Adventure Magazine Cover — page 68: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

66 may if he cares to. People used to be afraid of a total eclipse of the sun; some still are afraid of it. Imagine, if you can, what Julius Cesar or Alexander the Great or Timour Ilang or Akbar would have thought of radio, or of a thirty-six-inch astronomical telescope, or of a kodak camera.”’ ‘All those things can be explained. This stone is a mystery.” “Ommonee, everything that we do not yet understand is a mystery. To a pig, it must be a mystery why a man flings turnips to him over the wall of his sty. To that dog of yours it must be a mystery why you took such care to train her. Look into the stone now, sahib, and tell me what you see.”’ “Not I,” said Ommony. “I’ve done it twice. You look.” “ay CHUTTER CHAND took up the es stone in both hands and held it in the light from an overhead window. The thing glowed as if full of liquid-green fire, yet from ten feet away Ommony could see through it the lines on the palm of the jeweler’s hand. “Interesting! Interesting! Ommonee, the world is full of things we don’t yet know!” Chutter Chand’s brows contracted, the right side more than the left, in the habit- fixed expression of a man whose business 1s to use a microscope. ‘Two or three times he glanced away and blinked before looking again. Finally he put the stone back on the desk and wiped his spectacles from force of habit. “Our senses,” he said, ‘‘are much more reliable than the brain that interprets them. We probably all see and hear and smell alike, but no two brains interpret in the same way. Try to describe to me your sensations when you looked into the stone.” ‘Almost a brain-storm,” said Ommony. “A rush of thoughts that seemed to have no connection with one another. Something like modern politics—or listening in on the radio when there’s loads of interference, only more exasperating—more personal— more inside yourself, as it were.” Chutter Chand nodded confirmation. “Can you describe the thoughts, Om- monee? Do they take the form of words?” “No. Pictures. But pictures of a sort I’ve never seen, even in dreams. Rather horrible. They appear to mean something, tics outside! Adventure but the mind can’t grasp them. They’re broken off suddenly—begin nowhere and end nowhere.”’ 7 Chutter Chand nodded again. ‘Our experiences tally. You will notice that the stone is broken off; it also begins nowhere and ends nowhere. I have measured it carefully; from calculation of the curvature it is possible to surmise that it may have been broken off from an ellipsoid having a major axis of seventeen feet. That would be an immense mass of jade weighing very many tons; and if the whole were as perfect as this fragment, it would be a marvel such as we in our day have not seen. “T suspect it to have qualities more remarkable than those of radium, and I think—although, mind you, this is now conjecture—that if we could find the orig- inal ellipsoid from which this piece was broken we would possess the open-sesame to—well—to laws and facts of nature, the mere contemplation of which would fill all the lunatic asylums! I have never been so thrilled by anything in all my life.” But Ommony was not thrilled. He had seen men go mad from exploring without landmarks into the unknown. He laughed cynically. ; , ‘““*We fools of nature,’ he quoted, ‘so horridly to shake our disposition with thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls!’ I’d rather wipe out the asylums.” “Or live in one, sahzb, and leave the luna- Shakespeare knew nothing of the atomic construction of the universe. We have advanced since his day—in some respects. You, who are physically strong, would not flinch from climbing a mountain, whereas I, who am physically weak, would decline the attempt, knowing that the higher I should try to climb, the heavier would be the pull of gravity against me. “In the realm of thought our situation is reversed. I am willing to climb, for my brain is strong and used to it. You dread the downward pull of ignorance. MHas it occurred to you to wonder how this stone acquired such remarkable qualities? No! You merely wonder aé it. But observe: “You have seen a pudding stirred? The stupidest cook in the world can pour ingre- dients into a basin and stir them with water until they become something com- pounded, that does not in the feast resemble any one of the component parts. Is that not so? MICLOOOK C@ in