Super warfare has destroyed the old race of man, but elsewhere a new civilization is dawning....
Nothing was further from my mind, when I discovered the"Release Drug" Relin, than the realization that it would lead methrough as strange and ghastly and revealing a series of adventuresas any man has ever experienced. I encountered it, in away, as a mere by-product of my experiments; I am a chemist byprofession, and as one of the staff of the Morganstern Foundationhave access to some of the best equipped laboratories inAmerica. The startling new invention—I must call it that,though I did not create it deliberately—came to me in the courseof my investigations into the obscure depths of the human personality.
It has long been my theory that there is in man a psychicentity which can exist for at least brief periods apart from thebody, and have perceptions which are not those of the physicalsenses. In accordance with these views, I had been developingvarious drugs, compounded of morphine and adrenalin, whoseobject was to shock the psychic entity loose for limited periodsand so to widen the range and powers of the personality. I shallnot go into the details of my researches, nor tell by what accidentI succeeded better than I had hoped; the all-important fact—afact so overwhelming that I shudder and gasp and marveleven as I tell of it—is that I did obtain a minute quantity of adrug which, by putting the body virtually in a state of suspendedanimation, could release the mind to travel almost at will acrosstime and space.
Yes, across time and space!—for the drag of the physical havingbeen stricken off, I could enter literally into infinity andeternity. But let me tell precisely what happened that nightwhen at precisely 10:08 in the solitude of my apartment room,I swallowed half an ounce of Relin and stretched myself out onthe bed, well knowing that I was taking incalculable risks, andthat insanity and even death were by no means remote possibilitiesof the road ahead. But let that be as it may! In myopinion, there is no coward more despicable than he who willnot face danger for the sake of knowledge.
My head reeled, and something seemed to buzz inside it assoon as the bitter half ounce of fluid slipped down my throat.I was barely able to reach the bed and throw myself upon itwhen there came a snapping as of something inside my brain ...then, for a period, blankness ... then a gradual awakening withthat feeling of exhilaration one experiences only after the mostblissful sleep. I opened my eyes, feeling strong and light oflimb and charged with a marvelous vital energy—but, as I peeredabout me, my lips drew far apart in astonishment, and I amsure that I gaped like one who has seen a ghost.
Where were the familiar walls of my two-by-four room, thebureau, the book-rack, the ancient portrait of Pasteur that hungin its glass frame just above the foot of the bed? Gone! vanishedas utterly as though they had never been! I was standingon a wide and windy plain, with the gale beating in my ears,and with rapid sunset-colored clouds scudding across the blood-stainedwest. Mingled with the wailing of the blast, there wasa deep sobbing sound that struck me in successive waves, like theululations of great multitudes of far-off mourners. And while Iwas wondering what this might mean and felt a prickling ofhorror along my spine, the first of the portents swept across thesky. I say "portents," for I do not know by what other term todescribe the apparitions; high in the heavens, certainly at an altitudeof many miles, the flaming thing swept across my view,comet-shaped and stretching over at least ten degrees of arc,swift as a meteor, brillian