The Chamber of Life

  Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Annie McGuire and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  +-------------------------------------------------------+|This etext was produced from Amazing Stories July 1962,||a reprint from Amazing Stories October 1929. Extensive ||research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. ||copyright on this publication was renewed. |+-------------------------------------------------------+

  A Classic Reprint from AMAZING STORIES, October, 1929

  Illustrated by BRIGGS

 

  The CHAMBER of LIFE

  By G. PEYTON WERTENBAKER

  _Copyright 1929 by E. P. Inc._

  A Strange Awakening

  My first sensation was one of sudden and intense cold--a chill that shotthrough my body and engulfed it like a charge of electricity. For amoment I was conscious of nothing else. Then I knew that I was sinkingin cold water, and that I was fighting instinctively against the need togasp and breathe fresh air. I kicked weakly and convulsively. I openedmy eyes, and squeezed them as the bright green water stung them. Then Ihung for an instant as if suspended over the depths, and began to rise.It seemed hours before I shot up into the open air again, and wasdrinking it deeply and thankfully into my tortured lungs. The suntouched my head warmly like the hand of a benign god.

  Floating gently, I lay there for a long while before I even looked aboutme. There was a vague confusion in my head, as if I had just awakenedfrom a long sleep. Some memory seemed to be fading away, something Icould still feel but couldn't understand. Then it was gone, and I wasalone and empty, riding on the water.

  I glanced about, puzzled. Only a few yards away rose the gray stone sideof the embankment, with its low parapet, and behind that the Drive.There was no one in sight--not even a car--and the open windows of theapartment houses across the Drive seemed very quiet. People slept behindthem.

  It was only a little after dawn. The sun, blazing and tinted with pink,had hardly risen from the horizon. The lake was still lined with darkshadows behind glittering ridges of morning sunlight, and a cool breezeplayed across my face, coming in from the east. Over the city, the soundof a street car rumbling into motion, rising and dying away, was likethe crowing of a rooster in the country.

  I shivered, and began to swim. A few strokes brought me to theembankment, and I clambered up, almost freezing as I left the water. Iwas fully clothed, but without a hat. Perhaps I had lost it in the lake.I stood there, dripping and chill, and suddenly I realized that I hadjust waked up in the water. I had no recollection of falling in, noreven of being there. I could remember nothing of the previous night.

  A glance along the Drive told me where I was, at the corner ofFifty-third street. My apartment was only a few blocks away. Had I beenwalking in my sleep? My mind was a blank, with turbulent, dimimpressions moving confusedly under the surface.

  * * * * *

  Trembling in the chill air, I started up the Drive. I must go home andchange at once. Something came back to me--a memory of talking to somefriends at the Club. But was that last night? Or months ago? It was asthough I had slept for months. We had had a few drinks--could I havebeen drunk, and fallen into the lake on my way home? But I never tookmore than two or three drinks. Something had happened.

  Then I remembered the stranger. We had all been sitting about thelounge, talking of something. What had we been discussing? Franklin hadmentioned Einstein's new theory--we had played with that for a while,none of us with the least idea what it was about. Then the conversationhad shifted slowly from one topic to another, all having to do withscientific discoveries.

  Somewhere in the midst of it, Barclay had come in. He brought with him aguest--a straight, fine-looking man with a military carriage, aboutfifty years old. Barclay had introduced him as Mr. Melbourne. He spokewith a slight southern accent.

  In some way Melbourne and I gravitated into a corner. We went on withthe conversation while the others left it. They drifted into politics,drawing together about the table where the whisky stood, leaving usalone.

  Melbourne had been a fascinating man to talk to. He discussed topicsranging from theories of matter to the early Cretan culture, and relatedthem all to one dominant scientific thread. He spoke like a man of wideknowledge and experience.... As I walked up the Drive, bits of hisconversation came disjointedly back to me with the clarity andsignificance of sentences from Spengler.

  An early-morning taxi went by slowly as I crossed the Drive to myapartment. The driver stopped a moment, and looked at me inastonishment.

  "What's the matter, buddy," he said, "you look all wet. Fall in thelake?" I smiled, embarrassed.

  "Looks that way, doesn't it?" I answered.

  "Can I take you anywhere?"

  "No," I said, "I live here." He grinned, and started off again.

  "Wish I'd been in on that party!" he called back, as he drove away.

  I frowned, once more with that puzzled feeling, and went in.