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karohemdPreviously
In this episode we watch a Death Ray being demonstrated, experiment with the Ball of Doom™ and find a frozen house overgrown with Mushrooms from Outer Space™
We had driven up to Stansted the night before and spend the night at the local inn so we could arrive at Mr Matthews' estate in time for the demonstration. There was a bit of snow in the morning, possibly a bit odd this time of year but not unusual. This would get weirder later...
We arrived at Matthews' estate in style in the Rolls and had a look around. A larger area had been cleared of trees, in the center a table with a metal box was set up and further a rather big and odd contraption was set up whose function was quite unfathomable from the distance. It was roughly cone shaped (lying on its side) and had various controls and gauges attached. A cable led to another area with a pile of sandbags. A fellow we had passed on the way to the estate arrived as well. Turns out it was Julian Knight, reporter for the Daily Star. He asked us who we were and we introduced ourselves. Mr Knight told us a little more about his expectations. Apparently, the "Death Ray" as he liked to call it, was to be "the next weapon of the century". The reporter also suspected Mr Matthews might be after the government prize that was offered to anyone who could come up with a method of shooting down zeppelins. In the last demonstration, Matthews stopped an engine from afar.
Then Mr Matthews himself came up to greet us and explained that the metal box contained some gunpowder which would be ignited from a distance by the "death ray" or, more scientifically, a field of charged particles that would travel through the air from the device to the target without wires. Apart from the apparent range (500 yards) of the device, Matthews would not divulge any more details of his invention.
He then asked us to stay behind the felled tree and proceeded to the sandbagged area where he busied himself with a number of cables and clamps. With the final clamp in place there was an almighty explosion as the metal box was torn apart and a black mushroom cloud rose into the sky. Quite an impressive display! We applaud and are then invited inside for tea and cakes.
After a bit of a chat from which we couldn't really learn any more about the "deathray", I touched on our reason to visit Matthews in the first place.
When I showed him a filing of the curious metal, he was most interested and conducted a number of tests one of which involved throwing tiny fragments of the stuff into a flame which caused a marvellous flash of heat that temporarily blinded us all but thankfully harmed no-one. Quite impressed with the metal's properties, Mr Matthews had similar results when applying and electric current as Prof. Templeton had at London University. Matthews obviously wanted to know the source and we handed over the ball. The "mad scientist" immediately concluded that the "weld line" between the two halves was of the same material and found it quite extraordinary. Experiments involving weighing the ball both in and out of the box (the box would weigh the same regardless whether the ball was inside or not) led to attempts of putting other objects inside which had not only similar results regarding the weight but some entirely new ones as well: it looked like that anything placed inside the box for a short while would instantly freeze. A most curious development which sadly didn't really help us in finding out what it was all about.
As we reacted negatively to Matthews' suggestion of trying to open the ball (the memories were still too strong in our minds), he suggested we visit a colleague of his, a Dr Pike who had been working on X-Rays and might find a way of looking inside the ball without destroying it.
We thanked the man and drove to our next destination, Dr Pike's estate. Curiously, the closer we came (he lived quite a way outside a village a few miles away), the colder it became and soon there was snow on the road. There was even more snow on the driveway towards the house and it was eventually so heavy that Dunbar and a few others went outside with shovels to make a way for the Rolls while I remained behind the wheel. Even curiouser, there soon was not only snow but also a large number of bluish mushrooms in various sizes from small ones growing on tree trunks to one a foot across that grew in the middle of the driveway. This was dispatched and eventually we reached the house. Everything was covered in snow, ice and mushrooms of various sizes as if it had been freezing and snowing and the house had been abandoned for weeks, not just hours. There was a snow-covered shape in front of the house which turned out to be a Rolls. While others searched the car (uncovering a body of a certain Nigel Simms in the process), I made for the front door. Nobody answered our knocks so we opened the door and were greeted by a frost-covered corridor in which more mushrooms grew. How could a house get so bad that mushrooms grow all over it and how on Earth could it freeze inside when it hadn't really been freezing recently? This required investigation.
Armed with lanterns and shotguns or rifles, we searched the ground floor of the house which consisted of a drawing room/library with a book on "Fungi of the Western Hemisphere" out on a table but nothing else remarkable, a dining room and a kitchen. Like in the corridor, ice and mushrooms everywhere and the more organic an area was, the more and bigger mushrooms grew. Dunbar tried to light a fire in the dining room. First it wouldn't catch at all and even with a generous helping of petrol, it would only burn feebly. Very curious.
We were just about to go on when there was an ear-splitting, high and low pitched screeching coming from two floors up. We raced up the stairs ready for anything and when we reached the top had to hack our way through a veritable forest of mushrooms first.
Up ahead was a bedroom filled with mushrooms and what could barely be made out as a body on the bed but we couldn't see the source of the screech so carried on. Prof. Carter tried to break open the door when there was another screech so loud and jarring that I thought my head would explode. Some of the others seemed to fare even worse, complaining of being very cold and being quite distraught.
For some reason I'm a bit unsure of the exact sequence of events that followed, possibly because it was all a bit much to take in and quite disturbing, too so I'll put together what I can remember.
Behind the door Carter had tried to pry open was another bedroom, equally covered in mushrooms but there was also some sort of large spherical pod, broken open. I then remember that we all ran downstairs and outside to see a huge thing burst through the roof of the house and hover there for a while. It had flippers and tentacles and was pink and insect-like, unlike anything we'd ever seen not even in that odd cyclopean city we had visited in our dreams. Robert made as if to raise his gun and then the thing shot into the sky at incredible speed and was gone in an instant.
At the sight of the thing, Carter started gibbering in an unusual, ululating language which sounded a bit like Arabic or Egyptian but it was impossible to glean any meaning from it. After he had calmed down a bit, the professor said that "there were voices in my head"
Alex, Robert and I quickly searched the rest of the house, finding crumpled notes ripped out from a notebook in the study. The only other room was a darkroom that didn't contain anything useful but one photo of the other bedroom. Curiously, the odd spherical thing was not in the photo, just an empty space where it should have been.
As by this time it was completely dark, we decided the best way to proceed was to go back to the Rolls (where we warmed up), return to the village and stay the night at the inn. We also took a number of mushroom samples with us which Prof. Carter packed well in ice and snow to preserve them as they seemed to melt in the warmth. Thankfully, Carter's idea of trying to preserve the mushroom sample in the box was voted off as nobody wanted to repeat the experience of waking up somewhere else...
I had an appointment with the University's biology department the following day where we might learn more if the mushroom survived...
Note to self: I have
- a piece of shrapnel from the explosion
- crumpled notes from Dr Pike's study
Carter has
- mushrooms on ice
As usual, any comments, corrections and additions welcome from the other players.
In this episode we watch a Death Ray being demonstrated, experiment with the Ball of Doom™ and find a frozen house overgrown with Mushrooms from Outer Space™
We had driven up to Stansted the night before and spend the night at the local inn so we could arrive at Mr Matthews' estate in time for the demonstration. There was a bit of snow in the morning, possibly a bit odd this time of year but not unusual. This would get weirder later...
We arrived at Matthews' estate in style in the Rolls and had a look around. A larger area had been cleared of trees, in the center a table with a metal box was set up and further a rather big and odd contraption was set up whose function was quite unfathomable from the distance. It was roughly cone shaped (lying on its side) and had various controls and gauges attached. A cable led to another area with a pile of sandbags. A fellow we had passed on the way to the estate arrived as well. Turns out it was Julian Knight, reporter for the Daily Star. He asked us who we were and we introduced ourselves. Mr Knight told us a little more about his expectations. Apparently, the "Death Ray" as he liked to call it, was to be "the next weapon of the century". The reporter also suspected Mr Matthews might be after the government prize that was offered to anyone who could come up with a method of shooting down zeppelins. In the last demonstration, Matthews stopped an engine from afar.
Then Mr Matthews himself came up to greet us and explained that the metal box contained some gunpowder which would be ignited from a distance by the "death ray" or, more scientifically, a field of charged particles that would travel through the air from the device to the target without wires. Apart from the apparent range (500 yards) of the device, Matthews would not divulge any more details of his invention.
He then asked us to stay behind the felled tree and proceeded to the sandbagged area where he busied himself with a number of cables and clamps. With the final clamp in place there was an almighty explosion as the metal box was torn apart and a black mushroom cloud rose into the sky. Quite an impressive display! We applaud and are then invited inside for tea and cakes.
After a bit of a chat from which we couldn't really learn any more about the "deathray", I touched on our reason to visit Matthews in the first place.
When I showed him a filing of the curious metal, he was most interested and conducted a number of tests one of which involved throwing tiny fragments of the stuff into a flame which caused a marvellous flash of heat that temporarily blinded us all but thankfully harmed no-one. Quite impressed with the metal's properties, Mr Matthews had similar results when applying and electric current as Prof. Templeton had at London University. Matthews obviously wanted to know the source and we handed over the ball. The "mad scientist" immediately concluded that the "weld line" between the two halves was of the same material and found it quite extraordinary. Experiments involving weighing the ball both in and out of the box (the box would weigh the same regardless whether the ball was inside or not) led to attempts of putting other objects inside which had not only similar results regarding the weight but some entirely new ones as well: it looked like that anything placed inside the box for a short while would instantly freeze. A most curious development which sadly didn't really help us in finding out what it was all about.
As we reacted negatively to Matthews' suggestion of trying to open the ball (the memories were still too strong in our minds), he suggested we visit a colleague of his, a Dr Pike who had been working on X-Rays and might find a way of looking inside the ball without destroying it.
We thanked the man and drove to our next destination, Dr Pike's estate. Curiously, the closer we came (he lived quite a way outside a village a few miles away), the colder it became and soon there was snow on the road. There was even more snow on the driveway towards the house and it was eventually so heavy that Dunbar and a few others went outside with shovels to make a way for the Rolls while I remained behind the wheel. Even curiouser, there soon was not only snow but also a large number of bluish mushrooms in various sizes from small ones growing on tree trunks to one a foot across that grew in the middle of the driveway. This was dispatched and eventually we reached the house. Everything was covered in snow, ice and mushrooms of various sizes as if it had been freezing and snowing and the house had been abandoned for weeks, not just hours. There was a snow-covered shape in front of the house which turned out to be a Rolls. While others searched the car (uncovering a body of a certain Nigel Simms in the process), I made for the front door. Nobody answered our knocks so we opened the door and were greeted by a frost-covered corridor in which more mushrooms grew. How could a house get so bad that mushrooms grow all over it and how on Earth could it freeze inside when it hadn't really been freezing recently? This required investigation.
Armed with lanterns and shotguns or rifles, we searched the ground floor of the house which consisted of a drawing room/library with a book on "Fungi of the Western Hemisphere" out on a table but nothing else remarkable, a dining room and a kitchen. Like in the corridor, ice and mushrooms everywhere and the more organic an area was, the more and bigger mushrooms grew. Dunbar tried to light a fire in the dining room. First it wouldn't catch at all and even with a generous helping of petrol, it would only burn feebly. Very curious.
We were just about to go on when there was an ear-splitting, high and low pitched screeching coming from two floors up. We raced up the stairs ready for anything and when we reached the top had to hack our way through a veritable forest of mushrooms first.
Up ahead was a bedroom filled with mushrooms and what could barely be made out as a body on the bed but we couldn't see the source of the screech so carried on. Prof. Carter tried to break open the door when there was another screech so loud and jarring that I thought my head would explode. Some of the others seemed to fare even worse, complaining of being very cold and being quite distraught.
For some reason I'm a bit unsure of the exact sequence of events that followed, possibly because it was all a bit much to take in and quite disturbing, too so I'll put together what I can remember.
Behind the door Carter had tried to pry open was another bedroom, equally covered in mushrooms but there was also some sort of large spherical pod, broken open. I then remember that we all ran downstairs and outside to see a huge thing burst through the roof of the house and hover there for a while. It had flippers and tentacles and was pink and insect-like, unlike anything we'd ever seen not even in that odd cyclopean city we had visited in our dreams. Robert made as if to raise his gun and then the thing shot into the sky at incredible speed and was gone in an instant.
At the sight of the thing, Carter started gibbering in an unusual, ululating language which sounded a bit like Arabic or Egyptian but it was impossible to glean any meaning from it. After he had calmed down a bit, the professor said that "there were voices in my head"
Alex, Robert and I quickly searched the rest of the house, finding crumpled notes ripped out from a notebook in the study. The only other room was a darkroom that didn't contain anything useful but one photo of the other bedroom. Curiously, the odd spherical thing was not in the photo, just an empty space where it should have been.
As by this time it was completely dark, we decided the best way to proceed was to go back to the Rolls (where we warmed up), return to the village and stay the night at the inn. We also took a number of mushroom samples with us which Prof. Carter packed well in ice and snow to preserve them as they seemed to melt in the warmth. Thankfully, Carter's idea of trying to preserve the mushroom sample in the box was voted off as nobody wanted to repeat the experience of waking up somewhere else...
I had an appointment with the University's biology department the following day where we might learn more if the mushroom survived...
Note to self: I have
- a piece of shrapnel from the explosion
- crumpled notes from Dr Pike's study
Carter has
- mushrooms on ice
As usual, any comments, corrections and additions welcome from the other players.
