DOOMSDAY ON AJIAT
By Neil R. Jones
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Astonishing Stories, October 1942.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
CHAPTER ONE
The Professor's Experiment
Professor Jameson had looked for a means of preserving his body forever—and he had found it. But it was not by the art of embalming, for, after all, the mummies of the Egyptians proved to be only horrible caricatures of their former likeness, and even these in the passing of untold millions of years must have been destroyed by some planetary stress had the picks of archeologists never unearthed them. The logic of the professor was more or less axiomatic. He realized that he could never employ one system of atomic structure, like embalming fluid, to preserve another system of atomic structure, such as the human body, when all atomic structure is universally subject to change, whether it be amazingly swift or infinitely protracted.
The problem absorbed much of his attention, and he considered various ways and means until one day the answer flashed upon him—leaving his mind a chaotic maelstrom of plans and possibilities. He would cast his body into the depths of space where it would remain unaffected and unchanged! Material of organic origin might exist indefinitely between worlds.
He built gradually from this theory, conceiving a space rocket for his cosmic coffin, a rocket propelled from the Earth by powerful thrusts of radium repulsion. Next came his plan to make the rocket another satellite of the Earth somewhere between the Earth and the Moon. The professor decided on sixty-five thousand miles from the earth, or a little more than a quarter of the distance to the moon.
He set about his plans at once, and having experimented with radium all his life, it did not take him long to construct a rocket capable of carrying his dead body into the depths of space. The rocket lay pointed skyward at the foot of a leaning tower on the hill of the Jameson estate, surrounded by four gleaming tracks and balanced by four stabilizer fins. Everything was complete, and the aged professor knew that he had not long to live.