Forbidden Planet (21 page)

His eyes were closed, and his face was a sort of dirty-grey. His breath was coming quick and light. He said, “Not much time . . .” His voice was so weak I had to bend my head to hear him. “I took too long this time . . . I knew I was, but I couldn’t help it . . .”

He tried to sit up again but I pushed him back. He said, “John—I know all of it—all those answers—I wrote it down—in case—Even just now—”

His eyes closed again. His face was like wax and the marks on the temples looked black.

Altaira came back. She knelt by the couch and slid her arm under his head. She had a glass in her other hand. I stood up, out of her way.

She tried to lift his head up. She said, “Try and drink this. Please!”

His eyes opened. He smiled at her. It was a real Doc smile. He said, “—isn’t time, dear—” The smile went and he moved his eyes to look at me.

I went nearer and bent down. He said, “John—John—on the table by—by—”

His voice went away. His lips were moving. But no sound was coming. His eyes closed again and he drew a big breath. It had a rattling sound in it.

I heard myself say, “Doc—Doc—!” The words came out without my knowing.

His face twisted, with the eyes still closed. He made one last tremendous effort.

He said, “By the gate—the Krell gate—”

The rattle in his breathing came again. And his whole body twitched. I thought he was gone.

But then his eyes opened. They weren’t looking at Altaira. They weren’t looking at me. They were looking at something—somebody—we couldn’t see.

He smiled. It was the damndest thing, but while he was smiling he looked young.

“Caroline!” he said.

His voice was loud. It sounded young too.

He twitched again, and his head dropped back.

This time he was gone. I felt for a heartbeat but knew I wouldn’t find any.

I straightened. Slowly. I took Altaira by the elbows and lifted her up. There were tears in her eyes.

I’ve seen a lot of men die. A lot of them were friends. I’d lost two others who were almost friends that day.

But I never felt the way I felt about Doc. Maybe I never will again.

It was quite a while before I could say anything. But then I said, “Cover him up. Get something and cover him up.” I was surprised when I heard myself saying it.

Altaira didn’t speak. But she put her hands on each side of my face and kissed me.

And then went out.

I couldn’t look at Doc any more. I walked over to the other side of the room. And tried to pull myself together. What was that he’d been saying about a gate?

The Krell gate was what he’d said. He’d been trying to tell me about something he’d written . . . All the answers, he’d said . . .

It suddenly hit me. I could hear Morbius’ voice in my head—“. . . symbols . . . Krell writings . . .”

I whipped around and went to the door in the rock. I ducked under the arch and took the corridor on the run.

I came out into the big space of the lab. I cut over to the center and stopped by the chair Morbius had sat in while he was showing us the damn machine.

The chair was swiveled to face out. The way Doc must have left it.

I didn’t like the feel of the damn place. All around me the lights were blinking on and off in the relay boxes. And the thing Morbius had called ‘the library’ stood there like a goddamned box organ. And the chair that way—staring at me.

The headpiece of the ‘Gateway’ thing was hanging on its hooks behind the rail. The arms were bent, and the electrodes made me think of the marks on Doc’s temples. My audi-vid belt was hanging over the rail. And there was something on the seat next to Doc’s. A square box, with what looked like a book on top of it.

I picked it up. It was Doc’s Service notebook, with “C. X. Ostrow” stamped in the leather.

I opened it. Half the pages had been torn out to get to the unused part. The top one of what was left was covered with Doc’s neat writing. It began—“For Commander J. J. Adams.” And under that it said, “Dear John,” like a letter.

There were more pages of the writing. I slipped the book into my pocket. I wanted to get out of here to read it.

I was starting away when I remembered the box. I went back and picked it up. It was dark plastic about six inches square and eight deep. It must have been in Doc’s med kit. It was heavy.

I opened it. There was a stack of what looked like thin plates of the Krell metal inside. A lot of them. On top was a slip of paper with more of Doc’s writing.

It read: “John—If anything happens to me, KEEP THESE! I think they’re recordings. On some incredible cerebro-micro-wave system. DON’T LOSE THEM.”

I took the box. And got out of the place quicker than I’d come in. The echos of my feet sounded too loud. Louder than when I’d come in.

I ducked under the arch and was back in the study. It felt good.

Altaira was by the couch. She was unfolding something that looked like a blanket. But it was smooth and soft. And the material sort of glowed.

She looked at me and I dragged the notebook out of my pocket and held it up.

I said, “Doc left me a letter. In this.”

She said, “You must read it.”

She laid the cloth gently over Doc, covering his face.

I went to the writing table and sat on a corner of it. I opened the notebook and began to read . . .

II

“Dear John,” I read. “This letter may not be necessary. It is written in case I should make an error and let myself in for too much of the Gateway.

“You must understand that I haven’t been, and won’t be, trying to acquire any of the Krell knowledge or learning. There isn’t time, fascinating though it would be. What I am doing is to enlarge my intellectual capacity. It seems quite literally miraculous what effect this machine has upon one. Even after the very short (though repeated) sessions I have had, my comprehension, my grasp of matters of everything, has increased a thousandfold. Problems which seemed insoluble before are as simple as the alphabet!

“Here’s a physical analogy for you. Using the Gateway is to the mind like using some magical exerciser for the body which can increase your muscular force so much (and so quickly) that you find your lifting ability multiplied a hundred times after every minute you use the device. Before you used it, two hundred pounds seemed heavy. Afterwards, it’s a mere feather you can manipulate with one finger of one hand . . .

“That’s not very good, but it will have to serve. Because there may not be too much of what we call ‘time’.

“Now for our problems—your problems.

“Morbius, who I said didn’t strike me as a liar, told you one lie only. But it was epic in proportion. He stated, categorically, that he did not know the final aim of the Krell.

“He did. And it was his own aim too. Because he regards himself (megalomaniac that he is) as their rightful, their appointed successor.

“This aim is simple to state, but so large in conception that it needs contemplation to appreciate.

“It is to create life.

“Not to reproduce life by biological function—but to
create
it. Not from test-tube or seed-bed but basically. By the power of the mind.

“Has that sunk in, John?

“The Krell had the excuse of a long and brilliant (and therefore decadent) history behind them. They were reaching out for what I will call ‘ultimate worlds’ to conquer . . .

“But Morbius has no excuse except sickness. He is a sick man. Sick in the mind. And this sickness is the worst, the most deadly sickness. The greater the mind, the deadlier the sickness.

“Think, John. Think.

“To create life—life in any variation of form—by the power of the mind.

“If that is the aim (and it is!)—it is the aim of usurping the prerogative of the Ultimate Power—of The Builder of the Universe. Of God! . . .

“You will not want to believe that Morbius is working to this appalling end. But you have seen a concrete, positive proof—

“The animals. Altaira’s animals, which—so far as she can remember—weren’t here when she was ‘a very little girl,’ but then ‘just came’.

“They were experiments by Morbius. Experiments which served the secondary purpose of providing companionship and interest for his daughter.

“My autopsy on the little titi monkey should have shown me. It couldn’t have lived. But it did.

“It lived by the power of Morbius’ mind. Which had made it in the outward image of his thought, his memory.

“With my new understanding I know that there are not two divisions to every mind, as our psychologists still maintain, but three. When they speak of the ‘conscious’ and the ‘sub-conscious’ mind they are omitting what I call ‘mid-mind’.

“It is the ‘mid-mind’ which, so to speak, looks after matters first attended to by the ‘conscious mind,’ which then (deliberately or not) thrusts them backward either to be ‘forgotten’ or to make room for newer, more absorbing projects.

“Think about that. It will give you the answer to many questions you have thrust back into your ‘mid-mind’. Exempli gratia—Why the animals had the protective coloration to fit an Earth background rather than an Altairian; and why the tiger attacked Altaira after the consummation of your love for her . . .

“You have now read your groundwork. So back to the PRACTICAL you love so much—

“But with this preamble:

“The Krells, in the insolence of their success, tried to usurp the power of God. And were destroyed.

“Morbius, in the insolence bred by megalomania, has been, and is, working toward the same end. He has not yet reached the point where he will inevitably be destroyed. But he is approaching it.

“There is no record—there cannot be—of how the entire Krell race was wiped out. But I feel that I know.

“If the power of the ‘conscious’ mind is raised to such a pitch that Creation by it is possible, the potential power of the ‘sub-conscious’ mind should not be ignored.

“But the Krells, I am sure, ignored it. Their one weakness. They didn’t reckon upon what our psychologists call the ‘Id’—and the possibility that a creation, far the reverse of what the ‘conscious’ creation might be, could spring into being without the knowledge of either the ‘conscious’ or ‘mid-mind’.

“The dictionary tells us the Id in the psychological sense is “the fundamental mass of life tendencies, out of which the ego and the libido tendencies develop.” Which may mean, and in my present usage does mean, the mass of formless, bestial impulses, entirely self-centered, which are part of the basis of every thinking creature . . .

“Now, suppose the collective ‘conscious’ minds of a race to have developed to a pitch where the forbidden creation is an established or about to be established fact. What more logical than to suppose that, at the same time, the ‘sub-conscious’ mind—the Id—has developed to the point of autogenesis?

“The result? The letting loose, upon an unsuspecting and defenseless race of beings, of a horde of dread and insensate monsters! The most frightful monsters of all—the realized basenesses of their own natures! Monsters concrete and yet impalpable! Monsters with illimitable physical powers to rend and destroy but with no true physicality to be rent or destroyed themselves!

“An appalling thought, John. But one which I am already convinced is the true answer to the extinction of the Krell. And one which explains, too, dark passages in the life of Morbius upon this planet . . .

“I shall see more, know more, when I have been able to dare another sitting at the Gateway—”

III

The page of writing stopped there, in the middle. I turned it over and saw there was more. But the writing wasn’t neat any more. It was scrawled. It got wilder and wilder.

I felt a hand on my arm. I jumped. And looked up and saw it was Altaira who’d touched me.

I tried to smile, but I don’t think it worked.

Doc had gotten through to me all right. I might have taken a dose of that machine myself the way I understood. I put a hand up to my forehead and found it was clammy with sweat.

Altaira said, “What is it, John?” She looked at the notebook. “What is he telling you?”

I liked the way she said that. Not “What did he write you?” but “What is he telling you?”

But she sounded afraid. She was afraid.

I put my arm around her.

And Morbius walked in.

He stopped as he saw us. His face was—different. Lined. And pouched under the eyes. And his hair—I’ll swear there was twice as much white in it. His eyes were way back in his head, but they were the only things about him that looked alive. They looked too alive.

Altaira said, “Father!”

I got ready to take my arm away. But she didn’t want me to. She pressed against me.

Morbius looked at the couch. His mouth twisted and he went over and took hold of the top of the dark blanket and ripped it back from Doc’s face.

He stared at Doc’s face. He put out a hand and touched the temples, where the dark marks were.

He said, “The fool! The blind fool! Playing with things too big for him!”

Altaira moved a little away from me. She knew what I was going to do.

I stood up. I walked over to the couch. I shouldered past Morbius. I pulled the cover back over Doc’s face.

I turned around and looked at Morbius. I didn’t say anything.

He said, “And why are you here, Commander?”

I said, “To take you away. Back to Earth.” I kept my eyes on his face. “Whether you like it or not.”

“And Altaira?”

“She comes with me. She would in any case.” I hit the
any.

He moved then. He went over to the desk and stood beside her. I started after him. But thought better of it and stayed where I was.

He looked down at her. He said, “Altaira! Would you go with this—with this man?”

She said, “Yes, Father.”

“Even if I refused to go with him? You would leave me here? Alone?”

She took a moment over that one. But she didn’t stop looking at him. She said, “Yes, Father. I would have to go.”

He was standing sideways to me. But even then I saw something happening to his face. Something behind it.

I could feel something happening, too. Something—outside. Outside him. Outside this whole place. But—but belonging to him, whatever it was.