Chapter 1

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Title: Danger
Date of first publication: 1929
Author: Fletcher Pratt (1897-1956)
Date first posted: Feb. 16, 2022
Date last updated: Feb. 16, 2022
Faded Page eBook #20220239

This eBook was produced by: Al Haines

This file was produced from images generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries.

[Source: Amazing Stories, July, 1929]

DANGER

_By Irvin Lester and Fletcher Pratt_

Authors of: “The Great Steel Panic,” “The Roger Bacon Formula,” etc.

_Easter Island has for many years been a subject for considerable
conjecture. Though many expeditions have traveled there and made
intensive investigations, no definite reasons could be found for
the complete lack of human existence. There are many signs of
life having been there at some time. The statues there remain a
mystery. So does any reason as to why the area of water and
islands called the Agassis Triangle is so devoid of life._

_The co-authors of this story, apparently, have also wondered
about these questions and have developed an original explanation
of unusual interest._

The wind rose in the night and by dawn the sky was streaming with
torn and ragged masses of cloud moving from south to north like an
army in flight. There was a shiver of cold in the air and the seas
ran so high that effective work was impossible, so we gathered in
Professor Hartford’s cabin to help the old man brave out his
discomfort by getting him to talk. The way in which he kept up his
spirit, if not his body, through all the miseries of seasickness on
that trip, was one of the finest exhibitions of courage I have seen
anywhere.

As the senior member of the Museum’s staff he was, in a sense, in
charge of the expedition, though like the rest of us, he was inclined
to let things run themselves while he pursued his specialty. Perhaps
it was fortunate for him that the protozoa can be studied as well on
a constantly moving steamer as on dry land; for the work kept his
mind off his troubles. At all events, every day that was calm enough
for him to be out of bed, found him poring over his microscope in
search of hitherto undescribed forms in this remote corner of the
Pacific.

On days such as this he lay in his bunk, and between uneasy heavings
of the _mal-de-mer_ that plagued him, lectured our crowd of assorted
scientific experts on the importance of unicellular life. Very
interesting lectures they must have been to the other chaps; even I
was sometimes caught by the spell of the professor’s keen and
philosophical observation, and as a mere artist I always felt more or
less a misfit among all those -ologies and -isms.

I remember this day in particular, partly because the evening brought
us to our first view of Easter Island and partly because the
conversation turned to those scientific generalizations, which are
both easier to understand and more interesting to the non-scientific
hearer. But even then, I probably would have recalled it only as one
of a number of similar talks, had not after events given it a
peculiar, almost a sinister significance.

Burgess, our entomologist, had been trying to draw the professor out
by descanting on the rising tide of insect life. “Sooner or later,”
he declared, “we will have to fight for our lives with them. Science
always plods along behind their attacks. They have taken the
chestnut, the boll-weevil and corn-borer are taking two more of our
economically important plants. Who knows but that nature is working
in its slow way to send us after the dinosaurs?”

Slap, slap, went the waves against the cabin wall.

“Perhaps, perhaps,” mused Professor Hertford, “though I incline to
think that the insects will never drive man from the planet.
Evolution allows a group only one opportunity–the insects had their
chance to rule the world in the Carboniferous, and failed.

“… No,” he went on, “there are many lines of evolution untried, but
none of them lead through existing forms. When a more capable type
than man appears, it will be in a wholly new form of animal
life–perhaps even a direct evolution from the protozoa. So far as
we know, evolution along that line has never taken place to any great
extent. The division between the one-celled and many-celled animals
is sharper than that between an insect and an elephant. Think of a
one-celled animal, practically immortal as they are and possessed of
intelligence. No matter what work we do, no matter what records we
leave, the greater portion of human knowledge perishes with the minds
that give it birth. Think what it would mean if one person could go
on gathering knowledge through the centuries.”

“But,” objected Burgess, “a parmoecium hasn’t any brain tissue. You
can’t have that without some nervous organization.”

“But, my dear Burgess,” said the professor, urbanely, “is brain
tissue necessary to thought? You might as well say fins are
necessary to swimming. Neither the polar bear nor the octopus have
them, yet both can swim very well. Nature has a queer way of
accomplishing similar results by all sorts of different means.
Suppose thought is what Osborn hints it is–a matter of chemical
reaction, and interaction–is there any need for brain tissue in
which the thought must take place?”

“All true enough,” said Burgess, “but you must admit that without
proprioceptors there can be no sensation, and with a cortex–“

The conversation became so technical that I was perforce eliminated
from it, and wandered down the iron stairway to watch the engines.
For a time I sat there, vainly trying to put on paper the flicker of
those bright moving parts–so beautifully ordered, so Roman in their
efficient performance of their task, whatever else was happening.
But it was no use; a job for a Nevinson, and I clambered back to the
deck.

There I found the weather had moderated. The whole southwest was
streaked with the orange presage of a fairer day and, right in the
center of the illumination, grey and ominous, a huge cone rose
steeply from the water.