CLUTCH OF MORPHEUS

Originally published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, Winter 1946.

At the doorway of the building that combined the home and laboratory of Dr. Felder, Wayne Randall almost changed his mind. Then he said, “What the devil. Why not?” and rang the bell. It would, he hoped, embark him on a great adventure—an adventure into a strange world he had never known.

A red-headed girl in a white uniform answered the ring. Wayne caught his breath at the fresh clean beauty of the face framed by the sleek, wavy, auburn hair. At the contrast of that hair with the blue eyes. And at the slim but rounded figure.

Then he was aware that she had spoken, and flushed slightly at the realization of how hard he must have been staring.

“Is Doctor Felder in?” he asked, with embarrassment.

She nodded.

“Do you have an appointment? Dad is retired from active practice, you know. Doing research in anesthesia.”

“I’m not a patient—exactly,” Wayne assured her. “It’s in connection with his research that I’d like to see him. My name is Wayne Randall.”

She opened the door wider.

“Come in, Mr. Randall. I’ll see if he’s busy.”

He waited near a window and watched the comet that hung low in the western sky. And in common with the other millions of people who were watching Rackam’s comet of 1954, Wayne wondered whether the scientists were correct in stating that it would not affect conditions on Earth.

But probably the astronomers knew what they were talking about.

The comet had changed amazingly since its first appearance. From a long graceful curve, its tail had now shortened to a broad-based triangle. In another day or so, comet and tail alike would be invisible from Earth. For it was passing between Earth and sun, on an orbital plane almost coinciding with the Earth. The comet would be lost in the glare of the sun. Even now it was visible for only an hour or two of early evening. Earth would pass through its gaseous tail, was even now entering the outer fringe of those gasses.

Wayne Randall shrugged, and turned from the window. After all, the astrophysicists knew more than he. True, they disagreed as to the exact chemical composition of the comet’s tail, but they were unanimous in saying that it was too tenuous, too insubstantial, to affect Earth or its organic life. It would take hundreds of thousands of cubic feet of the comet’s gasses to equal in density a cubic inch of air, they said.

Well, thought Wayne, if they were that thin, probably the physicists were right. He put the unimportant matter of the comet far back in his mind as the girl reappeared and escorted him to the laboratory.

Dr. Felder, a volatile little man with a pointed sandy beard and heavy shell-rimmed glasses, leaped up from a chair in which he had been sitting before a bench lined with cages.

He pumped Wayne’s hand vigorously.

“Glad to meet you, Doctor Randall,” he said in a voice that matched his handshake. “I can’t recall your name, but so many are doing excellent research in narcosis today. Everybody but me.” He turned back toward the work bench, ran an excited hand through his thinning hair, and then grimaced humorously. “My subjects seem too sleepy. None of these darned guinea pigs will stay awake long enough to act as controls.”

Wayne Randall grinned. He decided he was going to like this excitable little man as well, or almost as well as he could like his auburn-haired daughter.

“But I’m not Doctor Randall, sir,” he explained. “Just plain Wayne Randall, and I’ve done no research in narcosis, except on the guinea pig side. My trouble is the opposite of theirs. They can’t stay awake, and I can’t sleep.”

Dr. Felder’s face fell.

“You mean you have insomnia, Mr. Randall? But that’s not in my line. I don’t—”

“Not insomnia, Doctor,” Wayne cut in. “I’ve never slept. Not once. Not in my whole life.”

Felder’s eyes widened in amazement. “You mean you’re that Randall? The chap Opdycke wrote a monograph about, and about whom Gneiss wrote a whole chapter in his Anatomy of Sleep? And that Leowenstein—”

Wayne nodded.

“When I was a kid back in Oshkosh my parents took me to a good many medicos. They sent me to New York for study. I got write-ups all over the country. Then it died down, and they let me alone a while. In college, I was discovered all over again. Once more they tried to make me into a guinea pig. And after college—”

“You disappeared,” finished Dr. Felder accusingly. “Why? Man, your case is unique in medical annals! You’re invaluable, but you simply disappeared. Why?”

“Possibly, Father,” volunteered the girl, “Mr. Randall didn’t want to be a guinea pig.” Wayne smiled at her gratefully. It wasn’t hard to smile at Marcia Felder.

“That’s about the size of it, Miss Felder,” he stated. “People looked at me as a sort of freak. A person who didn’t even know what sleep was rather frightened them. I had to conceal my identity in order to be accepted by other people and to have friends. I’ve been living under an assumed name ever since my parents died.”

“Hmmm.” Dr. Felder looked thoughtful. “Yes, I can see that. What have you been doing with yourself since then?”

“For a while I held two jobs, so I’d have only eight hours a day to kill. Then I got interested in radio and built myself a shortwave set. Got so interested, in fact, that I gave up my night job so I’d have plenty of time to experiment.”

“Ever feel tired?”

Wayne shook his head energetically.

“Not a bit, ordinarily. Of course if I do a lot of physical work, my muscles feel slightly weary. But a few hours of rest every couple of days, just sitting still, rests them up. And my brain—well, it doesn’t even need that.”

“Quite understandable. It is doubtful if the brain of a normal human ever completely rests. During sleep, it dreams. The mind goes on, but it is divorced from sensual contact with reality through normal nerve impulses, and imagines its own pseudo-impulses in order to— But the puzzling thing about your case, of course, is the ability of your muscles to revive without sleep.

“But I’m forgetting my duty as a host. Let’s go into my office where we can sit down. Come along, Marcia, if you wish. That is, Mr. Randall, if you don’t mind. You see, my daughter helps me in my work.”

Wayne smiled assent. It would be better, he thought, to have Marcia Felder interested in him as an abnormal specimen, than not at all.

“My reason for coming to see you, Doctor,” Wayne explained when they were seated in the office, “is that I’ve read about your new anesthetic you developed, novether. Do you think it would make me unconscious? All other known anesthetics have failed.”

Dr. Felder knitted his fingers together and pondered.

“If I recall correctly the verdict of the doctors who studied you, the consensus was that you are a mutant, that the mutation consists of the restoration to activity of a gland of which man’s ancestors lost the use, somewhere in the evolutionary scale, when they formed the habit of sleep.”

Wayne nodded agreement. “Many lower animals, of course, don’t sleep. Their glands secrete into the blood something which renews cells of the vasomotor mechanism. Forms of life which got the habit of hibernating during certain hours of the day or night gradually became more and more torpid during those periods. The dendrites learned to contract in an ameboid manner, shutting off the mind from nerve impulses. The gland became vestigial or was lost through lack of use, because the cells formed the habit of using this period of torpor for refreshment and—”

He broke off with a grin. “But here I am lecturing someone who knows a thousand times more about anatomy than I do. Forgive me, Doctor.”

“Nothing to forgive. Your statement was correct, if not technically expressed. But why do you wish to be anesthetized?” Wayne leaned forward eagerly.

“Curiosity, Doctor. No other anesthetic does any more to me than make my head buzz a trifle. I’d like to sleep just once, out of sheer cussed curiosity to find out what it’s like. I’d give anything to be unconscious just for a moment. To me it would be as momentous an experience as—as going to the moon would be to you!”

Dr. Felder wavered between a frown and a smile.

“Unethical, of course. But you’ve got me curious, too. If no other anesthetic has worked— Well, take off your shirt and lie down on the table over there. Marcia, get the machine.”

Ten minutes later there was amazement on Dr. Felder’s face as he lifted the cone and signaled Marcia to stop me machine. Wayne’s eyes, wide open, stared up at him.

“You felt nothing at all?” Dr. Felder asked, completely incredulous. “I gave you enough novether to knock out a herd of elephants!”

Wayne sat up and grinned ruefully. “Well, there’s a slight ringing in my ears, if that’s any satisfaction. I guess Rackam’s comet would have to hit me to make me unconscious.” He reached for his shirt, “By the way, Doctor, do you agree with the other scientists that the comet gasses won’t have any effect on conditions here, on the atmosphere, I mean?”

The little doctor looked up from his recording of the data on the experiment.

“Atmosphere’s still normal,” he observed, “We are in the outer fringe of the tail now. But one of my instruments has noted a slight electrical disturbance of a peculiar nature.” His eyes held a mild puzzlement as Marcia reappeared in the doorway after wheeling the novether machine back into the lab.

“I’ve asked the cook to send us in some coffee,” she told them. She smiled at Wayne. “I hope it won’t keep you awake, Mr. Randall.”

Wayne laughed appreciatively at the joke—and promptly pushed the comet out of his mind.

It was almost midnight when he left the Felders. Marcia—he hoped she had maneuvered it deliberately—escorted him to the door alone.

“You’ll come to see us again, won’t you?” she invited as she offered her hand.

* * * *

It was on the bus, homeward bound, that Wayne first noticed it. There seemed to be an unusual degree of sleepiness among the people about him. In fact, everyone on the bus looked almost as if they were drugged, so soundly were they slumbering. The driver yawned frequently, and shook his head, presumably to help him stay awake.

Suddenly Wayne remembered Dr. Felder’s trouble with his guinea pigs. They, too, had difficulty staying awake. Could there be any connection between them and the unseemly drowsiness of these people seated about him? He remembered now that the Felders, too, had seemed tired. And that when Marcia had gone for more coffee, she had joked about the fact that the cook had been sound asleep in the kitchen.

Back in his own quarters, Wayne was restless, unreasonably disturbed. His short-wave set was almost completely dismantled in the process of trying a new idea of his in combined radio-audio frequency amplification. It would take all night to get it working again, he thought, and somehow he couldn’t get himself started at the task this evening.

Abruptly he grabbed his hat and went out into the almost deserted Chicago streets. On Michigan Boulevard he caught a cruising taxicab with a sleepy driver.

“Where’s the best night spot?” Wayne asked impatiently.

The driver pondered, rubbed his eyes tiredly.

“Most of ’em are closing early tonight, mister. Not many customers, for some reason. Air’s muggy or something and people all seem to wanna go home. The 601 Club’s still open though. Or was half hour ago.” His mouth gaped into an enormous yawn. “Take ya there?”

His mind seething with possibilities, Wayne climbed into the cab. Could it be that—

The 601 Club was dark.

“’Sfunny,” drawled the taxi driver sleepily. “Never knew this joint to close before six in the mornin’. And it’s only two. What-ta night. Heck, wish I could knock off early myself. Back home, mister?”

Wayne shook his head slowly, and his face became grimly resolute.

“If you can stay awake, pal, take me to the office of the Chicago Blade.”

Ten minutes later he dropped his hat on a corner of the night editor’s desk.

“Your gang sleepy tonight?” Wayne asked sharply, an undertone of excitement in his voice.

The editor looked at him incuriously and nodded.

“Me too. So what? We get out a paper anyway. What you want?”

Wayne gripped the edge of the desk and leaned forward, his body tense.

“Listen, this is important. Everybody—in Chicago at least—is abnormally sleepy tonight. Every night club in town is closed for lack of customers. Even the regulars went home to bed. And you should see the people who have to be out whether they want to or not.”

The man’s eyes opened wide.

“You sure? Say, that would mean—”

“The comet,” snapped Wayne tersely. “The astrophysicists said it wouldn’t have any effect, but they could have been wrong. We’re in the fringe, and—”

The editor, with a visible effort, straightened up.

“Mister, if this is an exclusive, you’ll get paid for the tip-off. What a story!”

Wayne smiled grimly.

“And what bank would I cash the check at, with all the tellers asleep? This is serious, I tell you! It might mean the end of the human race! If those gasses of the comet’s tail—”

The editor grabbed a phone with unsteady hands.

“Hey, George,” he barked into the mouthpiece, “put the whole staff on this. Have them call New York, Frisco, Los Angeles. Have them ask whether…”

A tired-looking reporter shuffled in, and leaned against the desk.

“Say, Bill,” he said sluggishly, after the editor had replaced the receiver, “there’s an epidemic of people driving cars off the roads and into poles and what-not tonight, like they fell asleep at the wheel. Want me to do a feature on it?” He caught the horror-stricken eyes of the editor and snapped out of his lethargic stance. “What’s up?”

Wayne’s eyes narrowed and he leaned again across the desk.

“That proves it,” he exclaimed excitedly. “No need to wait for the answers to those calls. We know what they’ll be. Let’s get going.”

The editor’s face was pale, and now he could scarcely control the trembling of his hands.

“But what can we do?” he asked distraughtly.

“Call the observatories,” snapped Wayne. “Wake up some physicists and get new air tests. Find out where whatever gas masks this country has are kept. Blast it, man, call the President!”…

The hands of the clock stood at three-ten. Crowded into the editor’s office and overflowing out into the corridor was the entire staff of the Blade. The editor wiped sweat off his bald head and looked at them dazedly.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ve been through to the White House. The President’s declaring a state of emergency, whatever good that’ll do. We’ve learned gas masks won’t do any good. We’ve learned the air is one hundred percent normal. We’ve learned this thing is world-wide. Now on those other calls some of you’ve made—anybody got anything?”

“I got Ramsey, the biologist, Chief,” one of the reporters volunteered. “He spotted something before we did. Been dissecting rabbits and stuff since midnight. Says something about dendrites. Want me to read his statement?”

The editor nodded, his facial muscles twitching uncontrollably.

“He said, ‘Conscious cooperation of mind and body depends on neighboring nerve units being in contact with one another so nerve impulses can pass from neuron to neuron to reach the brain. In sleep the dendrites retract and separate, and the result is unconsciousness. Some influence whose nature we do not yet understand is causing the nerve dendrites of Earth’s mammalian life to retract, bringing sleep. The action is not chemical, as air is normal. It may be electrical, although we have yet found nothing to indicate that is the case. The effect, however, is not lethal.”

Someone drew a sharp sigh of relief.

“Not lethal! And here I thought I wouldn’t have to finish paying for my helicopter,” A murmur of amusement rippled through the crowd and helped to relieve some of the tension. But some of the men noticed that their chief had remained unmoved.

“S’matter, Bill?” one of them asked. “It won’t hurt to sleep a day or so. Gosh, the way I feel now, I could—”

Wayne answered the question, his voice flat and gray.

“A day or so? We’ve checked the observatories, can’t you understand? That comet is rounding the sun in the same direction as Earth, and in the same plane. We’ll be within the comet’s tail for two and a half months. And the world will starve to death in its sleep!”

A thunderbolt silence struck the room.

“Maybe it isn’t the comet,” someone ventured presently.

But there was no conviction in the voice. What hope was there that it wasn’t? Nothing like this had never happened before. But now it was happening exactly coincidental with the fact that Earth was entering the tail of Rackam’s comet.

Suddenly the night editor galvanized into action.

“Hey, you guys, we’re getting out a paper here. An extra at that! Get busy. Stop moping! You, Callahan, write—”

Quietly, Wayne Randall slipped through to the corridor and went down to the deserted street. There was no cab or for that matter no moving vehicle of any kind in sight. He started walking, his thoughts filled with dark foreboding.

Wayne knew now that there was something worse than fear of death. Of all the people on Earth, he suddenly realized, only he would not feel the effect of this unknown, sleep-producing agency. His dendrites didn’t contract, they had said. Maybe he didn’t have any dendrites, whatever they were.

Yes, worse than the fear of death was the stark, overwhelming fear of being completely, utterly alone. Probably within a few hours, a day at most, he would be the only person awake in Chicago, in the United States, in the world! Left awake to watch humanity die. Even sweet, radiant Marcia, whom he had just found.

Resolutely, he thrust the thought away. He must keep his mind clear, until he was certain there was nothing he could do. There would be lime for demoralization,-madness. Plenty of time.

He must think coldly, logically. The air was normal. It was suspected the influence possessed electrical properties. A field, perhaps? Some sort of electro-magnetic field that affected neurons? Why not? What man didn’t know about electrobiology would fill volumes.

Even in radio, his own field, there was plenty of scope for research. A sudden hope shot swiftly through Wayne’s mind. There were powerful broadcasting stations scattered all over Earth, and their waves covered all of the globe. Would it be possible to send out waves, short or long, which would damper or neutralize the menacing field?

It seemed such a desperately slim chance, there was so little time in which to work—but it was a chance, nonetheless. And Wayne determined to exhaust it thoroughly.

Spotting a cab parked across the street, he yelled at the driver, ran toward him. Loud snoring came from the front seat. Wayne tried frantically to wake the cabbie, but hard and repeated slaps on the back only changed the tempo of the snores. Finally Wayne pushed him to one side, slid behind the wheel and a moment later was speeding through the desolate streets toward Station WRV.

WRV, he knew, would be the best bet. Not only was it one of the most powerful stations in the country, but there was an excellent experimental laboratory equipped for research. And perhaps it was even possible that one of the technicians or research men had struck upon the same idea.

It was dawn when he parked the cab in front of the big building that housed the broadcasting station. The policeman on guard at the doorway was—sound asleep. Wayne ran past him and up the stairs. He’d been here before, as a visitor, and knew where the laboratory and workshop were located.

A haggard, red-eyed man in overalls that had been pulled on over pajamas met him at the open doorway of the lab.

“Thought I heard someone coming. You a research man? I’m Grayson. Look”—he waved a hand that pointed first to one part of the spacious laboratory and then another—“all asleep. I’m holding out on caffeine citrate. Took ten grains.”

Wayne peeled off his coat, tossed it on a chair, and stepped across a figure lying prone on the floor.

“Got anything yet?” he asked tensely.

“Not much.” Grayson swayed on his feet as he spoke. “Guess it’s too late, but going out trying. You look fresh, maybe you can carry on. Here, let me show you.”

He led the way across the room to a huge mechanism.

“Burkewell super-microscope. Living nerve-tissue in a nutrient solution in focus. There’s the projection. See those curly little things, retracted? Rogers, the biologist, set it up for us before he passed out.”

“Any clues as to the nature of the field?”

Grayson lighted a cigarette with trembling fingers.

“We can’t even prove there is one. None of our instruments show a thing. It’s only living tissue that shows any effect. We deduce a field just because it can’t be chemical. Good old Chicago air. Checked fifty ways. Qualitative and quantitative tests.”

Wayne bent over the chassis of a small transmitter that was already plugged into operation.

“I suppose you’ve tried all bands straight. How about super-hetting for a beat note. Maybe you can synchronize—”

Abruptly, there was a soft, scraping sound behind him and he turned swiftly. Grayson had leaned or fallen back against the wall and was sliding down to the floor. Before Wayne could reach him, his knees buckled under and he fell, lay breathing heavily.

Knowing it would be futile to attempt reviving Grayson, Wayne turned back to the set. Now he was alone in the laboratory, except for a dozen men who slept where they had fallen during their efforts to combat the unknown.

Even as he worked, changing wires almost haphazardly, Wayne realized the utter million-to-oneness of his chance of success. He didn’t know a single concrete fact about the nature of the electrical or magnetic field he was trying to neutralize. He couldn’t even be sure there was one. None of the instruments—

Suddenly Wayne stopped working and his eyes lit up with excitement. The word “instruments” stirred something in his memory, something that might be important.

He had it! Dr. Felder—it seemed like ages ago, but it had been last night—had said, “…one of my instruments has noted a slight electrical disturbance of a peculiar nature.” And that had been before the confirmation of the soporific effect of the comet’s tail. And Dr. Felder’s guinea pigs—

Even as his mind whirled with this new thought, Wayne was running out of the building into the street. Had Dr. Felder left any notes on that “disturbance of a peculiar nature”? If he had, it would prove a real lead. Something to work on. Even searching Dr. Felder’s home for a strange instrument that had reacted where others failed, was better than hunting blindly here in the laboratory.

The taxicab with its slumbering driver was still where he had parked it. Excitement running high within him, Wayne jumped in and gunned northward. He was astonished to discover that the sun was almost straight overhead. He’d been at the WRV laboratory a good six hours.

Along Michigan Boulevard there was no sign of life, save for people sleeping in parked cars or on the sidewalk. Some vehicles were stalled in the middle of the street, but others Wayne noted grimly had smashed into store fronts or light poles.

It was a world of vast, motionless silence in which nothing stirred save Wayne and the taxicab he had commandeered. In all of Chicago, probably in all the world, Wayne Randall, who had never experienced the sensation of sleep in his life, was the only person awake.

The tires squealed protestingly as he swung in to the curb in front of the Felder home. Impatiently, Wayne dashed up the steps. The iron bonds of habit made him ring a doorbell he knew wouldn’t be answered, but he stalked into the house without the formality of waiting.

“Doctor Felder!” he called out loudly. There was only the hollow echo of his own voice for answer.

Swiftly Wayne began to search the house. There was little chance of finding anyone awake or being able to awaken them when found, but at least he’d make certain before searching the laboratory.

Frantically he ran from room to room. But the house was ominously vacant, deserted.

He rushed with mounting desperation to the laboratory. It too was deserted. Then Wayne’s eyes riveted on the microscope, much smaller than the one at the WRV lab, but constructed on the same principle.

Hope skyrocketed his spirit when he saw what lay beneath the microscope lens. Nerve tissue in a nutrient solution. Perhaps this was the clue! But when he peered closer he saw that the tissue was dead, had long ago exhausted the solution. It must have been some time last night that Dr. Felder had put it there.

But he had been working on the problem then, independently! Surely, somewhere, there must be notes on the experiment. Hastily, Wayne riffled through the papers in both the office desk and the one in the laboratory. Nothing, not a single paper seemed to have any bearing on whatever research Dr. Felder had been conducting. Wayne turned away with a sinking heart.

Had the doctor truly solved the problem? And started somewhere with his answer? Suddenly Wayne remembered that there was a garage beside the house. If Dr. Felder had gone somewhere, his car would be missing. Quickly Wayne ran out the back way and through the side door of the garage.

The car was there! And seated in the gray sedan were two slumbering figures—Dr. Felder and his daughter, Marcia. What had happened was obvious. Dr. Felder had succumbed to sleep the instant he had settled behind the wheel, before he had even turned the ignition switch. Probably Marcia had tried to awaken him, and then fallen back, unable to stay awake any longer herself.

But it was the leather portfolio on the seat that magnetized Wayne’s attention. His hands trembled as he opened it and began scanning the several sheets of scribbled notes, and a diagram. A hook-up diagram for a radio transmitter!

It was midnight when Wayne Randall stumbled from the control room of WRV into the laboratory. On the floor, figures were beginning to stir. Grayson, the head technician, opened his eyes. He stared at Wayne blankly for a moment, then scrambled to his feet.

“Man alive!” he cried exultantly, “you’ve done it!”

Staggering with weariness Wayne fell into a chair.

“It was Doctor Felder,” he said in a voice leaden with exhaustion. “Give him the credit. He and his daughter are asleep, in the reception room. I brought them there. Guess they’ll be waking up any minute.”

Other men in the laboratory were now beginning to sit up and stare. Wearily, Wayne handed the diagram and notes to Grayson.

“This station should cover the Middle West. As soon as you can get in touch with other stations, Cincinnati, Louisville, Montreal, and the others, give them this dope. They’ll be able to pass it on to stations in their range as soon as they’re changed over. They can pass it on east, west, north, and south. New York can reach Europe, and—”

He closed his eyes to rest them a moment, then felt a curious sensation of limpness, relaxation flow over him. Grayson started for the control room but before he reached the door, two figures appeared in it—a short wiry man with sandy hair and beard, and a beautiful auburn-haired girl.

Dr. Felder spotted Wayne immediately and rushed across to him. He addressed him and when Wayne didn’t move, didn’t answer, the doctor hurriedly felt his pulse, then peeled up an eyelid and examined the pupil.

“Dad!” Marcia’s voice was frantic. “Is he—”

Dr. Felder turned and looked at her understandingly.

“He’s all right, my dear. And he’ll be all right if we take him home and give him care and intravenous feeding. But”—the doctor chuckled softly—“I’m afraid that the damper wave that will keep everyone else normal has finally made him sleep. He’s in for a ten weeks’ stretch of it, until the comet’s gone and we can convert the transmitters back to normal.”