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    The World Beyond
    The World Beyond
    The World Beyond
    Ebook78 pages55 minutes

    The World Beyond

    By Ray Cummings

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 27, 2013
    Author

    Ray Cummings

    Ray Cummings (born Raymond King Cummings) (August 30, 1887 – January 23, 1957) was an American author of science fiction literature and comic books. Cummings is identified as one of the "founding fathers" of the science fiction genre. His most highly regarded fictional work was the novel The Girl in the Golden Atom published in 1922, which was a consolidation of a short story by the same name published in 1919 (where Cummings combined the idea of Fitz James O'Brien's The Diamond Lens with H. G. Wells's The Time Machine) and a sequel, The People of the Golden Atom, published in 1920. Before taking book form, several of Cummings's stories appeared serialized in pulp magazines. The first eight chapters of his The Girl in the Golden Atom appeared in All-Story Magazine on March 15, 1919. Ray Cummings wrote in "The Girl in the Golden Atom": "Time . . . is what keeps everything from happening at once", a sentence repeated by scientists such as C. J. Overbeck, and John Archibald Wheeler, and often misattributed to the likes of Einstein or Feynman. Cummings repeated this sentence in several of his novellas. Sources focus on his earlier work, The Time Professor, published in 1921, as its earliest documented usage.

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      Book preview

      The World Beyond - Ray Cummings

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of The World Beyond, by Raymond King Cummings

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

      Title: The World Beyond

      Author: Raymond King Cummings

      Release Date: June 7, 2009 [EBook #29059]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD BEYOND ***

      Produced by Greg Weeks, adhere and the Online Distributed

      Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

      Transcriber's Note

      This etext was produced from Amazing Stories July 1942. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

      Out of nowhere came these grim, cold, black-clad men, to kidnap three Earth people and carry them to a weird and terrible world where a man could be a giant at will.

      Lee Anthony crouched and set himself to

      resist the attack of the robed men.

      THE WORLD BEYOND

      By RAY CUMMINGS

      The old woman was dying. There could be no doubt of it now. Surely she would not last through the night. In the dim quiet bedroom he sat watching her, his young face grim and awed. Pathetic business, this ending of earthly life, this passing on. In the silence, from the living room downstairs the gay laughter of the young people at the birthday party came floating up. His birthday—Lee Anthony, twenty-one years old today. He had thought he would feel very different, becoming—legally—a man. But the only difference now, was that old Anna Green who had been always so good to him, who had taken care of him almost all his life, now was dying.

      Terrible business. But old age is queer. Anna knew what was happening. The doctor, who had given Lee the medicines and said he would be back in the morning, hadn't fooled her. And she had only smiled.

      Lee tensed as he saw that she was smiling now; and she opened her eyes. His hand went to hers where it lay, so white, blue-veined on the white bedspread.

      I'm here, Anna. Feel better?

      Oh, yes. I'm all right. Her faint voice, gently tired, mingled with the sounds from the party downstairs. She heard the laughter. You should be down there, Lee. I'm all right.

      I should have postponed it, he said. And what you did, preparing for it—

      She interrupted him, raising her thin arm, which must have seemed so heavy that at once she let it fall again. Lee—I guess I am glad you're here—want to talk to you—and I guess it better be now.

      Tomorrow—you're too tired now—

      For me, she said with her gentle smile, there may not be any tomorrow—not here. Your grandfather, Lee—you really don't remember him?

      I was only four or five.

      Yes. That was when your father and mother died in the aero accident and your grandfather brought you to me.

      Very vaguely he could remember it. He had always understood that Anna Green had loved his grandfather, who had died that same year.

      What I want to tell you, Lee— She seemed summoning all her last remaining strength. Your grandfather didn't die. He just went away. What you've never known—he was a scientist. But he was a lot more than that. He had—dreams. Dreams of what we mortals might be—what we ought to be—but are not. And so he—went away.

      This dying old woman; her mind was wandering?...

      Oh—yes, Lee said. But you're much too tired now, Anna dear—

      Please let me tell you. He had—some scientific apparatus. I didn't see it—I don't know where he went. I think he didn't know either, where he was going. But he was a very good man, Lee. I think he had an intuition—an inspiration. Yes, it must have been that. A man—inspired. And so he went. I've never seen or heard from him since. Yet—what he promised me—if he could accomplish it—tonight—almost now, Lee, would be the time—

      Just a desperately sick old woman whose blurred mind was seeing visions. The thin wrinkled face, like crumpled white parchment, was transfigured as though by a vision. Her sunken eyes were bright with it. A wonderment stirred within Lee Anthony. Why was his heart pounding? It seemed suddenly as though he must be sharing this unknown thing of science—and mysticism. As though something within him—his grandfather's blood perhaps—was responding.... He felt suddenly wildly excited.

      Tonight? he murmured.

      Your grandfather was a very good man, Lee—

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