Dynasty of the Small Read online

  BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY JOHN RUSSELL FEARN

  1,000-Year Voyage: A Science Fiction Novel

  The Crimson Rambler: A Crime Novel

  Don’t Touch Me: A Crime Novel

  Dynasty of the Small: Classic Science Fiction Stories

  The Empty Coffins: A Mystery of Horror

  The Fourth Door: A Mystery Novel

  From Afar: A Science Fiction Mystery

  The G-Bomb: A Science Fiction Novel

  Here and Now: A Science Fiction Novel

  Into the Unknown: A Science Fiction Tale

  The Man Who Was Not: A Crime Novel

  One Way Out: A Crime Novel (with Philip Harbottle)

  Pattern of Murder: A Classic Crime Novel

  Reflected Glory: A Dr. Castle Classic Crime Novel

  Robbery Without Violence: Two Science Fiction Crime Stories

  Shattering Glass: A Crime Novel

  The Silvered Cage: A Scientific Murder Mystery

  Slaves of Ijax: A Science Fiction Novel

  The Space Warp: A Science Fiction Novel

  Vision Sinister: A Scientific Detective Thriller

  What Happened to Hammond? A Scientific Mystery

  Within That Room!: A Classic Crime Novel

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Copyright © 1936, 1946, 1947, 1955 by John Russell Fearn; Copyright © 2012 by Philip Harbottle

  Published by Wildside Press LLC

  www.wildsidebooks.com

  DEDICATION

  For David Ward

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  These stories were previously published as follows, and are reprinted by permission of the author’s estate and his agent, Cosmos Literary Agency.

  “Dynasty of the Small” was first published in Astounding Stories, November 1936. Copyright © 1936 by John Russell Fearn; Copyright © 2012 by Philip Harbottle.

  “Ice Maiden” was first published in British Science Fiction Magazine # 12, 1955 as “A Matter of Vibration.” Copyright © 1955 by John Russell Fearn; Copyright © 2011 by Philip Harbottle.

  “The Vicious Circle” was first published in Startling Stories, Summer 1946. Copyright © 1946 by John Russell Fearn; Copyright © 2003 by Philip Harbottle.

  “Chaos” was first published in Startling Stories. November 1947. Copyright © 1947 by John Russell Fearn; Copyright © 2004 by Philip Harbottle.

  “Sweet Mystery of Life” was first published in New Worlds #1, July 1946. Copyright © 1946 by John Russell Fearn; Copyright © 2012 by Philip Harbottle.

  DYNASTY OF THE SMALL

  CHAPTER 1

  As an independent chronicler of the astounding results following Dr. Haddon Blair’s efforts to eliminate disease germs from the world, my name may not be mentioned. Suffice it that I have been a witness throughout the entire sequence of events, and it is because so many misinformed people today regard the otherwise benevolent and singularly irresponsible Blair as a world-wrecker, that I am trying, purely out of Christian spirit, to absolve him from all taint of criminal inclination.

  The business started, as such things do, in the simplest manner. Blair, bacteriological instructor at the Research College of Science, was wont to spend his leisure hours investigating the realms of disease, studying antitoxins and serums, poring over microscopes, examining the formation of cells, protoplasm, blood, and whatnot. No form of bacilli escaped his tireless searching. I have myself seen him work far into the night at the laboratory—a short, bald-headed man, thin-shouldered and nervously earnest, his dark eyes forever alternating between his beloved microscope and voluminous scrapbook of notes.

  Most students believed he was eccentric; indeed, they were rarely so polite. What on earth did he hope to gain from such an exhaustive examination of bacilli, parasites, and Protozoa? Nobody knew—until a celebrated day in November, 2017, when he published his remarkable monograph on the cause of all protozoic diseases.

  He claimed that he could kill all diseases that had this multi-cellular organism as their base, and was quite confident that the unicellular bacteria would also soon come under his control. Disease, he assured the medical circles, was doomed. I read his monograph myself, but not being a bacteriologist I had some difficulty in understanding it; still, he certainly had the right and logical idea.

  His method was to destroy—by a method that he rightly withheld from his monograph—the protoplasmic nucleus of Protozoa. This, it appeared, killed the cell itself. He went on to explain how the Protozoa created, in parasitic form, such virulent diseases as sleeping sickness, malaria, and so forth.

  So much I gathered from his monograph; later, in due order, I learned his method of annihilation—but to that in its proper sequence. What mattered at that time was that, much though I regret to state it, the medical profession—either from a sense of jealousy or because they knew Blair spoke truth and would thereby ultimately put them out of business—utterly ridiculed the conception and forced the brilliant, sensitive Blair to retire into his shell and continue his work in secret.

  This state of affairs lasted for some weeks, until there arrived on the scene the bluff, nut-brown giant known throughout the world as Captain Barry Northern, big-game hunter, tropical explorer, and president of American Tropical Explorations, Inc.

  Dr. Blair watched him with a quiet expectancy, as he was shown into his study in the college annex.

  “I’m a man of few words, doctor,” the captain began, seating himself at Blair’s request. “Both my fellow directors and myself have read your recently published monograph on the absolute cure of all protozoic, tropical diseases. We believe that you really have the secret, and are willing to purchase it.”

  “Purchase it?” Blair shrugged and smiled whimsically. “My dear captain, my antitoxin, as we will call it, is not a patent medicine. It is the absolute solution of all diseases, which have the protozoan as the basis. Most certainly it is not for sale.”

  “Forgive me if I sound rather commercial,” the captain apologized, “but we really are prepared to purchase the formula for this—er—antitoxin from you. Just consider its enormous value to us! We lose many good men through tropical disease. We honestly believe in you, doctor, and be damned to what these petty doctors say! Why, you’ve found for tropical disease what Nietzsche found for ethics and Einstein for space!”

  “Thank you,” said Blair quietly, clasping his thin, nervous hands on the desk before him. “I’m glad to learn that somebody is at least interested. My antitoxin is unique in that it is progressive in its action. Suppose I explain, then if you are still impressed we may negotiate further? I would much rather you knew the details, you know.”

  “But I do! Your monograph—”

  “Ah, yes, the monograph! Well, it was a very technically arranged piece of work, hardly phrased to suit the requirements of so practical a body as Explorations, Inc. To put it more clearly, captain, we will take sleeping sickness as our example. In this case the victim is first bitten, probably by a tsetse fly, which hands on the parasitic Protozoa into the blood of the victim, and there develops the endoparasitic disease of sleeping sickness.

  “Now, Protozoa are, of course, more; highly developed organisms than bacteria; they are multi-cellular and divide by fission. Two become four, four become eight—and so on. Bacteria, on the other hand, are unicellular and far more difficult to destroy from the scientific point of view. Protozoa, though, possessing such amazing powers of multiplication, soon get their victim down. The center of their cells is composed of protoplasm, a granular viscid substance consisting of water to the extent of three quarters of its weight.”

  “Well?” Northern asked, listening intently.

  “It is that protoplasmic nucleus that has so interested me, captain. Protoplasm
in the germ world—indeed in any world—is life. Life to another. Life is all one grand parasitism. Everything lives on something else; lives on the protoplasm of the other. You understand?”

  “Why surely! Bigger fleas have smaller fleas upon their backs to bite ’em! Of course I understand! But go on, please.”

  “Well, I have been rather handicapped in my efforts by there being some six million cells in a drop of blood equal to two pins’ heads—but thanks to the ultra-powerful microscopes I have devised from the resources of this college I have managed to be successful. So far I have related only the externals of my discovery. If you would care to step into the adjoining laboratory I will give you a practical demonstration.”

  “Delighted!” The captain rose with alacrity to his feet, and followed the small savant from the study.

  * * * *

  Ten minutes of adjustment with his specially designed microscopes, and the placing on the slide of a drop of blood from a nearby phial completed Blair’s preliminaries. Then he motioned to the explorer to look.

  Obeying, the captain focused the lenses and studied in silence a vision of blood crystals, with a dark agglomeration of foreign substance to the extreme right of the illumined circle of vision.

  “Living flagellate Protozoa known as trypanosomes of sleeping sickness, transmitted to blood by the bite of the tsetse fly,” Blair explained sonorously. “Normally they would finally invade the cerebrospinal fluid. Now, just keep on watching, captain. There! Now what do you see?”

  At the words another spot of foreign matter dropped into view, moved indolently for a space amidst the blood crystals, then gravitated as though by chemical affinity directly upon the trypanosomes. Within five seconds the trypanosomes had completely vanished!

  “Say, that was terrific!” the explorer exclaimed enthusiastically, raising his eyes. “I never saw anything so swift in all my life. How did you do it?”

  Blair smiled. “Explained in detail it would give away my secret,” he replied quietly. “Still, I can outline what happened. In the bacteriological realms, captain, there exist, as any scientist will tell you, hundreds of unknown forms of life. For instance, the Protozoa, more highly developed than the bacteria, are the deadly enemy of bacteria. I reasoned that there must therefore be something that would likewise be the relentless enemy of Protozoa, and yet harmless to everything else.

  “At last I found it—a minute animalcule with a crawling movement which I myself created by the cross-fertilization of lowly cells and amoeba. Through long years I worked, until at last I created a creature that could exist only on the protoplasm contained with the cell nucleus of Protozoa.

  “All cells are different, all protoplasm is different; there is a specialized type to everything in nature. So my amoebical baby, weaned on Protozoa protoplasm, always seeks the Protozea when injected into the blood stream. Naturally my animalcule are capable of fission and multiply at an amazing speed. But you perceive, since it is only fatal to Protozoa, that the body as a whole is unharmed completely, my animalcule making no toxic effects whatever on the blood stream, and when there are no more Protozoa left to feed upon, my animalcule dies from starvation. The blood stream then resumes its normal condition. Instantaneous cure is the result.”

  “That’s marvelous!” the captain muttered. “But, tell me—how did you manage to manufacture this microscopic life? I thought creation of life was impossible?”

  “I didn’t manufacture life, my friend. I took living cells, compounds of protoplasm, chromatin, plant chlorphyll, and so forth, and brought about a complex crossbreeding. That’s all.”

  The little scientist paused and smiled reflectively. “Bacteria will be much more difficult, though. With their minute fungoid bases and insensibility to heat and cold extremes—”

  “Quite so—but about this stuff of yours. Are you willing to sell it?”

  “No, the formula is too valuable for inexperienced hands. I have a better proposition, a compromise. I will make up a bottle of the substance, complete with instructions as to method of injection, etc. If any of you are taken ill on your forthcoming tropic exploration and prove my antitoxin to be all I claim for it, your company must vindicate me in the eyes of the world and medical profession.”

  “It’s a deal!” Northern declared promptly, extending a vast hand. “And say, why can’t we inject before the disease and make doubly sure?”

  “Where would be the use with no harmful Protozoa present? I grant that normal Protozoa would be there, bound to be—but why waste the substance on a harmless organism? No, wait until you’re attacked, then start.”

  “I see your point. Well, that’s settled then. To make doubly sure of good faith you shall have confirmation in writing from my company.”

  “Thank you,” Blair murmured. “I will see to it that you get the antitoxin within a week.”

  “A week! But we leave the day after tomorrow! I’m so sorry; I realize that it is rather short notice—”

  “I cannot possibly do it under a week, captain. Still, that need not be a drawback, surely? You’ll be going by train and boat, of course?”

  “With our extensive equipment we shall have to.”

  “Excellent! I will send the antitoxin to you at—er— You’re going to South Africa, I believe? Suppose we say Cape Town? I’ll send it by fast airmail the moment I have it ready.”

  “Splendid, doctor! That will do admirably. We’ll leave it at that, then, and tomorrow you will receive our signed warrant of good faith. Sign it and send it back to me by return of post; that will ensure my getting it before I leave.”

  “I will.” Blair nodded. “Everything will be in order.”

  * * * *

  With the precision common to his quiet and industrious nature, Dr. Blair spent every spare moment in secretive manufacture of his extraordinary anti-toxin. The written assurance of the bluff captain’s promises duly arrived the following day, was signed by Blair, and returned.

  The days moved on; the African expedition departed; but, true to his promise, a week later, Blair mailed his anti-toxin by the fastest known South African air route, then proceeded to completely forget all about the matter and devote his attention to interrupted studies on the possible annihilation of bacteria.

  From then on, it appears, our little scientific friend fades transiently from the scene of activity, and instead attention must become focused upon a fast airplane heading for South Africa.

  Malignant fate, in the form of a severe winter gale, swept in from the Atlantic and, according to report, struck the airplane when she was twenty miles west of Cape Verde Islands. There appears to be no exact record of what happened, but it is certain that the machine was finally brought down in the storm’s fury and sank without a single survivor. Passengers, pilot, mails, and shattered plane all sank to the bottom of the tempest-lashed Atlantic. For days afterward planes conducted an exhaustive search, but finally could only add the disaster to the already grimly long list of those gone before.

  Dr. Blair, back in New York, constantly absorbed in his work, never read any newspapers and certainly did not listen to the radio, hence he was quite in ignorance of the occurrence. Indeed, even if he had known, it is doubtful if he could have foreseen the terrible things that were to accrue from the plane wreck. So it was that, several days afterward, to his mystified astonishment, Blair received a cable from Cape Town:

  NO ANTITOXIN TO HAND STOP UNDERSTAND PLANE WAS WRECKED IN GALE STOP SEND FRESH SUPPLY STOP WILL DELAY TRIP INTO INTERIOR FOR FOURTEEN DAYS.

  BARRY NORTHERN

  “Wrecked?” Blair repeated to his breakfast egg, and on asking his housekeeper for verification quickly received it.

  “Why, yes, sir—the South African express went down in that awful storm we had about a fortnight ago. Surely you remember, doctor?”

  “I do seem to remember that my hat blew off one day,” Blair mused. “That must have been it. Dear me, how annoying. Incidentally, Mrs. Mason, these eggs are underdone. Four minut
es is the time.”

  “I’ll remember, sir. Sorry, sir.”

  Blair turned back to his eating. Silently, he resolved that fresh antitoxin should arrive in Cape Town within another week. Odd how calmly he came to this decision, and yet had not the cold-blooded patience to realize what might be happening to the other antitoxin at the bottom of the ocean. Whilst he sat detachedly eating his over-boiled eggs and studying a treatise on germ cultures; whilst Captain Northern fumed impatiently in the torrid heat of Cape Town, a brine-sodden package in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean burst asunder and released into those murky, silent abysses the incipient decay of all civilization.

  CHAPTER 2

  The second package of antitoxin reached Cape Town. Captain Northern returned from his expedition eight months later at the close of a scorching July. It appeared that he had had the most successful expedition ever—not a man ill. Fresh discoveries had been made, and above all things, Dr. Blair’s Protozoa annihilator was publicly acclaimed in the eyes of the world—to the intense irritation of the medical faculty and the extreme joy of those suffering from, diseases, which were definitely protozoic in basis.

  Dr. Blair—Captain Northern now his closest friend—achieved world fame. Beyond the fact that his work had been recognized he seemed quite unconcerned, still pursuing his efforts in bacteriology. At his disposal had been placed a fully-equipped laboratory, backed by Explorations, Inc. The control of Cures, Inc„ too, where the antitoxin was constantly manufactured by public demand for hospitals and medical circles, absorbed a good deal of time.

  Yes, throughout the following August events were steady in arrival, but quite unexciting. There were the usual undercurrents of war talk, Eastern menace, unemployment, and kindred subjects, until in the waning warmth of September, 2018, came the first hint of the unusual.

  Probably nobody at that time attached the slightest significance to the almost obscure newspaper announcement that undoubtedly was the first authentic report of approaching trouble. Now, in the light of later events, I can trace it all back to that report, and here I reproduce it exactly as it appeared in the New York Clarion for September 28, 2018: