The Coming of the Ice Read online

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  _The COMING of the ICE_

  _By G. Peyton Wertenbaker_

  Strange men these creatures of the hundredth century ...]

  _Copyright, 1926, by E. P. Co., Inc._

  Transcriber's Note:

  This etext was produced from _Amazing Stories_ July 1961 and was first published in _Amazing Stories_ June 1926. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.

  A Classic Reprint from AMAZING STORIES, June, 1926

  Introduction by Sam Moskowitz

  _One of the gravest editorial problems faced by the editors of AMAZINGSTORIES when they launched its first issue, dated April, 1926, was theproblem of finding or developing authors who could write the type ofstory they needed. As a stop-gap, the first two issues of AMAZINGSTORIES were devoted entirely to reprints. But reprints were toconstitute a declining portion of the publication's contents for thefollowing four years. The first new story the magazine bought was_Coming of the Ice_, by G. Peyton Wertenbaker, which appeared in itsthird issue. Wertenbaker was not technically a newcomer to sciencefiction, since he had sold his first story to Gernsback's SCIENCE ANDINVENTION, _The Man From the Atom_, in 1923 when he was only 16! Now, atthe ripe old age of 19, he was appearing in the world's first trulycomplete science fiction magazine._

  _The scope of his imagination was truly impressive and, despite theauthor's youth, _Coming of the Ice_ builds to a climax of considerablepower._

  _Wertenbaker, under the name of Green Peyton, went on to sell his firstnovel, _Black Cabin_, in 1933. He eventually became an authority on theSouthwest with many regional volumes to his credit: _For God and Texas_,_America's Heartland_, _The Southwest_, and _San Antonio, City of theSun_. But he never lost his interest in space travel, assisting HubertusStrughold on the writing of _The Green and Red Planet_, a scientificappraisal of the possibilities of life on the planet Mars published in1953. He also served for a time as London correspondent for FORTUNEMAGAZINE._

  It is strange to be alone, and so cold. To be the last man on earth....

  The snow drives silently about me, ceaselessly, drearily. And I amisolated in this tiny white, indistinguishable corner of a blurredworld, surely the loneliest creature in the universe. How many thousandsof years is it since I last knew the true companionship? For a long timeI have been lonely, but there were people, creatures of flesh and blood.Now they are gone. Now I have not even the stars to keep me company, forthey are all lost in an infinity of snow and twilight here below.

  If only I could know how long it has been since first I was imprisonedupon the earth. It cannot matter now. And yet some vaguedissatisfaction, some faint instinct, asks over and over in my throbbingears: What year? What year?

  It was in the year 1930 that the great thing began in my life. There wasthen a very great man who performed operations on his fellows to composetheir vitals--we called such men surgeons. John Granden wore the title"Sir" before his name, in indication of nobility by birth according tothe prevailing standards in England. But surgery was only a hobby of SirJohn's, if I must be precise, for, while he had achieved an enormousreputation as a surgeon, he always felt that his real work lay in theexperimental end of his profession. He was, in a way, a dreamer, but adreamer who could make his dreams come true.

  I was a very close friend of Sir John's. In fact, we shared the sameapartments in London. I have never forgotten that day when he firstmentioned to me his momentous discovery. I had just come in from a longsleigh-ride in the country with Alice, and I was seated drowsily in thewindow-seat, writing idly in my mind a description of the wind and thesnow and the grey twilight of the evening. It is strange, is it not,that my tale should begin and end with the snow and the twilight.

  Sir John opened suddenly a door at one end of the room and came hurryingacross to another door. He looked at me, grinning rather like atriumphant maniac.

  "It's coming!" he cried, without pausing, "I've almost got it!" I smiledat him: he looked very ludicrous at that moment.

  "What have you got?" I asked.

  "Good Lord, man, the Secret--the Secret!" And then he was gone again,the door closing upon his victorious cry, "The Secret!"

  I was, of course, amused. But I was also very much interested. I knewSir John well enough to realize that, however amazing his appearancemight be, there would be nothing absurd about his "Secret"--whatever itwas. But it was useless to speculate. I could only hope forenlightenment at dinner. So I immersed myself in one of the surgeon'svolumes from his fine Library of Imagination, and waited.

  I think the book was one of Mr. H. G. Wells', probably "The SleeperAwakes," or some other of his brilliant fantasies and predictions, for Iwas in a mood conducive to belief in almost anything when, later, we satdown together across the table. I only wish I could give some idea ofthe atmosphere that permeated our apartments, the reality it lent towhatever was vast and amazing and strange. You could then, whoever youare, understand a little the ease with which I accepted Sir John's newdiscovery.

  He began to explain it to me at once, as though he could keep it tohimself no longer.

  "Did you think I had gone mad, Dennell?" he asked. "I quite wonder thatI haven't. Why, I have been studying for many years--for most of mylife--on this problem. And, suddenly, I have solved it! Or, rather, I amafraid I have solved another one much greater."

  "Tell me about it, but for God's sake don't be technical."

  "Right," he said. Then he paused. "Dennell, it's _magnificent_! It willchange everything that is in the world." His eyes held mine suddenlywith the fatality of a hypnotist's. "Dennell, it is the Secret ofEternal Life," he said.

  "Good Lord, Sir John!" I cried, half inclined to laugh.

  "I mean it," he said. "You know I have spent most of my life studyingthe processes of birth, trying to find out precisely what went on in thewhole history of conception."

  "You have found out?"

  "No, that is just what amuses me. I have discovered something elsewithout knowing yet what causes either process.

  "I don't want to be technical, and I know very little of what actuallytakes place myself. But I can try to give you some idea of it."

  * * * * *

  It is thousands, perhaps millions of years since Sir John explained tome. What little I understood at the time I may have forgotten, yet I tryto reproduce what I can of his theory.

  "In my study of the processes of birth," he began, "I discovered therudiments of an action which takes place in the bodies of both men andwomen. There are certain properties in the foods we eat that remain inthe body for the reproduction of life, two distinct Essences, so tospeak, of which one is retained by the woman, another by the man. It isthe union of these two properties that, of course, creates the child.

  "Now, I made a slight mistake one day in experimenting with aguinea-pig, and I re-arranged certain organs which I need not describeso that I thought I had completely messed up the poor creature'sabdomen. It lived, however, and I laid it aside. It was some years laterthat I happened to notice it again. It had not given birth to any young,but I was amazed to note that it had apparently grown no older: itseemed precisely in the same state of growth in which I had left it.

  "From that I built up. I re-examined the guinea-pig, and observed itcarefully. I need not detail my studies. But in the end I found that my'mistake' had in reality been a momentous discovery. I found that I hadonly to close certain organs, to re-arrange certain ducts, and to opencertain dormant organs, and, _mirabile dictu_, the whole process of
reproduction was changed.

  "You have heard, of course, that our bodies are continually changing,hour by hour, minute by minute, so that every few years we have beenliterally reborn. Some such principle as this seems to operate inreproduction, except that, instead of the old body being replaced by thenew, and in its form, approximately, the new body is created apart fromit. It is the creation of children that causes us to die, it would seem,because if this activity is, so to speak, dammed up or turned aside intonew channels, the reproduction operates on the old body, renewing itcontinually. It is very obscure and very absurd, is it not? But the mostabsurd part of it is that it is true. Whatever the true explanation maybe, the fact remains that the operation can be done, that it actuallyprolongs life indefinitely, and that I alone know the secret."

  Sir John told