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Title: Total Recall
Author: Larry Sternig
Release Date: November 10, 2020 [EBook #63708]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TOTAL RECALL ***
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Total Recall
By LARRY STERNIG
Buried under layers of horror in the old
scientist's brain was the only thing that
could save the System--and Roger Kay
had exactly half an hour to dig it out!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1946.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The face of Brian Wargan, chief of the Solar Bureau of Investigation,
was gray with strain and fatigue. "This Corvo North business," he
said. "It's almost a myth by now, but it's our only chance. We might as
well face that."
His features and that of the younger man across the desk from him
might have formed a study in contrasts. Roger Kay was keen, alert.
There were signs of weariness about his eyes, but the firm set of his
jaw revealed a tendency to action rather than introspection.
"Then, sir," he urged, "let's take that chance. The department has
located him, I believe? I haven't seen the reports."
The S.B.I. chief nodded. "His laboratory is right here on Gany." He
indicated a spot on the global map of Ganymede, some distance from the
spaceport.
"That's the mining district," Kay observed.
"Yes. He's been doing some research for the Inter-Planetary Mining
Syndicate. We've assigned a special wave band and are in constant
communication. Here, I'll introduce you."
Wargan set the dials on the visi-communicator that occupied one corner
of his desk; then looked up at the screen on the wall. A blurred
rectangle of light flickered and then coalesced into sharpness--and
Roger Kay involuntarily drew a deep breath. The girl looking out from
the visi-screen was the most beautiful he'd ever seen.
"Is your father making progress, Miss North?" asked Wargan.
The girl in the screen shook her head. "I'm afraid not, Mr. Wargan.
He's in the lab now, working, and won't let me disturb him except to
bring in coffee and sandwiches. I've been trying to get him to sleep."
"This is Roger Kay, Miss North," said the S.B.I. chief. "One of my
assistants. I'm sending him out to your place to see if he can help."
Ann North frowned slightly. "We're doing everything we possibly can
already."
"I'm sure of that. But Mr. Kay is rather outstanding as a scientist
himself, Miss North. He'll be able to help--at least in some of the
detail work, to save time."
Roger Kay grinned. "He means, Miss North, that I can clean the test
tubes and solder the wires and let your father save his energy for the
brain-work."
His smile was infectious, and the scientist's daughter capitulated.
Wargan flicked the switch and threw the screen into blankness.
"I'll give you an order for the fastest helio we have," he said.
"You'll be there in three hours. And that means there will be a little
less than three days left!"
Roger Kay drew a deep breath, his face suddenly serious. Three days to
save the System from an invasion that could not possibly prove to be
less than a major catastrophe, less than the end of things as he knew
them.
* * * * *
Even now the invaders from Andromeda were approaching the System's
outermost defenses; converging upon the virtually helpless garrisons
on Pluto. Patrol spacers off the frigid planet had already contacted
spearheads of the huge armada--with fatal results.
Once before the System had been periled by these devils from the
distant galaxy. Victory had been costly then, but the combined
Planetary fleets could not now hope to stave off the full force on this
new attack. They would have to yield space; fall back to more favorable
positions.
Trionite alone would prove the decisive factor in any war of worlds,
and the United Planets had not been able to learn the secret of
manufacturing the new explosive, one ton of which could wreck an
invading army.
As Roger Kay set the robot-course dial of his speedy helio for the
mining settlement, he switched in for a moment on Wargan's private
wave-band. "Leaving now, sir," he reported crisply. "Be there in two
hours. Any further instructions?"
"Do your best, Kay, that's all," came the weary voice of the S.B.I.
chief. "New reports in confirm the old ones. We expect the first blow
by noon Friday. Pluto is doomed; now being evacuated."
"We've got to stop them," Roger Kay said fiercely as he snapped the
switch. "We've just got to!"
He settled back to get in a much-needed two hours of sleep while the
robot pilot held his course.
The alarm bell awakened him, and he pointed the craft down under the
great red disk of Big Jupe, toward the low range of purple cliffs
indicated on his map.
A few minutes later he was knocking at the door of the dome-shaped
laboratory.
Ann North was twice as beautiful in the flesh as she had seemed on the
visi-screen. Attired in the modish shorts and tunic that had become
universal garb for Earth-women, she looked like a figure from a
Grecian frieze. She led him to the library.
"Dad's asleep at last," she said. "I persuaded him to rest for a few
hours--on the strength of my argument that he'd accomplish more in the
long run if he kept his brain clear."
Roger Kay nodded understandingly. "I just had a bit of sleep myself en
route. Nobody at headquarters has slept much the last few days. By the
way, I'm woefully in the dark about a lot of things. Will you tell me
just what your father's trying to re-discover? If you can enlighten me,
I'll not have to ask him so many darn-fool questions."
"You know, of course," said Ann North when they were comfortably
seated, "that it's a ray that will explode any explosive at a distance.
Or perhaps I shouldn't have said a ray--it's really a sound wave, in
the ultra-sonic belt, traveling on a beam. It disrupts any unstable
chemical compound."
Roger Kay nodded. "That much I know. I've examined one of the
projectors. We've installed them at all the outposts. They're all
ready, except--"
"Except for the catalyst. The part of the discovery that's lost in the
chemical compound that produces the catalytic gas. The ultra-sonic
waves, passing through the gas, change their vibration in some way."
"I see now," said Kay, "why it is directional. The ultra-sonic waves go
in all directions, of course, but only those passing through the gas
are disruptive. Right?"
The girl nodded her beautiful blond head. "It's all very simple, and
it's all in the hands of the government, except for the formula for
that catalyst. Fortunately my father has a reputation as a scientist.
That's why the government was willing to take a chance on having those
projectors set up, even though--"
Roger Kay smiled wryly. "Your father is the outstanding scientist of
the System, Miss North. But even if he wasn't, we might have taken
that chance. It's about the only chance. If he fails, three days from
today--"
"As bad as that?"
"I'm afraid so. But let's not talk about it. One thing I don't know:
How was the formula lost?"
"Dad destroyed it. He discovered it accidentally twenty years ago,
while working on something else. Never thinking that the fate of
worlds might hinge upon it, he destroyed his notes almost as soon as he
had made them. He's always been awfully opposed to war, you know, and
he saw the terrible possibilities in the weapon if it should fall into
the wrong hands."
"That is still true," said a quiet voice from the doorway. Roger Kay
recognized Corvo North at once from the many photographs he had seen.
He rose and offered his hand.
"I'm glad you're here, Mr. Kay," said the scientist. "Ann told me you
were coming. Yes, it's still true that I'm opposed to war--but this
isn't war. Even disregarding personal interests and patriotism, it's an
attempt to save the human race. Come on into the laboratory. We've no
time to waste."
* * * * *
Roger whistled softly under his breath as Corvo North closed the door
behind them. The laboratory, spacious and well equipped, was a research
worker's dream.
The scientist led the way past rows of pieces of apparatus whose
purpose Roger could but dimly guess, to a table at the far end of the
room. Upon the table was a small box bristling with dials. The back and
top were open, showing a maze of wires and coils and condensers.
"Looks like a radio set with hydrophobia," Roger observed. "What
connection has this with the catalyst formula?"
"Nothing, directly. There's no chance, through experimentation, of my
recovering that formula in time. Three years, possibly. Three days,
never."
"You mean that it's hopeless to try? That the System is lost?" Roger
Kay was appalled.
"I don't quite mean that," said North. "But what chance there is lies
through this apparatus you're looking at now. Sit down; I'll explain
while I work. You can help later, when I've explained the machine."
He began to tinker amidst the maze of wires.
"My discovery of trionite was purely accidental. It was empiric;
not based on any theory. There were six or seven chemicals, and I
recall the identity of only two of them. The others? Well, count the
chemicals in the pharmacopoeia! The only way I could re-discover it
would be by accident as I did before--and that would involve too many
experiments and too much time. But the formula is buried somewhere in
my subconscious mind. I _might_ remember it."
Roger Kay eyed the box with some misgivings. "You mean this is--"
"The memory of everything we've ever done or seen is latent in our
minds--in the molecular structure of the brain. Almost, I might say, in
concentric layers. When the present crisis arose, I had been studying
the human brain and the nature of thought and memory. Do you follow me?"
He looked up from his work and as Roger nodded, he saw how haggard and
weary was the face of the elderly scientist.
"Consciousness is basically electrical in nature. The act of memory is
the shift of that electrical impulse back to a buried stratum of the
brain. But the shift is never complete; most of the consciousness stays
in the present. We never remember anything perfectly."
"Then this machine is to--"
"To create a magnetic field of such a nature as to shift the
consciousness _as a whole_. By shifting the magnetic field's intensity,
I can move back the consciousness, or memory, to complete remembrance
of any given moment of the past. In other words, under its influence,
I hope to send back my memory to the moment when I jotted down the
formula. Earlier or later won't do; I didn't memorize it at any time."
His interest completely gripped, Roger Kay stared into the intricate
mechanism. "But, sir," he asked, "do you know the exact time that
was--down to the minute?"
"Fortunately, yes. I recall that it was the day Ann was being given a
party for her third birthday. My wife had told me to be home at three
o'clock in the afternoon. I was a little late--didn't leave the lab
until on the stroke of three, and it was two or three minutes before
then that I wrote down the formula."
"And you think you can hit that exact moment?"
"With a couple of preliminary experiments, yes. If I find that given
setting of the dial and the vernier adjustments give me a certain date
and time of day, I can calculate the proper adjustment for the time I
want."
"Amazing!" exclaimed Roger. "Frankly, if it weren't for the wonderful
things you've accomplished in other fields, I'd say it was visionary."
Corvo North shook his gray head. "The theory is sound; it should work.
But three days! Man, we're working against a deadly deadline!" He
grabbed a pad and pencil. "Here, I'll show you what to do and you can
start on the headpiece that connects to the machine here."
* * * * *
And thus started the busiest, dizziest hours of Roger Kay's life.
Sleep was a chimera that haunted every leaden-eyed hour, a mirage that
beckoned and pleaded in vain.
And the hands of the laboratory clock crept inexorably onward. At three
in the morning on Friday, Terran time, with nine hours left before the
invaders would strike, Kay staggered to the televis and dialed Wargan.
"I think we'll finish in time," he reported. "We'll be ready for the
first test in a couple of hours. Have you made the preparations we
suggested?"
The S.B.I. chief nodded. "At the base of each projector we've installed
practically a chemical warehouse. There is at least a small quantity of
every available known chemical. And expert chemists waiting at each."
"Good. Then within fifteen minutes after I send you the formula, the
projectors can be in operation?"
"Ten minutes, unless the formula is more complex than you believe. You
say that Corvo North believes there are but six or seven ingredients?"
Roger Kay nodded wearily. "And the communications?"
"Open constantly. An operator on duty at each projector at all times.
Test messages going through every fifteen minutes. Incidentally, latest
reports still confirm early ones. The deadline is still noon today."
Roger Kay saluted, then snapped the switch. Back to work at the little
box in the laboratory.
During those last hours, as well as the ones preceding them, Ann North
had been a ministering angel. Sleeping almost as little as the two
men, she was ever ready with encouragement--and hot coffee. At times,
almost by force, she would pry one or the other of them away from their
work for a brief period of rest.
On her own initiative she had called in Dr. Dane. Once he understood
the situation, the doctor was invaluable. He took no part in the work
on the machine, but he watched over Corvo North constantly and kept him
at the highest point of efficiency under the circumstances.
Ten o'clock came--and ten-thirty--and they were ready for the
preliminary test.
As he placed the metal plates on his head with shaking hands, Corvo
North seemed a mere shell of his former self.
Roger Kay sat at the controls. At North's instructions they ran the
wires to an easy chair several yards away, as they were uncertain just
how far the magnetic field would extend beyond the headset.
"Better tie me to the chair," North cautioned. "When the field is
thrown on, I'll have no recollection of the present or why I'm here.
Don't forget that. Until you bring me back by setting the dials to
zero, mentally, I'll be back where I was whatever time we hit upon.
It will seem to me that I'm waking suddenly in utterly strange
circumstances and surroundings. You know what questions to ask, of
course."
"Yes, Mr. North," said Roger. He turned to Dr. Dane. "Will you
attend to the tying? Just sufficiently so that he can't rise in his
bewilderment."
Ann North brought straps, and a few moments later Corvo North nodded
that he was ready; then leaned his head back and closed his eyes.
Roger Kay glanced at the instruments and then shifted two of the dials.
There was a sudden hum from within the box, and Corvo North's eyes
snapped open.
"What--what is this?" he demanded. "Why am I here?"
"Everything's all right, Mr. North," said Roger soothingly. "We'll
release you in a moment. First please tell us what is the date."
"It's January twelfth, of course. Why do you--"
"And the year?"
"Twenty forty-five. Now will you kindly--"
"Just one more question, Mr. North. Do you know the exact time of day
when you awoke here?"
"How can I when I don't know how I got here? The last thing I remember
is walking through the door of the bank to keep my appointment, at
nine. What's happened? Did I faint?"
A glow of satisfaction lodged itself in Roger's mind; they were getting
the time more accurately than he'd dared expect on the first trial. He
pushed his luck a bit farther.
"Were you on time to make that appointment, Mr. North?"
"I'd have been five minutes early. Now will you--"
"Perfect!" exclaimed Roger. He turned back the dials.
Corvo North went limp for an instant, then reopened his eyes. Dr. Dane
rushed to him and unbuckled the straps.
"Get anything?" asked the scientist weakly.
"Perfect!" said Roger again. "I've got a note of the exact
setting--and you were able to give the time exactly." He scribbled
hasty calculations on the pad. "And that setting took you back to
January of Twenty forty-five. To be exact--six thousand seven hundred
twenty-eight days, twenty-seven hours, seven minutes!"
Corvo North nodded weakly, but excitedly tried to rise. Dr. Dane, his
hand on North's pulse, motioned him back.
"That was a tremendous strain on your heart, North," he cautioned. "I
forbid you to do it again until you've rested."
"Absurd!" Corvo North glanced at the clock. "There isn't time! It's
eleven now!"
"Repeat that again right away and you'll never live to report what you
see," warned the physician solemnly. "Half an hour of rest--or the
entire experiment will be in vain."
* * * * *
Ann North's face was pale; she looked from her father to Roger Kay
pleadingly.
He nodded slowly. "We can just do it. I'll check and recheck the
calculations meanwhile--get the dial settings exact. And the next
try--Well, it's make or break anyway." His voice was grim. "One more
chance, and we get it or we don't."
During that half hour he checked and counter-checked his figures until
he was as sure as possible to hit the exact instant in the past--the
instant when Corvo North had jotted down the lost formula.
At eleven-thirty, the headset was replaced on Corvo North's head. This
time his arms were left free and a pad of paper placed on his lap. His
fingers held a pencil. He leaned back and again closed his eyes.
Roger Kay turned the dials.
Corvo North's face tensed, then relaxed. His eyes remained closed. For
a half minute, aside from the faint hum from the machine, there was
utter stark silence in the laboratory. It was maddening.
Then a faint scratching sound. The others, holding their breath from
sheer suspense, saw the pencil in Corvo North's hand begin to move
across the pad. Three lines it wrote; stopped.
The formula!
* * * * *
Suddenly the scientist's eyes snapped opened, widened with terror and
bewilderment. With a movement so swift that no one could stop him, he
ripped the sheet of paper from the pad, crumpled it, and hurled it at
the glowing coil of an electric heater!
The paper flashed into flame, crumpled into ash as Corvo North himself
crumpled, went limp in the chair.
Roger Kay turned the dials back to zero as Ann and the doctor leaped
forward, unstrapped the unconscious scientist. Dr. Dane felt the
fluttering pulse, then picked up the frail body and headed for the
living quarters. Ann, her blue eyes wide with anxiety, ran ahead to
open doors and prepare for the doctor's ministrations.
When she returned, Roger Kay stood before the visi-screen. Ann put a
hand on his shoulder. "Dad will be all right," she said, her voice flat
with despair, "but we've failed. Dr. Dane says it will be days before
he'd dare--"
"Shh," said Roger gently. "Watch." He slipped his left arm around her
slim waist, drew her to toward the screen.
The vista past the purple range showed at once that the view was
eastward from the spaceport. There was no shipping in sight. In the red
sky, far out and very high, was a thin silvery line, growing larger.
"The invaders." Unconsciously, Roger Kay whispered rather than spoke.
"A thousand spheres at least for us alone. Watch, in a moment we'll
know."
"Know what, Roger? Do you mean--"
The visi-screen answered for him. Out there high up in the sky there
was a single bright flash--and then a thousand flashes that blended
into one blinding one. A roar from the receiver rose to deafening
pitch, stopped abruptly.
[Illustration: _"Shh," said Roger gently. "Watch." He drew her to the
screen._]
"Shattered the diaphragm of the transmitter," said Roger quietly. "That
was trionite in action, Ann, it's all over. Your father--won!"
"But the formula! He destroyed it!"
Roger Kay put his other arm about her, smiled down. "That was why I was
sent here, Ann. To eliminate possible hitches."
"But how--"
"Your father destroyed the formula the first time, and I guessed he
might do it again--in his mind he was back some twenty years ago,
remember--so I took the elementary precaution of placing carbon paper
between the third and fourth sheets of that pad of paper. And I sent
Wargan the formula while you were with your father, twelve minutes ago."
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