventures had been strange ones, often perilous.

They were now entering another system of worlds. Already, they had passed several of the outer planets on their side of the sun. They were barren and cold, too far from the sun to support life.