Books › Blue Book v085 n06 [1947-10], 1947 › scan 3
Scan 3
Blue Book v085 n06 [1947-10], 1947
60 lines. Read by computer on 18 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1JOURNEY beyond
3IN THE BELIEF THAT LIFE ITSELF IS AN ELECTRICAL PROCESS, THIS PASSIONATE SCIENTIST CARRIED HIS RESEARCH EVEN BEYOND THAT OF MAD FRANKENSTEIN.
5by WALTER DE STEIGUER
7FOR ten years I have kept silence. I had thought—hoped—to carry with me into my grave all knowledge of the events here set down. But I have changed my mind. An explosion over the New Mexico desert began to change it for me. And events since that have made me think that now I should warn of what I have seen.
9For the scientists will keep on. Nothing will stop them. They are busy, very busy, battering down the last doors to that powder-house, the Atom. And it is in my mind that some day, somewhere, a man will stand in a laboratory with his finger on a trigger which can explode our Earth into another sun. A man human and fallible, even as you and I. Perhaps the man will not be certain he has his finger on that trigger, until—
11Bitterness, prejudice, ignorance? Perhaps. But more than all, cold fear. For I have been to the edge and looked over. Not into the ultimate abyss, no. Merely into one of the minor horror-pits on the way.
13Among those acts and happenings which have produced a tragedy, there is always one to which we can look back, and say: "It started there. If only I hadn't—"
15It is so that I look back—because, except for Mona Newell, I think that Court would never have built the second projector. His mind would have realized the blasphemy of what he hoped for; the possibility that a soul-searing horror might result even from success. And bitterly I blame myself, that my anger and my hurt permitted the creation of that damnable apparatus. It does no good to say that I did not believe—really believe—that it could work. I should never have left him free for it. I should have been there, ready to catch up an iron bar and flail the thing into shattered glass and twisted metal, if at the last there was no other way.
17I have tried to tell myself that, from the first meeting of Court and Mona, all that followed was inevitable. But even their meeting I brought about.
19That day is very clear in my memory. I had called at the studio for Mona, and we were debating what to do with the afternoon. It was a spring day, too perfect to spoil with work, or even with thought.
21I said: "Have you ever seen an electro-physicist, Mona?"
23"No, Ian," she said. "Do you think I should?"
25"I'll show you one," I said. "Name of Courtney Kane. He is a lunatic, but interesting to look at."
27Warners' had brought Mona out from New York a month before, for screen tests; but they could not make up their minds whether she would be box-office or not. Either you were frenetic about Mona's dancing, or you wondered why anyone was. It was very simple—just rhythm, grace, motion made into silent music. Since meeting her at one of George Brannigan's cocktail parties, I had been promoting the idea that marrying a sculptor with a moderate independent income and an aversion to work would perfectly round out her life. But if you are physically suited for coal-heaving or the prize-ring, and look it, that sort of thing takes time.
29We drove for an hour, and pulled up before one of those old-time gingerbread-encrusted California houses. It was smack in the middle of an oil-field, with derricks as thick around it as orange trees had been twenty years before, when a local real-estator had stuck Court's father with a dying grove, at a special Easterner's price.
31Mona widened her eyes. They were like sea water that day—very nice.
33"Yes," I said, "this is where he lives. I told you he was a lunatic. . . . His papa was crazy too. Like a fox, as it turned out."
35Okata, Court's little Jap, hissed us politely into the hall. "Mr. Kane in lab. I tell him."
37"Never mind, Okata," I said. "We'll go up."
39We started up a stair, once open but now boarded in, and I explained for Mona's benefit: "Court's parents died just after his graduation from Tech. He went back for a two-year p.g. course in electro-physics, then ripped out the partitions and ceilings of the upper floor here, and put in a private laboratory. Spends eighteen hours a day tinkering with gadgets. A low character. He fights and drinks. No moral sense—"
41"You're close friends," Mona decided.
43"Nonsense. We bloodied each other's noses from the age of nine on. We've sort of got used to each other, that's all."
45The laboratory seemed even worse cluttered than when I had seen it last. It was full of incomprehensible apparatus and machines from the size of an elephant down, with insulated cables snaking into them and out of them and across the floor. You tripped if you walked, and there was no place to sit down.
47Court was doing something sparky—electric welding, perhaps—on a machine at the far end. He pulled off his goggles, glanced over his shoulder, and then came up to us, wiping his hands on a wad of waste. He had on rope-soled espadrilles, filthy flannel trousers, and a sweat shirt; but he looked, as always, like a sun-god come down to earth.
49I said, "Court, Mona—Mona, Court. . . . Why don't you keep a couple of chairs up here?"
51He hadn't looked at me. He was looking at Mona. After a moment he said, "Su casa, Mona."
53"He knows a few words of English too," I told Mona. "And he can open doors, and turn a faucet on and off."
55Court said: "Come down to the patio, Mona. I'll get Mackinnon stupefied with liquor, and then we can talk."
57THERE was something in this. A moderate amount of Scotch produces for me a timeless interval during which silence seems better than conversation.
59It was very pleasant there in the half-enclosure of the patio, with the sun on the tiles and the scent of orange blossoms from a pair of old trees softening the faint odor of the oil. Court and Mona were getting on like a house afire. He was explaining, animatedly, about some recent work of his, and I was only half listening. But at length the tag end of a sentence registered
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