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Fantasy Commentator, v. 1, issue 7, Summer 1945
Page 151
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FANTASY COMMENTATOR 151 would be an open book to our world of science. This must not be! The elders among her people had sensed the direction of Le Normand's research, and had directed her intelligence across the vast ocean of space and time to stop him before it was too late. But in endeavoring merely to cloud his mind and direct it into other less dangerous channels she destroyed him utterly through the strange concurrence of events mentioned just above. Selena almost failed in her mission when likeable Jerry Lister, one of Le Normand's few friends and his only disciple, found the equations and continued work on them. Jerry was drawn to her by a strange fascination, however, so that it was a simple matter to influence him to marry her with almost indecent haste shortly after her husband Le Normand's death. Perhaps she gained a little of the idea of human love from him because when his work was completed and he knew her secret, she hesitated to silence his lips. Being only a mortal earth-man, however, Jerry could not bear the awful revelation when the whole soul-freezing truth about the Outside broke upon him. And is only solace was suicide. Selena departed---successful but unhappy---man had not broken down the barriers to her world, for a while a least. Nevertheless, she had forever lost something which she appreciated only dimly and which she could never hope to regain. In The Edge of Running Water we find Julian Blair, the brilliant but misunderstood electrophysicist who is obsessed by the effort to reach the realm of his beloved wife who has passed beyond the pale of life. Forced to leave his university because of the unorthodox direction of his researches and theories, he set up his laboratory in the wild fastness of Maine. Looking upon spiritualism with a scientist's eye he had postulated that the force engendered by a circle of kindred minds at a successful séance was semi-electrical in nature, but weak and uncertain withal. He reasoned: why not take the energy of one sensitive mind---his own---trained and aided by an authentic medium, and purifying its current with suitable filters, amplify it by a billionfold by special coils, transformers, vacuum tubes and colossal electrical force, thus setting up an electromagnetic field of tremendous proportions? Surely then, if ever, this mind should be able to shatter the ramparts of that other dimension wherein lie the minds of the dead. His friend, Richard Sayles, never guessed the true magnitude and direction of Blair's work until he was finally allowed in the laboratory, and thus suffered an almost soul-shattering experience. For it was demonstrated that Blair had progressed very far: his weird and unholy set-up actually worked! The shrouded circle of semi-human figures built of glass, wire, relays, etc., hummed with the pressure of millions of volts, the flow of millions of amperes. And as Blair, at the head of this blasphemous circle, advanced the controlling lever to almost maximum, over the dim personages surrounding the insulated table there began to appear a shadow. A shadow from the Outside hovered over the two scientists and the terrible sitters in the circle. Blair was utterly hypnotized, but Sayle had the wit to shove the control lever back to zero. There was a tremendous shock, the dark shadow retreated to its own domain, and the icy finger from the depths of Time was present no longer. Sayles had felt the nadir of cosmic horror and he trembled at the enormities toward which Blair was striving, but Blair was eager to go on after this promising taste of fulfillments yet to come. Sayles did his best to dissuade his friend but Blair was a man possessed---adamant in his determination to reach out to his wife's spirit. When the law finally stepped in Blair seized his final opportunity. He locked himself in the laboratory, and from the sounds heard by those without it was evident that the controlling lever had been pushed to its maximum position. The listeners fled, barely in time to escape the catastrophe which followed. There was a colossal implosion; the earth itself was shaken by the cosmic forces let loose. And when the survivors returned they found to their
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FANTASY COMMENTATOR 151 would be an open book to our world of science. This must not be! The elders among her people had sensed the direction of Le Normand's research, and had directed her intelligence across the vast ocean of space and time to stop him before it was too late. But in endeavoring merely to cloud his mind and direct it into other less dangerous channels she destroyed him utterly through the strange concurrence of events mentioned just above. Selena almost failed in her mission when likeable Jerry Lister, one of Le Normand's few friends and his only disciple, found the equations and continued work on them. Jerry was drawn to her by a strange fascination, however, so that it was a simple matter to influence him to marry her with almost indecent haste shortly after her husband Le Normand's death. Perhaps she gained a little of the idea of human love from him because when his work was completed and he knew her secret, she hesitated to silence his lips. Being only a mortal earth-man, however, Jerry could not bear the awful revelation when the whole soul-freezing truth about the Outside broke upon him. And is only solace was suicide. Selena departed---successful but unhappy---man had not broken down the barriers to her world, for a while a least. Nevertheless, she had forever lost something which she appreciated only dimly and which she could never hope to regain. In The Edge of Running Water we find Julian Blair, the brilliant but misunderstood electrophysicist who is obsessed by the effort to reach the realm of his beloved wife who has passed beyond the pale of life. Forced to leave his university because of the unorthodox direction of his researches and theories, he set up his laboratory in the wild fastness of Maine. Looking upon spiritualism with a scientist's eye he had postulated that the force engendered by a circle of kindred minds at a successful séance was semi-electrical in nature, but weak and uncertain withal. He reasoned: why not take the energy of one sensitive mind---his own---trained and aided by an authentic medium, and purifying its current with suitable filters, amplify it by a billionfold by special coils, transformers, vacuum tubes and colossal electrical force, thus setting up an electromagnetic field of tremendous proportions? Surely then, if ever, this mind should be able to shatter the ramparts of that other dimension wherein lie the minds of the dead. His friend, Richard Sayles, never guessed the true magnitude and direction of Blair's work until he was finally allowed in the laboratory, and thus suffered an almost soul-shattering experience. For it was demonstrated that Blair had progressed very far: his weird and unholy set-up actually worked! The shrouded circle of semi-human figures built of glass, wire, relays, etc., hummed with the pressure of millions of volts, the flow of millions of amperes. And as Blair, at the head of this blasphemous circle, advanced the controlling lever to almost maximum, over the dim personages surrounding the insulated table there began to appear a shadow. A shadow from the Outside hovered over the two scientists and the terrible sitters in the circle. Blair was utterly hypnotized, but Sayle had the wit to shove the control lever back to zero. There was a tremendous shock, the dark shadow retreated to its own domain, and the icy finger from the depths of Time was present no longer. Sayles had felt the nadir of cosmic horror and he trembled at the enormities toward which Blair was striving, but Blair was eager to go on after this promising taste of fulfillments yet to come. Sayles did his best to dissuade his friend but Blair was a man possessed---adamant in his determination to reach out to his wife's spirit. When the law finally stepped in Blair seized his final opportunity. He locked himself in the laboratory, and from the sounds heard by those without it was evident that the controlling lever had been pushed to its maximum position. The listeners fled, barely in time to escape the catastrophe which followed. There was a colossal implosion; the earth itself was shaken by the cosmic forces let loose. And when the survivors returned they found to their
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