“Omega, the Man”
© 1933
by
Lowell Howard Morrow
The
silver airship cut swiftly through the hot thin air. The noonday sun blazed
down upon it and the desert world below. All about was the solemn silence of
death. No living thing appeared either in the air or on the drab, gray earth.
Only the aircraft itself displayed any signs of life. The sky, blue as indigo,
held not the shadow of a cloud, and on the horizon the mountains notched into
it like the teeth of a giant saw (1).
The airship finally
came to a hovering stop, then dropped rapidly toward the salt-encrusted plain.
It came to rest at last on the bottom of a great, bowl-shaped hollow situated
at the end of a chasm whose gray, rock-strewn sides rose in rugged terraces for
miles back into the sky. In a few moments a panel in the vessel's side rolled
noiselessly upward, disclosing a brilliant light, and from the interior of the
airship soon appeared two figures who paused at the aperture and gazed out over
the parched earth. Then without fear or visible effort—although they were
seventy-five feet above the ground—they emerged from the ship and floated down
to earth.
These two humans—the
sole survivors of all earth's children—were man and wife—Omega and Thalma. They
were burned a deep cherry by the fierce rays of the sun. In stature they were
above the average man now on earth. Their legs were slender and almost
fleshless, because for many centuries man had ceased to walk. Their feet were
mere toeless protuberances attached to the ankle bone. Their arms were long and
as spare as their legs, but their hands, although small, were well-proportioned
and powerful. Their abdominal regions were very small, but above them were
enormous chests sheltering lungs of tremendous power, for thus nature had
armored man against the rarefaction of the earth's atmosphere. But the most
remarkable parts about this truly remarkable couple were there massive heads
set upon short, slim necks. The cranial development was extraordinary, their
bulging foreheads denoting great brain power. Their eyes—set wide apart—were
large and round, dark and luminous with intelligence and their ears were
remarkably large, being attuned to all the music and voices of life. While
their nostrils were large and dilated, their mouths were very small, though sensuous
and full-lipped. They were entirely hairless—for even the eyebrows and the
eyelashes of man had entirely disappeared ages before. And when they smiled
they betrayed no gleam of teeth, for nature had long discarded teeth in man's
evolution (2).
The great, silver ship
of the sky now rested in a deep pocket on the floor of an ancient sea. Millions
of years, under the sucking energy of the sun and the whip of many winds, had
sapped its waters, until only a shallow, brackish lake remained. Along the
shores of this lake, which covered scarcely more than a hundred acres, a rim of
yellowish, green grass followed the water's edge and struggled against the
inevitable, and here and there among the grasses flowers of faded colors and
attenuated foliage reared their heads bravely in the burning sunshine. And this
lone lake, nestled in the lowest spot among the mountains and valleys which
once floored the Pacific, now held the last of earth's waters. Barren and
lifeless the rest of the world baked under a merciless sun.
Now
clasping hands, like children at play, Omega and Thalma approached the lake.
They glided over the ground, merely touching their feet to the highest points,
and finally stopped with their feet in the warm, still water.
Omega ran his cupped
hand through the water, then drank eagerly.
"It is
good," he said in a low, musical voice. "And there is much of it.
Here we may live a long time." (3)
Thalma laughed with
sheer joy, her large, red-rimmed eyes aglow with mother light and love.
"I am glad,"
she cried. "I know that Alpha will be happy here."
"It is so, my
love, and—"
Omega checked and
stared out over the glassy lake. A spot in its center was stirring uneasily.
Great bubbles rose to the surface and eddied to one side, then suddenly huge
cascades of water shot into the air as if ejected by subterraneous pressure. As
they stared in silent astonishment the commotion suddenly ceased and the
surface of the lake became as tranquil as before.
"There is
volcanic action out there," said Omega fearfully. "At any time the
ground may open and engulf the lake in a pit of fire. But no, that cannot
be," he added, staring at Thalma with an odd light in his eyes. For he
suddenly recalled that no volcanic action or earth tremor had disturbed the
surface crust for ages.
"What is it,
Omega?" she whispered in accents of awe.
"Nothing to fear,
my dear, I am sure," he replied, averting his eyes. "Likely some
fissure in the rock has suddenly opened."
And then he embraced
her in the joy of new-found life. For long ages mind had communicated with mind
by telepathic waves, speech being used for its cheer and companionship.
"We will make
ready for Alpha," said Omega joyfully. "In very truth he may be able
to carry on. Moisture may return to earth, and it is more likely to return here
than elsewhere. Remember what the Mirror showed last week over the Sahara
plains—the makings of a cloud!"
They cheered each
other by this remembrance how, just before they had consumed the last of the
water in their recent home and buried the last of their neighbors and friends,
the reflecting Mirror had brought a view of a few stray wisps of vapor above
the Great Sahara which once had been reclaimed by man, where teeming millions
in by-gone ages had lived their lives.
"The inclination
of the earth's axis is changing as we know," (4) he went on hopefully as they
turned back toward the ship. "The moisture may come back."
His was the voice of
hope but not of conviction. Hope, planted in man's soul in the beginning, still
burned brightly in these last stout hearts.
Alpha was still
unborn. Omega and Thalma had willed a male child (5). In him was to be the
beginning of a new race which they hoped with the aid of science would repeople
the earth. Hence his name, the first letter of the Greek alphabet, of which
"omega" is the last.
"I am afraid, my
love," said Thalma, looking back over her shoulder at the placid lake.
"I wonder what heaved the water about that way."
"Don't worry
about it, my dear," he said as they paused beneath the ship and he put his
arm protectingly about her. "As I have said, it probably was the shifting
of a rock on the bed of the lake. It is nothing to worry about, and I feel that
we have nothing to fear for a long, long time. And we have so much joy to look
forward to. Remember Alpha is coming, and think of his glorious future! Think
of his changing all this!" And he swept his hand toward the grim, gray
hills. "Just think of again gardenizing the world!"
It
was indeed a dreary view upon which they gazed. On every side, upon the mountains
and hills, over salt-encrusted plains and upon the rocks, were the skeletons
and shells of departed life. Fossils of the animal and the vegetable kingdoms
greeted one on every hand. Great fronds of palms of the deep, draped with weird
remains of marine life long extinct, stood gaunt and desolate and rust-covered
in the hollows and on the hills. Long tresses of sea weed and moss, now crisp
and dead as desert sands, still clung in wreaths and festoons to rock and tree
and plant just as they had done in that far-off age, when washed by the waters
of the sea. Great forests of coral, once white and pink and red with teeming
life but now drab and dead, still thrust their arms upward, their former beauty
covered and distorted by the dust of the ages. Whales and sharks and serpents
and fish of divers species and sizes, together with great eels and monsters of
the deep, lay thickly over the land, their mummified remains shriveled by the
intense heat, their ghastliness softened by the ashes of the years.
Millions of ages had
rolled away since the struggle began—the battle of life on earth against the
encroachments of death. And now death stalked everywhere, grinning with
malicious triumph, for he had but one more battle to fight. Already his grisly
clutch was closing on the standard of victory. Man had mastered life but he had
not conquered death. With the magic wand of science he had reached out into
space and viewed the life of far-off worlds. He had routed superstition and
fear and selfishness. He had banished disease and learned all nature's secrets;
had even visited other worlds and had come to know and understand his God, but
still death had marched grimly on. For even the abysmal moment of creation had
marked the world for his prey. Slowly but surely death had closed his cold
hands about the earth. The sun flung forth his hot rays and drew more and more
of the earth's moisture and dissipated it in space. Gradually the forests
vanished and then the streams and lakes dwindled and disappeared. By this time
the atmosphere had thinned almost imperceptibly—and only by the aid of his
scientific instruments had man been able to detect its thinning. Less and less
rain fell, and finally even the ice-caps about the poles trickled away. Cold
and gaunt and shadowy those regions lay silent and lifeless throughout the long
nights, and loomed like gray ghosts in the hushed light of the summer. The sun
blazed on relentlessly and the shores of the seven seas receded age after age,
but with his science and his machines man had doggedly followed the retreating
waters, husbanded and harnessed them and thus retained his grip on life.
But now at last life
on earth had come to its final battlefield. The plans of the battle were
sharply drawn, but there could be no doubt of the issue. No one knew this
better than Omega, for the sun shone on with undiminished power. Yet the
rotation of the earth had slackened until twenty-five hours constituted a day,
while the year was 379 days and a fraction in length. Man, gradually adjusting
himself to the new conditions and environment, had triumphed even in the face
of a losing fight. For he had learned to smile into the hollow sockets of
death, to laugh at the empty promises of life (6).
Back
in their ship Omega and Thalma gazed out over the dead world, where the salt
crystals gleamed and sparkled in the sunshine.
"Will all this
ever become green again and full of joy and life?" asked Thalma wearily.
"Why not?"
asked Omega. "Although the race has come to its last stand, water is here
and before it is gone who knows what may happen?"
Omega spoke only to
please his wife, for well he knew in his heart that the star of hope had
forever set. And always he was thinking of that commotion in the waters of the
lake. What could have caused it? What did it portend? He was sure that the
answer was to be one of tragedy.
"We know that for
uncounted ages the world was green and beautiful, was vibrant with life and
joy," he went on. "And why may it not be so again, even though now it
is garbed in the clothes of the sepulchre? Let us trust in the power of our
son."
Thalma did not answer,
and Omega, seeing that she was terribly depressed, fell silent. So they sat in
their great airship, strangely dejected despite the close proximity of the
life-giving water, while the sun flamed through the cloudless sky and set in a
crimson flood beyond the lifeless plains. Night fell but still they sat
brooding. The stars shone out in the purple heavens, but they noticed not their
glory. The ship was wrapped in an awful silence. No night wind whispered its
message nor warmed the cold, desolate earth, stretching down from the poles,
nor cooled the hot wastes about the equator. The naked mountains rose stark and
forbidding into the sky, which hung like a great, bejeweled bowl over the
sun-scorched plains, where the dust of many ages lay undisturbed. The shadows
lay deep and dark over the valleys and among the streets of cities dead and
silent for many ages, and searched out deep chasms which when the world was
young had felt the surge of the restless seas. No form of life winged its way
through the darkness and called to its mate. No beast of prey rent the air with
its challenge. No insect chirped. No slimy shape crawled over the rocks. Dark
and solemn, mysterious and still, the earth sped on through the night.
Morning
found them in much better spirits. Over their breakfast, which consisted almost
wholly of food in tablet form, they discussed their plans. After which they
went to the lookout in the bow of the ship and gazed out at the gray world.
There was no change. The same heart-breaking monotony of death confronted them.
But despite it all they finally smiled into each other's eyes.
"It is
home," said Omega proudly. "The last home we shall ever know."
"My God,
look!" suddenly gasped Thalma, clutching his arm and pointing a trembling
finger toward the lake. "What—is that?"
Following her gesture
he stared in terror and stupefaction. Rising above the center of the lake where
the day before they had beheld the agitated waters, was an enormous,
scale-covered neck surmounted by a long, snake-like head whose round, red eyes
were sheltered beneath black, horny hoods. The horrible creature's head was
swaying back and forth as its black tongue darted in and out between wide-open
jaws displaying single rows of sharp teeth. Fully fifteen feet above the lake
the awful eyes looked toward the land. And as the neck moved in unison with the
swaying head the scales seemed to slide under and over one another a perfect
armor for the neck.
"A plesiosaurian!"
exclaimed Omega, leveling his glasses at the beast. "No—how can that
be?" he added in bewilderment. "Those monsters were supposed to be
extinct ages ago. And they had a smooth skin, while this thing has scales, like
those of a brontosaurus, which was really a land animal. This must be a cross
between the two that through the process of evolution has been developed (7).
Anyway it is the last of the species and it has come here—to die."
"Like us it has
followed the water and come here to die," said Thalma as she also leveled
glasses (8).
For several minutes
they watched the swaying head which every little while twisted from side to
side, as the blazing eyes seemed to be searching for prey, while a whitish
saliva dripped from the jaws. The body of the beast, which they knew to be
enormous, was hidden beneath the water, but the agitation on the surface showed
that powerful feet and legs were stirring.
"Yes, it has come
here to die," repeated Omega, "to fight for the last drop of earth's
water. It now has possession of the lake, and unless we kill it, it will kill
us or drive us away."
Almost with the words
Omega seized an atomic gun and pointed it at the brute's head. But before he
could sight the weapon and pull the trigger the monster, as though sensing danger,
suddenly jerked down its head and a moment later it had disappeared beneath the
surface (9).
"It has
gone!" cried Thalma. She was trembling as with a chill, and her eyes were
wide with terror.
"It will appear
again," said Omega, "and then we will kill it, for the water belongs
to man. Doubtless that huge beast is all that remains of life on earth save
ourselves. To-night while you sleep here in the ship, I will take a gun, take
position behind a rock on the shore of the lake and watch for its appearance. I
think shortly after nightfall when the rocks are cool it leaves the water and
comes on land in a vain search for food, for beyond a doubt it has devoured
everything in the lake, save marine mosses and the like. Yet as it has survived
all contemporary life except man, it may live for centuries unless we destroy
it."
"But there are
not centuries of water out there," Thalma said. "As to your hunting
this monster alone, I will not hear of it. I shall go with you. Together we
will destroy this menace of our new home."
All
Omega's eloquence could not dissuade her. So, after the sun had set and the dry
cold had chilled the hot rocks, they set out along the shore of the lake and
looked eagerly out over the still water for a sight of their enemy. Nothing
disturbed the silvery surface of the water. Crouching behind a mass of coral
they waited, but throughout the long, still night they watched without reward,
for nothing moved within their range of vision. The stars, wonderfully large
and brilliant in that rarefied atmosphere, seemed to be the only link between
them and the unknown. Only their own hurried breathing and the muffled thumps
of their wildly beating hearts broke the silence. And as the sun rose again
above the dead plains, weary and discouraged they returned to the ship.
While keeping up a
bold front for Thalma's sake, Omega's heart was sad, for he well knew that
unless they could vanquish that marine monster they were doomed. That such a
dreadful creature had come to them from the mists of antiquity, as it were, was
incredible. Yet he had seen it, Thalma had seen it, and it resembled some of
the sea-monsters he had heard of in the past. They could not doubt its
existence and must prepare for the worst.
Omega's name had been
conferred on him by an ironical whim of fate. When he was born there were still
many people on earth inhabiting the low valleys of the Pacific's floor where
much water still remained. But the droughts had increased with the years, and
before Omega had reached middle-life all rain had ceased to fall. The
atmosphere became so rare, even near the ground, that it was difficult for the
people with the aid of their machines to draw sufficient oxygen and nitrogen
from it to prepare the food which had been man's principal sustenance for ages.
Gradually the weaker
peoples had succumbed. But the remnants of the nations gathered about the
receding waters, all foreseeing the end, but all determined to defer it as long
as possible (10). There was no recourse. For ages before Omega was born the nations,
knowing that the earth was drying up, had fought one another for the privilege
of migrating to another planet to fight its inhabitants for its possession. The
battle had been so bitterly contested that two-thirds of the combatants were
slain. By the aid of their space-cars the victors colonized other planets in
our solar system leaving the vanquished on earth to shift for themselves. There
was nothing for them to do but to fight on and await the end, for no space-car
that man had ever devised was able to penetrate the cold, far-reaches of space.
Only among the family of our own sun could he navigate his ships. And now, like
the earth, every member of that once glorious family was dead or dying. For
millions of years, Mars, his ruddy glow gone forever, had rolled through space,
the tomb of a mighty civilization. The ashes of Venus were growing cold. Life
on Mercury, Jupiter and Saturn already was in the throes of dissolution, and
the cold, barren wastes of Uranus and Neptune always had forbidden man (11).
So it seemed that the
name, Omega, had been fittingly bestowed. More than ever the stark truth made
him shudder with apprehension, and he felt that only the coming of Alpha would
give him strength to carry on.
"Now we must make
ready for Alpha," said Omega, even while thoughts of the sea-monster
chilled his heart. "We will make our servants prepare the way. Here in
this valley must be born a new race of men. Life must come from death. Come,
Thalma."
She
smiled back at him, reassured by his confident manner, and together they
entered a lower compartment of the ship. This compartment contained the
servants of which Omega had spoken—divers machinery and other marvels of man's
construction. Omega touched several buttons and a section of the ship's hull
rolled aside. He pressed other buttons and whirled wheels. Then great sections
of mirror slid out into the air and without apparent direction or control they
ranged themselves far up on a steep hillside. Yet all were under perfect
control. With invisible, atomic rays Omega made all do his bidding. For
countless centuries man had mastered the atom, divided it, harnessed its
electrons. Following the discoveries of the great French scientist, Becquerel,
man had learned that the potential energy of all atoms—especially that of
radium—is almost limitless. And as the disintegration of the atom carries an
electrical discharge, man had learned to control this energy. Omega's machines,
utilizing atoms from everywhere, even the ether, split them by radio-activity
through electromagnetic waves, and utilized the energy of their electrons which
always move in fixed orbits. There being forty radio-active substances, Omega
took advantage of them all, and equalizing the atomic weight of the
atoms—whether those around a hydrogen nucleus or a helium nucleus—he broke the
atoms down and directed the charges of their electrons. Then his motors
amplified the discharges and, through the medium of an electric current,
projected them in the form of invisible atomic rays which he could control and
direct against any object and sustain and move at will by means of oscillating
currents (12).
Soon upon the
hillside, perfectly arranged and adjusted, appeared a giant, parabolic,
refracting mirror with which he could obtain a view of any portion of the earth's
surface by sending vibrating currents around the world and reproducing
impressions already recorded on the ether, on the surface of the mirror. And
beneath its center was a receiver, through which he might have heard the
minutest sound around the world, had there been any to hear.
The small, atomic
motors—which drew their energy both from hydrogen nuclei, the ether of space
and the radio-active substances of all metals—now were placed on the hillside
near the great mirror. There motors were capable of creating and focusing
light, without bulb or other container, whenever and wherever needed. All were
operated with scarcely any effort by Omega.
In a measure it seemed
strange that the Greek alphabet and all the classics of the ancients had
survived antiquity. But the latest inventions of man explained it all. For man
with his machines had reached far back into the shadowy past and proved the
immortality of all thought and action. All the records of history, all the
triumphs and defeats, the joys and sorrows and aspirations of humanity, came
out of the past and marched across the screen of his historical recorder. As
nothing is ever lost, all sounds and impressions occurring on earth since the
dawn of its creation, being already impressed on the sensitive plastic and
all-pervading ether, the same as a photograph is recorded on its film or plate,
man had developed a machine for drawing on these impressions until at will the
history of the world was before him (13). Even the varied life of the ancients came
out of the past. Saints and sinners, slaves and masters mingled. Confucius sat
before him in humility; Guatama counseled his followers to be humble; Christ
died upon the cross. Warriors and statesmen shouted their triumphs and bewailed
their defeats. Philosophers expounded their wisdom and Socrates drank the
hemlock. Hannibal and Caesar and Alexander fought their battles, and Napoleon
marched gory and unafraid from Austerlitz to Waterloo. All came back at the
call of Omega's science (14).
As
has been stated it was a giant craft on which Omega and Thalma had come to this
last retreat of man. Within its interior were all the latest marvels of man's
ingenuity and skill. These instruments of almost supernatural power not only
reached back into the past but also penetrated the future. There was a great
atomic-electric motor used in creating and controlling climate as long as there
was any to control. Sending forth electromagnetic waves it massed and directed
the atmospheric pressure, sending heat waves here, cold ones there, thus
causing droughts and rainfall at will (15). But now, as with the case of most of the
other machines, Omega needed it no longer. He kept it because it linked him
with the joy of the past. Besides, there was the mind-control appliance by
whose aid man's mind might visit other worlds. This was done through the
development of the subconscious and the discipline of the will. But Omega was
weary of these pilgrimages, because his body could not perform those far-off
flights. As time went on he realized that the earth was his natural home. Even
the earth's neighbors, dead and dying, offered him no haven.
Yes, Omega and Thalma
had garnered the gist of the world's treasures before commencing this last
trek. Gold and precious stones were common objects to them, because for
countless ages man had made them at will, but around those they had brought
clustered sacred memories of loved ones gone before. The biological machine in
the chemical laboratory of the ship—the machine that brought forth life from
nature's bountiful storehouse—was of little use now that both atmosphere and
moisture were nearly gone. Yet Omega cherished this machine, and aside from its
associations with the past, it held for him a fascination that he could not
understand (16).
Having set the Mirror
and other mechanical servants in position, Omega and Thalma returned to the
ship, and slept throughout the day, for with the descending sun they must again
go forth to hunt that scaly demon which had taken possession of the earth's
last water.
The night was
moonless, but the bright starlight brought all objects into plain relief
against the dark rocks. Taking position on the slope several rods above the
beach, Omega and Thalma watched the lake eagerly, but nothing disturbed its
mirror-like surface. As on the preceding night the awful silence appalled
them—even though they were accustomed to the vast solitude. It was so calm and
still, so full of death and mystery, that it seemed they must cry out in the
agony of their emotions. As the very silence was crushing their spirits so the
knowledge that only one form of life on earth stood between them and the water
to which their last hope clung, was maddening. How they longed to battle the
hideous monster! But the hours dragged on with nothing to disturb the dead,
heart-breaking silence. At last the Great Dipper had swung so far around that
dawn appeared (17). Yet there had been not a ripple on the lake. Omega concluded
that his guess was wrong—the beast did not leave the water at night to search
for food. Perhaps it had learned the futility of such a search in a dead,
dust-covered world.
Wearied
by their long and fruitless vigil they must have dozed, for suddenly Omega, who
sat but a yard or two from Thalma, was aroused by a padded footfall and the
exhalations of a noisome breath. Looking up he was horrified to see the monster
towering above him, its head swaying gently to and fro, as its great, awkward
feet sent it lunging forward and backward for many feet, its spotted,
scale-covered body trailed over the rocks. By suddenly rounding the shoulder of
the rock, sheltering Omega and Thalma, its head held high, it seemed not to
have seen the two humans, for its terrible unblinking eyes were fixed ahead on
the water. However, Omega, paralyzed with fear and astonishment, and being
directly in the beast's path, believed that his hour had come. This was to be
the end of all his plans—to be crushed by the enormous weight of the monster
which challenged his right to live. But in that tense moment when he thought
that it was all over, the lithe form of Thalma reached his side and in a frenzy
of terror pulled him away. But even then the sloping belly of the onrushing
beast tore him from her frail hands and dashed him against the rock.
While he lay there
stunned and unable to move, Thalma discharged her weapon at the monster. Three
times she fired in quick succession but the shots went wild, and in another
moment the great brute struck the water with a resounding splash and
disappeared from view. For a few minutes a trail of surface bubbles marked its
rapid course toward the lake's center, then all was motionless and still as
before.
"Are you hurt,
Omega?" Thalma cried anxiously, kneeling by his side (18).
"Just shaken up a
bit," he returned, sitting up with an effort. "Great hunters are
we," he went on with a laugh. "We almost allowed the game to catch
the hunters! Well, let's go back to the ship. We'll get him next time."
But their narrow
escape had shaken their nerve. All day long they remained safely in the ship
and kept their guns trained on the lake hoping that the beast would show
himself. How or when it had left the lake they could not surmise, but that it
was more formidable than they had thought now seemed certain, and Omega
concluded to bring science to his aid. In this way he was sure that he would
soon exterminate the monster.
So the next day he lay
a cable carrying a high voltage all around the lake and connected it with traps
of various designs both in the water and on the land. No more would they risk
their lives hunting the beast in the open after nightfall.
The hot, still days
that followed were anxious ones for these last children of life. Not a trap was
sprung. The beast did not drag his slimy body and tail across the heavily
charged cable. The last of his kind, fighting the last battle of existence, it
seemed that nature had endowed him with uncanny cunning. There was the
life-giving water for whose possession no human kind challenged them, but this
enemy was more terrible than any man, savage or civilized whom the earth had
ever known (19).
During
these anxious, watchful days Omega and Thalma went often to the Mirror and
gazed into it in search of vapor clouds. And more than once those gossamer-like
formations appeared over different parts of the world to gladden their hearts
only to fade away before their vision. The reflections of those embryo clouds
became less frequent as the days wore on. Omega and Thalma knew that they had
no right to hope for the return of water vapor. Their instruments, so finely
attuned as to appear endowed with intelligence, the records of the past and
their own common sense told them that. But nature and life in the upper reaches
of the air were dying as hard as their own hope. They knew that the aerial
manifestations they witnessed were but symptoms of the death struggle. And yet
a real cloud, dark and pregnant with moisture, suddenly appeared in the Mirror.
Consulting the chart they saw that it was hovering over a great land of plain
and mountains which formerly had been a part of the United States of America (20).
"We will go and
examine this gift from heaven," said Omega. "It moves over a once
beautiful land, which the voices of history tell us, harbored a race of the
free millions of years ago."
"Yes, we will
go," agreed Thalma. "It may be after all that Alpha will first see
the light far from this dreadful hollow and—and—that monster out there in the
lake."
Omega hung his head.
Well he knew that the presence of the monster was slowly killing his beloved.
She complained not, but her dreams were disturbed with frightful visions, and
often Omega awakened to find her at a window staring out over the lake with
terror-stricken eyes.
This new cloud was
thousands of miles to the east but with fond anticipations they entered the
ship and plunged toward it. But although they reached the spot in one hour, the
last remnant of vapor dissolved before their eyes, and they turned sadly
homeward, once more beaten by the inexorable decrees of fate.
So having decided at
last that this deep valley must remain their home forever, Omega looked about
for a suitable building site, for although the ship was safe and comfortable
they longed for a home on the earth. But the ever present menace of the
sea-monster saddened them and filled them with misgivings, despite the fact
that Omega could guard the cottage electrically. But Omega wondered whether
electric safeguards would keep this creature from coming some night to the
cottage and sticking his loathsome head in at door or window. Omega shuddered
at the thought, but refrained from mentioning such a possibility to Thalma (21).
Having selected a site
under the branches of a great coral tree standing within the shade of an
overhanging rock, Omega erected a cottage. It took him but a few days to build
and furnish this building from supplies on the ship. It was complete in every
feature, even to running water from the lake. Grass was brought from the lake
and a lawn laid out about the cottage in the shadows of the rock. The grass was
kept watered for Thalma's sake, even though the water was needed for other
purposes and the lake was diminishing steadily. But she was sacred in his
eyes—she the last mother the old earth ever was to know.
The interior of the
cottage was embellished like a palace, for treasures were brought from the
airship to grace its walls. The richest rugs, curtains, tapestries and silks
the world had ever known were there for Thalma's pleasure and comfort.
Paintings of green verdure, of forests and plains of waving grass, of tumbling
mountain streams and cool, placid lakes, Omega drew from the young days of the
earth. The power to portray nature's moods and beauties had increased in many
men with the passing of time. He placed these scenes before Thalma's couch that
their cool and inspiring presence might comfort her while she awaited the
coming of the child.
One
morning being weary of the stark monotony of the valley, whose eastern wall was
distant many miles, Omega and Thalma determined to scale the heights above. For
sometimes in the sinister aspect of the chasm's walls, it seemed that the rocks
would close together and crush out their lives. They concluded not to take the
air-car, but to go on a rambling picnic with the ever present hope that they
might discover another oasis of life.
Hand in hand they rose
into the air, up and up for miles past frowning cliffs and dark caverns,
yawning like grinning skulls above the outposts of death. There was no visible
effort in their flight. They but took advantage of nature's laws which man had
long understood. At last on the highest peak they paused to rest on a
dust-covered rock.
The red sun rose above
the cheerless horizon and blazed on them from a deep azure sky slashed across
by bars of purple and gold. More than nine miles beneath them spread the deep
gorge, where nestled their little home, looking like a doll-house, and above it
shone the great, silver ship. The lake shone like a speck of silver on the drab
rocks. They gazed down upon it in an attitude of worship, for it alone in all
that vast realm of peaks and plains and valleys symbolized life. Then suddenly
a dark speck appeared on the surface of the lake. Omega looked at Thalma
apprehensively, for well he knew the meaning of that speck. Her face was pale
and drawn, and she clung to Omega as they pointed their glasses at the water.
The monster was again
disporting himself. He threshed the water into foam with his long, sinuous
body, while his head wagged and his terrible eyes looked toward the land. It
was the first sight they had had of him since the night he almost killed Omega.
"Look!"
breathed Thalma, "it is coming ashore. Oh, I did hope that it was
dead!" And trembling violently she clung closer to her lord.
"Never mind,
dear," consoled Omega as he watched the great beast waddle toward the
shore. "We will get him this time," he went on exultingly.
"Watch—he is going to get into the trap!"
But they were again
doomed to disappointment. Within a few rods of the shore, with its great,
spotted body nearly all out of the water, the monster stopped, lifted its head
and looked slowly around in every direction. Then apparently scenting danger,
it turned, floundered back to the center of the lake and submerged.
"I—I—am
afraid," shuddered Thalma.
"There is nothing
to fear," reassured Omega. "The beast cannot get to our home, and one
of these days he will either get caught in a trap or we will get a shot at
him."
Although Omega spoke
bravely he was really worried about the beast and the influence it was having
on Thalma. He realized that he must at once devise a better method of
extermination. Even though he did not fear it so much personally its presence
was disturbing, and it was daily absorbing so much water needful for
themselves (22).
This
great gash in the earth's crust stretching for many miles below them had been
the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean when its blue waves still lapped the
shores of continents, and that little lake, far down in the earth's bosom, was
the pitiful remainder of that once mighty sea. Far to the north-west, showing
plainly against the sky in the focus of their binoculars, were great ridges of
mountain and table land, rising gaunt and desolate from the ancient bed of the
sea—the site of the ancient empire of Japan (23). Round about them on every hand
were the mute remains of marine life, for the spot where they sat had been far
below the surface of the sea. Silent, mysterious, hopeless and dreary, the
prospect appalled even their stout hearts. How they yearned for the sight of
some living thing there upon those high peaks. Silence supreme and dreadful, in
which even their voices, hushed and tremulous, sounded profane, cowed them by
its unending solemnity and the relentless grip. Gray and nude save for their
pall of dust the mountains rose into the sky, eternal in their ghostly majesty.
And the dark valleys between with their gray lips of death looked like the
gaping mouths of hell.
"Death! death!
eternal and triumphant death, thou art everywhere!" cried Omega, springing
up and gazing with hopeless eyes about over the desolation.
Thalma rose and
touched his arm. A smile of faith and confidence shone on her face. He looked
at her in wonder.
"Nay, death is
not everywhere," she reproved gently. "Remember Alpha, our son. In
him life does and will live again."
"Forgive me,
Thalma," said Omega, taking her in his arms. "You speak truly. With
your loyalty and courage I know we will win."
And so as it had
always been from the beginning of time, even so in these last days it took
woman's love and devotion to sustain man.
Now Omega gazed around
on the abode of death with an expression of disdain. He challenged it and dared
it to do its worst. Life still triumphed, for he had Thalma and Alpha was
coming soon. He would not surrender. He would fight the dark forces of
death—even that horrible monster down there in the lake—and conquer them all.
He would again 'gardenize' the world. The stubborn power of hope, that heritage
from his atavistic ancestors, was surging through his blood.
"We will change
all this," he went on, waving his hand toward the far rim of the sky.
"We are still masters of life. But now let us descend," he added in
answer to her approving smile.
So saying again hand
in hand they stepped off into space and floated easily down toward their last
home.
Omega knew that his
first important task was to get rid of the beast. The fear-haunted expression
in Thalma's eyes brooked no delay. Accordingly they went to the ship, and each
taking a small sack they filled them with depth bombs. Thus armed they floated
out over the lake in quest of their enemy. But although quite shallow the water
was opaque for the most part being discolored by vegetable matter stirred up by
the monster, and the transparent portions were too deep for them to see bottom (24).
Long and carefully they searched at a safe distance above the water, but no
sight of the beast could be seen. Then hoping that a chance shot might reach
and destroy him they passed to and fro over the lake's center and dropped their
bombs. Great columns of water were sent high in air deluging them with spray.
That was all. Still, they had no way of knowing whether a bomb had struck home.
In spots the water was so violently agitated as to suggest that the monster
writhed in a death struggle. But at last all became as quiet as before.
It
now occurred to Omega to surround the lake with an invisible wall of
electricity of such power as to electrocute the beast should he attempt to go
over or through it. This was accomplished by increasing the power of his motors
and by automatic controls projecting a high voltage potential through the air
around the lake (25). And then in addition to other protective appliances already
installed Omega put a similar wall about the cottage, much to Thalma's relief
and delight.
One night they had
retired early, Thalma being weary and her time but a few weeks away. To the
sweet strain of music which had been in the air for ages, they soon fell
asleep. How long he had slept Omega could never guess, but he was awakened
suddenly. He sat up bewildered and stared into the darkness, because for some
reason all lamps were out. And then he became aware of a peculiar sound coming
from afar. It was a queer noise combining the roar of the surf upon a
rock-bound coast, the sigh of the night wind through a forest and the rumble of
thunder. Suddenly it seemed to him that earth and cottage were trembling, and
the walls of the room swayed and buckled as though smitten by a great wind.
Frantically he rubbed
his eyes, convinced that it was all a dream. But the noise drew nearer,
thundered in his ears. In terror he got to his feet, tried to cry out. The
words froze on his lips, for just then the wall before him crashed in as though
struck by an avalanche. Then came a grinding, splitting jumble of sounds, the
solid ground shook under the passage of some mighty force which increased for a
moment followed by a piercing scream.
Frozen with horror
Omega stared around the wrecked room whose tottering walls seemed about to fall
upon him. Where was Thalma? In a frenzy he stared into the darkness, felt over
the couch. She was gone!
In some way he got
outside and there in the direction of the lake he saw the monster, its great
bulk looming high above the ground, its head swaying with the swing of its legs
as it lumbered along. And, merciful God—held in the grip of the monster's jaws
was Thalma!
The awful sight
galvanized Omega to action. With a hoarse scream he launched himself at the
beast, passed rapidly through the air above the monster and reached out for his
wife. Scream after scream rent the still air as he pressed forward and the
beast lurched on in its haste to reach the lake with its prey. But now Omega
was close to his beloved, and he reached out to grasp her as once more he
screamed right into the ears of his enemy. Then perhaps in sheer terror at the audacity
of man, the great jaws of the monster relaxed and Thalma fell limp and
unconscious to the ground.
As the beast lumbered
on Omega knelt by her side.
"Thank God,"
he breathed, "she lives!"
Then he took her in
his arms and turned back to the ruined home just as a great splash informed him
that once more the monster had entered his element to challenge them for its
possession.
Thalma
soon revived, but she clung to Omega and gazed about fearfully. How she had
wandered out of doors and had been snapped up by the beast she could not tell,
but Omega said that she must have been walking in her sleep. They went at once
to the ship and there spent the remainder of the night (26).
Every light, including
those about the Mirror, had been extinguished by the beast breaking the
circuit. Yet it appeared that the latter's passage through the electric wall
had caused no harm. Omega explained that likely its bony scales had acted as an
insulator against the action of the invisible wall.
While the cottage was
being repaired they remained on the ship. But despite their recent harrowing
experience, they went back to the cottage when the repairs were complete. It
was more home-like than the ship, and Thalma had learned to love it, for it was
to be the cradle of a new race. But before they again took up their residence
there Omega had erected a high fence around the cottage yard. This fence was
built of heavy cables securely fastened to huge posts, and each cable carried
an electric charge of 75,000 volts. Omega was confident that the beast could
never break through. His confidence was shared by Thalma, but as an additional
precaution she suggested that Omega place a similar fence about the lake. He
did so, and when the last cable was in place they stood back and surveyed the
work with satisfaction (27).
"We have him
now," exulted Omega. "He can never leave the lake alive, much less
reach the cottage. Despite his tough armor of scales this high potential will
penetrate to his vitals."
"It is
well," said Thalma as they turned away.
As they neared the
cottage they knew that a crisis was at hand. Forgetting the dead world about
them and subduing the fears that sometimes clutched their hearts, they lived in
the joy of anticipation and made ready for the advent of a new soul.
Night came down
moonless and dark save for the light of the stars. In the recesses of the rocks
and in the bottoms of the valleys intense darkness held sway. But the grounds
and the home of Omega and Thalma were ablaze with a thousand lamps, and on the
near-by hillsides giant searchlights, which seemed to have no basis, which were
born in the bosom of the air and blazed without visible cause, shot their rays
into the sky for miles. Yet the powerful lights about the cottage were so
tinted as to be restful to the eye. Thus silent and with clock-like regularity
the agents of Omega performed their functions. Man had mastered all the
elements of life. All were his friends and servants, and none was his master
save one—death.
In a perfect setting
and exactly at the time set for the event Alpha came into the world, the child
thrived from its first intake of earth's air.
Three weeks from birth
Alpha partook of solid food in tablet form drawn chiefly from gaseous sources (28).
At two months his speech was perfect, and at six months his education began. By
glandular control Omega nurtured both his body and his mind and developed them
rapidly. Small wonder that this child—the last to grace and bless the
world—became his parent's only joy and hope. They guarded him from all dangers,
instructed him in the great part he was to play in the world's future and set
about to conserve that element on which all depended—the waters of the lake.
But
during all these long, hot days and frigid nights, the close proximity of the
monster cast a shadow over their souls, marred their happiness by day and
terrorized their dreams by night. Often, when the sun beat down upon the lake,
they saw his hideous head rise high above the water and regard them with
baleful eyes. Twice while at play Alpha had seen him and had run screaming to
the protection of his mother, who had great difficulty in persuading him that
there was no danger. This seemed to be true, for the monster made no attempt to
force the fence. Endowed with more than the cunning of its remote progenitors,
it seemed to realize that it was trapped. Many nights Omega and Thalma, armed
with their ray guns and other implements of destruction, watched for the beast
to attempt to come on land. Sometimes he would raise his head and look at them
so long and steadily that icy chills ran along their spines and their hands
shook so that they could not sight their weapons and therefore shot wild. Then
the head would sink out of sight again (29).
Secure as they felt
against his horrible presence it finally began to sap their courage. Besides,
the lake fascinated Alpha, now but three years old but large and strong. He
loved to wander by its shore and dabble in the water, but so long as the beast
remained, an ever present danger was in this play. Besides there was the fear
that he might escape the watchfulness of his parents and come in contact with
one of the high tension cables.
And then Omega
determined to try another plan—he would electrically charge the water of the
lake. He hoped that this would reach the monster in his watery lair and kill
him instantly. So he constructed two giant magnets and placed one on each end
of the lake. Then harnessing all the electrical energy at his command he sent a
tremendous current through the water with high potential, alternating it at ten
second intervals for an hour.
Two weeks later he
watched for the carcass of the beast to rise. He felt now that his problem was
to get rid of it so that it would not pollute the water, but it did not appear.
With fear and
trembling Omega observed that the water of the lake was receding inch by inch.
Then by chemical action on the coral beds and on the rocks, he created a dense
cloud and caused it to form over the lake, thus in a measure protecting it from
the sun's rays. But day by day, despite the sheltering cloud, the water
receded. Day after day Omega moved his gauges hoping against hope that somehow
and somewhere nature would again awaken and bring water upon the earth.
During all these days
and months the monster did not raise its head above the surface of the
lake—Omega was certain of this, for had the water been disturbed ever so little
his water seismograph, as well as his cameras, would have recorded it. The
monster was dead at last and they were profoundly thankful. They were the
undisputed masters of the earth's last water! Now Alpha could play about the
shore and swim in the shallow water in peace and safety. So the dangerous fence
was removed (30).
Omega
knew that in the beginning the Creator had made man master of his own destiny.
He had endowed him with reason and given the earth into his keeping. Omega
thoroughly understood the Ruling Power of the universe. He read aright His
commands, blazoned across the breasts of billions of worlds, and by the same
token he knew that humanity on earth was doomed. Yet he was urged on by that
unconquerable spirit which had made man king of all. He set up his rain-making
machinery with the smile of a fatalist. For hundreds of miles its sinuous beams
sprang into the sky, writhed about like great, hungry serpents with their
tremendous sucking and receiving maws, then coiled back to earth bringing not a
drop. But one day the Mirror again showed small, faint clouds upon its surface.
They were scattered over various parts of the world and their presence made
Omega wonder. There appeared to be no reason for them.
"I do not
understand those clouds," he said to Thalma as he sat with her and Alpha
in the shade of the coral tree. "Perhaps there are hidden places of
moisture, that have escaped the receiving rays of this mirror."
"Let us go and
see," exclaimed Thalma, her eyes agleam with a new hope. "Let us make
another voyage around the world. Alpha has never been far from home."
"That is
so," he agreed. "We will go at once."
So they entered the
silver ship and sailed away over the hot, dry wastes, on and on over the cities
of antiquity. The ruins of New York, London, Paris and other marts of the
ancients were visited in their melancholy quest for life. But even the sites of
these cities were hard to find. Only the tops of the tallest structures, such
as the tip of the Washington monument and the towers of office buildings stood
above the ashes and sands of centuries. But not even the shadow of a cloud was
seen. Still they sailed on—even skirted the dark wastes of the poles and
stopped in deep valleys to test for water. Twice around the equatorial regions
they voyaged in search of a new and better haven, but in vain. The insistent
cry for water burned in their souls and led them back to the little lake—the
last sop nature had to offer the remnant of her children (31).
Although
the days were still hot and blistering, the nights were cold, ice often forming
on the lake near the shore and lingering until touched by the advancing sun.
Omega understood, and again a cold fear clutched his heart. Unless by some
miracle of the heavens sufficient moisture should come back to the earth, no
human soul could long endure the heat of the day and the freezing temperature
of night (32).
To still further
conserve the precious water of the lake, Omega now extended the folds of the
cloud curtain down to its shores thus completely enclosing it. And as this
further reduced the evaporation to a remarkable extent the hopes of Omega and
Thalma took on new life. Here they visioned Alpha and his children living and
dying in peace, now that the monster was no more.
With the help of
additional safeguards Omega reckoned that the water might be made to last many
more years, and, before it could become wholly exhausted, some whim of nature
might again shower the earth with rain (33).
Now to pass the
time—for there was nothing to do except to direct the appliances about
them—this last trio of mortals loved to leave the shelter of the cottage, now
that they had nothing further to fear from the sea-monster, when the westering
sun was low, and ramble among the shadows of the cliffs and commune with the
past, until the chill of night drove them indoors. Sometimes sitting there in
the dusk Thalma and Alpha would listen to Omega's rich voice as he recounted an
epic story in the life of long ago. So to-day seated together on a cliff above
the airship, they watched the sun descend. Thalma and Alpha had asked for a
story, but Omega refused. For some time he had sat silent, his great, brilliant
eyes on the flaming sun as it sank toward the rim of the earth. A great
loneliness had suddenly seized him. He recognized it as a presentiment of
disaster. It was beyond the analysis of reason, but for the first time in his
life he longed to hold back that sun. Somehow he feared the advent of the
night. It seemed to him that before the morning light would again flood the
earth a dire calamity would befall them.
"Why so
sad?" asked Thalma fearfully, and Alpha, at his father's knees, looked up
in wonder.
"It is
nothing," replied Omega with forced composure as he caressed the boy.
"Some foolish thoughts of mine. Now as it is getting chilly I think we had
better go down. Oh, how I dread this awful cold which is creeping steadily and
mercilessly over the world!" he added softly, his eyes lingering on the
sun.
With her usual sweet
smile Thalma agreed. So they rose and floated down. When they reached the floor
of the valley they paused and regarded the cloud that screened the lake.
"It does
well," remarked Omega. "It will make the water last into the
years."
"Yes, and all for
our boy," said Thalma proudly. Alpha had left them and was playing along
the shore.
"It is now time
that a mate for him be on the way," went on Omega wistfully. "He must
have a sister, you know."
"It is true,"
she agreed with a glad smile.
Omega had spoken
truly. Without a mate Alpha could not perpetuate the race. And so it was
arranged that before the rising of the morrow's sun a new life should begin.
Science had steadily
advanced the span of life. When Alpha was born Omega was two hundred years old,
but that was only middle age. Thalma was twenty-five years his junior. The
human birth-rate had decreased with the passing of the centuries and nature now
demanded the most exacting conditions for the propagation of the human species.
Thalma at her age could not afford to wait longer. Alpha's mate must be
provided forthwith (34).
"Alpha wants to
play a while before going in," Thalma continued presently. "I will
remain with him."
"Very well,
dear," said Omega. "I will go on and prepare dinner."
So saying he set his
face toward the cottage, but before he had taken a dozen steps he was startled
by a piercing scream from Thalma. He turned swiftly, then stood paralyzed with
terror and amazement. Out of the cloud curtain surrounding the lake protruded
the ugly scale-covered head and neck of the monster he had believed dead! And
the horrible, swaying head was darting down toward the playing boy! The
monster's jaws were spread wide, its black tongue was leaping out and in like
lightning, the sickening saliva was dripping upon the sand, and its awful eyes
were blazing like coals. And then in a twinkling the huge jaws seized the
child, the head reared back, the jaws closed, stifling the lad's screams, and
it started to draw back into the cloud (35).
But,
after the first onrush of horror, life came again to Omega's numbed senses. He
darted forward with a mad cry, and as he swung through the air rather than ran,
he seized a stone and hurled it at the brute's head. His aim was true and the
stone struck the great brute on the bony hood above the right eye. It did not
harm, but it maddened the monster. Hissing horribly it swung Alpha high in the
air and with a fling dashed him down upon the rocks. Then with a hoarse bellow
it turned upon Omega. With its first forward lunge it seemed about to crush
Thalma, who was between it and its intended victim. But the sight of her
mangled child and the danger to her lord roused all the latent fury and courage
in her soul and made of her a fighting demon. Like Omega she grabbed the first
weapon at hand—a stone the size of a man's fist—and with the hot breath of the
monster in her face she hurled the stone with all her strength straight into
the red, gaping mouth.
With a blood-curdling
scream the brute halted, reared backward, then ran its head back and forth over
the rocks. Its loathsome body threshed about in the lake, throwing water far up
on the beach. Then in its contortions it wallowed up out of the lake as it
swung its terrible head about in agony, all the while hissing its challenge.
Terror-stricken,
unable to move, Omega and Thalma watched it and could not understand its
writhings. But as it continued to writhe and groan they understood at last—the
stone had lodged firmly in its throat and was choking it to death (36).
Then they sprang to
Alpha's side. Omega gathered him up in his arms, but he saw with one agonized
glance that he was dead. His skull was crushed and it appeared that every bone
in his body was broken.
Omega's heart was
bursting, but he did not cry out. Holding the crushed body of his son, he
raised his eyes to that God who throughout the ages had hidden His face from
man, and smiled a brave smile of humility and resignation. While Thalma,
understanding all, looked on dumb and dry-eyed.
Leaving the monster
floundering about in its death agony, they took their beloved son to the
cottage and there injected those chemicals which would forever arrest decay.
Then they placed him on his cot that he might be with them to the end of life.
It was then that Thalma, broken in spirit, found refuge and relief in tears
which have always been woman's solace and savior.
And Omega, gazing out
toward the lake, saw that the monster lay still. They had won their long
battle, but at an awful cost. Omega realized that the gigantic creature,
probably deep in a water cavern, had been only stunned by the electric charges.
Thalma
refused to be comforted. Day after day she wept above the lifeless form of her
boy. All Omega's words of consolation, all his reasoning and faith in the
wisdom and justice of all things, failed to soothe her torn heart. Nor did the
promise of another child, rouse her from her sorrow. She steadfastly refused to
consider another child. Life had lost its last hold on her soul, and now she
was ready to surrender to that cruel fate which had given them mirages of
promise and mocked their misery. In vain Omega explained that it was their duty
to fight on; that they, the last of a once noble race, must not show the white
feather of cowardice. He mentioned the great consolation they had of having
their beloved son ever near them, though lifeless. But Thalma longed for the
presence of the soul, for those words of endearment and love that had thrilled
her mother heart.
Before the embalmment
it would have been possible for Omega to restore life to his boy. Man had
mastered all the secrets of biology and life. He could have mended the broken
bones and tissues, revitalized the heart and lungs and cleared the brain. Alpha
would have walked with them again. But his personality would not have been
there. That mysterious something, men call the soul, had fled forever, and so
far mankind had not been able to create its counterpart (37). To have brought life
again to Alpha would have been a travesty on the brilliant mind they had known.
Omega recalled many pathetic examples of such resuscitation where the living
had walked in death.
Omega foresaw the end,
but he smiled in the face of it all. He was the same kind and loving companion
Thalma had always known, her every want his command and law. But no more she
realized its inspiration and love. He seldom left her side any more, but
sometimes overcome with sorrow he would soar up above the peaks and commune
alone with the past.
So to-day he had risen
higher than usual. The red sun beat upon his body as he hovered in the hot air,
his eyes fixed on the distant sky line. He gazed like a famished animal, for it
seemed to him that at last a cloud must appear above that hopeless shore of
land and sky and bring renewed life to him and his. Yet he fully realized the
impossibility of such a thing. Slowly his great, dark eyes roved around the
horizon. He loathed its dreary monotony, and still it fascinated him. Beyond
that dead line of land and sky lay nothing but ghastly death. His many voyages
in the airship and the reflecting Mirror told him that, but still he hoped on.
When at last he glided
down to the cottage the sun was low. Having registered the time in his mind
when he left Thalma — for countless generations man had dispensed with
time-keeping devices (38) — he realized that he had been gone just three hours.
Reproaching himself for his negligence he entered the doorway, then stared
aghast.
Upon Thalma's wide
couch facing a painting of the ancient, green world, she had placed the body of
Alpha, then lain down by his side. Her glazed eyes were fixed upon the picture,
and for the first time in many weeks there was a smile about her lips.
Omega knelt by her
side, took her cold hands in his and feverishly kissed her brow. With a grief
too deep for tears he smiled at death, thankful for the love she had borne him.
Nor did he censure the Plan of the Creator, the Plan that had led him, Omega,
scion of the world's great, up to the zenith of life and now left him alone,
the sole representative of its power. Thalma had passed on, and in the first
crushing moments of his agony Omega was tempted to join her. Without effort and
without fear or pain, his was the power to check the machinery of life (39).
Crushed
and broken, Omega sat by his dead, while the shadows of night entered the
valley and wrapped all in their soft embrace. When would his own hour strike?
He might retard or hasten that time, but the real answer lay in that little
lake out there under the stars, daily shrinking despite the cloud curtain.
There was nothing more to live for, yet he determined to live, to go down
fighting like a valiant knight of old, to set an example for the sons of other
worlds.
But despite his brave
resolution his grief for a while seemed likely to master him. Heart-broken he
finally went out into the cold dusk and gazed up at the heavens appealingly.
"Alone!" he
whispered as an overwhelming sense of his isolation tore his spirit.
"Alone in a dead world—the sole survivor of its vanished life!"
He slumped to the
ground and buried his face in the cold dust. His thoughts were jumbled in a
maze of pain and sorrow. He could neither pray nor think. Gasping, dying a
thousand deaths, he lay there groveling in the dust. But at last he rose,
dashed the dust from his eyes and again faced the sky. He would accept the
cruel mandate of nature. He would live on and try to conquer all—even death.
He cast his eyes along
the shore of the lake, and there in the starlight loomed the form of the dead
monster which, but for Thalma's unerring aim, would have been the last of
earth's creatures. Omega sighed and turned back to his dead.
But despite his
resolution to live the loneliness was sapping Omega's spirit. During the
following weeks in a mood of recklessness and despair he allowed the cloud
curtain to dissolve above the lake. Once more the sun's hot rays poured down
unhindered and the lake receded rapidly.
As time went on Omega
grew more restless. Only by taking many voyages around the world was he able to
endure the appalling silence. He was the last traveler to visit the ancient
marts of man, he was the last hope and despair of life. Sometimes he talked
aloud to himself, but his words sounded hollow and ghostly in that deep
silence, which only added to his misery.
And then one day in a
fit of desperation he rebelled. He cursed the fate that had selected him to
drink the last bitter dregs of life. In this desperate frame of mind he evolved
a daring plan. He would not drink those dregs alone!
In
the chemical laboratory of the ship were all the elements of creative force and
life known to man. From the four corners of the earth they had been garnered,
and some had come from sister planets. Here were the ingredients of creation.
For thousands of years man had been able to create various forms of life. He
had evolved many pulsing, squirming things. He had even made man-like apes
possessing the instinct of obedience, and which he used for servants, and much
of his animal food also had been created in this manner (40).
Being skilled in all
branches of biology and chemistry Omega would create a comrade to share his
long wait for death. So he set to work and the task eased the pain in his
heart. He placed his chemicals in the test tube and watched the cell evolve
until it pulsated with life. Carefully nursing the frail embryo he added other
plasms, then fertilized the whole with warm spermatozoa and placed it in the
incubator over which glowed a violet, radio-active light (41).
The young life
developed quickly and soon began to take form within the glass walls. In a
month it half-filled the incubator, and at the end of six weeks he released it,
but it still grew amazingly.
At first Omega was
appalled by the monstrosity he had created, for it was a loathsome, repulsive
creature. Its head was flat and broad and sat upon its sloping shoulders
without a connecting neck. Its legs were short, but its arms were long, and
when standing erect it carried them well in front of an enormous torso. Its
short hands and feet were webbed like those of a duck. It had no visible ears,
and its nostrils were mere holes above a wide, grinning, thin-lipped mouth,
which was always spread in a grin. Its large, round, red eyes had no gleam of
intelligence, and its hairless skin, covered with minute, sucker-like scales,
lay in loose, ugly folds across its great chest. Most of its movements were
slow and uncertain, and it hopped about over the floor like a giant toad,
uttering guttural sounds deep within its chest. Omega had set out to create an
ape-man, but this thing was neither man nor beast, bird or reptile, but a
travesty on all—an unspeakable horror from the dead womb of the past (42).
Yet hideous as this
creature was Omega looked upon it with a certain degree of gratitude. It was a
companion at least, and it seemed to reciprocate the respect of its creator by
fawning upon him and licking his hand. Its red tongue always hung from its
slavering mouth like that of a panting dog. Omega named it The Grinner, because
of its habitual and ghastly smile. He took it to the cottage that it might wait
on him through the long hours of solitude. That night it slept by his side,
content and motionless. But the next morning after this first night of
incongruous companionship Omega was awakened by its stertorous breathing and the
touch of a cold, clammy sweat which was oozing from its pores and dropping upon
the floor.
Throughout
the day Omega marveled at this phenomenon. He noticed that the weird thing went
often to the drinking fountain and wrapped its tongue about the water jet. That
night he awakened at midnight to find The Grinner gone. He did not bother to
look for him and mid-forenoon he returned. His rotund form seemed to have grown
even larger, and as he ambled about on all fours the sweat trickled from his
repulsive skin and trailed across the floor. It was a strange thing and Omega
was at a loss to account for it, but his wonder was eclipsed by his
appreciation of The Grinner's companionship. The Grinner was often absent for
hours at a time, but he always returned of his own free will. Omega often saw
him ambling among the rocks or stretched out in the sun on the beach. He formed
the habit of letting him have his way, which was that of extreme laziness. But
during all this time he was growing prodigiously. In three months he had become
a monster weighing well over half a ton, but he still retained his amiable
nature and affection for his master.
Omega
seldom left the cottage. Determined to live as long as possible—for the age-old
urge of life still persisted—to do nothing to hasten his end, he, nevertheless,
was doing nothing to defer it. His soul in the past, he desired only to be near
his dear ones. For hours he would sit gazing on their peaceful features,
pouring into their heedless ears the love songs of his heart. Living for them,
patiently awaiting the day when he, too, could enter into rest, he paid less
and less attention to The Grinner, only noticing that he grew more horrible and
repulsive as his size increased.
Lonely and despondent
Omega at last left the cottage only to go to the airship for supplies. He
seldom even looked toward the lake. It was a long time since he had walked
about its shores, but one afternoon the impulse came to wander that way again.
He was amazed that the water was disappearing so rapidly. The body of the
monster now lay more than fifteen rods from the water's edge, though it had
been killed on the edge of the lake.
With an indifferent
and melancholy gaze Omega looked across the lake. Suddenly his stare became
fixed and wild, like that of one stricken dumb. About twenty rods out the water
was suddenly agitated as though by the movement of some great bulk along its
bottom, and then for a fleeting instant he glimpsed a dark, shining form heave
above the surface, then sink out of sight before he could grasp its details.
"My God," he
exclaimed hoarsely, "there is another sea-monster! Likely it is the mate
of the one Thalma killed. I might have known there would be a mate. We were
dealing with two of the beasts all that time. And now this thing disputes my
right to the water!"
Omega's face grew grim
and stern as he glared out over the water and his heart-beats quickened. The
latent combativeness of humanity was once more aroused in him. He had
considered himself the last representative of life on earth. He should remain
the last. No beast should claim that honor. He would kill it.
Then for two weeks he
waited and watched for it to reappear, waited with all the terrible atomic
weapons at hand, but he saw it no more. The Grinner sleeping in the sand was
the only form of life to be seen, and at last he became weary of the hunt. He
figured that some day he would charge the lake, but there was no hurry.
At last Omega lost all
interest in the things about him. The Grinner came and went unhindered and
almost unnoticed. He continued to grow, but Omega gave him little thought. Even
the treasures in the airship had lost their lure for him. Disconsolate and
hopeless, yet clinging grimly to life, he passed his time in the company of his
dead.
He had not left the
cottage for several weeks, when one cold morning after a sleepless night,
something impelled him to go in search of The Grinner who had been absent all
night. As this had become a frequent occurrence during the past two months
Omega's curiosity was aroused. As he glided toward the lake he wondered why his
interest in his surroundings had been aroused by thoughts of The Grinner, and
once more he thought of killing that other sea-monster in the lake. The lake!
He stopped and stared and stared. The lake was gone! Only a pool of an acre or
two remained, and in its center, disporting himself in glee was—not the monster
he was looking for—but The Grinner! The bloated creature was rolling about in
the water with all the abandonment of a mud-wallowing hog.
Omega
gazed in astonishment, then a shrill laugh escaped him. He had mistaken The
Grinner for another monster of the deep. It was the last joke of life, and it
was on him.
Then he realized that
this grotesque child of his hands, having in its system the combined thirst of
the dry ages—man, animal, plant, bird and reptile—was sucking up the lake,
absorbing it through his pores, then sweating it out only to repeat the
process. Water was his element and food. From the dim, dry past had come
nature's cry for water to find expression in this monster of Omega's making.
That which he had created for a companion had grown into a terrible menace,
which was rapidly exhausting his remaining stronghold of life. But, somehow,
Omega did not care, and as he watched the monstrous thing finally flounder its
way to the shore and lie down panting in the sun, he was glad that it was not
another monster of the deep (43).
For a moment Omega's
eyes rested on the drying form of the dead beast on the slope above him, then
with a shudder he turned to The Grinner.
He went up close and
stared into its terrible eyes which blinked back at him as its mouth spread in
a leer. Already the sweat was coursing along the slimy folds of its skin and
dripping off to be swallowed by the thirsty ground. It was a huge water sucker.
It took water in enormous quantities, fed upon its organisms, then discharged
it through its skin. Assisted by the rays of the sun it was rapidly drying up
the lake.
Now, as Omega stood
regarding it in awe and wonder, it showed signs of distress. It began to writhe
and utter hoarse cries of pain. Its eyes rolled horribly, its great,
barrel-like body heaved and trembled, and it waved its long arms and threshed
its feet upon the ground. Omega realized that it was the victim of its own
abnormal appetite. With the relish of a gormandizer it had taken more of its
peculiar food than even its prodigious maw could assimilate. Soon its struggles
became fiercer. It rolled over and over in contortions of agony, the sweat
streaming from its body, while a pitiful moaning came from its horrid mouth.
But at last it became quiet, its moanings trailed off into silence, it jerked
spasmodically and lay still.
Omega approached and
placed his hand over its heart. There was no pulsation. The Grinner was dead.
With a sigh Omega
turned back to the cottage. Although he was now alone once more, he did not
care. All he had to do was to prepare himself for the Great Adventure, which
despite all man's god-like achievements, still remained a mystery.
Now that the lake was
almost gone it again drew his attention. The sickly grass had long since given
up trying to follow the retreating water and now was only a dead and melancholy
strip of yellow far back from the shore. Every day Omega went to the little
pool and calmly watched it fade away, watched without qualms of fear or
heartache. He was ready. But even now, hot and weary, he refused adequately to
slake his thirst. He must fight on to the last, for such was the prerogative
and duty of the human race. He must conserve that precious fluid.
At
last there came a morning when Omega, gazing from his doorway, looked in vain
for the shining pool. Nothing but a brown expanse of rock and sand met his view
where the lake had been. Already the salt crystals were glinting in the sun. A
long, lingering sigh escaped him. It had come at last! The last water of those
mighty seas which once had covered nearly the whole earth, had departed leaving
him alone with the dead of ages.
Hot and feverish he
glided over the dry bed of the lake. Finally in the lowest depression on earth
he found, in a little hollow of rock, a mere cupful of water. Like a
thirst-maddened animal he sucked it up in great gulps, then licked the rock
dry. IT WAS THE LAST DROP! (44)
Omega rose, his face
calm and resigned. With a smile of gratitude he looked up at the sky. The water
was bitter, but he was thankful he had been given the final cup.
Then he went to the
airship and shot up into the blue and on around the world in a voyage of
farewell. In a few hours he was back. Reverently he set the airship down on its
landing place. He was through with it now. Its usefulness was gone, its great,
pulsing motors forever silent, soon to be covered with the dust of ages, he
would leave it a monument to mankind. For a little while he wandered among the
treasures of the ship. Sacred as they were they still mocked him with their
impotency to stay the hand of death. But he loved them all. Thalma had loved
them and they had been Alpha's playmates, and their marvelous powers had been his
hope and inspiration. With loving caresses and a full heart he bade good bye to
these treasures of his fathers, soon to become the keepsakes of death.
At last having
completed the rounds he let himself out into the still air. Resolutely he set
his face toward home.
The hot noonday sun,
beating fiercely down on the dead world, entered the cottage and fell in a
flood of glory about the couch where Omega, the last man, lay between his loved
ones. His great eyes were set and staring, but on his features rested a smile
of peace—the seal of life's last dream.
"The rest is
silence."
END.
======
NOTES
======
(1) - The sky is indigo because the Earth has lost much of its atmosphere, and it is cloudless because the Earth has become an extreme desert planet. However, the sharply-notched mountains imply recent vulcanism, which would have resulted in some replacement of atmosphere and hydrosphere. The importance of volcanic activity in this regard was not well grasped in the early 1930's, when the connections between geology and volatiles were much more poorly-understood than is the case today.
(2) - This was a common concept of future human evolution during the early to mid 20th century. The point which everyone missed was that Man's capabilities to alter both himself and his environment would advance much more rapidly than evolution's ability to alter the human race. Much of the adaptations described are unlikely because humans would choose other and better ones.
(3) - One wonders why the water wouldn't be brine, given the extensive dehydration of the Earth previously described. On the other hand, it's perfectly plausible that the humans of Omega's and Thalma's time are capable of separating salt from water in their own bodies, as can modern flamingoes.
(4) - A literal "As you know, Bob" (well, Thalma) and thus clumsy. There's no reason why Omega would have to remind Thalma of the fact that they both knew the Earth's action was changing, and people often do remind the ones they love of some hopeful fact pertinent to their situation, just to make them feel better.
(5) - They clearly have conscious control over normally-autonomous bodily processes. It's not obvious how Omega can control whether he makes male or female sperm cells (and I'm not sure that the biology of the early 1930's actually knew that it was the sex of the sperm cell which in mammals determines the sex of the child). It is however quite believable that Thalma can control and be aware of her time of ovulation. I'm ok with both, however, because some mammals actually can control the sex of their offspring. (We still don't know how they do it).
(6) - "Millions of ages" is an uncertain length of time, but must refer to at least hundreds of millions of years, possibly billions, given the degree to which the Earth has lost its atmosphere and hydrosphere. By that metric an "age" would have lasted centuries to millennia, which corresponds well with historical (though not geological) "ages."
(7) - This is seriously-mistaken taxonomy, biology and natural history: and needs to be discussed in detail.
Pleisiosaurs were neither dinosaurs nor even closely related to dinosaurs. Plesiosaurs were in the superorder Sauropterygia, which contained numerous marine reptiles, and which belongs to the infraclass Lepidosauromorpha, the same group which comprises all modern diapsids which are not archosaurs: which is to say, all modern lizards and snakes.
"Brontosaurus" (now renamed "apatosaurus" because the type specimen brontosaur turned out to be an accidental chimera) was s a sauropod dinosaur. The sauropods were saurischians, the "lizard-hipped" dinosaurs that (confusingly) are the ones also including the very un-lizardlike theropods. The saurschian dinosaurs either gave rise to or were very closely related to Class Aves -- the birds. All Dinosauria belong to the infraclass Archosauramoprha, the group which includes modern crocodilians and birds.
Is this a big difference, since both are cladistically Sauropsida? Well, suppose we were talking about mammals. Among mammals, two infraclasses are Eutheria (placental mammals) and Metatheria (the marsupials). So, roughly speaking, we are talking about a genetic distance between apatosaurs and plesiosaurs roughly equivalent to the genetic distance betwen humans and kangaroo.
(My wife, who has her degree in Natural History, dissents -- she thinks the genetic distance is even greater -- more like the distance between humans and monotremes or even humans and cynodonts).
The reason why a hybrid seemed plausible to the author is that both apatosaurs and plesiosaurs were animals with fat bodies, long necks and small heads in proportion to their bodies. This is called "convergent evolution," and in this case the convergence is for entirely different reasons (plesiosaurs needed fat bodies because they lived in water which rapidly drained their body heat, apatosaurs to house guts capable of digesting their diet of rough vegetation; plesiosaurs had long necks and small heads to lash out and catch fish, apatosaurs to reach up to and browse high tree branches).
By the same token, humans and red kangaroos are both bipeds with the ability to fight by biting or by administering blows with all four of their limbs. This, too is convergent evolution and it happened for different reasons (their bipedal gaits are very different, and in the case of the red kangaroo the tail is actually evolving into a third limb complete with nail at the end).
The chance of an apatosaur and a plesiosaur producing viable offspring is roughly the same as the chance of a human producing viable offspring with a red kangaroo. Which is to say, close to nil.
There is also the minor matter that both apatosaurs and plesiosaurs went extinct tens of millions of years before the first human ever lived. Which raises the question of how either was available to leave descendants into Omega's time ...
The story implicitly answers this question. Humanity has developed a means of looking backward in time (which is why they are familiar with Greek history and philosophy). The same technology, combined with powerful microscopy, would make it possible to directly read the genetic codes of both pleisosaurs and apatosaurs, and genengineer transgenic creatures combining the DNA of both kinds of animal.
Why anyone would want to do this is another matter, but then given hundreds of millions of years of history and millions of cultures and subcultures, someone might do it, if for no better reason than Olaf Stapledon's Third Men from Last and First Men (1930), who regarded genetic engineering as an art form worth doing for its own sweet sake. Indeed, there's been more than enough time for thousands of human species to have appeared -- Omega, Thalma and Alpha are definitely not modern homo sapiens sapiens, from their description.
(8) - It is curious, and perhaps wishful thinking, that Omega and Thalma agree, based on very little evidence, that the lake-beast is the last of its kind and has come to the lake to die. The first is far from obvious and in fact proves technically false since there is at least one more such beast (though there don't appear to be any other lakes left on the Earth, so it may be almost true). The second is true only in the sense that Omega winds up killing both of the surviving lake-beasts, but it would not have been true had he not been obsessed with colonizing that particular location.
(9) - This (and later events of the tale) make me believe that the lake-beast is not only sentient, and probably sapient, but also shares some of the psychic powers of Omega's human race. This is the only way it could possibly avoid death when being hunted by everything from plasma-guns to aerial depth-charges -- it must be able to track Omega and his family by telepathy and be instantly aware of any immediate hostile intent.
(10) - It is rather strange that the decline from several nations clustered around the remnants of the Pacific to just two human beings should have occurred within the lifetime of one single man, Omega. There is no hint in the story that Omega is immortal, though he certainly may have been naturally long-lived by 1930's standards. Given Omega's own rather violent nature (at no point does he consider the possibility of a truce with the lake-beast), it is possible that Omega's people accelerated their doom by civil strife. I can easily see Omega's kind as a somewhat-prettier version of the Itorloo -- though the Itorloo were actually better at survival on a dying planet!
(11) - This concept of the human future, with Mankind spending hundreds of millions of years trapped in a Solar System which is now dying with its Sun, and with even interplanetary space travel not achieved until millions of years after the present day, seems to be strongly drawing upon Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men (1930), to which I have already alluded. In this case, Morrow has assumed that numerous Solar worlds were colonized but that this now means that all habitable worlds are already-occupied and mutually-doomed, meaning that Omega has no hope of sanctuary off Earth. I will discuss the implications (and flaws) in this vision later, in my Commentary.
(12) - Sadly, nuclear fission doesn't work this way -- it would be convenient if we could break down radioactives all the way to hydrogen and helium, gaining energy at every step of the process. Indeed, if we could do this, we could then use the hydrogen and helium as fusion fuel, building them back up and thus having a perpetual-motion machine! In fact, neither fission nor fusion are energy-efficient processes past the first few steps, and each such process has an "nuclear ash" end-state (iron for fusion, lead for fission) beyond which one actually loses energy pushing the process further.
(13) - Given that we are now able to detect extrasolar planets with equipment of far less capability, one implication of the technology described is that Omega should be in continuous contact with any and all sapients in the Solar System who wish such contact, and have a complete map of all star systems in the Galaxy to which he possesses a line of sight. These implications would have been totally lost on Morrow and on every writer of his time, with the possible exceptions of E. E. "Doc" Smith and John W. Campbell (who separately postulated super-telescopes of this sort in the Skylark and the Black Star series respectively). Very few science-fiction writers predicted the long-range telescopic detection of extra-solar planets -- as late as the early 1990's, just before we actually achieved the capability, science fiction assumed that we wouldn't be able to see the planets of an alien star system until we sent a starship there.
(14) - This is a good example of the exaggeration of the importance of "real" history in much science-fiction set in the very far future. "Omega, the Man" is set sometime around 250 to 2500 million years in the future, and yet all the history referenced in this paragraph is between around 600 BC to 1900 AD -- which is to say, in a mere 2500 years of history. There is no mention of any important figures existing after Napoleon. Realistically, the vast majority of historical references should have been to persons not yet born at the time of the story's writing.
(15) - In other words, Omega's ship can provide unlimited long-term life support, both for itself and for its surroundings, given the right elemental feedstocks -- and its engines have a considerable degree of elemental transmutation capabilities, so at the cost of burning fuel faster, the ship can convert almost any mass into air, water and food. This raises certain questions regarding the necessity of natural air, water and food sources to Omega and his culture, ones which are incompletely answered in the immediately-succeeding paragraph.
(16) - The argument that the machine is useless because the air and water are mostly gone makes no sense: aside from the fact that Omega's ship can perform elemental conversion, the very rocks of the Earth would contain oxygen and hydrogen (much of it in the relatively-convenient form of hydrates) which atomic power could provide enough energy to chemically-extract -- unless, of course, previous Earthly civilizations have already extracted it all (but note: this is a lot of water). But if that much water has been extracted from the crust, there wouldn't be any lakes at the surface either -- unless the lake were left behind by some previous attempt at terraforming. In any case, the simplest assumption is that Omega isn't as skilled at chemistry as he might be, which makes sense, as he and Thalma are the only people available to rebuild, and they probably aren't really Omnidisciplinary Scientists.
(17) - Unless this is a new constellation with a similar name, Morrow has made a serious astronomical error. After hundreds of millions of years, the mix of stars close enough to the Sun to be visible in constellations would be entirely different, and in entirely different positions.
(18) - Thalma gets points here for rescuing Omega instead of just standing there and screaming (or worse, fainting) like some Interwar Era pulp heroines. Morrow gets point for being willing to write the action scene with the roles thus inverted
(19) - It is fairly obvious, from this and other aspects of the lake-beast's behavior, that the lake-beast is probably sapient.
(20) - We never find out from where this cloud came, nor do our protagonists seem to care, which may be a flaw in the story. You would think that Omega and Thalma would be more than a little bit curious, given that clouds are vaporized water and the water shortage drives this whole story.
(21) - This is more than a little bit foolish of Omega, given that Thalma has already amply demonstrated that she is no fragile flower. What's more, Omega's decision is partially-responsible for the tragedy which follows.
(22) - I'm not sure what Morrow means by "absorbing so much water needful for themselves." While water is obviously at a premium on this dying Earth, there must be an ecosystem including oxygenators and detritus feeders in the lake, otherwise the waters would be incapable of supporting smaller organisms on which the lake-monster could feed. Given that, fear that the lake-creature would somehow contaminate the entire lake with its wastes seems hysterical.
(23) - This puts Omega and Thalma right in the Ryukyu Trench, probably in the northeastern end, if they can see the Japanese mainland. This is dubious enough by 1930's geology, in that the land forms should have changed drastically over hundreds of millions of years; it is nonsense in light of what we know today about continental drift. The theory of continental drift was known in the 1930's -- Lovecraft used it in At the Mountains of Madness -- but it was not generally believed, because most of the supporting evidence had not yet been discovered.
(24) - That Omega does not think of what to us would be the obvious technological solutions -- sonar, homing torpedoes -- reminds us of just how primitive was anti-submarine (in this case, anti-lake-monster) warfare in the 1930's. This illustrates a point, common in Interwar Science Fiction, of writers being utterly incapable of predicting the massive technological progress that World War II would bring -- within a mere six years of this story's publication, Allied warships would be routinely deploying "Asdic" (sonar) technology against German submarines. To be fair to Morrow, though some of this technology had actually been developed by 1933, much of it was specialized and highly secret at the time.
(25) - Again, this is an esoteric technology being used instead of a much more practical lower-tech solution: automated radar-directed cannons. And again, this is not really Morrow's fault. Precisely such sorts of electrical barriers (run along actual cabling) had been proposed by Edison during World War One and were being postulated (as wireless systems) by Tesla at around the time the story was written. Primitive radar systems had actually been developed by the early 1930's, but were military secrets, and nobody predicted the immense miniaturization of electronics which would make automated weapons systems practical by the 1960's.
(26) - It is actually a bit surprising that Thalma survived this attack, given that this creature was gigantic and actually had her in its jaws. Indeed, this makes me wonder about its intentions. Omega's really-inexcusable mistake here is that he doesn't react by moving both of them to a more fortified residence.
(27) - Thalma has more common sense than Omega, but both of them are being too proud for their own good.
(28) - This begs a colossal question: if they can synthesize food from the air, why can't they extract water from the air? Assuming any humidity whatsoever, the latter task is by far the technologically-easier one. This is essentially a subset of Morrow's huge misunderstanding of geochemistry: it is very difficult to grasp how the Earth could be in anything like the same shape in terms of continents, etc. and yet have somehow lost every bit of water trapped in the rocks, including potential water in the form of oxygen and hydrogen atoms incorporated into minerals.
(29) - This all but directly implies that the beast is not merely sapient, but has powerful psychic abilities to boot.
(30) - This is mind-bogglingly wishful thinking. They haven't actually seen a corpse, they've never charted the lake bottom in detail, and yet it doesn't occur to them that there could be subterranean passages leading to other sources of oxygen for the beast? Or that it might not have taken shelter in these while the lake had been charged with electricity? And, with all this profligate expenditure of energy, they couldn't have thought of a better plan for its use?
(31) - It is exceedingly unlikely that any of this would have survived hundreds of millions of years, save perhaps as anomalous stratigraphic patterns. Of course, we are free to postulate advances in construction technology such that buildings became essentially non-erodible and indestructible save for major folding events.
(32) - Easily countered with his super-nuclear powerplant and some internal climate control. Omega's real problem is that all organic life is mostly water.
(33) - This is only possible if there are sub-surface water reserves. If there are, though, why is Omega playing around with this dangerous lake?
(34) - The mathematics of this are dubious, but can't be checked unless we know to what age Thalma is fertile. It seems to me that Thalma should logically have enough lifespan left to produce numerous offspring, but then maybe she only forms one egg every several years, or something of the sort?
(35) - A sadly predictable outcome, given that Omega and Thalma insisted on living right next to the monster-haunted lake. It has an air of nightmare tragedy, and as emotional description it is truly effective. But it all could have been avoided if the two main characters hadn't been so stubborn.
(36) - An astonishingly-effective use of an astonishingly-primitive weapon, especially compared to the rays and shells and bombs which they had previously expended upon the beast to no effect. Then again, they'd never hit it with their high-tech attacks.
(37) - Personality is a dynamic pattern; and Alpha was dead too long by the time they could get him help for such to be restored, even though they could have regenerated his body.
(38) - Perfect time-sense -- a rather useful ability, and one which I can see having either evolved in or been engineered into his ancestors long ago.
(39) - Despairing totally, Thalma had willed herself to die.
(40) - This is one of the reasons why I think that Omega's people had gained most of their superhuman inherent abilities by design, rather than blind evolution. If they could create life ex nihilo, merely modifying existing life forms would be a trivial feat by comparison.
(41) - This rather confused description of how Omega created life should serve as a reminder of just how little even those who were scientifically-literate knew about how a sperm and egg became an embryo almost a century ago. Also, notice the techno-babble use of the word "radioactive" in this passage.
(42) - I know that Morrow is trying to make a point about the futility of consoling oneself with artificial life after all hope of natural life is lost, but given Omega's supposed skill at biochemistry, I have to take the grotesqueness of The Grinner to imply that Omega is simply going utterly insane with loneliness and is in his madness forgetting much of his lore.
(43) - This is an astonishingly confused description of water-usage, which makes me wonder whether or not Morrow really grasped basic chemistry, or if Omega was going so crazy by this point that he had forgotten everything he ever knew. While The Grinner could certainly deplete Omega's available supply of pure water, there is no way that he could be significantly depleting the actual supply of water, unless Omega had designed him to do so.
This is because a normal life form would simply drink the water and then excrete it via breath, sweat, urination and defecation. The result would be polluted water, but such water could simply be run through water purifiers and rendered potable. This would have been possible even with Interwar Era technology, let alone the technology of Omega's far future. And Morrow should have known this -- there's no excuse for him if he didn't.
Of course, if Omega actually designed The Grinner with some sort of exotic metabolism that electrolyzed the water into oxygen and hydrogen and excreted the hydrogen, that's another story. Then he really could remove the water from easy chemical reclamation. But this isn't how most Earthlife works, and it isn't how scientists thought it worked a century ago, either.
(44) - Again, either Morrow was ignorant here of known science or Omega was crazy. Hydrology doesn't work like that. There would be water remaining below ground level, unless the bottom of the lake were made of solid rock with no cracks.
What Morrow could not have known in 1932-33, of course, was that most of the Earth's water is actually contained in the mantle. This was only discovered when we worked out the mechanisms powering plate tectonics. So I won't hold him liable for missing that point.
=====================================================
COMMENTARY: Omega was, of course, driven mad with grief by the end of the story. This makes sense. He had lost his beloved wife and child, and had no sapient companionship. That is why he made The Grinner even if we take his mastery of science straight.
The story is of course Romantic, allegorical and rather religious. Man's time has passed, and thus the efforts of Omega and Thalma to regenerate Mankind are doomed to failure. They were impious, yet magnificent, Having lost wife and child, Omega is now sterile; all his super-science can accomplish is to create an ugly creature which hastens his own end.
Though I totally disagree with the logic, I find the concept strangely and poetically beautiful. Despite the scientific flaws of the story, even for its day, it is a great tale of loss, tragedy, desparation and madness. It deserves to be read more today.
.
(7) - This is seriously-mistaken taxonomy, biology and natural history: and needs to be discussed in detail.
Pleisiosaurs were neither dinosaurs nor even closely related to dinosaurs. Plesiosaurs were in the superorder Sauropterygia, which contained numerous marine reptiles, and which belongs to the infraclass Lepidosauromorpha, the same group which comprises all modern diapsids which are not archosaurs: which is to say, all modern lizards and snakes.
"Brontosaurus" (now renamed "apatosaurus" because the type specimen brontosaur turned out to be an accidental chimera) was s a sauropod dinosaur. The sauropods were saurischians, the "lizard-hipped" dinosaurs that (confusingly) are the ones also including the very un-lizardlike theropods. The saurschian dinosaurs either gave rise to or were very closely related to Class Aves -- the birds. All Dinosauria belong to the infraclass Archosauramoprha, the group which includes modern crocodilians and birds.
Is this a big difference, since both are cladistically Sauropsida? Well, suppose we were talking about mammals. Among mammals, two infraclasses are Eutheria (placental mammals) and Metatheria (the marsupials). So, roughly speaking, we are talking about a genetic distance between apatosaurs and plesiosaurs roughly equivalent to the genetic distance betwen humans and kangaroo.
(My wife, who has her degree in Natural History, dissents -- she thinks the genetic distance is even greater -- more like the distance between humans and monotremes or even humans and cynodonts).
The reason why a hybrid seemed plausible to the author is that both apatosaurs and plesiosaurs were animals with fat bodies, long necks and small heads in proportion to their bodies. This is called "convergent evolution," and in this case the convergence is for entirely different reasons (plesiosaurs needed fat bodies because they lived in water which rapidly drained their body heat, apatosaurs to house guts capable of digesting their diet of rough vegetation; plesiosaurs had long necks and small heads to lash out and catch fish, apatosaurs to reach up to and browse high tree branches).
By the same token, humans and red kangaroos are both bipeds with the ability to fight by biting or by administering blows with all four of their limbs. This, too is convergent evolution and it happened for different reasons (their bipedal gaits are very different, and in the case of the red kangaroo the tail is actually evolving into a third limb complete with nail at the end).
The chance of an apatosaur and a plesiosaur producing viable offspring is roughly the same as the chance of a human producing viable offspring with a red kangaroo. Which is to say, close to nil.
There is also the minor matter that both apatosaurs and plesiosaurs went extinct tens of millions of years before the first human ever lived. Which raises the question of how either was available to leave descendants into Omega's time ...
The story implicitly answers this question. Humanity has developed a means of looking backward in time (which is why they are familiar with Greek history and philosophy). The same technology, combined with powerful microscopy, would make it possible to directly read the genetic codes of both pleisosaurs and apatosaurs, and genengineer transgenic creatures combining the DNA of both kinds of animal.
Why anyone would want to do this is another matter, but then given hundreds of millions of years of history and millions of cultures and subcultures, someone might do it, if for no better reason than Olaf Stapledon's Third Men from Last and First Men (1930), who regarded genetic engineering as an art form worth doing for its own sweet sake. Indeed, there's been more than enough time for thousands of human species to have appeared -- Omega, Thalma and Alpha are definitely not modern homo sapiens sapiens, from their description.
(8) - It is curious, and perhaps wishful thinking, that Omega and Thalma agree, based on very little evidence, that the lake-beast is the last of its kind and has come to the lake to die. The first is far from obvious and in fact proves technically false since there is at least one more such beast (though there don't appear to be any other lakes left on the Earth, so it may be almost true). The second is true only in the sense that Omega winds up killing both of the surviving lake-beasts, but it would not have been true had he not been obsessed with colonizing that particular location.
(9) - This (and later events of the tale) make me believe that the lake-beast is not only sentient, and probably sapient, but also shares some of the psychic powers of Omega's human race. This is the only way it could possibly avoid death when being hunted by everything from plasma-guns to aerial depth-charges -- it must be able to track Omega and his family by telepathy and be instantly aware of any immediate hostile intent.
(10) - It is rather strange that the decline from several nations clustered around the remnants of the Pacific to just two human beings should have occurred within the lifetime of one single man, Omega. There is no hint in the story that Omega is immortal, though he certainly may have been naturally long-lived by 1930's standards. Given Omega's own rather violent nature (at no point does he consider the possibility of a truce with the lake-beast), it is possible that Omega's people accelerated their doom by civil strife. I can easily see Omega's kind as a somewhat-prettier version of the Itorloo -- though the Itorloo were actually better at survival on a dying planet!
(11) - This concept of the human future, with Mankind spending hundreds of millions of years trapped in a Solar System which is now dying with its Sun, and with even interplanetary space travel not achieved until millions of years after the present day, seems to be strongly drawing upon Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men (1930), to which I have already alluded. In this case, Morrow has assumed that numerous Solar worlds were colonized but that this now means that all habitable worlds are already-occupied and mutually-doomed, meaning that Omega has no hope of sanctuary off Earth. I will discuss the implications (and flaws) in this vision later, in my Commentary.
(12) - Sadly, nuclear fission doesn't work this way -- it would be convenient if we could break down radioactives all the way to hydrogen and helium, gaining energy at every step of the process. Indeed, if we could do this, we could then use the hydrogen and helium as fusion fuel, building them back up and thus having a perpetual-motion machine! In fact, neither fission nor fusion are energy-efficient processes past the first few steps, and each such process has an "nuclear ash" end-state (iron for fusion, lead for fission) beyond which one actually loses energy pushing the process further.
(13) - Given that we are now able to detect extrasolar planets with equipment of far less capability, one implication of the technology described is that Omega should be in continuous contact with any and all sapients in the Solar System who wish such contact, and have a complete map of all star systems in the Galaxy to which he possesses a line of sight. These implications would have been totally lost on Morrow and on every writer of his time, with the possible exceptions of E. E. "Doc" Smith and John W. Campbell (who separately postulated super-telescopes of this sort in the Skylark and the Black Star series respectively). Very few science-fiction writers predicted the long-range telescopic detection of extra-solar planets -- as late as the early 1990's, just before we actually achieved the capability, science fiction assumed that we wouldn't be able to see the planets of an alien star system until we sent a starship there.
(14) - This is a good example of the exaggeration of the importance of "real" history in much science-fiction set in the very far future. "Omega, the Man" is set sometime around 250 to 2500 million years in the future, and yet all the history referenced in this paragraph is between around 600 BC to 1900 AD -- which is to say, in a mere 2500 years of history. There is no mention of any important figures existing after Napoleon. Realistically, the vast majority of historical references should have been to persons not yet born at the time of the story's writing.
(15) - In other words, Omega's ship can provide unlimited long-term life support, both for itself and for its surroundings, given the right elemental feedstocks -- and its engines have a considerable degree of elemental transmutation capabilities, so at the cost of burning fuel faster, the ship can convert almost any mass into air, water and food. This raises certain questions regarding the necessity of natural air, water and food sources to Omega and his culture, ones which are incompletely answered in the immediately-succeeding paragraph.
(16) - The argument that the machine is useless because the air and water are mostly gone makes no sense: aside from the fact that Omega's ship can perform elemental conversion, the very rocks of the Earth would contain oxygen and hydrogen (much of it in the relatively-convenient form of hydrates) which atomic power could provide enough energy to chemically-extract -- unless, of course, previous Earthly civilizations have already extracted it all (but note: this is a lot of water). But if that much water has been extracted from the crust, there wouldn't be any lakes at the surface either -- unless the lake were left behind by some previous attempt at terraforming. In any case, the simplest assumption is that Omega isn't as skilled at chemistry as he might be, which makes sense, as he and Thalma are the only people available to rebuild, and they probably aren't really Omnidisciplinary Scientists.
(17) - Unless this is a new constellation with a similar name, Morrow has made a serious astronomical error. After hundreds of millions of years, the mix of stars close enough to the Sun to be visible in constellations would be entirely different, and in entirely different positions.
(18) - Thalma gets points here for rescuing Omega instead of just standing there and screaming (or worse, fainting) like some Interwar Era pulp heroines. Morrow gets point for being willing to write the action scene with the roles thus inverted
(19) - It is fairly obvious, from this and other aspects of the lake-beast's behavior, that the lake-beast is probably sapient.
(20) - We never find out from where this cloud came, nor do our protagonists seem to care, which may be a flaw in the story. You would think that Omega and Thalma would be more than a little bit curious, given that clouds are vaporized water and the water shortage drives this whole story.
(21) - This is more than a little bit foolish of Omega, given that Thalma has already amply demonstrated that she is no fragile flower. What's more, Omega's decision is partially-responsible for the tragedy which follows.
(22) - I'm not sure what Morrow means by "absorbing so much water needful for themselves." While water is obviously at a premium on this dying Earth, there must be an ecosystem including oxygenators and detritus feeders in the lake, otherwise the waters would be incapable of supporting smaller organisms on which the lake-monster could feed. Given that, fear that the lake-creature would somehow contaminate the entire lake with its wastes seems hysterical.
(23) - This puts Omega and Thalma right in the Ryukyu Trench, probably in the northeastern end, if they can see the Japanese mainland. This is dubious enough by 1930's geology, in that the land forms should have changed drastically over hundreds of millions of years; it is nonsense in light of what we know today about continental drift. The theory of continental drift was known in the 1930's -- Lovecraft used it in At the Mountains of Madness -- but it was not generally believed, because most of the supporting evidence had not yet been discovered.
(24) - That Omega does not think of what to us would be the obvious technological solutions -- sonar, homing torpedoes -- reminds us of just how primitive was anti-submarine (in this case, anti-lake-monster) warfare in the 1930's. This illustrates a point, common in Interwar Science Fiction, of writers being utterly incapable of predicting the massive technological progress that World War II would bring -- within a mere six years of this story's publication, Allied warships would be routinely deploying "Asdic" (sonar) technology against German submarines. To be fair to Morrow, though some of this technology had actually been developed by 1933, much of it was specialized and highly secret at the time.
(25) - Again, this is an esoteric technology being used instead of a much more practical lower-tech solution: automated radar-directed cannons. And again, this is not really Morrow's fault. Precisely such sorts of electrical barriers (run along actual cabling) had been proposed by Edison during World War One and were being postulated (as wireless systems) by Tesla at around the time the story was written. Primitive radar systems had actually been developed by the early 1930's, but were military secrets, and nobody predicted the immense miniaturization of electronics which would make automated weapons systems practical by the 1960's.
(26) - It is actually a bit surprising that Thalma survived this attack, given that this creature was gigantic and actually had her in its jaws. Indeed, this makes me wonder about its intentions. Omega's really-inexcusable mistake here is that he doesn't react by moving both of them to a more fortified residence.
(27) - Thalma has more common sense than Omega, but both of them are being too proud for their own good.
(28) - This begs a colossal question: if they can synthesize food from the air, why can't they extract water from the air? Assuming any humidity whatsoever, the latter task is by far the technologically-easier one. This is essentially a subset of Morrow's huge misunderstanding of geochemistry: it is very difficult to grasp how the Earth could be in anything like the same shape in terms of continents, etc. and yet have somehow lost every bit of water trapped in the rocks, including potential water in the form of oxygen and hydrogen atoms incorporated into minerals.
(29) - This all but directly implies that the beast is not merely sapient, but has powerful psychic abilities to boot.
(30) - This is mind-bogglingly wishful thinking. They haven't actually seen a corpse, they've never charted the lake bottom in detail, and yet it doesn't occur to them that there could be subterranean passages leading to other sources of oxygen for the beast? Or that it might not have taken shelter in these while the lake had been charged with electricity? And, with all this profligate expenditure of energy, they couldn't have thought of a better plan for its use?
(31) - It is exceedingly unlikely that any of this would have survived hundreds of millions of years, save perhaps as anomalous stratigraphic patterns. Of course, we are free to postulate advances in construction technology such that buildings became essentially non-erodible and indestructible save for major folding events.
(32) - Easily countered with his super-nuclear powerplant and some internal climate control. Omega's real problem is that all organic life is mostly water.
(33) - This is only possible if there are sub-surface water reserves. If there are, though, why is Omega playing around with this dangerous lake?
(34) - The mathematics of this are dubious, but can't be checked unless we know to what age Thalma is fertile. It seems to me that Thalma should logically have enough lifespan left to produce numerous offspring, but then maybe she only forms one egg every several years, or something of the sort?
(35) - A sadly predictable outcome, given that Omega and Thalma insisted on living right next to the monster-haunted lake. It has an air of nightmare tragedy, and as emotional description it is truly effective. But it all could have been avoided if the two main characters hadn't been so stubborn.
(36) - An astonishingly-effective use of an astonishingly-primitive weapon, especially compared to the rays and shells and bombs which they had previously expended upon the beast to no effect. Then again, they'd never hit it with their high-tech attacks.
(37) - Personality is a dynamic pattern; and Alpha was dead too long by the time they could get him help for such to be restored, even though they could have regenerated his body.
(38) - Perfect time-sense -- a rather useful ability, and one which I can see having either evolved in or been engineered into his ancestors long ago.
(39) - Despairing totally, Thalma had willed herself to die.
(40) - This is one of the reasons why I think that Omega's people had gained most of their superhuman inherent abilities by design, rather than blind evolution. If they could create life ex nihilo, merely modifying existing life forms would be a trivial feat by comparison.
(41) - This rather confused description of how Omega created life should serve as a reminder of just how little even those who were scientifically-literate knew about how a sperm and egg became an embryo almost a century ago. Also, notice the techno-babble use of the word "radioactive" in this passage.
(42) - I know that Morrow is trying to make a point about the futility of consoling oneself with artificial life after all hope of natural life is lost, but given Omega's supposed skill at biochemistry, I have to take the grotesqueness of The Grinner to imply that Omega is simply going utterly insane with loneliness and is in his madness forgetting much of his lore.
(43) - This is an astonishingly confused description of water-usage, which makes me wonder whether or not Morrow really grasped basic chemistry, or if Omega was going so crazy by this point that he had forgotten everything he ever knew. While The Grinner could certainly deplete Omega's available supply of pure water, there is no way that he could be significantly depleting the actual supply of water, unless Omega had designed him to do so.
This is because a normal life form would simply drink the water and then excrete it via breath, sweat, urination and defecation. The result would be polluted water, but such water could simply be run through water purifiers and rendered potable. This would have been possible even with Interwar Era technology, let alone the technology of Omega's far future. And Morrow should have known this -- there's no excuse for him if he didn't.
Of course, if Omega actually designed The Grinner with some sort of exotic metabolism that electrolyzed the water into oxygen and hydrogen and excreted the hydrogen, that's another story. Then he really could remove the water from easy chemical reclamation. But this isn't how most Earthlife works, and it isn't how scientists thought it worked a century ago, either.
(44) - Again, either Morrow was ignorant here of known science or Omega was crazy. Hydrology doesn't work like that. There would be water remaining below ground level, unless the bottom of the lake were made of solid rock with no cracks.
What Morrow could not have known in 1932-33, of course, was that most of the Earth's water is actually contained in the mantle. This was only discovered when we worked out the mechanisms powering plate tectonics. So I won't hold him liable for missing that point.
=====================================================
COMMENTARY: Omega was, of course, driven mad with grief by the end of the story. This makes sense. He had lost his beloved wife and child, and had no sapient companionship. That is why he made The Grinner even if we take his mastery of science straight.
The story is of course Romantic, allegorical and rather religious. Man's time has passed, and thus the efforts of Omega and Thalma to regenerate Mankind are doomed to failure. They were impious, yet magnificent, Having lost wife and child, Omega is now sterile; all his super-science can accomplish is to create an ugly creature which hastens his own end.
Though I totally disagree with the logic, I find the concept strangely and poetically beautiful. Despite the scientific flaws of the story, even for its day, it is a great tale of loss, tragedy, desparation and madness. It deserves to be read more today.
.
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