Page:Amazing Stories Volume 01 Number 04.djvu/16

304 to communicate, and you will be unable to hear until to-morrow at the same hour as to-day, when you will come again to the instrument."

O there our conversation ceased, and I said no more; in fact, I had a curious feeling as though forbidden to do so. I hope I shall soon be relieved of this dreadful post. Headquarters tell me relief is coming as quickly as possible. I have nothing to say against the friendly sort of voice I have listened to, or the communication it has made. I owe it something for having, at our first interview, in my sleep, evidently quieted my nerves, when I was probably on the high road, to madness. Very possibly that saved my reason. All the same, I cannot forget that I am hundreds of miles from a living soul, and it makes my flesh creep to listen to the voice of one who tells me openly he is not a human being at all! What, I wonder, can he be like! I dare not think of it!

I have not reported officially any of the above conversation. What would be the use? At least I am now sure of the existence of some one who has talked to me. I can feel his personal influence too strongly to doubt it, apart from any other evidence. But that does not prove his words are true, or that he speaks from Venus. Perhaps some lying and wandering spirit—but I will not think about it. What would I not give to be off this awful rock that seems lost in the remotest wilderness of the Ocean. I used to like to look around from the cliff edge, and see the far-off circle of the horizon without a spot in any direction to break its line, but now I dread it. I have resolved not to attend at the instrument at the time the voice has appointed. Let the next conversation be when there are others here.

ITH a few love sentences, principally expressing the desire for an early reunion, the diary ended for the day. Under date of the next day, and precisely at the hour appointed by the, voice, evidently in spite of Macrae's resolve to the contrary, a further conversation had taken place and been recorded. This was only in shorthand, and, while the doctor was puzzling over the first words of it, the door opened and Captain Evered entered.

"Well, Anderson! What do you think of the poor fellow's ravings? Curious delusion, wasn't it?"

"More than curious; but between ourselves they don't read to me like ravings at all! There is a curious problem here that at the moment, I must admit, puzzles me. If Macrae were a man of scientific attainments it would be still very curious as an instance of self-delusion. But the number of such cases is very great, and this could simply pass as a noteworthy specimen among them. But if he was only the uneducated man you have given me to understand, then this document is the most astonishing thing I've ever heard of. Yet I suppose we can accept his own version of it?"

"Well, you know more about this kind of thing than I, but to me it simply reads like the ravings of a lunatic!"

"But these are not ravings! What he has written as the words of the voice indicate considerable scientific knowledge, and if Macrae did not himself possess it, the theory of his madness would not account for it. Let us dissect it a little. Either he had considerable scientific knowledge when he landed"

"My dear Anderson, I watched him closely during a long voyage while endeavoring to establish better relations between him and poor Wilson. I had several conversations with him, and drew him out, and you may absolutely rely on it that he was just an ignorant, unread mountain lad, but very imaginative. He had applied himself diligently to the practical part of radio telegraphy—and subsequently telephony. He knew next to nothing of the scientific theory of it, but was very competent in the engineering and general working. As for general scientific knowledge, he simply had none."

"Perhaps," pursued the doctor, "he took books with him and studied on the island."

"Nothing of the kind was landed."

"Or he was instructed by Wilson during their spare time," suggested the doctor.

"Absolutely out of the question, Wilson would as soon have thought of instructing a mountain goat."

HEN he has been in wireless communication with some one, somewhere, who has thought it worth his while to hold this conversation with him; that is the only explanation of this," said Dr. Anderson, tapping the manuscript before him.

"There are," said Captain Evered, "only two stations on earth that have the necessary apparatus for communication, by telephone, with Station X. No one at either, unless as mad as Macrae himself, would venture so far as to contravene the regulations for such a purpose. Using the Morse code, the signals of any vessel within a wide range are received, but it is forbidden to answer. Therefore, if we are driven to believe he received the messages from somewhere, we must, it seems, accept the version of Jupiter, or wherever it is he claims it for."

Anderson did not join in the Captain's laugh.

"Well, then," said Captain Evered, "as you will not, I see, accept my simple explanation, tell me what it is in his account that causes the difficulty."

"Certainly. Did you notice this account of a kind of compound telescope?"

"I saw there was some description of something in that way," was the reply; "is there anything in it?"

"I do not say it is workable; in fact, in my opinion it is not, but it is quite understandable; and the theory is all right. The difficulties, although probably fatal, are merely mechanical. So far as I am aware, the idea is quite new. In the hands of superior beings, such as this Venerian claims they are, mechanical difficulties would disappear. So that, in the first place, the story hangs together all right, and secondly Maerae could not have invented it. Further, while reading it, I checked off the position of Venus at the date of the writing, and calculated roughly the distance. I find that at the speed of these Hertzian waves it would be at-