Amazing Stories, Vol. 2, No. 2 — page 98: what you’re looking at

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

202 age. She pointed to his circles, each representing ten years, then to Venus in the picture to show him that she meant years of two hundred and twenty-five days. Then producing her tablet, she drew ten little circles and put a square around them. He smiled to himself, and remarked, “You don’t look a hundred, even if your years are only Seven months each.” But as he spoke, she was busy making squares and did not stop until she had made twenty-five. Then she made three circles and finally six strokes. Again he was greatly tempted to laugh, but the sight of her thimble fin- ger and the veranda post quelled the impulse. “Twenty-five hundred and thirty-six of your own years! Well, if you don’t tell anyone, they’ll never guess,” he remarked. She was still busy with her finger on the tablet. This time she was drawing a small child; she put five strokes above it; then she drew a larger child, and put a circle to indi- cate ten years, then touched herself, and drew quite a presentable likeness, and over it put two circles and four strokes. “Now we have it,” remarked the doctor, “twenty-four years of two hundred and twenty days each. If my mental calculations are _ right, you are almost fifteen.” The doctor began to see a little light. In actual age she was fifteen, but it was one thousand five hundred and eighty- five years since she was born. She rose, and walked into the library, beckoning him to follow; she pointed to various books which he took down and opened on the table. At last a small edition of an Encyclopaedia seemed to take her fancy, and making signs for him to carry the big collection of books, including the volume on astronomy, she led the way down the steps and out on the lawn where the rays of light were still Shining. Laying down her writing tablet, which She had opened out as large as a newspaper, she indicated that the pile of books were to be laid upon it. He dutifully put them down, and watched her touch them. It did not surprise him to see the books grow until they were higher than the house, and at the same time become transparent. Again she touched them, and they melted into the blue rays and vanished. She picked up the ivory-like sheet, folded it, and put it into her pocket. Then she looked at him, inclined her head, looked up, touched her forehead with that all powerful thim- ble, and melted away into the rays just as the books had done. OCTOR JOYCE went, back to his chair on the veranda. Every now and then he smiled to himself. “Some dream all right,’ he muttered. Then his glance fell on the veranda post, with the four inches missing out of the middle, and with face set in hard lines, he examined it carefully. Picking up the spool of thread, he broke off two or three yards, and putting a pin in the veranda post at the cut, he stretched the thread exactly parallel to the lower cut until he came to the chair where his visitor sat. Then he stretched another thread along the upper cut, and noticed with satisfaction that the threads came together exactly where she had her hand. Walking inside, he looked at the empty spaces on the bookshelves where his En- cyclopaedia and his Astronomy had been. He went out on the lawn and gazed up at the star of AMAZING STORIES love, the planet Venus, that shown brilliantly above. His dreams were feverish that night, and when he awoke, he lay thinking for a few minutes, and then burst into his boyish laughter. “Jim,” he called, “bring me the small Encyclopaedia and the big astronomy book from the library. And say, Jim, you also go out and see if the veranda post. is cut in two.” He laughed again at old Jim’s look of astonishment. In a few minutes Jim was back. “Sah, the books you mention is not there. Yes, sah, the veranda post, as you say, is cut in two.” Night after night the doctor sat in his chair watching and thinking. He had prepared various ways of communicating, should his visitor appear at any moment. Suddenly he was smitten with the thought that perhaps she had come while he was out, and even now might be waiting for some sign from him. How stupid! No wonder she had put his brain power at four parts out of forty- four. Hurrying inside, he took a large sheet of white paper and drew with charcoal a big circle, in which he indicated a hand at a quarter to the hour. Underneath the circle he wrote COME. He took it out, spread it on the lawn, and returned to his chair. Fifteen minutes later the blue rays focused on the lawn, and he saw the girl material- ize. She took out the folded sheet, opened it, and spread it on the lawn where the rays touched it. Then he seemed to see his books as big as street cars, and transparent so that he could see the houses across the road through them. When she touched the books he saw them shrink and become opaque and solid. In answer to her beckoning he went down and picked up the books. He hesitated just long enough to touch the sheet of white ma- terial. At first it felt smooth and cold like glass. Then he noticed that he was not really touching it at all, for his finger was about a quarter of an inch or so above it. “Negatively charged,” he told him- self, as he carried the books inside. When he re- turned she was sitting in the canvas deck chair. He switched on the light, but quickly turned it off again, for she seemed more dim in the strong light. On a pad of paper he wrote: “Have you learned our language from the books?” She hesitated, and made no sign of understanding. He was sur- prised, and a little disappointed. Then he noticed that she was writing in her luminous characters with that fatal finger tip. It was his script that had floored her, for she wrote in perfect printing letters. “There is nothing in your books like your writing. Please give me a sample alphabet of small letters and capitals in your own writing.” He wrote them out, and watched her study them for about twenty seconds. At the end of that time she knew them for always. Now the way was open, and all of the mysteries of the planet of love were his for the asking. Doctor Joyce wrote rapidly, tearing out sheet after sheet as he wrote them, and laying them on the arm of her chair. He leaned back while she answered his questions. “You people on earth are on the verge of the discoveries we made ten thousand years ago. “Life was altered when we found out that the attraction of the molecules of any substance could be changed. When we EOMIGDOOKS.Com