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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Disowned, by Victor Endersby
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Disowned
+
+Author: Victor Endersby
+
+Release Date: July 12, 2009 [EBook #29384]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DISOWNED ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         Transcriber's Note:
+
+   This etext was produced from Astounding Stories September 1932.
+   Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the
+   U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
+
+
+
+         [Illustration: "_Wonderful! The World's Unparalleled
+                          Upside-Down Man_!"]
+
+
+
+                               Disowned
+
+
+                          By Victor Endersby
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+[Sidenote: The tragic misadventure of a man to whom the sky became an
+appalling abyss, drawing him ever upward.]
+
+
+The sky sagged downward, bellying blackly with a sudden summer rain,
+giving me a vision of catching my train in sodden clothing after the
+short-cut across the fields, which I was taking in company with my
+brother Tristan and his fiancée.
+
+The sullen atmosphere ripped apart with an electric glare; our ears
+quivered to the throbbing sky, while huge drops, jarred loose from the
+air by the thunder-impact, splattered sluggishly, heavily, about us.
+Little breezes swept out from the storm center, lifting the undersides
+of the long grass leaves to view in waves of lighter green. I
+complained peevishly.
+
+"Ah, mop up!" said Tristan. "You've plenty of time, and there's the
+big oak! It's as dry under there as a cave!"
+
+"I think that'll be fun!" twittered Alice. "To wait out a
+thunder-storm under a tree!"
+
+"Under a tree?" I said. "Hardly! I'm not hankering to furnish myself
+as an exhibit on the physiological effects of a lightning stroke--no,
+sir!"
+
+"Rats!" said Tristan. "All that's a fairy-tale--trees being dangerous
+in a thunder-storm!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The rain now beat through our thin summer clothing, as Tristan seized
+Alice's hand and towed her toward the spreading shelter. I followed
+them at first, then began to lag with an odd unwillingness. I had been
+only half serious in my objection, but all at once that tree exercised
+an odd repulsion on me; an imaginary picture of the electric fluid
+coursing through my shriveling nerve-channels grew unpleasantly vivid.
+
+Suddenly I knew I was not going under that tree. I stopped dead,
+pulling my hat brim down behind to divert the rivulet coursing down
+the back of my neck, calling to the others in a voice rather cracked
+from embarrassment. They looked back at me curiously, and Alice began
+to twit me, standing in the rain, while Tristan desired to know
+whether we thought we were a pair of goldfish; in his estimation, we
+might belong to the piscine tribe all right, but not to that
+decorative branch thereof. To be frank, he used the term "suckers."
+Feeling exceptionally foolish, I planted myself doggedly in the
+soaking grass as Alice turned to dash for the tree.
+
+Then the thing happened; the thing which to this hour makes the fabric
+of space with its unknown forces seem an insecure and eery garment for
+the body of man. Over the slight rise beyond the tree, as the air
+crackled, roared and shook under the thunder-blasts, there appeared an
+object moving in long, leisurely bounds, drifting before the wind, and
+touching the ground lightly each time. It was about eighteen inches in
+diameter, globular, glowing with coruscating fires, red, green, and
+yellow; a thing of unearthly and wholly sinister beauty.
+
+Alice poised with one foot half raised, and shrieked at Tristan, half
+terrified, half elated at the sight. He wheeled quickly, there under
+the tree, and slowly backed away as the thing drifted in to keep him
+company in his shelter. We could not see his face, but there was a
+stiffness to his figure indicating something like fear. Suddenly
+things I had read rose into my memory. This was one of those objects
+variously called "fire-balls," "globe-lightning," "meteors," and the
+like.
+
+I also recalled the deadly explosive potencies said to be sometimes
+possessed by such entities, and called out frantically:
+
+"Tristan! Don't touch it! Get away quickly, but don't disturb the
+air!"
+
+He heard me and, as the object wavered about in the comparative calm
+under the tree, drifting closer to him, started to obey. But it
+suddenly approached his face, and seized with a reckless terror, he
+snatched off his hat and batted at it as one would at a pestilent bee.
+Instantly there was a blinding glare, a stunning detonation, and a
+violent air-wave which threw me clear off my feet and to the ground. I
+sat up blindly with my vision full of opalescent lights and my ears
+ringing, unable to hear, see, or think.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Slowly my senses came back; I saw Alice struggling upright in the
+grass before me. She cast a quick glance toward the tree, then, still
+on her knees, covered her face and shuddered. For a long time, it
+seemed, I gazed toward the tree without sight conveying any mental
+effect whatever. Quite aside from my dazed state, the thing was too
+bizarre; it gave no foothold to experience for the erection of
+understanding.
+
+My brother's body lay, or hung, or rested--what term could describe
+it?--with his stomach across the _under_ side of a large limb a few
+feet above where he had stood. He was doubled up like a hairpin, his
+abdomen pressed tightly up against this bough, and his arms, legs and
+head extended stiffly, straightly, skyward.
+
+Getting my scattered faculties and discoordinate limbs together, I
+made my way to the tree, the gruesome thought entering my mind that
+Tristan's body had been transfixed by some downward-pointing snag as
+it was blown up against the limb, and that the strange stiffness of
+his limbs was due to some ghastly sudden rigor mortis brought on by
+electric shock. Dazed with horror and grief, I reached up to his
+clothing and pulled gently, braced for the shock of the falling body.
+It remained immovable against the bough. A harder tug brought no
+results either. Gathering up all my courage against the vision of the
+supposed snag tearing its rough length out of the poor flesh, I leaped
+up, grasping the body about chest and hips, and hung. It came loose at
+once, without any tearing resistance such as I had expected, but
+manifesting a strong elastic pull upward, as though some one were
+pulling it with a rope; as I dropped back to the ground with it, the
+upward resistance remained unchanged. Nearly disorganized entirely by
+this phenomenon, it occurred to me that his belt or some of his
+clothing was still caught, and I jerked sidewise to pull it loose. It
+did not loosen, but I found myself suddenly out from under the tree,
+my brother dragging upward from my arms until my toes almost left the
+ground. And there was obviously no connection between him and the
+tree--or between him and anything else but myself, for that matter. At
+this I went weak; my arms relaxed despite my will, and an incredible
+fact happened: I found the body sliding skyward through my futile
+grasp. Desperately I got my hands clasped together about his wrist,
+this last grip almost lifting me from the earth; his legs and
+remaining arm streamed fantastically skyward. Through the haze which
+seemed to be finally drowning my amazed and tortured soul, I knew that
+my fingers were slipping through one another, and that in another
+instant my brother would be gone. Gone--where? Why and how?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a sudden shriek, and the impact of a frantic body against
+mine, as Alice, whom I had quite forgotten, made a skyward running
+jump and clasped the arm frantically to her bosom with both her own.
+With vast relief, I loosed my cramped fingers--only to feel her silken
+garments begin to slide skyward against my cheek. It was more instinct
+than sense which made me clutch at her legs. God, had I not done that!
+As it was, I held both forms anchored with only a slight pull, waiting
+dumbly for the next move--quite _non compos_ by this time, I think.
+
+"Quick, Jim!" she shrieked. "Quick, under the tree! I can't hold him
+long!"
+
+Very glad indeed to be told what to do, I obeyed. Under her direction
+we got the body under a low limb and wedged up against it, where with
+our feet both now on the ground, we balanced it with little effort.
+Feverishly, once more at her initiative, we took off our belts and
+strapped it firmly; whereupon we collapsed in one another's arms,
+shuddering, beneath it.
+
+The blasé reader may consider that we here manifested the characters
+of sensitive weaklings. But let him undergo the like! The
+supernatural, or seemingly so, has always had power to chill the
+hottest blood. And here was an invisible horror reaching out of the
+sky for its prey, without any of the ameliorating trite features which
+would temper an encounter with the alleged phenomena of ghostland.
+
+For a time we sat under that fatal tree listening to the dreary drench
+of rain pouring off the leaves, quivering nerve-shaken to the
+thunderclaps. Lacking one another, we had gone mad; it was the
+beginning of a mutual dependence in the face of the unprecedented,
+which was to grow to something greater during the bizarre days to
+follow.
+
+There was no need of words for each of us to know that the other was
+struggling frantically for a little rational light on the _outre_
+catastrophe in which we were entangled.
+
+It never once occurred to us that my brother might still be
+alive--until a long shuddering groan sounded above us. In combined
+horror and joy we sprang up. He was twisting weakly in the belts,
+muttering deliriously. We unfastened him and pulled him to the ground,
+where I sat on his knees while she pressed down on his shoulders, and
+so kept him recumbent, both horrified at the insistent lift of his
+body under us.
+
+She kissed him frantically and stroked his cheeks, I feeling utterly
+without resource. He grew stronger, muttered wildly, and his eyes
+opened, staring upward through the tree limbs. He became silent, and
+stiffened, gazing fixedly upward with a horror in his wild blue gaze
+which chilled our blood. What did he see there--what dire other-world
+thing dragging him into the depths of space? Shortly his eyes closed,
+and he ceased to mutter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I took his legs under my arms--the storm was clearing now--and we set
+out for home with gruesomely buoyant steps, the insistent pull
+remaining steady. Would it increase? We gazed upward with terrified
+eyes, becoming calmer by degree as conditions remained unchanged.
+
+When the country house loomed near across the last field, Alice
+faltered:
+
+"Jim, we can't take him right in like this!"
+
+I stopped.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Oh, because--because--it's too ridiculously awful. I don't know just
+how to say it--oh, can't you see it yourself?"
+
+In a dim way, I saw it. No cultured person cares to be made a center
+of public interest, unless on grounds of respect. To come walking in
+in this fashion, buoyed balloon-like by the body of this loved one,
+and before the members of a frivolous, gaping house party--ah, even I
+could imagine the mingled horror and derision, the hysterics among the
+women, perhaps. Nor would it stop there. Rumors--and heaven only knows
+what distortions such rumors might undergo, having their source in the
+incredible--would range our social circle like wildfire. And the
+newspapers, for our families are established and known--no, it
+wouldn't go.
+
+I tied Tristan to a stile and called up Jack Briggs, our host, from a
+neighboring house, explained briefly that Tristan had met with an
+accident, asked him to say nothing, and explained where to bring the
+machine. In ten minutes he had maneuvered the heavy sedan across the
+rough wet fields. And then we had another problem on our hands: to let
+Jack into what had happened without shocking him into uselessness. It
+was not until we got him to test Tristan's eery buoyancy with his own
+hands that we were able to make him understand the real nature of our
+problem. And after that, his comments remained largely gibberish for
+some time. However, he was even quicker than we were to see the need
+for secrecy--he had vivid visions of the political capital which
+opposing newspapers would make of any such occurrence at his
+party--and so we arranged a plan. According to which we drove to the
+back of the house, explained to the curious who rushed out that
+Tristan had been injured by a stroke of lightning, and rushed the
+closely wrapped form up to his room, feeling a great relief at having
+something solid between us and the sky. While Jack went downstairs to
+dismiss the party as courteously as possible, Alice and I tied my
+brother to the bed with trunk straps. Whereupon the bed and patient
+plumped lightly but decisively against the ceiling as soon as we
+removed our weight. While we gazed upward open mouthed, Jack returned.
+His faculties were recovering better than ours, probably because his
+affections were not so involved, and he gave the answer at once.
+
+"Ah, hell!" said he. "Pull the damn bed down and spike it to the
+floor!" This we did. Then we held a short but intense consultation.
+Whatever else might be the matter, obviously Tristan was suffering
+severely from shock and, for all we knew, maybe from partial
+electrocution. So we called up Dr. Grosnoff in the nearest town.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Grosnoff after our brief but disingenuous explanation, threw off the
+bed covers in a business-like way, then straightened up grimly.
+
+"And may I ask," he said with sarcastic politeness, "since when a
+strait-jacket has become first-aid for a case of lightning stroke?"
+
+"He was delirious," I stammered.
+
+"Delirious my eye! He's as quiet as a lamb. And you've tied him down
+so tightly that the straps are cutting right into him! Of all
+the--the--" He stopped, evidently feeling words futile, and before we
+could make an effective attempt to stop him, whipped out a knife and
+cut the straps. Tristan's unfortunate body instantly crashed against
+the ceiling, smashing the lathing and plaster, and remaining half
+embedded in the ruins. A low cry of pain rose from Alice. Dr. Grosnoff
+staggered to a chair and sat down, his eyes fixed on the ceiling with
+a steady stare--the odd caricature of a man coolly studying an
+interesting phenomenon.
+
+My brother appeared to be aroused by the shock, struggling about in
+his embedment, and finally sat up. Up? _Down_, I mean. Then he
+_stood_, _on the ceiling_, and began to walk! His nose had been
+bruised by the impact, and I noticed with uncomprehending wonder that
+the blood moved slowly _upward_ over his lip. He saw the window, and
+walked across the ceiling to it upside down. There he pushed the top
+of the window down and leaned out, gazing up into the sky with some
+sort of fascination. Instantly he crouched on the ceiling, hiding his
+eyes, while the house rang with shriek after shriek of mortal terror,
+speeding the packing of the parting guests. Alice seized my arm, her
+fingers cutting painfully into the flesh.
+
+"Jim," she screamed. "I see it now--don't you? His gravity's all
+changed around--he weighs _up_! He thinks the sky's _under_ him!"
+
+The human mind is so constructed that merely to name a thing oddly
+smooths its unwonted outlines to the grasp of the mind; the conception
+of a simple reversal of my brother's weight, I think, saved us all
+from the padded cell. That made it so commonplace, such an everyday
+sort of thing, likely to happen to anybody. The ordinary phenomenon of
+gravitation is no whit more mysterious, in all truth, than that which
+we were now witnessing--but we are born to _it_!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dr. Grosnoff recovered in a manner which showed considerable caliber.
+
+"Well," he grunted, "that being the case, we'd best be looking after
+him. Nervous shock, possible electric shock and electric burns,
+psychasthenia--that's going to be a long-drawn affair--bruises, maybe
+a little concussion, and possibly internal injury--that was equivalent
+to a ten-foot unbroken fall flat on his stomach, and I'll never
+forgive myself if.... Get me a chair!"
+
+With infinite care and reassuring words, the big doctor with our help
+pulled my brother down, the latter frantically begging us not to let
+him "fall" again. Holding him securely on the bed and trying to
+reassure him, Grosnoff said:
+
+"Straps and ropes won't do. His whole weight hangs in them--they'll
+cut him unmercifully. Take a sheet, tie the corners with ropes, and
+let him lie in that like a hammock!"
+
+It took many reassurances as to the strength of this arrangement
+before Tristan was at comparative peace. Dr. Grosnoff effected an
+examination by slacking off the ropes until Tristan lay a couple of
+feet clear of the bed, then himself lay on the mattress face up,
+prodding the patient over.
+
+The examination concluded, he informed us that Tristan's symptoms were
+simply those of a general physical shock such as would be expected in
+the case of a man standing close to the center of an explosion, though
+from our description of the affair he could not understand how my
+brother had survived at all. The glimmering of an explanation of this
+did not come until a long time afterward. So far as physical condition
+was concerned, Tristan might expect to recover fully in a matter of
+weeks. Mentally--the doctor was not so sure. The boy had gone through
+a terrible experience, and one which was still continuing--might
+continue no one knew how long. We were, said the doctor, up against a
+trick played by the great Sphinx, Nature, and one which, so far as he
+knew, had never before taken place in the history of all mankind.
+
+"There is faintly taking shape in my mind," he said, "the beginning of
+a theory as to how it came about. But it is a theory having many
+ramifications and involving much in several lines of science, with
+most of which I am but little acquainted. For the present I have no
+more to say than that if a theory of causation can be worked out, it
+will be the first step toward cure. But--it may be the only step.
+Don't build hopes!"
+
+Looking Alice and me over carefully, he gave us a each a nerve
+sedative and departed, leaving us with the feeling that here was a man
+of considerably wider learning than might be expected of a small-town
+doctor. In point of fact, we learned that this was the case. The
+specialist has been described as a "man who knows more and more about
+less and less." In Dr. Grosnoff's mind, the "less and less" outweighed
+the "more and more."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tristan grew stronger physically; mentally, he was intelligent enough
+to help us and himself by keeping his mind as much as possible off his
+condition, sometimes by sheer force of will. Meantime, Dr. Grosnoff,
+realizing that his patient could not be kept forever tied in bed, had
+assisted me in preparing for his permanent care at home. The device
+was simple; we had just taken his room, remodeled the ceiling as a
+floor, and fitted it with furniture upside down. Most of the problems
+involved in this were fairly simple. The matter of a bath rather
+stumped us for a while, until we hit upon a shower. The jets came up
+from under Tristan's feet, from the point of view of his perceptions;
+he told us that one of the strangest of all his experiences was to see
+the waste water swirl about in the pan _over_ his head, and being
+sucked up the drain as though drawn by some mysterious magnet.
+
+My brother and I shared a flat alone, so there was no servant problem
+to deal with. But he was going to need care as well as companionship,
+and I had to earn my living. For Alice, it was a case where the voice
+of the heart chimed with that of necessity; and I was best man at
+perhaps the weirdest marriage ceremony which ever took place on this
+earth. Held down in bed with the roped sheet, all betraying signs
+carefully concealed, Tristan was married to Alice by an unsuspecting
+dominie who took it all for one of those ordinary, though romantic
+sick-bed affairs.
+
+From the first, Tristan felt better and more secure in his special
+quarters, and was now able to move about quite freely within his
+limits; though such were his mental reactions that for his comfort we
+had to refinish the floor to look like a plaster ceiling, to eliminate
+as far as possible the upside-down suggestions left in the room, and
+to keep the windows closely shaded. I soon found that the sight of me,
+or any one else, walking upside down--to him--was very painful; only
+in the case of Alice did other considerations remove the
+unpleasantness.
+
+Little by little the accumulation of experience brought to my mind the
+full and vivid horror of what the poor lad had suffered and was
+suffering. Why, when he had looked out of that window into the sky, he
+was looking _down_ into a bottomless abyss, from which he was
+sustained only by the frail plaster and planking under his feet! The
+whole earth, with its trees and buildings, was suspended over his
+head, seemingly about to fall at any moment with him into the depths;
+the sun at noon glared _upward_ from the depths of an inferno,
+lighting from _below_ the somber earth suspended overhead! Thus the
+warm comfort of the sun, which has cheered the heart of man from time
+immemorial, now took on an unearthly, unnatural semblance. I learned
+that he could never quite shake off the feeling that the houses were
+anchored into the earth, suspended only by the embedment of their
+foundations in the soil; that trees were suspended from their roots,
+which groaned with the strain; that soil was held to the bedrock only
+by its cohesion. He even dreaded lest, during storms, the grip of the
+muddy soil be loosened, and the fields fall into the blue! It was only
+when clasped tight in Alice's arms that the horrors wholly left him.
+
+All the reasoning we might use on his mind, or that he himself could
+bring to bear on it, was useless. We found that the sense of up and
+down is ineradicably fixed by the balancing apparatus of the body.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile, his psychology was undergoing strange alterations; the more
+I came to appreciate the actual conditions he was living under, the
+more apparent it seemed to me that he must have a cast-iron mental
+stamina to maintain sanity at all. But he not only did that; he began
+to recover normal strength, and to be irked unbearably by his constant
+confinement. So it came about that he began to venture a little at a
+time from his room, wandering about on the ceiling of the rest of the
+house. However, he could not yet look out of windows, but sidled up to
+them with averted face to draw any blinds that were up.
+
+As he grew increasingly restless, we all felt more and more that the
+thing could not continue as it was; some way out must be found. We had
+many a talk with Grosnoff, at last inducing him to speak about the
+still half-formed theory which he had dimly conceived at the first.
+
+"For a good many decades," he said, "there have been a few who
+regarded the close analogies between magnetism and gravitational
+action as symptomatic of a concealed identity between them. Einstein's
+'Field Theory' practically proves it on the mathematical side. Now it
+is obvious that if gravitation is a form of magnetism--and if so it
+belongs to another plane of magnetic forces than that which we know
+and use--then the objects on a planet must have the opposite polarity
+from that of the planet itself. Since the globe is itself a magnet,
+with a positive and negative pole, its attraction power is not that of
+a magnet on any plane, because then the human race would be divided
+into two species, each polarized in the sign opposite to its own
+pole; when an individual of either race reached the equator, he would
+become weightless, and when he crossed it, would be repelled into
+space."
+
+"Lord!" I said. "There would be a plot for one of your scientific
+fiction writers!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I can present you with another," said Dr. Grosnoff. "How do we know
+whether another planet would have the opposite sign to our own
+bodies?"
+
+"Well," I chuckled, "they'll find that out soon enough when the first
+interplanetary expedition tries to land on on of 'em!"
+
+"Hmf!" grunted the medico. "That'll be the least of their troubles!"
+
+"But you said the polarity couldn't be that of a magnet; then what?"
+
+"Don't you remember the common pith ball of your high school physics
+days? An accumulation of positive electricity repels an accumulation
+of negative--if indeed we can correctly use 'accumulation' for a
+negativity--and it is my idea that the earth is the container of a
+gigantic accumulation of this meta--or hyper-electricity which we are
+postulating; and our bodies contain a charge of the opposite sign."
+
+"But, Doctor, the retention of a charge of static electricity by a
+body in the presence of one of the opposite sign requires insulation
+of the containing bodies; for instance, lightning is a breaking down
+of the air insulation between the ground and a cloud. In our case we
+are constantly in contact with the earth, and the charges would
+equalize."
+
+"Please bear in mind, Jim, that we are not talking about electricity
+as now handled by man, but about some form of it as yet hypothetical.
+We don't know what kind of insulation it would require. We may be
+_constitutionally_ insulated."
+
+"And you think the fire-ball broke down that insulation by the shock
+to Tristan's system?" I asked. The logic of the thing was shaping up
+hazily, but unmistakably. "But, then, why don't we frequently see
+people kiting off the earth as the result of explosions?"
+
+"_How do you know they haven't?_ Don't we have plenty of mysterious
+disappearances as the result of explosions, and particularly,
+strangely large numbers of missing in a major war?"
+
+My blood chilled. The world was beginning to seem a pretty awful
+place.
+
+Grosnoff saw my disturbance, and placed a reassuring hand on my
+shoulder.
+
+"I'm afraid," he said, smiling, "that I rather yielded to the
+temptation to get a rise out of you. That suggestion _might_ be
+unpleasantly true under special circumstances. But I particularly have
+an eye out for the special capacities of that weird and rare
+phenomenon, the fire-ball. It isn't impossible that the energy of the
+fire-ball went into the re-polarization rather than into a destructive
+concussion--hence Tristan's escape."
+
+"You mean its effect is _qualitatively_ different from that of any
+other explosion?"
+
+"It may be so. It is known to be an electric conglomeration of some
+kind--but that's all."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meantime circumstances were not going well with us; the financial
+burden of Tristan's support, added to the strain of the situation, was
+becoming overwhelming. Tristan knew this and felt it keenly; this
+brought him to a momentous decision. He looked down at us from the
+ceiling one day with an expression of unusual tenseness, and
+announced that he was going out permanently, and to take part in the
+world again.
+
+"I've gotten now so that I can bear to look out of the windows quite
+well. It's only a matter of time and practise until I can stand the
+open. After all, it isn't any worse than being a steel worker or
+steeplejack. Even if the worst came to the worst, I'd rather be burst
+open by the frozen vacuum of interstellar space than to splash upon a
+sidewalk before an admiring populace--and people do _that_ every day!"
+
+Dr. Grosnoff, who was present, expressed great delight. His patient
+was coming along well mentally, at least. Alice sat down, trembling.
+
+"But, good Lord, Tristan," I said, "what possible occupation could you
+follow?"
+
+"Oh, I've brooded over that for weeks, and I've crossed the Rubicon. I
+think we're a long way past such petty things as personal pride. Did
+it ever occur to you that what from one point of view is a monstrous
+catastrophe, from another is an asset?"
+
+"What in the dickens are you talking about?" I asked.
+
+"I'm talking about the--the--" he gulped painfully--"the stage."
+
+Alice wrung her hands, crying bitterly:
+
+"Wonderful! Splendid! Tristan LeHuber, The World's Unparalleled
+Upside-Down Man! He Doesn't Know Whether He's On His Head Or His
+Heels. He's Always Up In The Air About Something, But You Can't Upset
+Him! Vaudeville To-night--The Bodongo Brothers, Brilliant Burmese
+Balancers--Arctic Annie, the Prima Donna of Sealdom, and Tristan
+LeHuber, The Balloon Man--He Uses An Anchor For A Parachute!" At last
+indeed the LeHuber family will have arrived sensationally in the
+public eye!
+
+"There are," Alice raved, "two billion people on the earth to-day.
+Counting three generations per century, there have been about twelve
+billion of us in the last two hundred years. And out of all those, and
+all the millions and billions before that, we had to be picked for
+this loathsome cosmic joke--just little us for all that distinction!
+Why, oh, why? If our romance _had_ to be spoiled by a tragedy smeared
+across the billboards of notoriety, why couldn't it have been in some
+decent, human sort of way? Why this ghastly absurdity?"
+
+"From time immemorial," said Grosnoff, "there have been men who sought
+to excite the admiration of their fellows, to get themselves
+worshiped, to dominate, to collect perquisites, by developing some
+wonderful personal power or another. From Icarus on down, levitation
+or its equivalent has been a favorite. The ecstatics of medieval
+times, the Hindu Yogis, even the day-dreaming schoolboy, have had
+visions of floating in air before the astounding multitudes by a mere
+act of will. The frequency of 'flying dreams' may indicate such a
+thing as a possibility in nature. Tradition says many have
+accomplished it. If so, it was by a reversal of polarity through _an
+act of will_. Those who did it--Yogis--believed in successive lives on
+earth. If they were right about the one, why not the other? Suppose
+one who had developed that power of will, carried it to another birth,
+where it lay dormant in the subconscious until set off uncontrolled by
+some special shock?"
+
+Alice paled.
+
+"Then Tristan might have been--"
+
+"He might. Then again, maybe my brain is addled by this thing. In any
+case, the moral is: don't monkey with Nature! She's particular."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tristan's vaudeville scheme was not as easily realized as said. The
+first manager to whom we applied was stubbornly skeptical in spite of
+Tristan's appearance standing upside down in stilts heavily weighted
+at the ground ends; and even after his resistance was broken down in a
+manner which left him gasping and a little woozy, began to reason
+unfavorably in a hard-headed way. Audiences, he explained, were off
+levitation acts. Too old. No matter what you did, they'd lay it to
+concealed wires, and yawn. Even if you called a committee from the
+audience, the committee itself would merely be sore at not being able
+to solve the trick; the audience would consider the committee a fake
+or merely dumb. And all that would take too much time for an act of
+that kind.
+
+"Oh, yeh, I know! It's got me goin', all right. But I can't think like
+me about this sorta thing. I got to think like the audience does--or
+go outa business!"
+
+After which solid but unprofitable lesson in psychology, we dropped
+the last vestige of pride and tried a circus sideshow. But the results
+were similar.
+
+"Nah, the rubes don't wear celluloid collars any more. Ya can't slip
+any wire tricks over on 'em!"
+
+"But he can do this in a big topless tent, or even out in an open
+field, if you like."
+
+"Nope--steel rods run up the middle of a rope has been done before."
+
+"Steel rods in a rope which the people see uncoil from the ground in
+front of their eyes?"
+
+"Well, they'd think of somethin' else, then. I'm tellin' ya, it won't
+go! Sure, people like to be fooled, but they want it to be done
+_right_!"
+
+"Yes!" I sneered. "And a hell of a lot of people have fooled
+themselves _right_ about this matter, too!"
+
+He looked at me curiously.
+
+"Say, have ya really got somethin' up y'r sleeve?"
+
+"You'd be surprised!"
+
+Thus he grudgingly gave us a chance for a tryout; and he was surprised
+indeed. But on thinking it over, he decided like the vaudeville man.
+
+"Listen!" said Tristan suddenly, in a voice of desperation. "I'll do a
+parachute jump into the sky, and land on an airplane!"
+
+"Tristan!" shrieked Alice, in horror.
+
+The circus man nearly lost his cigar, then bit it in two.
+
+"Sa-ay--what the--I'll call that right now! I'll get ya the plane and
+chute if y'll put up a deposit to cover the cost. If ya do it, we'll
+have the best money in the tents; if ya don't, I keep the money!"
+
+"If I don't," said Tristan distinctly, "I'll have not the slightest
+need for the money."
+
+But the airplane idea was out; we could think of no way for him to
+make the landing on such a swiftly-moving vehicle.
+
+Again Alice solved it.
+
+"If you absolutely must break my heart and put me in a sanitarium,"
+she sobbed, "get a blimp!"
+
+Of course! And that is what we did--on the first attempt coming
+unpleasantly close to doing just that to Alice.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The blimp captain was obviously skeptical, and betrayed signs of a
+peeve at having his machine hired for a hoax; but money was money and
+he agreed to obey our instructions meticulously. His tone was
+perfunctory, however, despite my desperate attempts to impress him
+with the seriousness of the matter; and that nonchalance of his came
+near to having dire consequences.
+
+The captain was supplied with a sort of boat-hook with instructions to
+steer his course to reach the parachute ropes as it passed him on its
+upward flight. And he was seriously warned of the fact that, after the
+chute reached two or three thousand feet, its speed would increase
+because of the rarefaction of the air; and in case of a miss, it would
+become constantly harder to overtake. These directions he received
+with a scornful half smile; obviously he never expected to see the
+chute open.
+
+We got all set, the blimp circling overhead, Tristan upside down in
+his seat suspended skyward, a desperately grim look on his face; and
+Alice almost in collapse. We were all spared the agony of several
+hundred feet of unbroken fall; the parachute was open on the ground,
+and rose at a leisurely speed, but too fast at that for the comfort of
+any of us. I don't think the wondering crowd and the dumbfounded
+circus people ever saw a stranger sight than that chute drifting
+upward into the blue. We heard nothing of "hidden wires," then or ever
+after! The white circle grew pitifully small and forlorn against the
+fathomless azure; and suddenly we noticed that the blimp seemed to be
+merely drifting with the wind, making no attempt to get under--or
+over--Tristan. Our hearts labored painfully. Had the engines broken
+down? Alice buried her face against my sleeve with a moan.
+
+"I can't look ... tell me!"
+
+I tried to--in a voice which I vainly tried to make steady.
+
+All at once the blimp went into frenzied activity--we learned
+afterwards that its crew of three, captain included, had been so
+completely paralyzed by the reality of the event that they had
+forgotten what they were there for until almost too late. Now we heard
+the high note of its overdriven engines as it rolled and rocked toward
+the rising chute. For a moment the white spot showed against its gray
+side, then tossed and pitched wildly in the wake of the propellers as,
+driven too hastily and frenziedly, the ship overshot its mark and the
+captain missed his grab.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I could only squeeze Alice tightly and choke as the aerial objects
+parted company and the blue gap between them widened. Instantly, avid
+to retrieve his mistake, the captain swung his craft in a wild careen
+around and a spiral upward. But he tried to do too many things at a
+time--make too much altitude and headway both at once. The blimp
+pitched steeply upward to a standstill, barely moving toward the
+parachute. Quickly it sloped downward again and gathered speed,
+nearing the chute, and then making a desperate zoom upward on its
+momentum. Mistake number three! He had waited too long before using
+his elevator; and the chute fled hopelessly away just ahead of the
+uptilted nose of the blimp. I could only moan, and Alice made no sound
+or movement.
+
+Next we saw the blimp's water ballast streaming earthward in the sun,
+and it was put into a long, steady spiral in pursuit of the parachute,
+whose speed--or so it seemed to my agonized gaze--was now noticeably
+on the increase. The altitude seemed appallingly great; the blimp's
+ceiling, I knew, was only about twenty thousand; and my brother, even
+if not frozen to death by that time, would be traveling far faster
+then than any climbing speed the blimp could make; as his fall
+increased in speed, the climb of the bag decreased.
+
+At last, with a quiver of renewed hope, I saw the blimp narrowing down
+its spirals--it was overtaking! Smaller and smaller grew both
+objects--but so did the gap between them! At last they merged, the
+tiny white dot and the little gray minnow. In one long agony I waited
+to see whether the gap would open out again. Lord of Hosts--the blimp
+was slanting steeply downward; the parachute had vanished!
+
+Then at last I paid some attention to the totally limp form in my
+arms; and a few minutes later, amid an insane crowd, a pitifully
+embarrassed and nerve-shaken dirigible navigator was helping me lift
+my heavily-wrapped, shivering brother from the gondola, while the
+mechanics turned their attention to the overdriven engines and wracked
+framing. Did I say "helping me lift?" Such is the force of habit--but
+verily, a new nomenclature would have to come into being to deal
+adequately with such a life as my poor brother's!
+
+Tristan seized my hand.
+
+"Jim!" he said through chattering teeth, "I'm cured--cured of the
+awful fear! That second time he missed, I just gave up entirely; I
+didn't care any longer. And then somehow I felt such a sense of peace
+and freedom--there weren't any upside-down things around to torture
+me, no sense of insecurity. I just was, in a great blue quiet; it
+wasn't like falling at all; no awful shock to meet, no sickness or
+pain--just quietly floating along from Here to There, with no
+particular dividing line between, anywhere. The cold hurt, of course,
+but somehow it didn't seem to matter, and was getting better when they
+caught me. But now--I can do things you never even imagined!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thus began my brother's real public career--he had arrived. After that
+he was able to name his own compensation, and shortly during his
+tours, began to sport a private dirigible of his own, which he often
+used for jumps between stands. He told me jokingly that it was very
+fitting transportation for him, as his hundred and sixty pound lift
+saved quite a bit of expense for helium!
+
+He developed an astonishing set of tricks. After the jump, he would
+arrive on the field suspended above the dirigible doing trapeze
+tricks. After that, in the show tent, he would go through some more of
+them, with a few hair raisers of his own invention, one of which
+consisted of apparently letting go the rope by accident and shooting
+skyward with a wild shriek, only to be caught at the end of a fine,
+especially woven piano wire cable attached to a spring safety belt,
+the cable being in turn fastened into the end of the rope.
+
+Needless to say, Alice was unable to wax enthusiastic about any of
+these feats, though she loyally accompanied him in his travels. She
+would sit in the tent gazing at him with a horrible fascination, and
+month by month grew thinner and more strained. Tristan felt her stress
+deeply; but was making money so fast that we all felt that in a short
+time, if not able to finance the discovery of a cure, at least he
+could retire and live a safer life. And he found his ideal haven of
+rest--in a Pennsylvania coal mine! Thus, the project grew in his mind,
+of buying an abandoned mine and fitting it with comfortable and
+spacious inverted quarters, environed with fungus gardens, air ferns
+and the like, plants which could be trained to grow upside down; he
+emerging only for necessary sun baths.
+
+As time went on, I really grew accustomed to the situation, though
+seeing less and less of Tristan and Alice; during summers they were on
+tour, and in winter were quartered in Tristan's coal mine, which had
+become a reality.
+
+So one summer day when the circus stopped at a small town where I was
+taking vacation, I was overjoyed at the opportunity to see them. I
+timed myself to get there as the afternoon performance was over, but
+arrived a little early, and went on into the untopped tent.
+
+Tristan waved an inverted greeting at me from his poise on his
+trapeze, and I watched for a few minutes. There was an odd mood about
+the crowd that day, largely due to a group of loud-mouthed
+hill-billies from the back country--the sort which is so ignorant as
+to live in perpetual fear of getting "something slipped over," and so
+disbelieves everything it is told, looking for something ulterior
+behind every exterior. Having duly exposed to their own satisfaction
+the strong man's "wooden dumbbells," the snake charmer's rubber
+serpents, the fat woman's pillows, and the bearded lady's false
+whiskers (I don't know what they did about the living skeleton), these
+fellows were now gaping before Tristan's platform, and growing hostile
+as their rather inadequate brains failed to cook up any damaging
+explanation.
+
+"Yah!" yelled a long-necked, flap-eared youth, suddenly. "He's got an
+iron bar in that rope!" They had come too late to see the parachute
+drop. Tristan grinned and pulled himself down the rope, which of
+course fell limp behind him. At this, the crowd jeered and booed the
+too-hasty youth, who became so resentfully abusive of Tristan that one
+of the attendants pushed him out of the tent. As he passed me, I
+caught fragments of wrathy words:
+
+"Wisht I had a ... Show'm whether it's a fake...."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tristan closed his act by dropping full-length to the end of his
+invisible wire, then pulled himself down, got into his stilts, and was
+unfastening the belt, when the manager rushed in with a request that
+he repeat, for the benefit of a special party just arrived on a
+delayed train.
+
+"Go on and look at the animals, old man." Tristan called to me. "I'll
+be with you in about half an hour!"
+
+I strolled out idly, meeting on the way the flap-eared youth, who
+seemed bent on making his way back into the tent, wearing a mingled
+air of furtiveness, of triumph, and anticipation. Wondering casually
+just what kind of fool the lad was planning to make of himself next, I
+wandered on toward the main entrance--only to be stopped by an
+appalling uproar behind me. There was a raucous, gurgling shriek of
+mortal terror; the loud composite "O-o-o!" of a shocked or astonished
+crowd; a set of fervent curses directed at some one; loud confused
+babbling, and then a woman's voice raised in a seemingly endless
+succession of hysterical shrieks. Thinking that an animal had gotten
+loose, or something of that kind, I wheeled. Unmistakably the racket
+came from Tristan's own tent.
+
+Cold dread clutching at my heart, and with lead on my boot soles, I
+rushed frantically back. At the entrance I was held by a mad onrush of
+humanity for some moments. When I reached the platform, Tristan was
+not in sight. Then I noticed the long-necked boy sitting on the
+platform with his face in his hands, shrieking:
+
+"I didn't mean to! I didn't mean to! Damn it, don't touch me! I
+thought sure it was a fake!"
+
+I saw a new, glittering jack-knife lying on the platform beside the
+limp, foot-long stub of Tristan's rope. Slowly, frozenly, I raised my
+eyes. The blue abyss was traceless of any object....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Disowned, by Victor Endersby
+
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Disowned, by Victor Endersby
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Disowned
+
+Author: Victor Endersby
+
+Release Date: July 12, 2009 [EBook #29384]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DISOWNED ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="tr"><p class="center">Transcriber's Note: </p>
+<p class="center">This etext was produced from Astounding Stories September 1932. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.</p>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img class="img1" src="images/image_001.jpg" width="500" height="547" alt="&quot;Wonderful! The World&#39;s Unparalleled Upside-Down
+Man!&quot;" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;Wonderful! The World&#39;s Unparalleled Upside-Down
+Man!&quot;</span>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h1>Disowned</h1>
+
+<h2>By Victor Endersby</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="sidenote">The tragic misadventure of a man to whom the sky became an
+appalling abyss, drawing him ever upward.</div>
+
+
+<p><span class="f1">T</span>he sky sagged downward, bellying blackly with a sudden summer rain,
+giving me a vision of catching my train in sodden clothing after the
+short-cut across the fields, which I was taking in company with my
+brother Tristan and his fianc&eacute;e.</p>
+
+<p>The sullen atmosphere ripped apart with an electric glare; our ears
+quivered to the throbbing sky, while huge drops, jarred loose from the
+air by the thunder-impact, splattered sluggishly, heavily, about us.
+Little breezes swept out from the storm center, lifting the undersides
+of the long grass leaves to view in waves of lighter green. I
+complained peevishly.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, mop up!" said Tristan. "You've plenty of time, and there's the
+big oak! It's as dry under there as a cave!"</p>
+
+<p>"I think that'll be fun!" twittered Alice. "To wait out a
+thunder-storm under a tree!"</p>
+
+<p>"Under a tree?" I said. "Hardly! I'm not hankering to furnish myself
+as an exhibit on the physiological effects of a lightning stroke&mdash;no,
+sir!"</p>
+
+<p>"Rats!" said Tristan. "All that's a fairy-tale&mdash;trees being dangerous
+in a thunder-storm!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">T</span>he rain now beat through our thin summer clothing, as Tristan seized
+Alice's hand and towed her toward the spreading shelter. I followed
+them at first, then began to lag with an odd unwillingness. I had been
+only half serious in my objection, but all at once that tree exercised
+an odd repulsion on me; an imaginary picture of the electric fluid
+coursing through my shriveling nerve-channels grew unpleasantly vivid.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly I knew I was not going under that tree. I stopped dead,
+pulling my hat brim down behind to divert the rivulet coursing down
+the back of my neck, calling to the others in a voice rather cracked
+from embarrassment. They looked back at me curiously, and Alice began
+to twit me, standing in the rain, while Tristan desired to know
+whether we thought we were a pair of goldfish; in his estimation, we
+might belong to the piscine tribe all right, but not to that
+decorative branch thereof. To be frank, he used the term "suckers."
+Feeling exceptionally foolish, I planted myself doggedly in the
+soaking grass as Alice turned to dash for the tree.</p>
+
+<p>Then the thing happened; the thing which to this hour makes the fabric
+of space with its unknown forces seem an insecure and eery garment for
+the body of man. Over the slight rise beyond the tree, as the air
+crackled, roared and shook under the thunder-blasts, there appeared an
+object moving in long, leisurely bounds, drifting before the wind, and
+touching the ground lightly each time. It was about eighteen inches in
+diameter, globular, glowing with coruscating fires, red, green, and
+yellow; a thing of unearthly and wholly sinister beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Alice poised with one foot half raised, and shrieked at Tristan, half
+terrified, half elated at the sight. He wheeled quickly, there under
+the tree, and slowly backed away as the thing drifted in to keep him
+company in his shelter. We could not see his face, but there was a
+stiffness to his figure indicating something like fear. Suddenly
+things I had read rose into my memory. This was one of those objects
+variously called "fire-balls," "globe-lightning," "meteors," and the
+like.</p>
+
+<p>I also recalled the deadly explosive potencies said to be sometimes
+possessed by such entities, and called out frantically:</p>
+
+<p>"Tristan! Don't touch it! Get away quickly, but don't disturb the
+air!"</p>
+
+<p>He heard me and, as the object wavered about in the comparative calm
+under the tree, drifting closer to him, started to obey. But it
+suddenly approached his face, and seized with a reckless terror, he
+snatched off his hat and batted at it as one would at a pestilent bee.
+Instantly there was a blinding glare, a stunning detonation, and a
+violent air-wave which threw me clear off my feet and to the ground. I
+sat up blindly with my vision full of opalescent lights and my ears
+ringing, unable to hear, see, or think.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">S</span>lowly my senses came back; I saw Alice struggling upright in the
+grass before me. She cast a quick glance toward the tree, then, still
+on her knees, covered her face and shuddered. For a long time, it
+seemed, I gazed toward the tree without sight conveying any mental
+effect whatever. Quite aside from my dazed state, the thing was too
+bizarre; it gave no foothold to experience for the erection of
+understanding.</p>
+
+<p>My brother's body lay, or hung, or rested&mdash;what term could describe
+it?&mdash;with his stomach across the <i>under</i> side of a large limb a few
+feet above where he had stood. He was doubled up like a hairpin, his
+abdomen pressed tightly up against this bough, and his arms, legs and
+head extended stiffly, straightly, skyward.</p>
+
+<p>Getting my scattered faculties and discoordinate limbs together, I
+made my way to the tree, the gruesome thought entering my mind that
+Tristan's body had been transfixed by some downward-pointing snag as
+it was blown up against the limb, and that the strange stiffness of
+his limbs was due to some ghastly sudden rigor mortis brought on by
+electric shock. Dazed with horror and grief, I reached up to his
+clothing and pulled gently, braced for the shock of the falling body.
+It remained immovable against the bough. A harder tug brought no
+results either. Gathering up all my courage against the vision of the
+supposed snag tearing its rough length out of the poor flesh, I leaped
+up, grasping the body about chest and hips, and hung. It came loose at
+once, without any tearing resistance such as I had expected, but
+manifesting a strong elastic pull upward, as though some one were
+pulling it with a rope; as I dropped back to the ground with it, the
+upward resistance remained unchanged. Nearly disorganized entirely by
+this phenomenon, it occurred to me that his belt or some of his
+clothing was still caught, and I jerked sidewise to pull it loose. It
+did not loosen, but I found myself suddenly out from under the tree,
+my brother dragging upward from my arms until my toes almost left the
+ground. And there was obviously no connection between him and the
+tree&mdash;or between him and anything else but myself, for that matter. At
+this I went weak; my arms relaxed despite my will, and an incredible
+fact happened: I found the body sliding skyward through my futile
+grasp. Desperately I got my hands clasped together about his wrist,
+this last grip almost lifting me from the earth; his legs and
+remaining arm streamed fantastically skyward. Through the haze which
+seemed to be finally drowning my amazed and tortured soul, I knew that
+my fingers were slipping through one another, and that in another
+instant my brother would be gone. Gone&mdash;where? Why and how?</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">T</span>here was a sudden shriek, and the impact of a frantic body against
+mine, as Alice, whom I had quite forgotten, made a skyward running
+jump and clasped the arm frantically to her bosom with both her own.
+With vast relief, I loosed my cramped fingers&mdash;only to feel her silken
+garments begin to slide skyward against my cheek. It was more instinct
+than sense which made me clutch at her legs. God, had I not done that!
+As it was, I held both forms anchored with only a slight pull, waiting
+dumbly for the next move&mdash;quite <i>non compos</i> by this time, I think.</p>
+
+<p>"Quick, Jim!" she shrieked. "Quick, under the tree! I can't hold him
+long!"</p>
+
+<p>Very glad indeed to be told what to do, I obeyed. Under her direction
+we got the body under a low limb and wedged up against it, where with
+our feet both now on the ground, we balanced it with little effort.
+Feverishly, once more at her initiative, we took off our belts and
+strapped it firmly; whereupon we collapsed in one another's arms,
+shuddering, beneath it.</p>
+
+<p>The blas&eacute; reader may consider that we here manifested the characters
+of sensitive weaklings. But let him undergo the like! The
+supernatural, or seemingly so, has always had power to chill the
+hottest blood. And here was an invisible horror reaching out of the
+sky for its prey, without any of the ameliorating trite features which
+would temper an encounter with the alleged phenomena of ghostland.</p>
+
+<p>For a time we sat under that fatal tree listening to the dreary drench
+of rain pouring off the leaves, quivering nerve-shaken to the
+thunderclaps. Lacking one another, we had gone mad; it was the
+beginning of a mutual dependence in the face of the unprecedented,
+which was to grow to something greater during the bizarre days to
+follow.</p>
+
+<p>There was no need of words for each of us to know that the other was
+struggling frantically for a little rational light on the <i>outre</i>
+catastrophe in which we were entangled.</p>
+
+<p>It never once occurred to us that my brother might still be
+alive&mdash;until a long shuddering groan sounded above us. In combined
+horror and joy we sprang up. He was twisting weakly in the belts,
+muttering deliriously. We unfastened him and pulled him to the ground,
+where I sat on his knees while she pressed down on his shoulders, and
+so kept him recumbent, both horrified at the insistent lift of his
+body under us.</p>
+
+<p>She kissed him frantically and stroked his cheeks, I feeling utterly
+without resource. He grew stronger, muttered wildly, and his eyes
+opened, staring upward through the tree limbs. He became silent, and
+stiffened, gazing fixedly upward with a horror in his wild blue gaze
+which chilled our blood. What did he see there&mdash;what dire other-world
+thing dragging him into the depths of space? Shortly his eyes closed,
+and he ceased to mutter.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">I</span>&nbsp;took his legs under my arms&mdash;the storm was clearing now&mdash;and we set
+out for home with gruesomely buoyant steps, the insistent pull
+remaining steady. Would it increase? We gazed upward with terrified
+eyes, becoming calmer by degree as conditions remained unchanged.</p>
+
+<p>When the country house loomed near across the last field, Alice
+faltered:</p>
+
+<p>"Jim, we can't take him right in like this!"</p>
+
+<p>I stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, because&mdash;because&mdash;it's too ridiculously awful. I don't know just
+how to say it&mdash;oh, can't you see it yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>In a dim way, I saw it. No cultured person cares to be made a center
+of public interest, unless on grounds of respect. To come walking in
+in this fashion, buoyed balloon-like by the body of this loved one,
+and before the members of a frivolous, gaping house party&mdash;ah, even I
+could imagine the mingled horror and derision, the hysterics among the
+women, perhaps. Nor would it stop there. Rumors&mdash;and heaven only knows
+what distortions such rumors might undergo, having their source in the
+incredible&mdash;would range our social circle like wildfire. And the
+newspapers, for our families are established and known&mdash;no, it
+wouldn't go.</p>
+
+<p>I tied Tristan to a stile and called up Jack Briggs, our host, from a
+neighboring house, explained briefly that Tristan had met with an
+accident, asked him to say nothing, and explained where to bring the
+machine. In ten minutes he had maneuvered the heavy sedan across the
+rough wet fields. And then we had another problem on our hands: to let
+Jack into what had happened without shocking him into uselessness. It
+was not until we got him to test Tristan's eery buoyancy with his own
+hands that we were able to make him understand the real nature of our
+problem. And after that, his comments remained largely gibberish for
+some time. However, he was even quicker than we were to see the need
+for secrecy&mdash;he had vivid visions of the political capital which
+opposing newspapers would make of any such occurrence at his
+party&mdash;and so we arranged a plan. According to which we drove to the
+back of the house, explained to the curious who rushed out that
+Tristan had been injured by a stroke of lightning, and rushed the
+closely wrapped form up to his room, feeling a great relief at having
+something solid between us and the sky. While Jack went downstairs to
+dismiss the party as courteously as possible, Alice and I tied my
+brother to the bed with trunk straps. Whereupon the bed and patient
+plumped lightly but decisively against the ceiling as soon as we
+removed our weight. While we gazed upward open mouthed, Jack returned.
+His faculties were recovering better than ours, probably because his
+affections were not so involved, and he gave the answer at once.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, hell!" said he. "Pull the damn bed down and spike it to the
+floor!" This we did. Then we held a short but intense consultation.
+Whatever else might be the matter, obviously Tristan was suffering
+severely from shock and, for all we knew, maybe from partial
+electrocution. So we called up Dr. Grosnoff in the nearest town.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">G</span>rosnoff after our brief but disingenuous explanation, threw off the
+bed covers in a business-like way, then straightened up grimly.</p>
+
+<p>"And may I ask," he said with sarcastic politeness, "since when a
+strait-jacket has become first-aid for a case of lightning stroke?"</p>
+
+<p>"He was delirious," I stammered.</p>
+
+<p>"Delirious my eye! He's as quiet as a lamb. And you've tied him down
+so tightly that the straps are cutting right into him! Of all
+the&mdash;the&mdash;" He stopped, evidently feeling words futile, and before we
+could make an effective attempt to stop him, whipped out a knife and
+cut the straps. Tristan's unfortunate body instantly crashed against
+the ceiling, smashing the lathing and plaster, and remaining half
+embedded in the ruins. A low cry of pain rose from Alice. Dr. Grosnoff
+staggered to a chair and sat down, his eyes fixed on the ceiling with
+a steady stare&mdash;the odd caricature of a man coolly studying an
+interesting phenomenon.</p>
+
+<p>My brother appeared to be aroused by the shock, struggling about in
+his embedment, and finally sat up. Up? <i>Down</i>, I mean. Then he
+<i>stood</i>, <i>on the ceiling</i>, and began to walk! His nose had been
+bruised by the impact, and I noticed with uncomprehending wonder that
+the blood moved slowly <i>upward</i> over his lip. He saw the window, and
+walked across the ceiling to it upside down. There he pushed the top
+of the window down and leaned out, gazing up into the sky with some
+sort of fascination. Instantly he crouched on the ceiling, hiding his
+eyes, while the house rang with shriek after shriek of mortal terror,
+speeding the packing of the parting guests. Alice seized my arm, her
+fingers cutting painfully into the flesh.</p>
+
+<p>"Jim," she screamed. "I see it now&mdash;don't you? His gravity's all
+changed around&mdash;he weighs <i>up</i>! He thinks the sky's <i>under</i> him!"</p>
+
+<p>The human mind is so constructed that merely to name a thing oddly
+smooths its unwonted outlines to the grasp of the mind; the conception
+of a simple reversal of my brother's weight, I think, saved us all
+from the padded cell. That made it so commonplace, such an everyday
+sort of thing, likely to happen to anybody. The ordinary phenomenon of
+gravitation is no whit more mysterious, in all truth, than that which
+we were now witnessing&mdash;but we are born to <i>it</i>!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">D</span>r. Grosnoff recovered in a manner which showed considerable caliber.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he grunted, "that being the case, we'd best be looking after
+him. Nervous shock, possible electric shock and electric burns,
+psychasthenia&mdash;that's going to be a long-drawn affair&mdash;bruises, maybe
+a little concussion, and possibly internal injury&mdash;that was equivalent
+to a ten-foot unbroken fall flat on his stomach, and I'll never
+forgive myself if.... Get me a chair!"</p>
+
+<p>With infinite care and reassuring words, the big doctor with our help
+pulled my brother down, the latter frantically begging us not to let
+him "fall" again. Holding him securely on the bed and trying to
+reassure him, Grosnoff said:</p>
+
+<p>"Straps and ropes won't do. His whole weight hangs in them&mdash;they'll
+cut him unmercifully. Take a sheet, tie the corners with ropes, and
+let him lie in that like a hammock!"</p>
+
+<p>It took many reassurances as to the strength of this arrangement
+before Tristan was at comparative peace. Dr. Grosnoff effected an
+examination by slacking off the ropes until Tristan lay a couple of
+feet clear of the bed, then himself lay on the mattress face up,
+prodding the patient over.</p>
+
+<p>The examination concluded, he informed us that Tristan's symptoms were
+simply those of a general physical shock such as would be expected in
+the case of a man standing close to the center of an explosion, though
+from our description of the affair he could not understand how my
+brother had survived at all. The glimmering of an explanation of this
+did not come until a long time afterward. So far as physical condition
+was concerned, Tristan might expect to recover fully in a matter of
+weeks. Mentally&mdash;the doctor was not so sure. The boy had gone through
+a terrible experience, and one which was still continuing&mdash;might
+continue no one knew how long. We were, said the doctor, up against a
+trick played by the great Sphinx, Nature, and one which, so far as he
+knew, had never before taken place in the history of all mankind.</p>
+
+<p>"There is faintly taking shape in my mind," he said, "the beginning of
+a theory as to how it came about. But it is a theory having many
+ramifications and involving much in several lines of science, with
+most of which I am but little acquainted. For the present I have no
+more to say than that if a theory of causation can be worked out, it
+will be the first step toward cure. But&mdash;it may be the only step.
+Don't build hopes!"</p>
+
+<p>Looking Alice and me over carefully, he gave us a each a nerve
+sedative and departed, leaving us with the feeling that here was a man
+of considerably wider learning than might be expected of a small-town
+doctor. In point of fact, we learned that this was the case. The
+specialist has been described as a "man who knows more and more about
+less and less." In Dr. Grosnoff's mind, the "less and less" outweighed
+the "more and more."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">T</span>ristan grew stronger physically; mentally, he was intelligent enough
+to help us and himself by keeping his mind as much as possible off his
+condition, sometimes by sheer force of will. Meantime, Dr. Grosnoff,
+realizing that his patient could not be kept forever tied in bed, had
+assisted me in preparing for his permanent care at home. The device
+was simple; we had just taken his room, remodeled the ceiling as a
+floor, and fitted it with furniture upside down. Most of the problems
+involved in this were fairly simple. The matter of a bath rather
+stumped us for a while, until we hit upon a shower. The jets came up
+from under Tristan's feet, from the point of view of his perceptions;
+he told us that one of the strangest of all his experiences was to see
+the waste water swirl about in the pan <i>over</i> his head, and being
+sucked up the drain as though drawn by some mysterious magnet.</p>
+
+<p>My brother and I shared a flat alone, so there was no servant problem
+to deal with. But he was going to need care as well as companionship,
+and I had to earn my living. For Alice, it was a case where the voice
+of the heart chimed with that of necessity; and I was best man at
+perhaps the weirdest marriage ceremony which ever took place on this
+earth. Held down in bed with the roped sheet, all betraying signs
+carefully concealed, Tristan was married to Alice by an unsuspecting
+dominie who took it all for one of those ordinary, though romantic
+sick-bed affairs.</p>
+
+<p>From the first, Tristan felt better and more secure in his special
+quarters, and was now able to move about quite freely within his
+limits; though such were his mental reactions that for his comfort we
+had to refinish the floor to look like a plaster ceiling, to eliminate
+as far as possible the upside-down suggestions left in the room, and
+to keep the windows closely shaded. I soon found that the sight of me,
+or any one else, walking upside down&mdash;to him&mdash;was very painful; only
+in the case of Alice did other considerations remove the
+unpleasantness.</p>
+
+<p>Little by little the accumulation of experience brought to my mind the
+full and vivid horror of what the poor lad had suffered and was
+suffering. Why, when he had looked out of that window into the sky, he
+was looking <i>down</i> into a bottomless abyss, from which he was
+sustained only by the frail plaster and planking under his feet! The
+whole earth, with its trees and buildings, was suspended over his
+head, seemingly about to fall at any moment with him into the depths;
+the sun at noon glared <i>upward</i> from the depths of an inferno,
+lighting from <i>below</i> the somber earth suspended overhead! Thus the
+warm comfort of the sun, which has cheered the heart of man from time
+immemorial, now took on an unearthly, unnatural semblance. I learned
+that he could never quite shake off the feeling that the houses were
+anchored into the earth, suspended only by the embedment of their
+foundations in the soil; that trees were suspended from their roots,
+which groaned with the strain; that soil was held to the bedrock only
+by its cohesion. He even dreaded lest, during storms, the grip of the
+muddy soil be loosened, and the fields fall into the blue! It was only
+when clasped tight in Alice's arms that the horrors wholly left him.</p>
+
+<p>All the reasoning we might use on his mind, or that he himself could
+bring to bear on it, was useless. We found that the sense of up and
+down is ineradicably fixed by the balancing apparatus of the body.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">M</span>eanwhile, his psychology was undergoing strange alterations; the more
+I came to appreciate the actual conditions he was living under, the
+more apparent it seemed to me that he must have a cast-iron mental
+stamina to maintain sanity at all. But he not only did that; he began
+to recover normal strength, and to be irked unbearably by his constant
+confinement. So it came about that he began to venture a little at a
+time from his room, wandering about on the ceiling of the rest of the
+house. However, he could not yet look out of windows, but sidled up to
+them with averted face to draw any blinds that were up.</p>
+
+<p>As he grew increasingly restless, we all felt more and more that the
+thing could not continue as it was; some way out must be found. We had
+many a talk with Grosnoff, at last inducing him to speak about the
+still half-formed theory which he had dimly conceived at the first.</p>
+
+<p>"For a good many decades," he said, "there have been a few who
+regarded the close analogies between magnetism and gravitational
+action as symptomatic of a concealed identity between them. Einstein's
+'Field Theory' practically proves it on the mathematical side. Now it
+is obvious that if gravitation is a form of magnetism&mdash;and if so it
+belongs to another plane of magnetic forces than that which we know
+and use&mdash;then the objects on a planet must have the opposite polarity
+from that of the planet itself. Since the globe is itself a magnet,
+with a positive and negative pole, its attraction power is not that of
+a magnet on any plane, because then the human race would be divided
+into two species, each polarized in the sign opposite to its own
+pole; when an individual of either race reached the equator, he would
+become weightless, and when he crossed it, would be repelled into
+space."</p>
+
+<p>"Lord!" I said. "There would be a plot for one of your scientific
+fiction writers!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">"I</span>&nbsp;can present you with another," said Dr. Grosnoff. "How do we know
+whether another planet would have the opposite sign to our own
+bodies?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well," I chuckled, "they'll find that out soon enough when the first
+interplanetary expedition tries to land on on of 'em!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hmf!" grunted the medico. "That'll be the least of their troubles!"</p>
+
+<p>"But you said the polarity couldn't be that of a magnet; then what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you remember the common pith ball of your high school physics
+days? An accumulation of positive electricity repels an accumulation
+of negative&mdash;if indeed we can correctly use 'accumulation' for a
+negativity&mdash;and it is my idea that the earth is the container of a
+gigantic accumulation of this meta&mdash;or hyper-electricity which we are
+postulating; and our bodies contain a charge of the opposite sign."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Doctor, the retention of a charge of static electricity by a
+body in the presence of one of the opposite sign requires insulation
+of the containing bodies; for instance, lightning is a breaking down
+of the air insulation between the ground and a cloud. In our case we
+are constantly in contact with the earth, and the charges would
+equalize."</p>
+
+<p>"Please bear in mind, Jim, that we are not talking about electricity
+as now handled by man, but about some form of it as yet hypothetical.
+We don't know what kind of insulation it would require. We may be
+<i>constitutionally</i> insulated."</p>
+
+<p>"And you think the fire-ball broke down that insulation by the shock
+to Tristan's system?" I asked. The logic of the thing was shaping up
+hazily, but unmistakably. "But, then, why don't we frequently see
+people kiting off the earth as the result of explosions?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>How do you know they haven't?</i> Don't we have plenty of mysterious
+disappearances as the result of explosions, and particularly,
+strangely large numbers of missing in a major war?"</p>
+
+<p>My blood chilled. The world was beginning to seem a pretty awful
+place.</p>
+
+<p>Grosnoff saw my disturbance, and placed a reassuring hand on my
+shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid," he said, smiling, "that I rather yielded to the
+temptation to get a rise out of you. That suggestion <i>might</i> be
+unpleasantly true under special circumstances. But I particularly have
+an eye out for the special capacities of that weird and rare
+phenomenon, the fire-ball. It isn't impossible that the energy of the
+fire-ball went into the re-polarization rather than into a destructive
+concussion&mdash;hence Tristan's escape."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean its effect is <i>qualitatively</i> different from that of any
+other explosion?"</p>
+
+<p>"It may be so. It is known to be an electric conglomeration of some
+kind&mdash;but that's all."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">M</span>eantime circumstances were not going well with us; the financial
+burden of Tristan's support, added to the strain of the situation, was
+becoming overwhelming. Tristan knew this and felt it keenly; this
+brought him to a momentous decision. He looked down at us from the
+ceiling one day with an expression of unusual tenseness, and
+announced that he was going out permanently, and to take part in the
+world again.</p>
+
+<p>"I've gotten now so that I can bear to look out of the windows quite
+well. It's only a matter of time and practise until I can stand the
+open. After all, it isn't any worse than being a steel worker or
+steeplejack. Even if the worst came to the worst, I'd rather be burst
+open by the frozen vacuum of interstellar space than to splash upon a
+sidewalk before an admiring populace&mdash;and people do <i>that</i> every day!"</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Grosnoff, who was present, expressed great delight. His patient
+was coming along well mentally, at least. Alice sat down, trembling.</p>
+
+<p>"But, good Lord, Tristan," I said, "what possible occupation could you
+follow?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I've brooded over that for weeks, and I've crossed the Rubicon. I
+think we're a long way past such petty things as personal pride. Did
+it ever occur to you that what from one point of view is a monstrous
+catastrophe, from another is an asset?"</p>
+
+<p>"What in the dickens are you talking about?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm talking about the&mdash;the&mdash;" he gulped painfully&mdash;"the stage."</p>
+
+<p>Alice wrung her hands, crying bitterly:</p>
+
+<p>"Wonderful! Splendid! Tristan LeHuber, The World's Unparalleled
+Upside-Down Man! He Doesn't Know Whether He's On His Head Or His
+Heels. He's Always Up In The Air About Something, But You Can't Upset
+Him! Vaudeville To-night&mdash;The Bodongo Brothers, Brilliant Burmese
+Balancers&mdash;Arctic Annie, the Prima Donna of Sealdom, and Tristan
+LeHuber, The Balloon Man&mdash;He Uses An Anchor For A Parachute!" At last
+indeed the LeHuber family will have arrived sensationally in the
+public eye!</p>
+
+<p>"There are," Alice raved, "two billion people on the earth to-day.
+Counting three generations per century, there have been about twelve
+billion of us in the last two hundred years. And out of all those, and
+all the millions and billions before that, we had to be picked for
+this loathsome cosmic joke&mdash;just little us for all that distinction!
+Why, oh, why? If our romance <i>had</i> to be spoiled by a tragedy smeared
+across the billboards of notoriety, why couldn't it have been in some
+decent, human sort of way? Why this ghastly absurdity?"</p>
+
+<p>"From time immemorial," said Grosnoff, "there have been men who sought
+to excite the admiration of their fellows, to get themselves
+worshiped, to dominate, to collect perquisites, by developing some
+wonderful personal power or another. From Icarus on down, levitation
+or its equivalent has been a favorite. The ecstatics of medieval
+times, the Hindu Yogis, even the day-dreaming schoolboy, have had
+visions of floating in air before the astounding multitudes by a mere
+act of will. The frequency of 'flying dreams' may indicate such a
+thing as a possibility in nature. Tradition says many have
+accomplished it. If so, it was by a reversal of polarity through <i>an
+act of will</i>. Those who did it&mdash;Yogis&mdash;believed in successive lives on
+earth. If they were right about the one, why not the other? Suppose
+one who had developed that power of will, carried it to another birth,
+where it lay dormant in the subconscious until set off uncontrolled by
+some special shock?"</p>
+
+<p>Alice paled.</p>
+
+<p>"Then Tristan might have been&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"He might. Then again, maybe my brain is addled by this thing. In any
+case, the moral is: don't monkey with Nature! She's particular."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">T</span>ristan's vaudeville scheme was not as easily realized as said. The
+first manager to whom we applied was stubbornly skeptical in spite of
+Tristan's appearance standing upside down in stilts heavily weighted
+at the ground ends; and even after his resistance was broken down in a
+manner which left him gasping and a little woozy, began to reason
+unfavorably in a hard-headed way. Audiences, he explained, were off
+levitation acts. Too old. No matter what you did, they'd lay it to
+concealed wires, and yawn. Even if you called a committee from the
+audience, the committee itself would merely be sore at not being able
+to solve the trick; the audience would consider the committee a fake
+or merely dumb. And all that would take too much time for an act of
+that kind.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yeh, I know! It's got me goin', all right. But I can't think like
+me about this sorta thing. I got to think like the audience does&mdash;or
+go outa business!"</p>
+
+<p>After which solid but unprofitable lesson in psychology, we dropped
+the last vestige of pride and tried a circus sideshow. But the results
+were similar.</p>
+
+<p>"Nah, the rubes don't wear celluloid collars any more. Ya can't slip
+any wire tricks over on 'em!"</p>
+
+<p>"But he can do this in a big topless tent, or even out in an open
+field, if you like."</p>
+
+<p>"Nope&mdash;steel rods run up the middle of a rope has been done before."</p>
+
+<p>"Steel rods in a rope which the people see uncoil from the ground in
+front of their eyes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they'd think of somethin' else, then. I'm tellin' ya, it won't
+go! Sure, people like to be fooled, but they want it to be done
+<i>right</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes!" I sneered. "And a hell of a lot of people have fooled
+themselves <i>right</i> about this matter, too!"</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me curiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Say, have ya really got somethin' up y'r sleeve?"</p>
+
+<p>"You'd be surprised!"</p>
+
+<p>Thus he grudgingly gave us a chance for a tryout; and he was surprised
+indeed. But on thinking it over, he decided like the vaudeville man.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen!" said Tristan suddenly, in a voice of desperation. "I'll do a
+parachute jump into the sky, and land on an airplane!"</p>
+
+<p>"Tristan!" shrieked Alice, in horror.</p>
+
+<p>The circus man nearly lost his cigar, then bit it in two.</p>
+
+<p>"Sa-ay&mdash;what the&mdash;I'll call that right now! I'll get ya the plane and
+chute if y'll put up a deposit to cover the cost. If ya do it, we'll
+have the best money in the tents; if ya don't, I keep the money!"</p>
+
+<p>"If I don't," said Tristan distinctly, "I'll have not the slightest
+need for the money."</p>
+
+<p>But the airplane idea was out; we could think of no way for him to
+make the landing on such a swiftly-moving vehicle.</p>
+
+<p>Again Alice solved it.</p>
+
+<p>"If you absolutely must break my heart and put me in a sanitarium,"
+she sobbed, "get a blimp!"</p>
+
+<p>Of course! And that is what we did&mdash;on the first attempt coming
+unpleasantly close to doing just that to Alice.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">T</span>he blimp captain was obviously skeptical, and betrayed signs of a
+peeve at having his machine hired for a hoax; but money was money and
+he agreed to obey our instructions meticulously. His tone was
+perfunctory, however, despite my desperate attempts to impress him
+with the seriousness of the matter; and that nonchalance of his came
+near to having dire consequences.</p>
+
+<p>The captain was supplied with a sort of boat-hook with instructions to
+steer his course to reach the parachute ropes as it passed him on its
+upward flight. And he was seriously warned of the fact that, after the
+chute reached two or three thousand feet, its speed would increase
+because of the rarefaction of the air; and in case of a miss, it would
+become constantly harder to overtake. These directions he received
+with a scornful half smile; obviously he never expected to see the
+chute open.</p>
+
+<p>We got all set, the blimp circling overhead, Tristan upside down in
+his seat suspended skyward, a desperately grim look on his face; and
+Alice almost in collapse. We were all spared the agony of several
+hundred feet of unbroken fall; the parachute was open on the ground,
+and rose at a leisurely speed, but too fast at that for the comfort of
+any of us. I don't think the wondering crowd and the dumbfounded
+circus people ever saw a stranger sight than that chute drifting
+upward into the blue. We heard nothing of "hidden wires," then or ever
+after! The white circle grew pitifully small and forlorn against the
+fathomless azure; and suddenly we noticed that the blimp seemed to be
+merely drifting with the wind, making no attempt to get under&mdash;or
+over&mdash;Tristan. Our hearts labored painfully. Had the engines broken
+down? Alice buried her face against my sleeve with a moan.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't look ... tell me!"</p>
+
+<p>I tried to&mdash;in a voice which I vainly tried to make steady.</p>
+
+<p>All at once the blimp went into frenzied activity&mdash;we learned
+afterwards that its crew of three, captain included, had been so
+completely paralyzed by the reality of the event that they had
+forgotten what they were there for until almost too late. Now we heard
+the high note of its overdriven engines as it rolled and rocked toward
+the rising chute. For a moment the white spot showed against its gray
+side, then tossed and pitched wildly in the wake of the propellers as,
+driven too hastily and frenziedly, the ship overshot its mark and the
+captain missed his grab.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">I</span>&nbsp;could only squeeze Alice tightly and choke as the aerial objects
+parted company and the blue gap between them widened. Instantly, avid
+to retrieve his mistake, the captain swung his craft in a wild careen
+around and a spiral upward. But he tried to do too many things at a
+time&mdash;make too much altitude and headway both at once. The blimp
+pitched steeply upward to a standstill, barely moving toward the
+parachute. Quickly it sloped downward again and gathered speed,
+nearing the chute, and then making a desperate zoom upward on its
+momentum. Mistake number three! He had waited too long before using
+his elevator; and the chute fled hopelessly away just ahead of the
+uptilted nose of the blimp. I could only moan, and Alice made no sound
+or movement.</p>
+
+<p>Next we saw the blimp's water ballast streaming earthward in the sun,
+and it was put into a long, steady spiral in pursuit of the parachute,
+whose speed&mdash;or so it seemed to my agonized gaze&mdash;was now noticeably
+on the increase. The altitude seemed appallingly great; the blimp's
+ceiling, I knew, was only about twenty thousand; and my brother, even
+if not frozen to death by that time, would be traveling far faster
+then than any climbing speed the blimp could make; as his fall
+increased in speed, the climb of the bag decreased.</p>
+
+<p>At last, with a quiver of renewed hope, I saw the blimp narrowing down
+its spirals&mdash;it was overtaking! Smaller and smaller grew both
+objects&mdash;but so did the gap between them! At last they merged, the
+tiny white dot and the little gray minnow. In one long agony I waited
+to see whether the gap would open out again. Lord of Hosts&mdash;the blimp
+was slanting steeply downward; the parachute had vanished!</p>
+
+<p>Then at last I paid some attention to the totally limp form in my
+arms; and a few minutes later, amid an insane crowd, a pitifully
+embarrassed and nerve-shaken dirigible navigator was helping me lift
+my heavily-wrapped, shivering brother from the gondola, while the
+mechanics turned their attention to the overdriven engines and wracked
+framing. Did I say "helping me lift?" Such is the force of habit&mdash;but
+verily, a new nomenclature would have to come into being to deal
+adequately with such a life as my poor brother's!</p>
+
+<p>Tristan seized my hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Jim!" he said through chattering teeth, "I'm cured&mdash;cured of the
+awful fear! That second time he missed, I just gave up entirely; I
+didn't care any longer. And then somehow I felt such a sense of peace
+and freedom&mdash;there weren't any upside-down things around to torture
+me, no sense of insecurity. I just was, in a great blue quiet; it
+wasn't like falling at all; no awful shock to meet, no sickness or
+pain&mdash;just quietly floating along from Here to There, with no
+particular dividing line between, anywhere. The cold hurt, of course,
+but somehow it didn't seem to matter, and was getting better when they
+caught me. But now&mdash;I can do things you never even imagined!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">T</span>hus began my brother's real public career&mdash;he had arrived. After that
+he was able to name his own compensation, and shortly during his
+tours, began to sport a private dirigible of his own, which he often
+used for jumps between stands. He told me jokingly that it was very
+fitting transportation for him, as his hundred and sixty pound lift
+saved quite a bit of expense for helium!</p>
+
+<p>He developed an astonishing set of tricks. After the jump, he would
+arrive on the field suspended above the dirigible doing trapeze
+tricks. After that, in the show tent, he would go through some more of
+them, with a few hair raisers of his own invention, one of which
+consisted of apparently letting go the rope by accident and shooting
+skyward with a wild shriek, only to be caught at the end of a fine,
+especially woven piano wire cable attached to a spring safety belt,
+the cable being in turn fastened into the end of the rope.</p>
+
+<p>Needless to say, Alice was unable to wax enthusiastic about any of
+these feats, though she loyally accompanied him in his travels. She
+would sit in the tent gazing at him with a horrible fascination, and
+month by month grew thinner and more strained. Tristan felt her stress
+deeply; but was making money so fast that we all felt that in a short
+time, if not able to finance the discovery of a cure, at least he
+could retire and live a safer life. And he found his ideal haven of
+rest&mdash;in a Pennsylvania coal mine! Thus, the project grew in his mind,
+of buying an abandoned mine and fitting it with comfortable and
+spacious inverted quarters, environed with fungus gardens, air ferns
+and the like, plants which could be trained to grow upside down; he
+emerging only for necessary sun baths.</p>
+
+<p>As time went on, I really grew accustomed to the situation, though
+seeing less and less of Tristan and Alice; during summers they were on
+tour, and in winter were quartered in Tristan's coal mine, which had
+become a reality.</p>
+
+<p>So one summer day when the circus stopped at a small town where I was
+taking vacation, I was overjoyed at the opportunity to see them. I
+timed myself to get there as the afternoon performance was over, but
+arrived a little early, and went on into the untopped tent.</p>
+
+<p>Tristan waved an inverted greeting at me from his poise on his
+trapeze, and I watched for a few minutes. There was an odd mood about
+the crowd that day, largely due to a group of loud-mouthed
+hill-billies from the back country&mdash;the sort which is so ignorant as
+to live in perpetual fear of getting "something slipped over," and so
+disbelieves everything it is told, looking for something ulterior
+behind every exterior. Having duly exposed to their own satisfaction
+the strong man's "wooden dumbbells," the snake charmer's rubber
+serpents, the fat woman's pillows, and the bearded lady's false
+whiskers (I don't know what they did about the living skeleton), these
+fellows were now gaping before Tristan's platform, and growing hostile
+as their rather inadequate brains failed to cook up any damaging
+explanation.</p>
+
+<p>"Yah!" yelled a long-necked, flap-eared youth, suddenly. "He's got an
+iron bar in that rope!" They had come too late to see the parachute
+drop. Tristan grinned and pulled himself down the rope, which of
+course fell limp behind him. At this, the crowd jeered and booed the
+too-hasty youth, who became so resentfully abusive of Tristan that one
+of the attendants pushed him out of the tent. As he passed me, I
+caught fragments of wrathy words:</p>
+
+<p>"Wisht I had a ... Show'm whether it's a fake...."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">T</span>ristan closed his act by dropping full-length to the end of his
+invisible wire, then pulled himself down, got into his stilts, and was
+unfastening the belt, when the manager rushed in with a request that
+he repeat, for the benefit of a special party just arrived on a
+delayed train.</p>
+
+<p>"Go on and look at the animals, old man." Tristan called to me. "I'll
+be with you in about half an hour!"</p>
+
+<p>I strolled out idly, meeting on the way the flap-eared youth, who
+seemed bent on making his way back into the tent, wearing a mingled
+air of furtiveness, of triumph, and anticipation. Wondering casually
+just what kind of fool the lad was planning to make of himself next, I
+wandered on toward the main entrance&mdash;only to be stopped by an
+appalling uproar behind me. There was a raucous, gurgling shriek of
+mortal terror; the loud composite "O-o-o!" of a shocked or astonished
+crowd; a set of fervent curses directed at some one; loud confused
+babbling, and then a woman's voice raised in a seemingly endless
+succession of hysterical shrieks. Thinking that an animal had gotten
+loose, or something of that kind, I wheeled. Unmistakably the racket
+came from Tristan's own tent.</p>
+
+<p>Cold dread clutching at my heart, and with lead on my boot soles, I
+rushed frantically back. At the entrance I was held by a mad onrush of
+humanity for some moments. When I reached the platform, Tristan was
+not in sight. Then I noticed the long-necked boy sitting on the
+platform with his face in his hands, shrieking:</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't mean to! I didn't mean to! Damn it, don't touch me! I
+thought sure it was a fake!"</p>
+
+<p>I saw a new, glittering jack-knife lying on the platform beside the
+limp, foot-long stub of Tristan's rope. Slowly, frozenly, I raised my
+eyes. The blue abyss was traceless of any object....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Disowned, by Victor Endersby
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+</body>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Disowned, by Victor Endersby
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Disowned
+
+Author: Victor Endersby
+
+Release Date: July 12, 2009 [EBook #29384]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DISOWNED ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         Transcriber's Note:
+
+   This etext was produced from Astounding Stories September 1932.
+   Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the
+   U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
+
+
+
+         [Illustration: "_Wonderful! The World's Unparalleled
+                          Upside-Down Man_!"]
+
+
+
+                               Disowned
+
+
+                          By Victor Endersby
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+[Sidenote: The tragic misadventure of a man to whom the sky became an
+appalling abyss, drawing him ever upward.]
+
+
+The sky sagged downward, bellying blackly with a sudden summer rain,
+giving me a vision of catching my train in sodden clothing after the
+short-cut across the fields, which I was taking in company with my
+brother Tristan and his fiancee.
+
+The sullen atmosphere ripped apart with an electric glare; our ears
+quivered to the throbbing sky, while huge drops, jarred loose from the
+air by the thunder-impact, splattered sluggishly, heavily, about us.
+Little breezes swept out from the storm center, lifting the undersides
+of the long grass leaves to view in waves of lighter green. I
+complained peevishly.
+
+"Ah, mop up!" said Tristan. "You've plenty of time, and there's the
+big oak! It's as dry under there as a cave!"
+
+"I think that'll be fun!" twittered Alice. "To wait out a
+thunder-storm under a tree!"
+
+"Under a tree?" I said. "Hardly! I'm not hankering to furnish myself
+as an exhibit on the physiological effects of a lightning stroke--no,
+sir!"
+
+"Rats!" said Tristan. "All that's a fairy-tale--trees being dangerous
+in a thunder-storm!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The rain now beat through our thin summer clothing, as Tristan seized
+Alice's hand and towed her toward the spreading shelter. I followed
+them at first, then began to lag with an odd unwillingness. I had been
+only half serious in my objection, but all at once that tree exercised
+an odd repulsion on me; an imaginary picture of the electric fluid
+coursing through my shriveling nerve-channels grew unpleasantly vivid.
+
+Suddenly I knew I was not going under that tree. I stopped dead,
+pulling my hat brim down behind to divert the rivulet coursing down
+the back of my neck, calling to the others in a voice rather cracked
+from embarrassment. They looked back at me curiously, and Alice began
+to twit me, standing in the rain, while Tristan desired to know
+whether we thought we were a pair of goldfish; in his estimation, we
+might belong to the piscine tribe all right, but not to that
+decorative branch thereof. To be frank, he used the term "suckers."
+Feeling exceptionally foolish, I planted myself doggedly in the
+soaking grass as Alice turned to dash for the tree.
+
+Then the thing happened; the thing which to this hour makes the fabric
+of space with its unknown forces seem an insecure and eery garment for
+the body of man. Over the slight rise beyond the tree, as the air
+crackled, roared and shook under the thunder-blasts, there appeared an
+object moving in long, leisurely bounds, drifting before the wind, and
+touching the ground lightly each time. It was about eighteen inches in
+diameter, globular, glowing with coruscating fires, red, green, and
+yellow; a thing of unearthly and wholly sinister beauty.
+
+Alice poised with one foot half raised, and shrieked at Tristan, half
+terrified, half elated at the sight. He wheeled quickly, there under
+the tree, and slowly backed away as the thing drifted in to keep him
+company in his shelter. We could not see his face, but there was a
+stiffness to his figure indicating something like fear. Suddenly
+things I had read rose into my memory. This was one of those objects
+variously called "fire-balls," "globe-lightning," "meteors," and the
+like.
+
+I also recalled the deadly explosive potencies said to be sometimes
+possessed by such entities, and called out frantically:
+
+"Tristan! Don't touch it! Get away quickly, but don't disturb the
+air!"
+
+He heard me and, as the object wavered about in the comparative calm
+under the tree, drifting closer to him, started to obey. But it
+suddenly approached his face, and seized with a reckless terror, he
+snatched off his hat and batted at it as one would at a pestilent bee.
+Instantly there was a blinding glare, a stunning detonation, and a
+violent air-wave which threw me clear off my feet and to the ground. I
+sat up blindly with my vision full of opalescent lights and my ears
+ringing, unable to hear, see, or think.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Slowly my senses came back; I saw Alice struggling upright in the
+grass before me. She cast a quick glance toward the tree, then, still
+on her knees, covered her face and shuddered. For a long time, it
+seemed, I gazed toward the tree without sight conveying any mental
+effect whatever. Quite aside from my dazed state, the thing was too
+bizarre; it gave no foothold to experience for the erection of
+understanding.
+
+My brother's body lay, or hung, or rested--what term could describe
+it?--with his stomach across the _under_ side of a large limb a few
+feet above where he had stood. He was doubled up like a hairpin, his
+abdomen pressed tightly up against this bough, and his arms, legs and
+head extended stiffly, straightly, skyward.
+
+Getting my scattered faculties and discoordinate limbs together, I
+made my way to the tree, the gruesome thought entering my mind that
+Tristan's body had been transfixed by some downward-pointing snag as
+it was blown up against the limb, and that the strange stiffness of
+his limbs was due to some ghastly sudden rigor mortis brought on by
+electric shock. Dazed with horror and grief, I reached up to his
+clothing and pulled gently, braced for the shock of the falling body.
+It remained immovable against the bough. A harder tug brought no
+results either. Gathering up all my courage against the vision of the
+supposed snag tearing its rough length out of the poor flesh, I leaped
+up, grasping the body about chest and hips, and hung. It came loose at
+once, without any tearing resistance such as I had expected, but
+manifesting a strong elastic pull upward, as though some one were
+pulling it with a rope; as I dropped back to the ground with it, the
+upward resistance remained unchanged. Nearly disorganized entirely by
+this phenomenon, it occurred to me that his belt or some of his
+clothing was still caught, and I jerked sidewise to pull it loose. It
+did not loosen, but I found myself suddenly out from under the tree,
+my brother dragging upward from my arms until my toes almost left the
+ground. And there was obviously no connection between him and the
+tree--or between him and anything else but myself, for that matter. At
+this I went weak; my arms relaxed despite my will, and an incredible
+fact happened: I found the body sliding skyward through my futile
+grasp. Desperately I got my hands clasped together about his wrist,
+this last grip almost lifting me from the earth; his legs and
+remaining arm streamed fantastically skyward. Through the haze which
+seemed to be finally drowning my amazed and tortured soul, I knew that
+my fingers were slipping through one another, and that in another
+instant my brother would be gone. Gone--where? Why and how?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a sudden shriek, and the impact of a frantic body against
+mine, as Alice, whom I had quite forgotten, made a skyward running
+jump and clasped the arm frantically to her bosom with both her own.
+With vast relief, I loosed my cramped fingers--only to feel her silken
+garments begin to slide skyward against my cheek. It was more instinct
+than sense which made me clutch at her legs. God, had I not done that!
+As it was, I held both forms anchored with only a slight pull, waiting
+dumbly for the next move--quite _non compos_ by this time, I think.
+
+"Quick, Jim!" she shrieked. "Quick, under the tree! I can't hold him
+long!"
+
+Very glad indeed to be told what to do, I obeyed. Under her direction
+we got the body under a low limb and wedged up against it, where with
+our feet both now on the ground, we balanced it with little effort.
+Feverishly, once more at her initiative, we took off our belts and
+strapped it firmly; whereupon we collapsed in one another's arms,
+shuddering, beneath it.
+
+The blase reader may consider that we here manifested the characters
+of sensitive weaklings. But let him undergo the like! The
+supernatural, or seemingly so, has always had power to chill the
+hottest blood. And here was an invisible horror reaching out of the
+sky for its prey, without any of the ameliorating trite features which
+would temper an encounter with the alleged phenomena of ghostland.
+
+For a time we sat under that fatal tree listening to the dreary drench
+of rain pouring off the leaves, quivering nerve-shaken to the
+thunderclaps. Lacking one another, we had gone mad; it was the
+beginning of a mutual dependence in the face of the unprecedented,
+which was to grow to something greater during the bizarre days to
+follow.
+
+There was no need of words for each of us to know that the other was
+struggling frantically for a little rational light on the _outre_
+catastrophe in which we were entangled.
+
+It never once occurred to us that my brother might still be
+alive--until a long shuddering groan sounded above us. In combined
+horror and joy we sprang up. He was twisting weakly in the belts,
+muttering deliriously. We unfastened him and pulled him to the ground,
+where I sat on his knees while she pressed down on his shoulders, and
+so kept him recumbent, both horrified at the insistent lift of his
+body under us.
+
+She kissed him frantically and stroked his cheeks, I feeling utterly
+without resource. He grew stronger, muttered wildly, and his eyes
+opened, staring upward through the tree limbs. He became silent, and
+stiffened, gazing fixedly upward with a horror in his wild blue gaze
+which chilled our blood. What did he see there--what dire other-world
+thing dragging him into the depths of space? Shortly his eyes closed,
+and he ceased to mutter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I took his legs under my arms--the storm was clearing now--and we set
+out for home with gruesomely buoyant steps, the insistent pull
+remaining steady. Would it increase? We gazed upward with terrified
+eyes, becoming calmer by degree as conditions remained unchanged.
+
+When the country house loomed near across the last field, Alice
+faltered:
+
+"Jim, we can't take him right in like this!"
+
+I stopped.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Oh, because--because--it's too ridiculously awful. I don't know just
+how to say it--oh, can't you see it yourself?"
+
+In a dim way, I saw it. No cultured person cares to be made a center
+of public interest, unless on grounds of respect. To come walking in
+in this fashion, buoyed balloon-like by the body of this loved one,
+and before the members of a frivolous, gaping house party--ah, even I
+could imagine the mingled horror and derision, the hysterics among the
+women, perhaps. Nor would it stop there. Rumors--and heaven only knows
+what distortions such rumors might undergo, having their source in the
+incredible--would range our social circle like wildfire. And the
+newspapers, for our families are established and known--no, it
+wouldn't go.
+
+I tied Tristan to a stile and called up Jack Briggs, our host, from a
+neighboring house, explained briefly that Tristan had met with an
+accident, asked him to say nothing, and explained where to bring the
+machine. In ten minutes he had maneuvered the heavy sedan across the
+rough wet fields. And then we had another problem on our hands: to let
+Jack into what had happened without shocking him into uselessness. It
+was not until we got him to test Tristan's eery buoyancy with his own
+hands that we were able to make him understand the real nature of our
+problem. And after that, his comments remained largely gibberish for
+some time. However, he was even quicker than we were to see the need
+for secrecy--he had vivid visions of the political capital which
+opposing newspapers would make of any such occurrence at his
+party--and so we arranged a plan. According to which we drove to the
+back of the house, explained to the curious who rushed out that
+Tristan had been injured by a stroke of lightning, and rushed the
+closely wrapped form up to his room, feeling a great relief at having
+something solid between us and the sky. While Jack went downstairs to
+dismiss the party as courteously as possible, Alice and I tied my
+brother to the bed with trunk straps. Whereupon the bed and patient
+plumped lightly but decisively against the ceiling as soon as we
+removed our weight. While we gazed upward open mouthed, Jack returned.
+His faculties were recovering better than ours, probably because his
+affections were not so involved, and he gave the answer at once.
+
+"Ah, hell!" said he. "Pull the damn bed down and spike it to the
+floor!" This we did. Then we held a short but intense consultation.
+Whatever else might be the matter, obviously Tristan was suffering
+severely from shock and, for all we knew, maybe from partial
+electrocution. So we called up Dr. Grosnoff in the nearest town.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Grosnoff after our brief but disingenuous explanation, threw off the
+bed covers in a business-like way, then straightened up grimly.
+
+"And may I ask," he said with sarcastic politeness, "since when a
+strait-jacket has become first-aid for a case of lightning stroke?"
+
+"He was delirious," I stammered.
+
+"Delirious my eye! He's as quiet as a lamb. And you've tied him down
+so tightly that the straps are cutting right into him! Of all
+the--the--" He stopped, evidently feeling words futile, and before we
+could make an effective attempt to stop him, whipped out a knife and
+cut the straps. Tristan's unfortunate body instantly crashed against
+the ceiling, smashing the lathing and plaster, and remaining half
+embedded in the ruins. A low cry of pain rose from Alice. Dr. Grosnoff
+staggered to a chair and sat down, his eyes fixed on the ceiling with
+a steady stare--the odd caricature of a man coolly studying an
+interesting phenomenon.
+
+My brother appeared to be aroused by the shock, struggling about in
+his embedment, and finally sat up. Up? _Down_, I mean. Then he
+_stood_, _on the ceiling_, and began to walk! His nose had been
+bruised by the impact, and I noticed with uncomprehending wonder that
+the blood moved slowly _upward_ over his lip. He saw the window, and
+walked across the ceiling to it upside down. There he pushed the top
+of the window down and leaned out, gazing up into the sky with some
+sort of fascination. Instantly he crouched on the ceiling, hiding his
+eyes, while the house rang with shriek after shriek of mortal terror,
+speeding the packing of the parting guests. Alice seized my arm, her
+fingers cutting painfully into the flesh.
+
+"Jim," she screamed. "I see it now--don't you? His gravity's all
+changed around--he weighs _up_! He thinks the sky's _under_ him!"
+
+The human mind is so constructed that merely to name a thing oddly
+smooths its unwonted outlines to the grasp of the mind; the conception
+of a simple reversal of my brother's weight, I think, saved us all
+from the padded cell. That made it so commonplace, such an everyday
+sort of thing, likely to happen to anybody. The ordinary phenomenon of
+gravitation is no whit more mysterious, in all truth, than that which
+we were now witnessing--but we are born to _it_!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dr. Grosnoff recovered in a manner which showed considerable caliber.
+
+"Well," he grunted, "that being the case, we'd best be looking after
+him. Nervous shock, possible electric shock and electric burns,
+psychasthenia--that's going to be a long-drawn affair--bruises, maybe
+a little concussion, and possibly internal injury--that was equivalent
+to a ten-foot unbroken fall flat on his stomach, and I'll never
+forgive myself if.... Get me a chair!"
+
+With infinite care and reassuring words, the big doctor with our help
+pulled my brother down, the latter frantically begging us not to let
+him "fall" again. Holding him securely on the bed and trying to
+reassure him, Grosnoff said:
+
+"Straps and ropes won't do. His whole weight hangs in them--they'll
+cut him unmercifully. Take a sheet, tie the corners with ropes, and
+let him lie in that like a hammock!"
+
+It took many reassurances as to the strength of this arrangement
+before Tristan was at comparative peace. Dr. Grosnoff effected an
+examination by slacking off the ropes until Tristan lay a couple of
+feet clear of the bed, then himself lay on the mattress face up,
+prodding the patient over.
+
+The examination concluded, he informed us that Tristan's symptoms were
+simply those of a general physical shock such as would be expected in
+the case of a man standing close to the center of an explosion, though
+from our description of the affair he could not understand how my
+brother had survived at all. The glimmering of an explanation of this
+did not come until a long time afterward. So far as physical condition
+was concerned, Tristan might expect to recover fully in a matter of
+weeks. Mentally--the doctor was not so sure. The boy had gone through
+a terrible experience, and one which was still continuing--might
+continue no one knew how long. We were, said the doctor, up against a
+trick played by the great Sphinx, Nature, and one which, so far as he
+knew, had never before taken place in the history of all mankind.
+
+"There is faintly taking shape in my mind," he said, "the beginning of
+a theory as to how it came about. But it is a theory having many
+ramifications and involving much in several lines of science, with
+most of which I am but little acquainted. For the present I have no
+more to say than that if a theory of causation can be worked out, it
+will be the first step toward cure. But--it may be the only step.
+Don't build hopes!"
+
+Looking Alice and me over carefully, he gave us a each a nerve
+sedative and departed, leaving us with the feeling that here was a man
+of considerably wider learning than might be expected of a small-town
+doctor. In point of fact, we learned that this was the case. The
+specialist has been described as a "man who knows more and more about
+less and less." In Dr. Grosnoff's mind, the "less and less" outweighed
+the "more and more."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tristan grew stronger physically; mentally, he was intelligent enough
+to help us and himself by keeping his mind as much as possible off his
+condition, sometimes by sheer force of will. Meantime, Dr. Grosnoff,
+realizing that his patient could not be kept forever tied in bed, had
+assisted me in preparing for his permanent care at home. The device
+was simple; we had just taken his room, remodeled the ceiling as a
+floor, and fitted it with furniture upside down. Most of the problems
+involved in this were fairly simple. The matter of a bath rather
+stumped us for a while, until we hit upon a shower. The jets came up
+from under Tristan's feet, from the point of view of his perceptions;
+he told us that one of the strangest of all his experiences was to see
+the waste water swirl about in the pan _over_ his head, and being
+sucked up the drain as though drawn by some mysterious magnet.
+
+My brother and I shared a flat alone, so there was no servant problem
+to deal with. But he was going to need care as well as companionship,
+and I had to earn my living. For Alice, it was a case where the voice
+of the heart chimed with that of necessity; and I was best man at
+perhaps the weirdest marriage ceremony which ever took place on this
+earth. Held down in bed with the roped sheet, all betraying signs
+carefully concealed, Tristan was married to Alice by an unsuspecting
+dominie who took it all for one of those ordinary, though romantic
+sick-bed affairs.
+
+From the first, Tristan felt better and more secure in his special
+quarters, and was now able to move about quite freely within his
+limits; though such were his mental reactions that for his comfort we
+had to refinish the floor to look like a plaster ceiling, to eliminate
+as far as possible the upside-down suggestions left in the room, and
+to keep the windows closely shaded. I soon found that the sight of me,
+or any one else, walking upside down--to him--was very painful; only
+in the case of Alice did other considerations remove the
+unpleasantness.
+
+Little by little the accumulation of experience brought to my mind the
+full and vivid horror of what the poor lad had suffered and was
+suffering. Why, when he had looked out of that window into the sky, he
+was looking _down_ into a bottomless abyss, from which he was
+sustained only by the frail plaster and planking under his feet! The
+whole earth, with its trees and buildings, was suspended over his
+head, seemingly about to fall at any moment with him into the depths;
+the sun at noon glared _upward_ from the depths of an inferno,
+lighting from _below_ the somber earth suspended overhead! Thus the
+warm comfort of the sun, which has cheered the heart of man from time
+immemorial, now took on an unearthly, unnatural semblance. I learned
+that he could never quite shake off the feeling that the houses were
+anchored into the earth, suspended only by the embedment of their
+foundations in the soil; that trees were suspended from their roots,
+which groaned with the strain; that soil was held to the bedrock only
+by its cohesion. He even dreaded lest, during storms, the grip of the
+muddy soil be loosened, and the fields fall into the blue! It was only
+when clasped tight in Alice's arms that the horrors wholly left him.
+
+All the reasoning we might use on his mind, or that he himself could
+bring to bear on it, was useless. We found that the sense of up and
+down is ineradicably fixed by the balancing apparatus of the body.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile, his psychology was undergoing strange alterations; the more
+I came to appreciate the actual conditions he was living under, the
+more apparent it seemed to me that he must have a cast-iron mental
+stamina to maintain sanity at all. But he not only did that; he began
+to recover normal strength, and to be irked unbearably by his constant
+confinement. So it came about that he began to venture a little at a
+time from his room, wandering about on the ceiling of the rest of the
+house. However, he could not yet look out of windows, but sidled up to
+them with averted face to draw any blinds that were up.
+
+As he grew increasingly restless, we all felt more and more that the
+thing could not continue as it was; some way out must be found. We had
+many a talk with Grosnoff, at last inducing him to speak about the
+still half-formed theory which he had dimly conceived at the first.
+
+"For a good many decades," he said, "there have been a few who
+regarded the close analogies between magnetism and gravitational
+action as symptomatic of a concealed identity between them. Einstein's
+'Field Theory' practically proves it on the mathematical side. Now it
+is obvious that if gravitation is a form of magnetism--and if so it
+belongs to another plane of magnetic forces than that which we know
+and use--then the objects on a planet must have the opposite polarity
+from that of the planet itself. Since the globe is itself a magnet,
+with a positive and negative pole, its attraction power is not that of
+a magnet on any plane, because then the human race would be divided
+into two species, each polarized in the sign opposite to its own
+pole; when an individual of either race reached the equator, he would
+become weightless, and when he crossed it, would be repelled into
+space."
+
+"Lord!" I said. "There would be a plot for one of your scientific
+fiction writers!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I can present you with another," said Dr. Grosnoff. "How do we know
+whether another planet would have the opposite sign to our own
+bodies?"
+
+"Well," I chuckled, "they'll find that out soon enough when the first
+interplanetary expedition tries to land on on of 'em!"
+
+"Hmf!" grunted the medico. "That'll be the least of their troubles!"
+
+"But you said the polarity couldn't be that of a magnet; then what?"
+
+"Don't you remember the common pith ball of your high school physics
+days? An accumulation of positive electricity repels an accumulation
+of negative--if indeed we can correctly use 'accumulation' for a
+negativity--and it is my idea that the earth is the container of a
+gigantic accumulation of this meta--or hyper-electricity which we are
+postulating; and our bodies contain a charge of the opposite sign."
+
+"But, Doctor, the retention of a charge of static electricity by a
+body in the presence of one of the opposite sign requires insulation
+of the containing bodies; for instance, lightning is a breaking down
+of the air insulation between the ground and a cloud. In our case we
+are constantly in contact with the earth, and the charges would
+equalize."
+
+"Please bear in mind, Jim, that we are not talking about electricity
+as now handled by man, but about some form of it as yet hypothetical.
+We don't know what kind of insulation it would require. We may be
+_constitutionally_ insulated."
+
+"And you think the fire-ball broke down that insulation by the shock
+to Tristan's system?" I asked. The logic of the thing was shaping up
+hazily, but unmistakably. "But, then, why don't we frequently see
+people kiting off the earth as the result of explosions?"
+
+"_How do you know they haven't?_ Don't we have plenty of mysterious
+disappearances as the result of explosions, and particularly,
+strangely large numbers of missing in a major war?"
+
+My blood chilled. The world was beginning to seem a pretty awful
+place.
+
+Grosnoff saw my disturbance, and placed a reassuring hand on my
+shoulder.
+
+"I'm afraid," he said, smiling, "that I rather yielded to the
+temptation to get a rise out of you. That suggestion _might_ be
+unpleasantly true under special circumstances. But I particularly have
+an eye out for the special capacities of that weird and rare
+phenomenon, the fire-ball. It isn't impossible that the energy of the
+fire-ball went into the re-polarization rather than into a destructive
+concussion--hence Tristan's escape."
+
+"You mean its effect is _qualitatively_ different from that of any
+other explosion?"
+
+"It may be so. It is known to be an electric conglomeration of some
+kind--but that's all."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meantime circumstances were not going well with us; the financial
+burden of Tristan's support, added to the strain of the situation, was
+becoming overwhelming. Tristan knew this and felt it keenly; this
+brought him to a momentous decision. He looked down at us from the
+ceiling one day with an expression of unusual tenseness, and
+announced that he was going out permanently, and to take part in the
+world again.
+
+"I've gotten now so that I can bear to look out of the windows quite
+well. It's only a matter of time and practise until I can stand the
+open. After all, it isn't any worse than being a steel worker or
+steeplejack. Even if the worst came to the worst, I'd rather be burst
+open by the frozen vacuum of interstellar space than to splash upon a
+sidewalk before an admiring populace--and people do _that_ every day!"
+
+Dr. Grosnoff, who was present, expressed great delight. His patient
+was coming along well mentally, at least. Alice sat down, trembling.
+
+"But, good Lord, Tristan," I said, "what possible occupation could you
+follow?"
+
+"Oh, I've brooded over that for weeks, and I've crossed the Rubicon. I
+think we're a long way past such petty things as personal pride. Did
+it ever occur to you that what from one point of view is a monstrous
+catastrophe, from another is an asset?"
+
+"What in the dickens are you talking about?" I asked.
+
+"I'm talking about the--the--" he gulped painfully--"the stage."
+
+Alice wrung her hands, crying bitterly:
+
+"Wonderful! Splendid! Tristan LeHuber, The World's Unparalleled
+Upside-Down Man! He Doesn't Know Whether He's On His Head Or His
+Heels. He's Always Up In The Air About Something, But You Can't Upset
+Him! Vaudeville To-night--The Bodongo Brothers, Brilliant Burmese
+Balancers--Arctic Annie, the Prima Donna of Sealdom, and Tristan
+LeHuber, The Balloon Man--He Uses An Anchor For A Parachute!" At last
+indeed the LeHuber family will have arrived sensationally in the
+public eye!
+
+"There are," Alice raved, "two billion people on the earth to-day.
+Counting three generations per century, there have been about twelve
+billion of us in the last two hundred years. And out of all those, and
+all the millions and billions before that, we had to be picked for
+this loathsome cosmic joke--just little us for all that distinction!
+Why, oh, why? If our romance _had_ to be spoiled by a tragedy smeared
+across the billboards of notoriety, why couldn't it have been in some
+decent, human sort of way? Why this ghastly absurdity?"
+
+"From time immemorial," said Grosnoff, "there have been men who sought
+to excite the admiration of their fellows, to get themselves
+worshiped, to dominate, to collect perquisites, by developing some
+wonderful personal power or another. From Icarus on down, levitation
+or its equivalent has been a favorite. The ecstatics of medieval
+times, the Hindu Yogis, even the day-dreaming schoolboy, have had
+visions of floating in air before the astounding multitudes by a mere
+act of will. The frequency of 'flying dreams' may indicate such a
+thing as a possibility in nature. Tradition says many have
+accomplished it. If so, it was by a reversal of polarity through _an
+act of will_. Those who did it--Yogis--believed in successive lives on
+earth. If they were right about the one, why not the other? Suppose
+one who had developed that power of will, carried it to another birth,
+where it lay dormant in the subconscious until set off uncontrolled by
+some special shock?"
+
+Alice paled.
+
+"Then Tristan might have been--"
+
+"He might. Then again, maybe my brain is addled by this thing. In any
+case, the moral is: don't monkey with Nature! She's particular."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tristan's vaudeville scheme was not as easily realized as said. The
+first manager to whom we applied was stubbornly skeptical in spite of
+Tristan's appearance standing upside down in stilts heavily weighted
+at the ground ends; and even after his resistance was broken down in a
+manner which left him gasping and a little woozy, began to reason
+unfavorably in a hard-headed way. Audiences, he explained, were off
+levitation acts. Too old. No matter what you did, they'd lay it to
+concealed wires, and yawn. Even if you called a committee from the
+audience, the committee itself would merely be sore at not being able
+to solve the trick; the audience would consider the committee a fake
+or merely dumb. And all that would take too much time for an act of
+that kind.
+
+"Oh, yeh, I know! It's got me goin', all right. But I can't think like
+me about this sorta thing. I got to think like the audience does--or
+go outa business!"
+
+After which solid but unprofitable lesson in psychology, we dropped
+the last vestige of pride and tried a circus sideshow. But the results
+were similar.
+
+"Nah, the rubes don't wear celluloid collars any more. Ya can't slip
+any wire tricks over on 'em!"
+
+"But he can do this in a big topless tent, or even out in an open
+field, if you like."
+
+"Nope--steel rods run up the middle of a rope has been done before."
+
+"Steel rods in a rope which the people see uncoil from the ground in
+front of their eyes?"
+
+"Well, they'd think of somethin' else, then. I'm tellin' ya, it won't
+go! Sure, people like to be fooled, but they want it to be done
+_right_!"
+
+"Yes!" I sneered. "And a hell of a lot of people have fooled
+themselves _right_ about this matter, too!"
+
+He looked at me curiously.
+
+"Say, have ya really got somethin' up y'r sleeve?"
+
+"You'd be surprised!"
+
+Thus he grudgingly gave us a chance for a tryout; and he was surprised
+indeed. But on thinking it over, he decided like the vaudeville man.
+
+"Listen!" said Tristan suddenly, in a voice of desperation. "I'll do a
+parachute jump into the sky, and land on an airplane!"
+
+"Tristan!" shrieked Alice, in horror.
+
+The circus man nearly lost his cigar, then bit it in two.
+
+"Sa-ay--what the--I'll call that right now! I'll get ya the plane and
+chute if y'll put up a deposit to cover the cost. If ya do it, we'll
+have the best money in the tents; if ya don't, I keep the money!"
+
+"If I don't," said Tristan distinctly, "I'll have not the slightest
+need for the money."
+
+But the airplane idea was out; we could think of no way for him to
+make the landing on such a swiftly-moving vehicle.
+
+Again Alice solved it.
+
+"If you absolutely must break my heart and put me in a sanitarium,"
+she sobbed, "get a blimp!"
+
+Of course! And that is what we did--on the first attempt coming
+unpleasantly close to doing just that to Alice.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The blimp captain was obviously skeptical, and betrayed signs of a
+peeve at having his machine hired for a hoax; but money was money and
+he agreed to obey our instructions meticulously. His tone was
+perfunctory, however, despite my desperate attempts to impress him
+with the seriousness of the matter; and that nonchalance of his came
+near to having dire consequences.
+
+The captain was supplied with a sort of boat-hook with instructions to
+steer his course to reach the parachute ropes as it passed him on its
+upward flight. And he was seriously warned of the fact that, after the
+chute reached two or three thousand feet, its speed would increase
+because of the rarefaction of the air; and in case of a miss, it would
+become constantly harder to overtake. These directions he received
+with a scornful half smile; obviously he never expected to see the
+chute open.
+
+We got all set, the blimp circling overhead, Tristan upside down in
+his seat suspended skyward, a desperately grim look on his face; and
+Alice almost in collapse. We were all spared the agony of several
+hundred feet of unbroken fall; the parachute was open on the ground,
+and rose at a leisurely speed, but too fast at that for the comfort of
+any of us. I don't think the wondering crowd and the dumbfounded
+circus people ever saw a stranger sight than that chute drifting
+upward into the blue. We heard nothing of "hidden wires," then or ever
+after! The white circle grew pitifully small and forlorn against the
+fathomless azure; and suddenly we noticed that the blimp seemed to be
+merely drifting with the wind, making no attempt to get under--or
+over--Tristan. Our hearts labored painfully. Had the engines broken
+down? Alice buried her face against my sleeve with a moan.
+
+"I can't look ... tell me!"
+
+I tried to--in a voice which I vainly tried to make steady.
+
+All at once the blimp went into frenzied activity--we learned
+afterwards that its crew of three, captain included, had been so
+completely paralyzed by the reality of the event that they had
+forgotten what they were there for until almost too late. Now we heard
+the high note of its overdriven engines as it rolled and rocked toward
+the rising chute. For a moment the white spot showed against its gray
+side, then tossed and pitched wildly in the wake of the propellers as,
+driven too hastily and frenziedly, the ship overshot its mark and the
+captain missed his grab.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I could only squeeze Alice tightly and choke as the aerial objects
+parted company and the blue gap between them widened. Instantly, avid
+to retrieve his mistake, the captain swung his craft in a wild careen
+around and a spiral upward. But he tried to do too many things at a
+time--make too much altitude and headway both at once. The blimp
+pitched steeply upward to a standstill, barely moving toward the
+parachute. Quickly it sloped downward again and gathered speed,
+nearing the chute, and then making a desperate zoom upward on its
+momentum. Mistake number three! He had waited too long before using
+his elevator; and the chute fled hopelessly away just ahead of the
+uptilted nose of the blimp. I could only moan, and Alice made no sound
+or movement.
+
+Next we saw the blimp's water ballast streaming earthward in the sun,
+and it was put into a long, steady spiral in pursuit of the parachute,
+whose speed--or so it seemed to my agonized gaze--was now noticeably
+on the increase. The altitude seemed appallingly great; the blimp's
+ceiling, I knew, was only about twenty thousand; and my brother, even
+if not frozen to death by that time, would be traveling far faster
+then than any climbing speed the blimp could make; as his fall
+increased in speed, the climb of the bag decreased.
+
+At last, with a quiver of renewed hope, I saw the blimp narrowing down
+its spirals--it was overtaking! Smaller and smaller grew both
+objects--but so did the gap between them! At last they merged, the
+tiny white dot and the little gray minnow. In one long agony I waited
+to see whether the gap would open out again. Lord of Hosts--the blimp
+was slanting steeply downward; the parachute had vanished!
+
+Then at last I paid some attention to the totally limp form in my
+arms; and a few minutes later, amid an insane crowd, a pitifully
+embarrassed and nerve-shaken dirigible navigator was helping me lift
+my heavily-wrapped, shivering brother from the gondola, while the
+mechanics turned their attention to the overdriven engines and wracked
+framing. Did I say "helping me lift?" Such is the force of habit--but
+verily, a new nomenclature would have to come into being to deal
+adequately with such a life as my poor brother's!
+
+Tristan seized my hand.
+
+"Jim!" he said through chattering teeth, "I'm cured--cured of the
+awful fear! That second time he missed, I just gave up entirely; I
+didn't care any longer. And then somehow I felt such a sense of peace
+and freedom--there weren't any upside-down things around to torture
+me, no sense of insecurity. I just was, in a great blue quiet; it
+wasn't like falling at all; no awful shock to meet, no sickness or
+pain--just quietly floating along from Here to There, with no
+particular dividing line between, anywhere. The cold hurt, of course,
+but somehow it didn't seem to matter, and was getting better when they
+caught me. But now--I can do things you never even imagined!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thus began my brother's real public career--he had arrived. After that
+he was able to name his own compensation, and shortly during his
+tours, began to sport a private dirigible of his own, which he often
+used for jumps between stands. He told me jokingly that it was very
+fitting transportation for him, as his hundred and sixty pound lift
+saved quite a bit of expense for helium!
+
+He developed an astonishing set of tricks. After the jump, he would
+arrive on the field suspended above the dirigible doing trapeze
+tricks. After that, in the show tent, he would go through some more of
+them, with a few hair raisers of his own invention, one of which
+consisted of apparently letting go the rope by accident and shooting
+skyward with a wild shriek, only to be caught at the end of a fine,
+especially woven piano wire cable attached to a spring safety belt,
+the cable being in turn fastened into the end of the rope.
+
+Needless to say, Alice was unable to wax enthusiastic about any of
+these feats, though she loyally accompanied him in his travels. She
+would sit in the tent gazing at him with a horrible fascination, and
+month by month grew thinner and more strained. Tristan felt her stress
+deeply; but was making money so fast that we all felt that in a short
+time, if not able to finance the discovery of a cure, at least he
+could retire and live a safer life. And he found his ideal haven of
+rest--in a Pennsylvania coal mine! Thus, the project grew in his mind,
+of buying an abandoned mine and fitting it with comfortable and
+spacious inverted quarters, environed with fungus gardens, air ferns
+and the like, plants which could be trained to grow upside down; he
+emerging only for necessary sun baths.
+
+As time went on, I really grew accustomed to the situation, though
+seeing less and less of Tristan and Alice; during summers they were on
+tour, and in winter were quartered in Tristan's coal mine, which had
+become a reality.
+
+So one summer day when the circus stopped at a small town where I was
+taking vacation, I was overjoyed at the opportunity to see them. I
+timed myself to get there as the afternoon performance was over, but
+arrived a little early, and went on into the untopped tent.
+
+Tristan waved an inverted greeting at me from his poise on his
+trapeze, and I watched for a few minutes. There was an odd mood about
+the crowd that day, largely due to a group of loud-mouthed
+hill-billies from the back country--the sort which is so ignorant as
+to live in perpetual fear of getting "something slipped over," and so
+disbelieves everything it is told, looking for something ulterior
+behind every exterior. Having duly exposed to their own satisfaction
+the strong man's "wooden dumbbells," the snake charmer's rubber
+serpents, the fat woman's pillows, and the bearded lady's false
+whiskers (I don't know what they did about the living skeleton), these
+fellows were now gaping before Tristan's platform, and growing hostile
+as their rather inadequate brains failed to cook up any damaging
+explanation.
+
+"Yah!" yelled a long-necked, flap-eared youth, suddenly. "He's got an
+iron bar in that rope!" They had come too late to see the parachute
+drop. Tristan grinned and pulled himself down the rope, which of
+course fell limp behind him. At this, the crowd jeered and booed the
+too-hasty youth, who became so resentfully abusive of Tristan that one
+of the attendants pushed him out of the tent. As he passed me, I
+caught fragments of wrathy words:
+
+"Wisht I had a ... Show'm whether it's a fake...."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tristan closed his act by dropping full-length to the end of his
+invisible wire, then pulled himself down, got into his stilts, and was
+unfastening the belt, when the manager rushed in with a request that
+he repeat, for the benefit of a special party just arrived on a
+delayed train.
+
+"Go on and look at the animals, old man." Tristan called to me. "I'll
+be with you in about half an hour!"
+
+I strolled out idly, meeting on the way the flap-eared youth, who
+seemed bent on making his way back into the tent, wearing a mingled
+air of furtiveness, of triumph, and anticipation. Wondering casually
+just what kind of fool the lad was planning to make of himself next, I
+wandered on toward the main entrance--only to be stopped by an
+appalling uproar behind me. There was a raucous, gurgling shriek of
+mortal terror; the loud composite "O-o-o!" of a shocked or astonished
+crowd; a set of fervent curses directed at some one; loud confused
+babbling, and then a woman's voice raised in a seemingly endless
+succession of hysterical shrieks. Thinking that an animal had gotten
+loose, or something of that kind, I wheeled. Unmistakably the racket
+came from Tristan's own tent.
+
+Cold dread clutching at my heart, and with lead on my boot soles, I
+rushed frantically back. At the entrance I was held by a mad onrush of
+humanity for some moments. When I reached the platform, Tristan was
+not in sight. Then I noticed the long-necked boy sitting on the
+platform with his face in his hands, shrieking:
+
+"I didn't mean to! I didn't mean to! Damn it, don't touch me! I
+thought sure it was a fake!"
+
+I saw a new, glittering jack-knife lying on the platform beside the
+limp, foot-long stub of Tristan's rope. Slowly, frozenly, I raised my
+eyes. The blue abyss was traceless of any object....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Disowned, by Victor Endersby
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