Page:Weird Tales v15n01 1930-01.djvu/73
ment and supplies swung up. Then, with the leaving of the tug, we put our equipment in order and began our work, on the plan that Dr. Munson had outlined to us.
"It was Dr. Munson's belief that the change from the inorganic element of sea-silt into the organic, living compounds of protoplasm had been accomplished by the driving force of certain etheric vibrations. You know, of course, that the chemical combinations of elements are profoundly affected in myriad ways by such vibrations. The vibrations of radiant heat, for instance, will break many compounds down into their original elements, or build up new ones. Those of light will affect others in the same way, and as Professor Baly of Liverpool showed in his famous experiments, are responsible more or less for the change from inorganic to organic living matter in the case of plants. Electro-magnetic, that is Hertzian or radio vibrations, can affect the very atomic structure of certain metals. Radio-active or gamma vibrations have a profound power of disintegrating or breaking down the great majority of chemical compounds. All these we tested, but in none of them did we find the vibration whose force would cause the building up of protoplasm's organic compounds from the sea-silt inorganic elements. It was only when we tried the last remaining etheric vibration known, the most recently discovered of all, the cosmic ray vibrations, that we succeeded at last.
"You know, Ralton, that the cosmic ray vibrations are the shortest in wave length of all the etheric vibrations, ranking just below the radio-active waves. First comprehensively studied but a few years ago by Dr. Millikan, the cosmic rays have been found to permeate all space, shot forth from the white-hot furnaces of stars just as heat-vibrations and light-vibrations are shot forth. And it was the cosmic ray vibrations, we found, that had in past ages built up the organic compounds of living protoplasm from inorganic elements of sea-silt. To prove that, we had devised a mechanism, or rather it had been devised by Kingsford and Krauner, which condensed and concentrated any etheric vibration. It was a small globe-condenser, and when set to the correct wave-length would attract and concentrate all vibrations of that wavelength for a great space around it. If we set it to the wave-length of Hertzian vibrations, for instance, it attracted and condensed them into a concentrated ray; the same with radio-active vibrations; the same with cosmic ray vibrations. And it was this we used to produce a concentrated shaft of the cosmic ray vibrations, turning it upon a container of sea-silt and sea-water from the island's beach. In the remote past, we reasoned, the cosmic ray at its natural intensity had during long ages formed protoplasm out of the sea's elements. Now, using a cosmic vibration millions of times concentrated by the condenser, the process should take but a proportionate time, should require but days instead of ages.
"We succeeded, Ralton! Almost at once the sea-silt in the container began to change beneath the concentrated vibrations, giving forth a thin, clear slime that gradually began to show signs of life, of movement. But a day or two it had taken that slime to form from the sea-silt, and in another day or two it was no longer slime but living protoplasm, a mass of it there in the container. And when it had developed under the concentrated vibrations to a certain stage of life, of power, it began to flow from the container, moving blindly out of it in search of food, a mindless thing of protoplasm that we had created out of inorganic matter! By concentrating the cosmic ray vibrations we had done within days what had required eons in the past!