Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 Part 43

"I have told the warden about the suit, saying it was something I made for you myself," she said, in a low voice. "You must pretend the coil and the cups are things you desire for your own amus.e.m.e.nt. You know, they have allowed you a great deal of lat.i.tude, since you are educated and need diversion."

"Yes, yes. There may be some difficulty, but I will overcome that. Tell Burr to come. I'll talk with him and he can instruct me in the final details. It is better than waiting here like a rat in a trap. I have been afraid of going mad, mother, but this buoys me up."

He smiled at her, and her heart sang in the joy of relief.

How did the intervening days pa.s.s? Mrs. Baker could not sleep, could scarcely eat, she could do nothing but wait, wait, wait. She watched the meeting of her son and Ramsey Burr, on the day preceding the date set for the execution.

"Well, Baker," said Burr nonchalantly, nodding to his former a.s.sistant.

"How are you?"

"You see how I am," said Allen, coldly.

"Yes, yes. Well, listen to what I have to say and note it carefully.

There must be no slip. You have the suit, the cups and the director coil? You must keep the suit on, the cups go under the legs of the cot you lie on. The director under your tongue."

The professor spoke further with Allen, instructing him in scientific terms which the woman scarcely comprehended.

"To-night, then at eleven-thirty," said Burr, finally. "Be ready."

Allen nodded. Mrs. Baker accompanied Burr from the prison.

"You--you will let me be with you?" she begged.

"It is hardly necessary," said the professor.

"But I must. I must see Allen the moment he is free, to make sure he is all right. Then, I want to be able to take him away. I have a place in which we can hide, and as soon as he is rescued he must be taken out of sight."

"Very well," said Burr, shrugging. "It is immaterial to me, so long as you do not interfere with the course of the experiment. You must sit perfectly still, you must not speak until Allen stands before you and addresses you."

"Yes, I will obey you," she promised.

Mrs. Baker watched Professor Ramsey Burr eat his supper. Burr himself was not in the least perturbed; it was wonderful, she thought, that he could be so calm. To her, it was the great moment, the moment when her son would be saved from the jaws of death.

Jared carried a comfortable chair into the laboratory and she sat in it, quiet as a mouse, in one corner of the room.

It was nine o'clock, and Professor Burr was busy with his preparations.

She knew he had been working steadily for the past few days. She gripped the arms of her chair, and her heart burned within her.

The professor was making sure of his apparatus. He tested this bulb and that, and carefully inspected the curious oscillating platform, over which was suspended a thickly bunched group of gray-green wire, which was seemingly an antenna. The numerous indicators and implements seemed to be satisfactory, for at quarter after eleven Burr gave an exclamation of pleasure and nodded to himself.

Burr seemed to have forgotten the woman. He spoke aloud occasionally, but not to her, as he drew forth a suit made of the same metal cloth as Allen must have on at this moment.

The tension was terrific, terrific for the mother, who was awaiting the culmination of the experiment which would rescue her son from the electric chair--or would it fail? She shuddered. What if Burr were mad?

But look at him, she was sure he was sane, as sane as she was.

"He will succeed," she murmured, digging her nails into the palms of her hands. "I _know_ he will."

She pushed aside the picture of what would happen on the morrow, but a few hours distant, when Allen, her son, was due to be led to a legal death in the electric chair.

Professor Burr placed the shiny suit upon his lank form, and she saw him put a duplicate coil, the same sort of small machine which Allen possessed, under his tongue.

The Mephistophelian figure consulted a matter-of-fact watch; at that moment, Mrs. Baker heard, above the hum of the myriad machines in the laboratory, the slow chiming of a clock. It was the moment set for the deed.

Then, she feared the professor was insane, for he suddenly leaped to the high bench of the table on which stood one of the oscillating platforms.

Wires led out from this, and Burr sat gently upon it, a strange figure in the subdued light.

Professor Burr, however, she soon saw, was not insane. No, this was part of it. He was reaching for switches near at hand, and bulbs began to glow with unpleasant light, needles on indicators swung madly, and at last, Professor Burr kicked over a giant switch, which seemed to be the final movement.

For several seconds the professor did not move. Then his body grew rigid, and he twisted a few times. His face, though not drawn in pain, yet twitched galvanically, as though actuated by slight jabs of electricity.

The many tubes fluoresced, flared up in pulsing waves of violet and pink: there were gray bars of invisibility or areas of air in which nothing visible showed. There came the faint, crackling hum of machinery rather like a swarm of wasps in anger. Blue and gray thread of fire spat across the antenna. The odor of ozone came to Mrs. Baker's nostrils, and the acid odors burned her lungs.

She was staring at him, staring at the professor's face. She half rose from her chair, and uttered a little cry.

The eyes had changed, no longer were they cold, impersonal, the eyes of a man who prided himself on the fact that he kept his arteries soft and his heart hard; they were loving, soft eyes.

"Allen," she cried.

Yes, without doubt, the eyes of her son were looking at her out of the body of Professor Ramsey Burr.

"Mother," he said gently. "Don't be alarmed. It is successful. I am here, in Professor Burr's body."

"Yes," she cried, hysterically. It was too weird to believe. It seemed dim to her, unearthly.

"Are you all right, darling?" she asked timidly.

"Yes. I felt nothing beyond a momentary giddy spell, a bit of nausea and mental stiffness. It was strange, and I have a slight headache. However, all is well."

He grinned at her, laughed with the voice which was not his, yet which she recognized as directed by her son's spirit. The laugh was cracked and unlike Allen's whole-hearted mirth, yet she smiled in sympathy.

"Yes, the first part is a success," said the man. "Our egos have interchanged. Soon, our bodies will undergo the transformation, and then I must keep under cover. I dislike Burr--yet he is a great man. He has saved me. I suppose the slight headache which I feel is one bequeathed me by Burr. I hope he inherits my shivers and terrors and the neuralgia for the time being, so he will get some idea of what I have undergone."

He had got down from the oscillating platform, the spirit of her son in Ramsey's body.

"What--what are you doing now?" she asked.

"I must carry out the rest of it myself," he said. "Burr directed me when we talked yesterday. It is more difficult when one subject is out of the laboratory, and the tubes must be checked."

He went carefully about his work, and she saw him replacing four of the tubes with others, new ones, which were ready at hand. Though it was the body of Ramsey Burr, the movements were different from the slow, precise work of the professor, and more and more, she realized that her son inhabited the sh.e.l.l before her.