Exiles From Below

by Neil R. Jones

Another adventure of the intrepid Professor Jameson. ExcerptProfessor Jameson clung more tightly to his precarious perch on the sloping mountainside. His metal tentacles curled about treacherous knobs of slippery rock. His mechanical eyes circling the coned metal head regarding Gloph, the intelligent space creature who, too, fought for his life against the face of the looming peak. Around them shone the stars of space, and several little moons moved visibly in ever-changing phases. Out of the darkness, a blazing sun threw sharp etched shadows all about them. Far beneath them, they saw the haze of the planet's low-lying, dense atmosphere up out of which the towering mountains reached beyond and into space, a bleak region, a veritable top of the world, where only Gloph and his species lived. The space ship of the Zoromes was gone. It had fallen when a part of the mountain peak had slid away. Weathering had weakened the mountain peak beneath the atmosphere line. The professor remembered 65G-849 remarking about this characteristic as they had approached and examined the strange world from out in space."There is no weathering on the mountain tops in space, other than what results from temperature changes when the sun shines," 65G-849 had assured his fellow Zoromes. "It is different, however, below the atmosphere line. Because of the presence of atmosphere and moisture, a good many of the mountain peaks are undermined around the edges."Besides the space ship and those inside it, the five machine men who had come out of the space ship with the professor to talk with friendly space creatures had gone hurtling to their doom. The professor had seen 6W-438, 119M-5, 29G-75, 777Y-46 and 7H-88 grab frantically for something to stay their plunge. Only the professor and 119M-5 had been successful in gaining a hold, and 119M-5's respite had been but a brief one. The machine man's hold on the slippery surface had been even more insecure than the professor's 119M-5 had shot by the professor, radiating a departing farewell.Among the group of space creatures accompanying the machine men, all had fallen, too, except Gloph, who with the professor and 119M-5 had been farthest from the edge of the great break. Before the catastrophe, the space creatures had formed a funeral cortege in the performance of strange rites for the two of their dead, and the machine men had watched. At the climax of the rites, it was the custom, the machine men had learned, to hurl the two dead bodies off the precipice and into the atmospheric sea far below. It was never just one. There always had to be two.Professor Jameson looked across at Gloph and envied the latter's soft, shaggy feet which gave him some measure of support in avoiding the inevitable. "Are you all right?" he radiated. "For the moment," the long, thin creature with the luminous eyes formed the thought. "But I can get nowhere from here." He gazed up helplessly at the steep slope they were on. His four long arms clung to scanty holds on the steep face of the mountain; four shaggy hooves settled against uneven spots on the slippery rock, while the long, gray body hugged the wall closely."We can't get up farther," the machine man told him. "If we could only climb down. It would be easier to climb if we were below the atmosphere line."

55 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 2011

About the author

Neil Ronald Jones (29 May 1909 - 15 February 1988) was an American author who worked for the state of New York. Not prolific, and little remembered today, Jones was ground–breaking in science fiction. His first story, "The Death's Head Meteor", was published in Air Wonder Stories in 1930, recording the first use of "astronaut". He also pioneered cyborg and robotic characters, and is credited with inspiring the modern idea of Cryonics. Most of his stories fit into a "future history" like that of Robert A. Heinlein or Cordwainer Smith, well before either of them used this convention in their fiction.

Rating not even a cover mention, the first installment of Jones' most popular creation, "The Jameson Satellite", appeared in the July 1931 issue of Amazing Stories. The hero was Professor Jameson, the last Earthman, who became immortal through the science of the Zoromes. Jameson was obsessed with the idea of perfectly preserving his body after death and succeeded by having it launched into space in a small capsule. Jameson's body survived for 40,000,000 years, where it was found orbiting a dead planet Earth by a passing Zorome exploration ship. The Zoromes, or machine men as they sometimes called themselves, were cyborgs. They came from a race of biological beings who had achieved immortality by transferring their brains to machine bodies. They occasionally assisted members of other races with this transition (i.e. the Tri-Peds and the Mumes), allowing others to become Zoromes and join them on their expeditions, which sometimes lasted hundreds of years. So, much like the Borg of the Star Trek series, a Zorome crew could be made up of assimilated members of many different biological species. The Zoromes discovered that Jameson's body had been so well preserved that they were able to repair his brain, incorporate it into a Zorome machine body and restart it. The professor joined their crew and, over the course of the series, participated in many adventures, even visiting Zor, the Zorome homeworld, where he met biological Zoromes. The professor eventually rose to command his own crew of machine men on a new Zorome exploration ship. "The Jameson Satellite" proved so popular with readers that later installments in Amazing Stories got not only cover mentions but the cover artwork.

Being cryopreserved and revived is an idea that would recur in SF, such as in Gene Roddenberry's Genesis II. One young science fiction fan who read The Jameson Satellite and drew inspiration from the idea of cryonics was Robert Ettinger, who became known as the father of cryonics. The Zoromes are also credited by Isaac Asimov as one of the inspirations behind the robots of his Robot series.

Masamune Shirow paid homage to Jones in his cyborg-populated Ghost in the Shell saga by including a no-frills brain-in-a-box design, even naming them Jameson-type cyborgs.

Jameson (or 21MM392, as he was known to his fellow metal beings) was the subject of twenty-one stories between 1931 and 1951, when Jones stopped writing, with nine stories still unpublished. In the late 1960s, Ace Books editor Donald A. Wollheim compiled five collections, comprising sixteen of these, including two previously unpublished. In all there were thirty Jameson stories written (twenty four eventually saw publication, six remain unpublished), and twenty-two unrelated pieces.