THE “V” FORCE (1)
By:
August 15, 2026
Fred C. Smale’s “The ‘V’ Force” was first published in All Story Magazine, December 1913. Surtees has returned from Tibet with an engraved metal bar that glows in the dark… and has mysterious effects on living things. (As you read, please note that Tolkien didn’t conceive of his malign ring of power until c. 1937.) HiLoBooks is pleased to serialize the story for HILOBROW’s readers.
I examined the bar of metal closely.
Subsequent measurements showed it to be fourteen inches long, three inches wide, and three-quarters of an inch thick. On the broad surface, about the center, was engraved a circle with strokes radiating from it, possibly a conventionalized representation of the sun. Beyond this no marks were visible.
The metal itself, so far as I could judge, was a very hard steel with a curious ruddy iridescence on the surface, somewhat reminding me of the appearance of “shot” silk. When suspended between the fingers and thumb and struck sharply it rang with a clear bell-like note. Evidently there was no flaw in the metal.
“Do you believe it?” I asked, looking up from my examination.
Walter Surtees shrugged his shoulders.
“Twenty years’ residence in the East,” said he, “have taught me to believe many stranger things.”
“But this,” I protested. ” A mere bar of inanimate metal to have all the powers you ascribe —”
“Excuse me,” he corrected. “I don’t ascribe any powers to it — at least you haven’t heard me do so yet — I have merely retailed to you the statement made to me by the Tibetan priest who gave it to me.”
“Has it the ordinary magnetic properties?” said I. “But of course you have thought of that.”
Walter Surtees smiled. “Yes, I have tested it, but it doesn’t even lift iron-filings. No, it isn’t a mere bar-magnet, whatever it is.”
“But that stuff about the ‘periodic powers,'” said I. “If there is anything in it at all it must be permanent. I am inclined to think the whole thing a fable. I dare say those artful priests were able to play some curious tricks with it. It’s their business.”
My friend looked queerly at me for a moment before he spoke.
“Well, to be frank with you,” said he, “there is something supernormal about it. I haven’t confined my experiments to poking it among iron-filings.”
“What else, then?” I asked curiously.
“It shines in the dark, for one thing,” he replied.
I laughed.
“Radium,” I suggested. “Possibly it contains a minute quantity. But that wasn’t what you were going to tell me. You would hardly call looking at it in the dark an experiment.”
Surtees rose and went to the door of the room.
“You shall see for yourself,” said he.
He opened the door and whistled softly. Presently a huge, gray cat insinuated itself into the room and rubbed affectionately against my friend’s leg, purring gently the while.
Surtees closed the door and returned to his chair.
“Now watch,” said he.
The cat followed him for a yard or two, then it seemed to grow suddenly uneasy. Its fur rose and its tail became enlarged.
In obedience to a sign from Surtees I placed the bar, which I was still holding, on the floor. The cat watched it as though fascinated and mewed plaintively. It now seemed more terrified than angry.
Slowly, as though against its will, the animal drew nearer with a curious sidling movement until at last it lay close to the bar, motionless and apparently exhausted.
“That is certainly queer,” said I thoughtfully. “I say,” I added, looking up sharply, “you’re not playing any hanky-panky tricks, old chap?”
Walter Surtees shook his head gravely. He was watching the cat.
“There may be some odor clinging to it which we cannot ourselves detect,” I suggested, “and which the cat can, and finds rather overpowering.”
“I never knew an odor to affect a cat or any other animal in that fashion” “returned Surtees. “This morning it only fluffed up and swore at the thing. Now it seems to be decidedly more impressed.”
He rose and lifted the cat gently. Then he started and examined the animal closely.
“Why, it’s dead!” he cried.
“Dead!” I echoed. “Nonsense!”
“Dead as mutton,” repeated Surtees. “Luckily it is my own cat and not the landlady’s. Poor brute! I was going to show you something else. The canary —”
“No, thanks,” said I. “We’ll spare the canary, if you don’t mind.”
After spending some time in futile examinations of both bar and poor pussy, we left the bar where I had placed it on the carpet and passed to some other of my friend’s curios.
But it was of no use. That infernal bar fascinated both of us. At last Surtees muttered something under his breath, and picking it up, replaced it carefully in a leather case.
“You take good care of it,” I remarked.
“It may resent neglect,” replied my friend lightly.
“Look here, old chap,” said I suddenly, “if I were you I’d take an early train to Brighton or Southend and chuck that thing off the end of a pier — leather case and all.”
“I am waiting to see what will happen,” he returned in a curious dull tone. “I intend to see it out.”
“Is there nothing that will check its influence?” I suggested. “No antidote.”
“Nothing opaque to it, so to speak. I have thought of that. I tried lots of things this morning. Glass, electrified and normal — silk, water, shellac, a score or other things. I even borrowed an air-pump from the science school yonder and tried a vacuum. No use, any of it.”
“Didn’t you learn anything of its nature from the man who gave it to you?”
“He simply told me that he had taken it from the robe of a fellow priest, whom he found crushed to death.”
“Crushed to death! How?”
Walter Surtees shrugged his shoulders.
“Some sort of panic, I believe. There was a big crowd of fanatics at some shrine or other, and this man seemed to have got underfoot. The story was very vague.”
“And he had this thing on him,” said I, musingly looking at the case on the table.
Surtees nodded.
I rose, and as I did so I swayed suddenly.
“Hold up — what’s the matter — dizzy?” exclaimed Surtees.
“It’s that confounded juju of yours,” I gasped, catching sight of a rather white face in the mirror. I pulled myself together and reached the door.
“I’ve found a better name for it than that,” said Walter Surtees. “The ‘V’ force — the vital force, you know.”
“We’ll leave it at that,” said I, feeling angry with myself and the mysterious drawing power which I still felt, though less strongly. “Call it what you like, but I repeat my advice. Get rid of it or it may play cat-tricks with you,” and I touched the dead animal with my foot.
Surtees seemed preoccupied and scarcely replied to my “Good night.”
I went slowly down the stairs with an uneasy feeling that I was leaving him to face some unknown danger alone. I hesitated and half turned back. Then I heard the piano. Surtees was playing one of his favorite “Chants sans paroles.” I laughed to myself.
“Music hath charms,” I muttered. “It may soothe even a steel bar.”
Yet I could not shake off the memory of that poor brute of a cat and the mysterious suddenness with which death had come to it.
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF: “Radium Age” is Josh Glenn’s name for the nascent sf genre’s c. 1900–1935 era, a period which saw the discovery of radioactivity, i.e., the revelation that matter itself is constantly in movement — a fitting metaphor for the first decades of the 20th century, during which old scientific, religious, political, and social certainties were shattered. More info here.
SERIALIZED BY HILOBOOKS: James Parker’s Cocky the Fox | Annalee Newitz’s “The Great Oxygen Race” | Matthew Battles’s “Imago” | & many more original and reissued novels and stories.