Chapter I: Front Matter

MAN^Nth

By GARDNER F. FOX

From strange and distant worlds the master
beings came to Neeoorna, bringing with them
the science of the Universe. One by one
they fought the alien fire--and died. And
now Jonathan Morgan, the Earthling, whose
science was primitive compared to the others,
found himself facing the black flames.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Winter 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

He stood alone in the laboratory, frightened, staring at the tiny motes of dust that swirled lightly in the breeze. That dust had been a block of solid lead a moment ago; before he had touched it, and concentrated.

Jonathan Morgan licked his lips with a dry tongue. Things like this shouldn't happen to the assistant to the Chief of the National Foundation for Physics Research. It went against every law he had studied so absorbedly for the past twelve years, ever since he had decided in high school to make physics his life work.

"I'm mad," he said to himself, knowing he was utterly sane; that was what frightened, knowing his sanity.

He removed a glass test-tube from a wooden rack before him, grasped it firmly and furrowed his brows over his clear black eyes. If this works, he thought savagely, I can chuck every law of physics and organic chemistry into the junk heap, and become a tramp riding the rods of the first train out of town....

The glass in his hands stretched noticeably; grew and expanded to pint size, to the size of a quart container.

"_God!_"

The glass shattered on the inlaid linoleum floor. Jonathan put out his big hands and clung to the edge of the sandstone tabletop until his muscles bunched in big ridges all along his hairy forearms.

"Dr. Wooden!" he shouted hoarsely. "Dr. Wooden!"

A big man came and stood in the doorway, staring at him, clad in white smock with the sleeves rolled up to bare his wrists.

"Did you call--Jonathan! What's wrong?"

The Chief ran to him, his eyes intent in his white face, his features tense.

"You've had a shock. Tell me, did the rays react as we'd hoped?"

"No, no. It isn't the rays. It's me. I--I'm _infinite_!"

Dr. Wooden smiled, saying, "Sit down, boy. You've been working too hard. You need a rest. Forget all about the calcatryte and how to bend the rays it emanates. You need a change. Perhaps the shore. Or my mountain lodge in the Adirondacks."

Jonathan Morgan straightened, shaking his head, muttering, "No, no." His brain was clearing, and he knew with a grim sureness that something big had happened to him, for a reason. He lifted another block of lead, and looked down at it.

"Watch it, Doctor. Watch the lead."

The lead block quivered strangely, undergoing some queer transformation. Its outlines became blurred and vague. It shrank, dissolved; became infinitesimal bits of dust in Morgan's palm. Jonathan bent and blew on the dust and it fluttered away.

He looked at Doctor Wooden with a wry smile.

"I can do anything, Doctor. I can grow or become small. I can destroy or I can--create!"

"Well," the Chief breathed gustily. "I almost believe you. Whew! Man, do you realize the vast vistas that are opening for you? With power such as that ... oh, my God! How trite I am after seeing--that!"

"Does sort of stun you," agreed Jonathan dryly. "Doctor, do you think this gift was given to me for a--reason?"

The Chief glanced sharply at his assistant, then nodded slightly.

"Go on, Jonathan. Tell me what's on your mind."

* * * * *

Jonathan Morgan stalked up and down the laboratory aisle, his tall body graceful as the stalking panther, his great shoulders illy fitted in the smeared lab smock. He was a big man. Conference football and baseball had added lithe muscles to the frame that was his heritage from a family of farmers. Black hair, cut crew above a high-cheeked, tanned face, and coal black eyes that were alert as a watching cat, added to his look of fitness.

"I've known of this power since last night," he said slowly. "We were at Mrs. Gordon's bridge, remember? I was sitting there with that blamed cup on my knees wishing I didn't have to drink it, when my mind went blank. Absolutely blank.

"It was like being suspended in a dark vault, with someone working on your mind. I could _feel_ what they--or _it_, was doing to me. Oh, it didn't hurt. It was just a sense of--awareness. As though someone were operating on me with instruments of telepathy. Knowing just what to do, and going there and getting it over with, quickly. When the feeling went away, I was still sitting there. I hadn't moved, and no one had noticed anything. It had been accomplished in an incredibly short space of time.

"I recall looking at the tea in the cup, and wishing with all my heart it was a stiff drink. And when I put it to my lips, it was just that--the best liquor I've ever tasted in my life.

"I needed that drink. Especially in view of the fact that it was a drink. Then I thought I heard a voice, whispering to me from far away. I sat still and listened. But the voice, or whatever it was, couldn't get through to me. It tried desperately to tell me something, but the connection was wrong. It gave up after a while."

Jonathan took the cigarette the doctor handed him and puffed in on it, standing in a patch of sunlight, gazing down at the flooring.

"On the way home, I got to wondering about what had happened. I thought, maybe somebody's made a present to me of terrific mental powers. I looked up at the moon, and wondered about it.

"The idea came to me: why not concentrate on the moon, and see what would happen. It was to be a test, you see.

"I concentrated, all right.

"The next thing I knew I was standing on it. And oh, boy! the Earth is damn big, looking up, or down, at it."

The Chief choked on cigarette smoke. He gasped finally, "You mean to tell me you were on the moon?"

"It was the moon, all right. I know. I scrambled right back here on terra firma in a big hurry, too. There are some things on that satellite of ours--

"This morning I tried destroying matter. You saw how it worked. I've tried making things grow. That works, too. It's unlimited, this power. Anything that is limitless is--infinite."

Doctor Wooden put his cigarette into a bowl of water. Jonathan flipped his out the window, and watched it arc downwards. They stood silent, frowning. Doctor Wooden roused himself slowly.

"You can turn this gift into the greatest benefit to mankind the world has ever known, Jonathan. You can investigate scientific mysteries at the source. You could find cures. You could--"

Jonathan waved a big hand.

"I know. I've thought of all that. But I'm worried. I've a feeling that this power was given to me for a certain purpose. To enable me to do something even bigger. No force we know could have done this to me. It came from outside, beyond the Earth. It _must_ have. There is something out there that needs--or wants--me. Maybe that voice did get in a few subconscious suggestions, after all. Wherever it came from, I should find that voice."

"You could explore the universe," murmured Dr. Wooden thoughtfully.

"I may have to. I'm going to search all space if need be. I can't hold back. Perhaps the voice implanted that, too. An urge to go out there among the stars and look for it. The wanderlust. It's a thing like thirst and hunger, that is a part of you."

"When do you intend leaving?"

"Tonight. At once, perhaps. Why wait for night? Oh, God, I don't know what to say, what to think. But I'm going."

Dr. Wooden caught him by the arm, drawing him into the next room. It was a smaller laboratory, bare but for long chrome tables with metal cradles hung from tripods resting on their tops. In each cradle was pouched a block of crystalline rock formation, semi-transparent, with fine veins of iridescent color interlacing with each other to form weird patterns in the milky depths.

"You're young, Jonathan, and you're imaginative. I'm not trying to dissuade you. I just want you to consider."

He put his hands on the rocks in the cradles. These stones were calcatryte, dredged accidently in a scoop shovel off Great Barrier Reef and sent to the National Foundation for testing.

Dr. Wooden bit his lips. Jonathan knew what restraint he was exercising. This research institute was his heart's dream, with its marble halls and linoleum lab floors, its chrome tables. He had two things in his life: the Institute, and his theory. And Jonathan was part of both.

His theory was this: that somewhere in the world there is an element, a substance, that would emit _straight_ light as one of its properties. Light that did not curve as all light did. Light that would, by its very rigidity, cut through the atomic structure of other matter by the sheer energy of its photons, cutting a path in a thing by ripping electrons from their beds. A light to outmode all cutting and sawing instruments; a ray that would be easy to handle, and inexpensive to operate.

Many elements they had tested and tried; many tested, many thrown aside. When the calcatryte had been brought in, they had not even hoped. But _it_ gave off straight light.

"The credit is yours, Jonathan," the doctor was saying. "You've done a lot. It was your discovery, the tungsten beam that heated the rocks to the pitch high enough to rip those rays from it. Uncurvable rays. A series of lines of unbendable light. I'll harness that light, soon."

"I know. But there's that urge in me. The wanderlust."

"You're giving up a lot. Fame. Maybe fortune."

Jonathan grinned a little, saying, "Maybe I've gotten a lot more in exchange."

"Damn it, Jonathan. What the hell's the matter with me? I'm _jealous_, boy. If I were in your boots, I'd kick the ribs out of any old codger that tried to talk me out of the greatest experience in the history of mankind!"

Jonathan put his big hand on the other's shoulder and squeezed it, hard. The Chief took out his handkerchief and blew his nose.

"Let's go," he said hoarsely. "There's no sense in hanging around here any longer. Not when you can go--where you're going."

It was a Saturday afternoon. There was no one in the great quadrangle between the buildings. They walked along a path, smoking their farewells together; headed toward the quad.

Jonathan stepped onto the lawn. He bent and undressed, and handed his clothes and shoes to Dr. Wooden.

"I left a letter for you," he said. "And a power of attorney. I don't know when I'll be back. Or--whether."

Jonathan turned, stood erect; sunlight glinted on the white tones of his flesh, shading the ribs and the ridges of muscle on arms and legs, on shoulder and belly. He lifted his arms, and his face grew hard with his effort at concentration.

Watching, Dr. Wooden smothered a curse. Before his eyes the form of Jonathan Morgan was expanding, growing. Its substance swelled and rippled outward in a vast cloud of tiny motes of matter shimmering and glittering with opalescent hues.

"He's turned his structure into gas," he muttered.

The gas that was a man swept upward and onward with the speed of thought itself.