Valley of Pretenders. John Russell Fearn
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but without alternative,” Emmot murmured, then he looked at Mart questioningly.
“O.K.,” Mart announced, sampling one. “They’re safe enough. Overgrown plantains, or something. Not poisonous to our constitution, anyhow.”
Rawl watched in blasé contentment as the four began to appease their hunger, sharpened by their experiences. One of the women slipped outside and returned shortly afterwards with four garlands of livid-hued flowers. With a little cry of girlish delight, she placed one around Sir Basil’s perfectly bald head.
“Really, young woman, I protest!” he shouted, looking up. “And at my age—!”
“Irrelevant and immaterial,” grinned. Mart, looking at him critically. “But you’d better not take it off. These folks have evidently got you down as a sort of god, or something— Hey, what the—” He broke off in dismay as soft white arms passed against his ears and he found himself similarly adorned.
Eda looked remarkably pretty with hers—but Judge Walbrook looked about as attractive as a pig with a lemon between its teeth.
“Most irregular!” he fumed, crinkling with passion. “I refuse to wear it!”
“You’d better,” Mart counselled quickly, glancing up. “Our friend Aniseed Ball has his eye on you.… Keep your shirt on.”
“I assure you,” Walbrook said, with measured acidity, “that I have no intention of taking my shirt off.”
“Oh, skip it,” Mart groaned. “Why don’t you learn English?”
Rawl came forward from the ranks of his smiling, highly delighted people.
“I bring you a message,” he stated, waving his small arm. “We wait for the appointed ones: they who will show us peace. You are the appointed ones.”
“Oh, but we’re not,” Mart protested, jumping up. “You’re talking about things religious, Rawl; things you’ve heard over the radio. Some religious denominations wait for the appointed ones, yes—but that’s not us. We’ve got to leave here. We have a ship waiting for us.”
Rawl shook his head steadily and smiled. “We have waited long. We shall honor and cherish so long as you all shall live.”
“So long as—” Mart gulped, stared, then sat down with a thud. He spread his hands helplessly. “That’s the marriage service you’re mangling!” he yelled. “And it’s time this sort of foolery came to an end. We can’t stop here.”
“You are here…on a journey which knows no returning,” Rawl observed calmly.
“That’s—that’s Shakespeare,” Eda said quickly. “An’ maybe he means it, Mart. There is no way back over that waterfall.…”
“Hell!” Mart said helplessly, and all sat looking at each other, too concerned to notice how absurd they all looked with their garlands—all save Eda. Emmot was looking at her with a pop-eyed expression that might have either been fascinated appreciation or incipient cardiac.
CHAPTER IV
After a time Rawl and his people began to hum, in not unmusical voices, watching the four intently as they did so. At first it did not occur to Mart what they were chanting, then he suddenly leaped up.
“Listen to ’em!” he shouted. “That song is ‘I’ll Buy Me a Robot’—the latest American craze song! They can only have contacted that by direct radio.…” He swung around to Rawl. “Look here, where is your radio receiver?” he demanded.
Rawl shrugged, tapped his head. “Why travel far when it comes to your door?” he asked, then pointed again towards the far end of the room. It was obvious he meant the aurora, hidden from sight now, of course.
Mart stared, perplexedly, then suddenly Eda cried, “Listen, Mart, is it possible that these folks are natural radio receivers? They haven’t the brains to build apparatus; they’re only like kids.”
“Say, I believe you’ve got something there, Eda. Their lack of a sense of smell, for instance, might be compensated for by another unknown sense. Here’s to trying, anyhow.… Rawl, can you hear radio waves?”
“All-wave receiver given free,” he said in gratification, thudding his white-haired head again.
“It is inside his brain!” Eda cried. “What there is of his brain, that is.”
“But how—?” Mart kicked his chair back and began to pace the room, thinking. “Short-wave radio waves do penetrate this far, of course, especially the ones linked with television. They travel as far from Earth as Pluto. But—Good Lord!” he broke off with a gasp. “I begin to get it now—the connection between the aurora and this radio reception. This planet is naturally highly magnetic; we know that by discovering that lodestone area back in the forest. There may be thousands of ’em knocking around different parts of Rhea, particularly at the poles.”
“Well?” Eda questioned, and the people themselves moved closer to hear Mart’s halting, thoughtful exposition.
“Is there any reason,” he deliberated, “why the free electrons of short radio waves cannot be caught by Rhea’s lines of magnetic force spiraling around its magnetic poles? It’s a highly magnetized satellite for one thing; it doesn’t spin too fast, of course, but quite fast enough to form itself into a planetary dynamo and collect radio waves and redistribute them— Gosh, yes! That would account for the weird electrical display at the pole. Probably the same thing happens at the other pole, too. Not only trapped radio wave electrons, but electric radiations of various sorts have full play. This planet has such a high magnetization it captures them pretty freely, both from outer space and Saturn’s own emanations.”
“That may be right,” Eda admitted, thinking, “but how do you account for these folks being able to hear them?”
“Just a minute,” Mart said, and turning to the table he picked up the skin of one of the plantain fruits. Gently he folded it and rubbed it together.
“Rawl, what does that sound like to you?” he asked quickly.
“Visit Niagara Falls for your honeymoon,” Rawl smiled back—and Mart gave a yelp, slammed the peel emphatically back on the table.
“There you are! To us that sounded like a faint, slippy sort of noise. To him it sounds like the din of Niagara. You get it? The hearing perception of these people is way ahead of ours. Human ear limit is 10-12 watt power, and that’s mighty low. Animals a bit higher. These people are above our audible frequency.”
“Maybe,” Eda mused, “but how does that connect up with them hearing radio waves—electronic waves? Those aren’t audible anyway; they’re electrical.”
“I know that, sweetheart! Point is, their brains are adapted differently than ours. If they can hear inaudible sounds, and magnify them as much as they do, it logically indicates that they can also receive electrical waves and interpret them.”
“But how?”
“How the devil should I know?” Mart snorted exasperatedly. “Give me some cooperation, can’t you? When a stream of electrons changes its course in, say, the Sun, it produces the sensation of light in our brains, via our eyes. Well, what happens inside our brains to transform electron agitation into light? We don’t know; nobody does. It’s a thought mutation; a cellular response as impossible to describe as explaining a color to a blind man.”
Eda looked about her at the child-like faces and shrugged her slim shoulders.
“Can you beat it?” she asked at last, “Kids with radio-receiver minds in a mud city on a cock-eyed moon! And I thought I knew all the answers about space and its contents.”
“Personally,” said Walbrook sadly, fingering his garland, “I am not in the least interested in space or vulgar radio.… I really must insist we find our way back to the ship. I have a case to judge.”
“You’ve