Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930Pelcher, Anthony
Science
Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930
Pelcher, Anthony
Science fiction -- Periodicals; Science fiction, American -- Periodicals
Professor Ramsey Burr, she knew, was the greatest electrical engineer
the world had ever known. And he stood high as a physicist. Nothing
hindered him in the pursuit of knowledge, they said. He knew no fear,
and he lived on an intellectual promontory. He was so great that he
almost lost sight of himself. To such a man, nothing was impossible.
Hope, wild hope, sprang in Mary Baker's heart, and she grasped the bony
hand of the professor and kissed it.
"Oh, I believe, I believe," she cried. "You can do it. You can save
Allen. I will do anything, anything you tell me to."
"Very well. You visit your son daily at the death house, do you not?"
She nodded; a shiver of remembrance of that dread spot passed through
her.
"Then you will tell him the plan and let him agree to see me the night
preceding the electrocution. I will give him final instructions as to
the exchange of bodies. When my life spirit, or ego, is confined in your
son's body in the death house, Allen will be able to perform the feat of
changing the bodies, and your son's flesh will join his soul, which will
have been temporarily inhabiting my own shell. Do you see? When they
find me in the cell where they suppose your son to be, they will be
unable to explain the phenomenon; they can do nothing but release me.
Your son will go here, and can be whisked away to a safe place of
concealment."
"Yes, yes. What am I to do besides this?"
Professor Burr pulled out a drawer near at hand, and from it extracted a
folded garment of thin, shiny material.
"This is metal cloth coated with the new alloy," he said, in a matter of
fact tone. He rummaged further, saying as he did so, "I expected you
would be here to see me, and I have been getting ready for your visit.
All is prepared, save a few odds and ends which I can easily clean up in
the next two days. Here are four cups which Allen must place under each
leg of his bed, and this delicate little director coil you must take
especial pains with. It is to be slipped under your son's tongue at the
time appointed."
* * * * *
She was staring at him still, half in fear, half in wonder, yet she
could not feel any doubt of the man's miraculous powers. Somehow, while
he talked to her and rested those cold eyes upon her, she was under the
spell of the great scientist. Her son, before the trouble into which he
had been dragged by the professor, had often hinted at the abilities of
Ramsey Burr, given her the idea that his employer was practically a
necromancer, yet a magician whose advanced scientific knowledge was
correct and explainable in the light of reason.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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