Part 1

World Atavism

By Edmond Hamilton

_Author of "The Universe Wreckers," "The Other Side of the Moon," etc._

Illustrated by PAUL

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Amazing Stories August 1930. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

_The sun's rays have been credited with many beneficial powers. It is a universally conceded fact that the sun is necessary to good health; not only because of its warmth-giving rays, but also because of some other element, directly a health-giving factor, which has since been more or less successfully duplicated in the laboratory--in the form of Alpine lamps and what not. It is also said, however, that there are certain properties in the rays of the sun which might be used as life-giving rays. As far as we know, nothing definite has been established on this score yet. Who knows what other helpful possibilities are hidden in the various ether vibrations produced by the sun? Edmond Hamilton has a brand new idea, which he elaborates and weaves into a fascinating story of scientific fiction. Certainly it seems to us to be of absorbing interest._

FOREWORD

I write these words in a room perched high in one of New York's highest towers. Beneath me, in the fading sunlight of late afternoon, there stretches the vast mass of the mighty city's structures. New York it is--but such a New York as never man looked upon before. And it is with its familiar but infinitely strange panorama before my eyes that I start now this record of the great change.

* * * * *

My name is Allan Harker. Dr. Allan Harker, I could say, for it has been seven years since I took the degree and with it a position on the biological staff of Manhattan University. That was a great day for me. Manhattan was one of the most renowned of eastern universities, and its biological department in particular was known to scientists the world over. This was due not only to the department's unrivalled equipment, but also in greater part to two of the scientists who worked in it, Dr. Howard Grant, head of the department, and Dr. Raymond Ferson, his associate. Very proud I was to have won so soon the opportunity of working with those two world-famed biologists. And even prouder I was when, in the next years, my work came gradually to link my name with theirs.

Grant and Ferson and Harker--we were known to scientists across half the world. It was Grant, of course, the eldest of us, who was best known. A tall, saturnine-faced and dark-browed Scotsman, his utter and undivided passion for research was a byword among us. It used to be said, though not in his hearing, that Grant would have vivisected his own grandmother if he thought some new principle might be learned by it. All respected the man, or the man's achievements, but he never had a tithe of the popularity that was Ferson's. Ferson was in fact a complete contrast to his superior, a short-statured man of middle age with unruly hair and beard and warm brown, friendly eyes. As for myself, the third of the trio, I had neither the brilliant scientific mind of Grant nor the keen vision of Ferson, but by dint of ceaseless plodding with monotonous details, I had built for myself a reputation that linked my name with theirs.

Aside from our professorial duties in the university's lecture-rooms, we had each of us our separate work. I was plodding away with my dull experiments on cell-grouping, which I expected would some day yield a theory that would astound all cytologists. Now and then I received help on some difficult point from Ferson, who was himself immersed in an attempt to demolish the Snelsen-Morrs re-vertebration theory by prying into the interior structure of innumerable unheard-of lizards. Grant, however, never received or gave any help, keeping his work entirely to himself. We had gathered, from his rare references to it, that he had been working for months on one of the broader problems of evolutionary science, but that was all we knew, and we were as amazed as any when Grant published the statement that touched off the sensational "evolution controversy."

It is needless for me to give here all the details of the thing. It is sufficient to say that Grant, in his statement, announced that he had solved at last the greatest enigma of biological science--that he had discovered the cause of evolution.

One can understand what an uproar that statement created, and was bound to create. For the cause of evolutionary change has always been the supreme problem of biology. Long ago Darwin and Wallace and Lamarck and their fellows had laid the processes of evolution bare. They had shown to an astonished world that life on earth was not static in forms that had always existed and always would exist, but that it was in constant change and movement up through constantly changing forms. The eohippus had changed, had evolved into the horse, and in future ages would be something different still. The great felines that had roamed earth had evolved into smaller forms and into tame cats. A certain branch of ape-like forms had evolved into great hairy troglodytes and then into modern men. All life on earth was constantly changing, evolving, forced ever upward through the diverging channels of evolution into new and different forms.

But what force was it that pressed earth's life thus upward through the paths of change? What force was it that caused all this vast, slow evolution of earth's creatures into different creatures, that had begun with the first jelly-like life-forms on earth and had forced the tide of life up from them to the forms of today, that still was slowly changing them? That question none could answer. Environment did not explain it, for though environment had certain effects on the life-forms in it, it was not responsible for that deep, vast tide of upward evolution. Mendelism had seemed for a time to suggest an explanation but had failed in the end to do so. Some great force there was, all knew, that pressed life always up the path of evolution, but none had ever guessed what that force might be, and the thing had come to be accepted at last as one of the insoluble problems of science. And now Grant claimed that he had solved it!

"For long," Grant's statement said, "I have held that since evolutionary change is unquestionably caused by some definite and omnipresent force acting upon all life on earth, it should be possible to discover the nature of that force. I will not recount the work of months which I have spent in constant search for this force, but will say that finally I have been successful, have identified the force which my experiments show beyond all doubt to be the single force responsible for the upward course of evolution on earth. That force is a vibratory force, a vibration unknown to earth's physicists prior to my discovery of it, which has as its source the sun!

"The sun, we know, is a vast mass of incandescent matter which ceaselessly pours out part of its matter transformed into energy. The energy thus formed, flooding out in all directions from the sun through space, takes various forms. At a certain vibratory frequency, it takes the form of light and illuminates our day. At another frequency, it is radiant heat, warming our world. At still another, it is the cosmic ray so recently discovered. There are many others, known to us, and still more of which we know nothing as yet, a vast welter of vibratory forces flooding endlessly outward from the sun. And it is one of those vibrations, one which we well may call the evolution vibration, which is responsible for the evolutionary change of all life on earth.

"In this there is nothing astounding. The sun's various vibratory forces affect all living things on earth profoundly, each in a different manner. Without the light-vibrations earth's life would fade and die, the absence of the ultra-violet waves being fatal in time. Without its heat-radiations all life would freeze. And without this evolution vibration playing ceaselessly upon earth, all life upon earth would no longer be pressed upward through the paths of evolution, would slip back swiftly down those paths, down the myriad roads up which it has surged for so long. For not only is it this evolution vibration that forces earth's life upward on the way of change, it is this vibration that keeps earth's life from slipping backward!"

Thus for Grant's statement. To Ferson and me it was as astonishing as to the rest of the scientific world, for not until then did we learn what work it was that had occupied Grant for so long. Yet even we two, I think, were surprised at the sensation that that statement caused. Always the work of Dr. Grant had been accepted almost without question, so great was his reputation and so brilliant his achievements. But with the publication of this amazing new theory of his, the general dislike of the man that had always lain latent, burst forth into a storm of criticism.

It was admitted that the new vibratory force which Grant had discovered did apparently exist, since other scientists working on his data had corroborated his work on it. But it was denied, by Grant's numerous critics, that this force was what he claimed it to be--the cause of evolutionary change. It was impossible, they stated, that such a so-called evolution vibration could in reality be responsible for the course of evolution on earth. And it was even more absurd to suggest as Grant had done that were that force withdrawn, were the evolution vibration to cease to play on earth from the sun, the living beings of earth would slip swiftly backward on the road of change.

The controversy over the thing grew, in fact, to a point of bitterness unprecedented in scientific discussion, a bitterness intensified by the comments of the saturnine and black-tempered Grant. In a series of sardonic statements, he compared his critics to those who had derided the work of Darwin and his fellows, and indulged in some rather acrid personalities. These in turn provoked fiercer attacks, and the whole matter grew thus quickly into an unseemly intellectual brawl. To Ferson and myself the whole controversy seemed a useless one, because, in the course of time, experimentation by other scientists would definitely prove or disprove Grant's theory. Yet neither of us ventured to suggest that to our bitter superior, and so the wrangle grew in intensity in the next days until it suddenly came to a head.

It was the elderly President Rogers of Manhattan University who brought the thing to a focus. He and the university's other officials had been growing more and more restive under the criticisms that Grant's controversy was bringing on the school, and so at last he suggested that a meeting be held at which Grant could lay his theories and data before his fellow-scientists in their entirety. This Grant accepted, and so too did most biologists of any note within traveling distance of New York, so widely had the clamor of the dispute spread. And on an afternoon Grant rose before several hundred assembled scientists in one of the university's lecture-halls to explain his discovery.

There is little need for me to tell at length of what took place at that meeting, which both Ferson and I attended. At the first appearance of Dr. Grant his enemies in the audience grew vocal in their criticisms, and before he had spoken a quarter of an hour the hall was in such an uproar as a scientific meeting has seldom heard. Twice Grant made an effort to go on and each time his voice was drowned by a storm of shouted cries. The President, chairman of the meeting, was rapping vainly for order, but Grant only stood still, looking out over the stormy meeting with a cold contempt in his eyes, yet with a strange fire in them. Quietly he rolled up the data-sheets in his hand and thrust them into his pocket, and as quietly stepped forward to the platform's edge. Something in his bearing, in his expression, quickly quieted the noisy throng before him.

His voice came out over the hall cold and clear. "You have not let me give to you the proof for which you asked," he said.

The President stepped to his side, said something rapidly, but Grant shook his head calmly. "No proof that I can give you here would convince you of my theory's truth, I know," he told the silent throng before him, "but I will give you proof of it yet! To you, and to the world, I will give a proof such as the world has never seen before!"

Before any could move, he had walked from the platform and out of the hall. A buzz of excited voices broke out instantly, in comment and criticism. It was some hours later before Ferson and I got from the meeting to Grant's laboratory. But Grant was not there.

Within twenty-four hours more we knew, and all at the university knew, that Dr. Grant had disappeared. From the meeting he went to his laboratory, burned some papers there and pocketed others. Then he went to his rooms, hastily packed a few bags and departed. He left no note, no message. His action brought to a climax the whole sensation of the controversy he had precipitated and Grant's going was taken by many of his critics as a confession of the falsity of his position. He had had no close relatives to start a search for him, and though to Ferson and me his strange departure seemed astounding, we could explain it no better than others. The sensation subsided, and Ferson was appointed to head the department in place of the vanished scientist. Our own work occupied us once more. And certainly neither Ferson nor I, any more than another, guessed what lay behind Grant's strange action.

* * * * *

It was six months after Grant's departure that the great change began.

The first intimation was brought to the public notice by a New York newspaper. In a sensational article entitled "Is a New Crime Wave Upon Us?" it pointed out that in the last few days an unprecedented number of crimes of violence had taken place.

These were the more appalling in that many seemed quite without motive. In New York alone, in those few days, there had been more than a dozen murders, mostly clubbings and stabbings, which had apparently been provoked by the slightest of causes. In Chicago a respected clerk of middle age had for some annoyance turned suddenly and fractured the skulls of three of his associates with a heavy bar. From San Francisco and Los Angeles had come news of half a dozen holocausts in which one member of a family had slaughtered or attempted to slaughter all the others. From every part of the land there were coming reports of the most horrifying crimes of violence, the great majority of which seemed inspired by the pettiest of causes.

And this same wave of homicidal mania seemed at work over all the world! It was as though hundreds in earth's population had suddenly had their reason dwarfed and their passions magnified. No less than three solid householders in London had run amuck in bursts of sadistic[1] fury that had cost a half-score lives. The Paris police had taken from the Seine more human bodies, many terribly mutilated, than had ever been found in it in a like time before. Germany was aghast over two mass-murders of unexampled fiendishness that had occurred in a Rhenish and a Silesian village. There was news of an even more terrible slaying in Calcutta, and word of murders almost as terrible from almost every country on the globe.

[Footnote 1: Sadism, of which this word is the adjective, is a mental perversion towards cruelty.]

Nor was it murder alone that was stalking the earth, for robberies of the utmost brutality were even more numerous. Overshadowed as they were by the greater horror, they were as astonishing in nature. For all, like the slayings, seemed the result of sudden brutal instincts or desires uncontrolled by reason. Small shopkeepers in American and English towns were struck down for trifles. In the stores of great cities there were those who snatched childishly at desired objects and attempted a hopeless escape to the street. That was the keynote of all these robberies, of all these crimes--the unreasoning childishness of them. For the great part of them were attempted under circumstances which should have shown to even the most dull-witted that there was no chance of success.

It was a wave of strange and terrible crime, indeed, that was sweeping over all the earth. The newspapers concerned themselves with it to the exclusion of all else soon. They sought for explanations. What had caused this sudden release of the most brutal passions of numberless people? Many were the answers. An eminent scientist declared that the nerve-racking strain of modern civilization had reached such a pitch that the human mind could no longer stand it, was giving way beneath it. Many wrote serious letters to the press denouncing the motion pictures as schools of crime. Others defended them. And while the cause was thus argued, the great wave of crime and utter lawlessness that had rolled across earth seemed increasing in volume.

The number of deaths by violence that were each day recorded had grown now to an appalling figure. Murderous attacks were common in every one of earth's great cities. Men hurled themselves at each other's throats, apparently for a word, a gesture. Nor was this all. A strange erratic insanity seemed seizing more and more of earth's millions. Numberless were those reported to the authorities as missing, those who had wandered causelessly away from home and family. The world's roads held an unprecedented number of vagrant wanderers.

But in a few days more even this astounding wave of appalling crime was dwarfed in importance by more astounding and more terrible happenings. Accidents, a great number of them fatal to many, were occurring in every part of earth in an amount that was all but incredible.

More than a hundred people had gone to death in the crash of two thundering passenger trains in Colorado, a crash that had been due to the failure of an engineer to heed the plainest of signals. Two train wrecks in northern England had taken a toll of life almost as great, and there were reports of many other crashes from various parts of earth. In every one the accident had been due to the inexplicable failure of the human element, the failure of dispatcher or switchman or engineer to perform the duty that habit should have made automatic. In one case, that of the Austrian disaster, the crash had been directly caused by the sudden craziness of a switchman, who, for some slight grievance, had sent a long passenger-train crashing through an open switch and down an embankment.

There was news as terrible from the seas. Wireless reports flashed thick with word of ships that had blundered fatally on rocks or shoals by fault of helmsman or navigating officer. The greater part of these, fortunately, were freight-ships of medium and small size, but one case sent a thrill of horror through earth, already steeped in horror. That was when the great transatlantic liner _Garonia_, bound to Southampton, crashed by night into the southern Irish coast with the resulting loss of three-fourths of the thousand humans it carried. And that wreck, like the others, was due to an utterly inexplicable failure of the ship's personnel.

Smaller in magnitude, but taking a total of far more lives, were the unnumbered accidents that took place in the thickly populated and highly mechanized countries of North America and Europe. The number of automobile deaths, always staggering America, reached a stunning total in those last fateful days of September. Crashes took place at every corner, and the running down of pedestrians became a common occurrence everywhere. Many cars mowed a path of death through street and sidewalk before they were halted, their drivers losing apparently all faculty of control of them.

And in mill and shop and factory death's grim hand was reaping as thickly. Men, upon whom the lives of many depended, suddenly lost control of their machines and sent those many to death. Countless others were mangled or crushed to death by the great mechanisms they had operated for years without mishaps. Airplane crashes became so numerous that many sections of the world peremptorily forbade all further flying until the cause of it all could be ascertained. It was as though more and more of the masses of men were becoming incapable of handling the mechanisms, of conducting the operations, that they had been executing for years. Was mankind going collectively insane?

It seemed insanity, indeed, that was sweeping earth now. Riots had taken place on a small scale here and there in those days, but it was not until after the first of October that the first of the great outbreaks took place in London. Crowds of wandering men and women began the looting of shops, the breaking of windows, and the rioting swiftly spread. So swiftly did it spread, in fact, that by the time the troops called to suppress it appeared on the scene, unestimated thousands were engaged in the wild search for plunder. At the order to fire, an irregular volley from the troops killed scores, but in the pitched mob battle that followed scores of the soldiers took the side of the looters. The combat between mob and soldiers was forgotten, and the battle became a wild scene of brutality and violence in which hundreds were slain and trampled. In the end it required machine-guns to disperse them.

A similar great outbreak in New York was curbed quickly a day later by the use of planes and tear-bombs, but two days after there came a huge riot of unexampled bloodiness in Chicago, which cost several thousand lives and which resulted in the burning of a third of the city. Beginning as a race riot and developing into a savage general battle for loot, it was notable for the fact that the troops, called to suppress it, broke up even before they reached the scene and occupied themselves in brutal looting and battle of their own. And a score of great riots in the other cities of earth had similar results.

Civilization seemed crashing, with this oncoming dissolution of its organization and institutions. Had humanity gone insane, indeed? Swiftly, with full realization of the peril upon it by then, a conference of the world's most noted scientists had been called some days before at New York, to explain and to halt, if possible, this wave of seeming insanity that was gripping more of the masses of humanity each day and that was disintegrating civilization.