“Secret of the Observatory” (Amazing Stories, August 1938)

Bloch, Robert. “Secret of the Observatory.” Amazing Stories, August 1938, pp. 6-31.
https://archive.org/details/Amazing_Stories_v12n04_1938-08/page/n5/mode/2up

The novella opens with a journalist named Marlin and his friend, Hughes, sneaking up a Canadian mountain trail toward an observatory, careful not to be seen in the twilight. Marlin gives a bit of the reason for their clandestine journey: Dr. Okida and a group of Japanese men calling themselves “scientists” have occupied the place. Marlin and his newspaper editor are convinced they are there for nefarious purposes. When they get close enough, Marlin reveals his invention: the “Argus Eye,” a device capable of taking photographs through solid walls. They set themselves up to get images of what is happening inside the fortified building. They manage to take photos of most of the building before the shooting starts. They run down the mountain lugging the strange camera with them, but they are intercepted at the bottom by more gunmen. Hughes is killed, and Marlin becomes enraged. He chases one of the assailants, who is revealed to be a beautiful woman who seems to be American and not Japanese. Marlin brings her back to his rooming house where they talk. She is also trying to reveal the secret of the observatory; Marlin doesn’t quite believe her despite her charm and beauty. 

They develop the film and see a weapon inside called an “ignition ray machine,” a fearsome weapon of war. Marlin sends the information to his editor who publishes the story about Japanese spies building weapons in Canada. The story is a bust because the Canadia government actually owns the weapon; Okida had stolen it and made it easy to identify to throw others off his trail. Marlin and the woman are attacked in Marlin’s room. The woman is taken along with the Argus Eye. Marlin vows to build another camera to find proof of Okida’s ill intentions. The images he takes show the inside of the observatory revealing weapons of war. He also sees the woman being held hostage. Vowing to free her (and, secondarily, to save the free world), he goes back to the observatory where he breaks inside, kills Okida’s minions, and confronts the evil scientist. Okida has a gun and takes him by surprise. He explains his plot to Marlin which gives the journalist time to launch a final, desperate assault. He defeats Okida, and the woman fall s into his arms: “Then Lois had stepped forward, her arms cool and close around him. ‘I hope that’s the last military duty you ever perform,’ she whispered. ‘There are other duties for a man like you.’ As his lips found hers, Dan Marlin decided that he agreed perfectly” (31).

This is Bloch’s first story in Hugo Gernsback’s science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories. In fact, it is his first published science fiction. More would come soon after, but this one, with its emphasis on the technology of war, with its explanations for the inner workings of the Argus Eye, places the focus about as far away form cosmic horror as is possible. Raymond A. Palmer became editor of the magazine with the June issue. Palmer is credited with creating the first science fiction fan group ever as well as the first fan publication, Al of this is described in Fred Nadis’s excellent book, The Man from Mars: Ray Palmer’s Amazing Pulp Journey (2013). Palmer and Bloch were both from Milwaukee, and they knew each other. Along with Stanley G. Weinbaum and others, they were members of the Milwaukee Fictioneers. On a different note, a similar weapon to Okida’s is the subject of The Eater of Darkness (1926) by Robert M. Coates, a surrealist science fiction novel that is about as bonkers as can be: it is “a hilariously misconstrued hurricane of happenstance, adventure and parody” (Roza 53). One wonders if Bloch might have known about this fairly obscure novel. No matter what, as the editorial footnotes indicate, the idea of an “Argus Eye” and the various other technologies discussed in the story were, in the immediate pre-war years, part of the public conversation in science fiction circles. Finally, Marlin and Hughes are described as friends. When Hughes is murdered on the nighttime trail, Marlin… leaves him out there in the woods! It took me a few times reading through the story to confirm that Marlin just never thought about him again!