Post by Catsmate on Oct 27, 2022 12:54:32 GMT
Inspired by a mention by olegrand in the Iliad and Odyssey thread of this interesting little story.
While Minos was doing morally questionable biological research Daedalus was meddling with the nature of reality itself!3
Daedalus needs the help of Marlin to close the Labyrinth and prevent Minos raiding the future. However the Nazi officer has other plans:
In the end....
An interesting little story, ripe for use in a Who game.
Comments? Ideas? Suggestions?
NOTES
1. And, naturally, Daedalus' beacutiful, ahistorical, daughter Luane the priestess of the title.
2. I'm reminded of the Mad Mole.
3. I'm also reminded of the Borad and his meddling with biology and time travel.
4. Another character who needs a write-up. A Pulp era Occult Detective, basically a French Poirot, who encounters vampires, ghosts, warlocks and similar.
Priestess of the Labyrinth
This is an obscure short story written by the American science fiction author Edmond Hamilton and first published in Weird Tales in 1945. It has only been republished in a collection of Hamilton's stories which is rather a pity.
The basic plot is pretty simple. A USAAF pilot named Brad Marlin is shot down over Crete in early 1944 while flying an escort fighter during a bombing raid against an unnamed port (probably Chania though the text says 'Candia'). He parachuted to the ground and attempts to evade the German troops by taking shelter in a gorge and then in a tunnel leading into the cliff. Thus he enters the Labyrinth of Knossos.
However this labyrinth loops around itself in more than three dimensions2 and, after a fourth right-angle turn, Marlin is transferred to ancient Crete, in the days of Daedalus and Minos1. And of course the Minotaur, or rather Minotaurs because there are many of them.
Unfortunately a German lieutenant named Preyder and a few Nazi troops (Blaun is the only one named) have also been transported back. Some shooting ensues and several Minotaurs are killed.
Luane meets the surviving travellers (all the unnamed Germans are killed) and brings them to Daedalus. Handily both Marlin and Preyder speak Ancient Greek.....
Daedalus then delivers the necessary exposition in his laboratory, with lead lined walls to keep Minos's malign clairvoyance out;Naturally there is a rivalry between him and Minos.
Many instruments were of familiar design - crucibles, retorts and other chemical apparatus. But tliere were also ancient alembics, charcoal braziers, twisted glass tubes through which bubbled yellow gases, metal geometrical models of outlandish alienage tliat made the eye ache to look at.
"We have science, we of Crete,” Daedalus was saying. "Perhaps not the same as your science of the future. I perceive by your dress and weapons that you have mastered many material forces. We have concentrated on other problems, on the subtle laws of time and space and life".
"Greatest of scientists in our land are Minos, hereditary king, and I, high priest of this Temple of Wisdom. But the researches of Minos have always been unholy. For he has long cherished a black, evil purpose.
"Minos has always wished to breed new, monstrous, semi-human races who would serve him and extend his power over all the Earth! Years ago, he sought for the ultimate seeds of life, the tiny germs that control every aspect of a living creature’s growth and formation”.
"Minos has always wished to breed new, monstrous, semi-human races who would serve him and extend his power over all the Earth! Years ago, he sought for the ultimate seeds of life, the tiny germs that control every aspect of a living creature’s growth and formation”.
"He found those controlling germs of life, and bred horrible new creatures from human stock. Men who had only a travesty of human shape, whom the experiments of Minos had caused to grow into bestial forms! Yes, the beast-headed monsters whom you saw in the Labyrinth, the poor mockeries of humanities whom Minos called his Minotaurs!”
"I was then engaged in a great experiment of my own. I believed that I could create a supergeometrical pattern that would enter four dimensions and thus would penetrate time, past and future. Beneath this Temple, I buiit the Labyrinth.
"I pierced thus into other ages. I looked forth, and saw Knossos as it will be in future ages, dead and ruined. I looked even farther and saw strange things of Earth to be that even you do not know.
He [Minos] proposed to use the Labyrinth to raid future ages for human subjects!
"I pierced thus into other ages. I looked forth, and saw Knossos as it will be in future ages, dead and ruined. I looked even farther and saw strange things of Earth to be that even you do not know.
He [Minos] proposed to use the Labyrinth to raid future ages for human subjects!
Daedalus needs the help of Marlin to close the Labyrinth and prevent Minos raiding the future. However the Nazi officer has other plans:
“In my own future age,” Preyder declared, "this island of Crete is held by my countrymen, the Germans. They are defending it against a motley horde of nations who attacked us. Our soldiers could come through the Labyrinth to this time, and help you sweep Minos from the throne!”
Preyder added eagerly, “In return, we’d ask only the privilege of taking refuge in this time if our enemies invade the island —of taking refuge merely until we can go back and counter-attack them by surprise.”
Naturally Daedalus refuses, and Preyder shoots him. Marlin is knocked out and Preyder and Blaun kidnap Luane and race off to join Minos.
However Marlin recovers and Daedalus has a handy healing potion.With the aid of a few of Daedalus's other gadgets including the legendary wings...
"The phial of blue liquid,” he murmured hoarsely. "In the cabinet.....”
Marlin stumbled to the silver cabinet and searched hastily. There were many strange looking instruments and vessels in it. But he soon found a flat, twisted-necked glass phial of bright blue fluid.
He returned quickly with it to the Cretan. "Break the neck and pour the liquid into my wound,” whispered Daedalus.
The lips of the wound drew together as though from a super-clotting agent affecting tissues as well as blood. And strength and life seemed to pour back into Daedalus’ pallid face.
Marlin stumbled to the silver cabinet and searched hastily. There were many strange looking instruments and vessels in it. But he soon found a flat, twisted-necked glass phial of bright blue fluid.
He returned quickly with it to the Cretan. "Break the neck and pour the liquid into my wound,” whispered Daedalus.
The lips of the wound drew together as though from a super-clotting agent affecting tissues as well as blood. And strength and life seemed to pour back into Daedalus’ pallid face.
...the thing was a pair of big, artificial wings. They were broad, batlike pinions six feet in length, made of a dark, skinlike substance stretched on a light interior skeleton. The wings seemed to grow like living ones out of a flat, heavy mass of muscular flesh covered by gray, lifeless skin. To it was attached a harness.
"There is pseudo-life in these wings and in the powerful muscles that operate them. It is quiescent now but it will kindle to awakening when you wear the wings against your body.”
...that suggest that Minos wasn't the only one meddling with biology, and a darkness projector:
[the little instrument was]….a circular copper frame in which four curious black prisms revolved on an axle around a larger black prism whose facets were cut in a baffling design.
[Daedalus] was spinning the rotating prisms rapidly around the central one……. An uncanny thing was happening. The prisms were rotating so fast that they could be seen only as black blur. And that blur of blackness was spreading. It was spreading outward like water flowing from a fountain—a fountain of utter darkness.
In the dim light that came through tlie loophole of the wall, Marlin could see that flowing darkness seeping out through the solid wall itself, expanding in all directions.
In the dim light that came through tlie loophole of the wall, Marlin could see that flowing darkness seeping out through the solid wall itself, expanding in all directions.
Daedalus seems to have other gadgets but these aren't described.
In the palace they watch Minos and his wife Pasiphae bargain with the Nazis and plan to use Luane to control the time portal in the Labyrinth:Luane is uncooperative:
Pasiphae looked slim as Luane, and as young... [but] there were unclean depths in those eyes. Not even the lush
beauty of her figure in its clinging green silks could banish that taint.
beauty of her figure in its clinging green silks could banish that taint.
Minos smiled tolerantly, fingering his beard. "Torture will change your mind. There are devices in my laboratories which will bring you whimpering to my feet in submission.”
In the end....
It all ends well. Minos and Pasiphae are killed, as are Preyder and Braun, Luane is rescued but Daedalus dies. Marlin and Luane escape to the present day of 1944 through the Labyrinth and use the wings to escape Crete to the relative safety of a British warship. A happy ending seems inevitable.
An interesting little story, ripe for use in a Who game.
Prehaps the Labyrinth survived and is reopened, allowing people to arrive in the 'modern day' from Ancient Greece (complete with Weird Science) or the Second World War. Perfect for a UNIT era scenario, complete with Nazis.
And just where did Daedalus and Minos come from? Were they perhaps lab assistants/minions to a Mad Scientist who fled? Suitable choices would be the Borad, Morbius or Magnus Greel, who all meddled in genetics and time travel. Why did they end in in Ancient Greece? And what artefacts might have survived their demise?
Links.
The story can be found in the JAN1945 issue of Weird Tales, available from the Internet Archive here in various formats.
The issue also has some other interesting stories, including one of Seabury Quinn's Jules de Grandin4 stories, The Green God's Ring.
Comments? Ideas? Suggestions?
NOTES
1. And, naturally, Daedalus' beacutiful, ahistorical, daughter Luane the priestess of the title.
2. I'm reminded of the Mad Mole.
3. I'm also reminded of the Borad and his meddling with biology and time travel.
4. Another character who needs a write-up. A Pulp era Occult Detective, basically a French Poirot, who encounters vampires, ghosts, warlocks and similar.
