A Brand New World by Ray Cummings

We helped Freddie unload the cylinder from his plane. He arrived about midnight, flying alone with his precious burden. It was a cylindrical metal container, some ten feet long by three feet in diameter -- a strange looking, purple-brown metal, smooth and shining like burnished copper. White metal handles were on the cylinder -- and down one of its bulging sides was crudely engraved the inscription "Peter Vanderstuyft, Porto Rico. Rush."

The thing weighed perhaps two hundred pounds. It was warm, yet clammy to the touch, as though sweating. And though it appeared smooth, under my finger tips I could feel that it was pitted and scarred -- blistered as though by tremendous heat.

We labored up the hill with it, and deposited it on the floor in the Cain's living room, gathering over it, wondering how it might be opened. The message from Xenephrene! It had come at last; and abruptly I seemed to feel that this was not remarkable. We had been waiting for it; and here it was, at our feet here, strangely fashioned -- mute, but waiting passively to give up its secret.

We were all trembling. Freddie had discarded his furs and helmet, but his hands were stiff with the cold.

"How do we get into it? They didn't want to open it -- I didn't try either. It's the message, Peter."

Dan was on the floor beside the cylinder, running his hands over its surface. His father and mother crowded upon him. Old man Cain's jaw was dropped with his awe; Mrs. Cain chattered, "Land sakes! What next! Dan, what is it? Is it from Professor Vanderstuyft? Is he all right? And dear little Hulda? She's all right, isn't she, Dan? That's what this means, doesn't it? My heavens, these queer times that have come to the world -- "

Dan jumped to his feet. "Yes, mother, that's what we hope it means. " He kissed her; pushed her away; firm, but very gentle. "You go to bed, mother. Father, you go too. We'll be working here some hours -- in the morning we'll tell you all about it."

Freddie, Dan and I were left alone. The double doors and double windows were closed against the cold; a broad coal fire burned in the grate; the room was warm and silent; and blue with the light-tube, which cast its beam down upon the cylinder. Freddie said, with a hush in his voice: "We'd have been afraid to try and open it anyway, in Miami. You -- you don't suppose it would explode if we pound at it, do you?"

The sweating thing was strangely sinister, for all its friendly inscription. Dan was again bending over it. Freddie added:

"It was in a meteorite -- some strange rock, or metal. Evidently not natural -- artificially made. It was burned, fused and shapeless by the heat of its fall through our atmosphere. You can see where the heat has burned into the cylinder -- "

"Hush! " said Dan abruptly. "Listen!"

With our ears close to the metal a tiny hum was audible. The thing was humming inside. Alive! Vibrant! Humming with that strange, almost gruesome whine which brought to my memory the crimson sound of the Xenephrene invaders when Robinson and Davis had attacked them.

It was half an hour before, with the utmost caution, we got the cylinder open. Upon one of its sides we found four slightly raised circles and four small depressions, numbered from one to eight. And the words, crudely scratched on the metal, "Peter, press one, three, five and eight."

A lid came off. We had not seen the cracks where it fitted. It stuck, fused by heat; but we carefully forced it, and at length it came away.

The human mind is subject to queer vagaries. There was just an instant, as we lifted the metal panel, that there flashed to me the vague horror that this was a coffin; that we were about to behold a corpse -- wrapped and sent to us like a mummy. Hulda! Zetta! A ghastly gibe, sent to mock us from this sinister unknown world!

"Ah! " breathed Dan. My leaping heart quieted; but the cold sweat stood in beads on my forehead from those fleeting, horrible fancies.

The interior of the cylinder was divided into orderly compartments. Metal boxes; cones; cubes of metal; diaphragms; coils of white wire -- packed, wrapped and lashed in orderly array; each piece seemingly set in springs to absorb the landing shock. A white lining was inside the cylinder, smooth as mica -- insulation against the heat, perhaps. A strange, vague odor arose; and we could hear the humming now more plainly. It seemed to come from several metal globes the size of a man's head. Dead black metal; four or five of them were packed near the center of the cylinder. Around them a dim radiance was hovering.

"Wait! " admonished Dan. "Take it easy! " Freddie, in his excitement, would have begun rummaging. "Wait! There must be some instructions somewhere. Don't touch anything until you know what you're doing."

We found the box of instructions; it was, indeed, the most prominent thing before us, though we had overlooked it -- a flat metal case some twelve inches square and half as thick, packed edge-wise. Clipped to its top was a white roll of what seemed paper.

Dan gingerly removed it; unrolled it -- a translucent white animal skin, possibly. And with writing on it! Ah! At last the doubts and fears that were within us all were dispelled. Father's handwriting -- his firm, smooth unhurried script.