Steampunk Prime_ A Vintage Steampunk Reader - Mike Ashley [75]
There are many other things of which I would like to speak; but I must bring this memorandum to a close before leaving earth, as I am about to do, for a voyage and an absence which may be permanent.
With all the improvements in machinery, inventions, and modes of life, human nature, also, has somewhat improved; but it has not radically altered. Its passions, good and bad, remain much the same, together with its weakness, fickleness, and treachery. Noting this, and having seen so much of the world even in our rapid journeys, I began to grow a trifle tired of it all and to yearn for something new and for a rest. Moreover, Zorlin had stirred up so much controversy by his private and public talks wherever he went, regarding his large cosmic views in religion, philosophy, and science, that he, also, longed for return to his native planet.
It was when we had arrived at this state of mind that Graemantle suddenly came up with us, just as we alighted from an air-ship, in Norway. After getting us under thorough observation by a number of emissaries, he had obtained from the World Committee of Twenty an order for Electra as an American “Child of the State” to return with him, and he now put her under a mildly paternal sort of arrest. A day or two later Hammerfleet arrived, surprising me while I was taking a walk in a quiet spot outside of Christiania. He looked haggard, vindictive and terrible. I nerved myself to resist whatever attack he might make, but I was not prepared for the particular weapon he produced. He unrolled in front of me a peculiar glittering curtain that uncurled from a rod in his hand, dropping thence to the ground; and in a moment I recognized that it was something I had heard of but had not seen before — nothing less than a hypnotizing machine!
These machines are used medically, for the investigation of nervous disorders and weak organisms; and they are also applied officially to the examination of candidates for the Civil Service and for high office; but the laws of the world and all the nations forbid their use in any other way.
I gazed helplessly at the glittering thing; and it was evident that my enemy was putting it in operation. The next moment I lost all consciousness of myself, as myself. What would have happened I do not know, for I came almost immediately back to myself, and found that Graemantle, Zorlin, and Electra had come to my rescue in the nick of time; having been guided by Zorlin, whose Kurol mind had enabled him to divine from a little distance what was going on.
This episode settled Hammerfleet’s fate. He was promptly sent back to the United States in irons, and isolated in one of the penal districts. His merely using the hypnotizing machine was sufficient reason for this; and when he saw the game was up, he confessed that his object had been to hypnotize me back into the nineteenth century, into my glass chrysalis in Gladwin’s laboratory, then seclude me personally and keep me permanently hypnotized under this delusion; which would have been practically the same as death for this world.
All through our journeying, I had been more and more impressed with Eva Pryor’s gentleness and winning qualities; and, from wondering at first whether I had not made a mistake as to my real feeling towards her, I came to the positive conclusion that I had done so. Now that we had completed our globe voyage, and Zorlin was pining for his home on Kuro or Mars, I had a candid little conversation with her, and wound up by asking her, “How would you like to carry out actually what you once said