Eric Frank Russell - Sinister Barrier

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Sinister Barrier

Eric Frank Russell

Foreword

IT would be idle to pretend and dishonest to suggest that Sinister Barrier is anything other than

fiction. Some may regard it as fantasy because it is placed in the future and depicts certain

developments likely in times to come. But I regard it as a sort of fact-fiction solely because I do

sincerely believe that if ever a story was based upon facts it is this one.

Sinister Barrier is as true a story as it is possible to concoct while presenting believe-it-or-not

truths in the guise of entertainment. It derives its fantastic atmosphere only from the queerness,

the eccentricity, the complete in-explicability-so far as dogmatic science is concerned-of the

established facts which gave it birth. These facts are myriad. I have them in the form of a

thousand press clippings snatched from half a hundred newspapers in the Old World and the

New. A thousand more were given me by adventurers hardier than myself; people who have

explored farther and more daringly into forbidden acres where only one law operates: that

curiosity kills the cat.

Despite my possession of a highly suggestive mountain of evidence, none of it jelled into a story

until three Americans came at me, not together, yet with cumulative effect. They formed an

unholy trinity out of whom was born Sinister Barrier's religion of damnation. The first of these

three, a San Franciscan lover of long-distance debate, asked, "Since everyone wants peace, why

don't we get it?" The second, a bellicose Iowan, demanded, "If there are extra-terrestrial races

further advanced than ourselves, why haven't they visited us already?" Until I encountered the

third, Charles Fort, it didn't occur to me that perhaps we had been visited and were still being

visited, without being aware of it. Charles Fort gave me what might well be the answer to both

these questions. Casually but devastatingly, he said, "I think we're property." And that is the plot

of Sinister Barrier.

When first this story appeared, its publishers, Street & Smith, of New York, gave it a tremendous

boost throughout their chain of magazines, describing it as "the greatest imaginative yarn of two

decades" and forecasting that it would "go down in history along with H. G. Wells' War of the

Worlds, Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Sutton Vane's Outward

Bound." At that time I thought they were overdoing it-they'd be the death of me yet. There are

moments when it's sinful to reveal the truth, and the wages of sin is death. But I remain alive,

which is satisfactory proof that the story's basis is a lot of nonsense ... or do I owe my

preservation to the need for that "proof?"

Anyway, this narrative's sales have reached the quarter million mark and, inevitably, some

readers have mailed me quantities of reports on supernormal happenings snipped from their local

papers. Because of this further piling-up of evidence, and because of the bloody nature of the

promised history through which the yarn has gone down, I remain more than ever ready to accept

that there is some truth in its basic proposition, namely, that Man is not and never has been the

master of his fate and the captain of his soul. "I think we're property." Charles Fort had something

there! We've long been the property of common germs, haven't we?

I wrote this story, but it isn't mine, or not in the sense that other stories have been mine. This one

is a multiple collaboration with a number of people who were brought to bear upon me in the

strangest way, almost as if some outside influence had decided ... but that is yet another yarn: To

all those folk I acknowledge my indebtedness, and especially to the following:-

To Charles Fort, author of The Book of the Damned, New Lands, Lo! and Wild Talents, for

providing the germ of the plot.

To the Fortean Society of New York, and to its redoubtable secretary Tiffany Thayer, for

providing evidence of universal cowhood.

To John W. Campbell, Jr., editor of Astounding Science-Fiction and Unknown Worlds, for

kicking me around until this story bore more resemblance to a story.

To H. W. Ralston, Esq., of Street & Smith Publishing Co. of New York, for releasing clothbound

book rights and thus enabling the yarn to reappear in its present form.

To Julius Schwartz, editor of Superman, for providing the press clipping shown on a following

page, and with it the spark-plug which got me going.

To Lloyd Arthur Eshbach and associates, of Fantasy Press, for encouraging my obsessions.

To thousands of science-fiction fans for being willing to enter the gates of hell-providing that

they get in on the ground floor-and thus being willing to read this yarn.

Eric Frank Russell

Liverpool, England, January, 1948

Clipping from a New York daily:-

TO BE READ IN A DIM LIGHT, AT NIGHT.

The late Charles Fort, who was a sort of Peter Pan of science and went about picking up

whimsies of fact, mostly from the rubbish heaps of astronomy, would have been interested in an

incident that occurred Sunday morning on Fifth Avenue between Twenty-ninth and Thirtieth

Streets. Eight starlings in flight suddenly plummeted to the feet of Patrolman Anton Vodrazka,

dead. There was no sign of a wound or any other indication of what caused their end. It was at

first thought that they might have been poisoned, as were some pigeons at Verdi Square, Seventy-

second Street and Broadway, recently.

S.P.C.A. agents said it was most unlikely that eight birds, even if they had been poisoned, would

succumb at the same moment in mid-flight. Another report from the same neighborhood a few

minutes later didn't help any. A starling, "excited and acting as if pursued by some invisible

terror," had flown into a Childs Restaurant on Fifth Avenue, banged into the lights and fallen in

the front window.

What killed the eight starlings? What frightened the ninth? Was there some Presence in the sky?

... We hasten to pass the idea on to the nearest writer of mystery stories.

Chapter 1

"SWIFT death awaits the first cow that leads a revolt against milking," mused Professor Peder

Bjornsen. It was a new slant, and a wicked one, born of dreadful facts. He passed long, slender

fingers through prematurely white hair. His eyes, strangely protruding, filled with uncanny light,

stared out of his office window which gaped on the third level above traffic swirling through

Stockholm's busy Hotorget. But those eyes were not looking at the traffic.

"And there's a swat waiting for the first bee that blats about pilfered honey." he added. Stockholm

hummed and roared, a city unconscious of its chains. The professor continued to stare in silent,

fearful contemplation. Then suddenly his eyes lifted, widened, flared with apprehension. He drew

away from the window, slowly, reluctantly; moving as if forcing himself by sheer will-power to

retreat from a horror which beckoned, invisibly beckoned.

Raising his hands, he pushed, pushed futilely at thin air. Those distorted optics of his, still

preternaturally cold and hard, yet brilliant with something far beyond fear, followed with dreadful

fascination a shapeless, colorless point that crept from window to ceiling. Turning with a

tremendous effort, he ran, his mouth open and expelling breath soundlessly.

Halfway to the door he emitted a brief gasp, stumbled, fell. His stricken hand clutched the

calendar from his desk, dragged it down to the carpet. He sobbed, hugged hands to his heart, lay

still. The spark which had motivated him became extinguished. The calendar's top leaf fluttered

in a queer, inexplicable breeze from nowhere. The date was May the seventeenth, 2015.

Bjornsen had been five hours dead when the police got to him. Imperturbably, the medical

examiner diagnosed heart disease and left it at that. Snooping restlessly around, Police Lieutenant

Baeker found on the professor's desk a note bearing a message from the grave.

"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. It is humanly impossible to discipline my thoughts

every minute of the day, to control my involuntary dreams every hour of the night. It is inevitable

that soon I shall be found dead, in which case you must-"

"Must what?" asked Baeker. There was no reply. The voice that could have shocked him with its

answer was stilled forever. Baeker heard the medical examiner's report, then burned the note. The

professor, he decided, like others of his ilk, had grown eccentric in his old age, being burdened

by too much abstruse learning. Heart disease it was, actually and officially.

On May the thirtieth, Doctor Guthrie Sheridan walked with the deliberate, jerky step of an

automaton along Charing Cross Road, London. His eyes were shining, frozen lumps, and he kept

them focussed on the sky while his legs made their mechanical way. He had the eerie appearance

of a blind man following a thoroughly familiar route.

Jim Leacock saw him wending his fascinated way, failed to notice anything abnormal. Dashing

up, he yelled, "Hey, Sherry!" all set to administer a hearty slap on the back. He stopped, appalled.

Turning upon him pale, strained features framing eyes that gleamed like icicles seen in bluish

twilight, Guthrie seized an arm and chattered, "Jim! By heavens, I'm glad to see you!" His breath

was fast, his voice urgent. "Jim, I've got to talk to someone-or go crazy. I've just discovered the

most incredible fact in the history of mankind. It is almost beyond belief. Yet it explains a

thousand things that we've merely guessed at or completely ignored."

"What is it?" demanded Leacock, skeptically. He studied the other's distorted face.

"Jim, let me tell you that man is not and never has been the master of his fate, nor the captain of

his soul. Why, the very beasts of the field-!" He broke off, grabbed at his listener. His voice went

two tones higher, held a hysterical note. "I've thought it! I've thought it, I tell you!" His legs bent

at the knees. "I'm done for!" He slumped to the pavement.

Hastily, the startled Leacock stooped over him, tore open his shirt, slid a hand down his chest. No

beat was discernable. The once wildly beating heart had packed up -for keeps. Sheridan was

dead. Heart disease, apparently.

At the same hour of the same day, Doctor Hans Luther did a very similar thing. Carrying his

deceptively plump body at top speed across his laboratory, he raced headlong down the stairs,

across the hall. He fled with many fearful glances over one shoulder, and the glances came from

eyes like polished agate.

Reaching the telephone, he dialled with shaking finger, got the Dortmund Zeitung, shouted for

the editor. With his eyes still upon the stairs while the telephone receiver trembled against his ear,

he bawled into the mouthpiece, "Vogel, I have for you the most astonishing news since the dawn

of time. You must give it space, plenty of space, quickly-before it is too late."

"Let me have the details," suggested Vogel, tolerantly.

"Earth is belted with a warning streamer that says: KEEP OFF THE GRASS!" Luther watched

the stairs and sweated.

"Ha-ha!" responded Vogel, without mirth. His heavy face moved in the tiny vision-screen above

the telephone, bore the patient expression of one accustomed to the eccentricities of scientists.

"Listen!" yelled Luther. He wiped his forehead with the back of a quivering hand. "You know

me. You know that I do not tell lies, I do not joke. I tell you nothing which I cannot prove. So I

tell you that now and perhaps for thousands of years past, this troubled world of ours ... a-ah! ...

a-a-ah!"

The receiver swung at the end of its cord, gave forth a reedy shout of, "Luther! Luther! What's

happened?"

Doctor Hans Luther made no response. Sinking slowly to his knees, he rolled his peculiarly

glistening eyes upward, fell on his side. His tongue licked his lips sluggishly, very sluggishly,

once, twice. He died in awful silence.

Vogel's face bobbed in the vision-screen. The dangling receiver made agitated noises for ears

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SinisterBarrierByEricFrankRussellForewordITwouldbeidletopretendanddishonesttosuggestthatSinisterBarrierisanythingotherthanfiction.Somemayregarditasfantasybecauseitisplacedinthefutureanddepictscertaindevelopmentslikelyintimestocome.ButIregarditasasortoffact-fictionsolelybecauseIdosincerelybelievethat...

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Eric Frank Russell - Sinister Barrier

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